In the moment she touched the dark azure feather, Gu Yanying experienced an unprecedented sensation of vastness and spaciousness, as if she had been tossed up beyond the nine heavens. Everything in the world had become insignificant. Even the unbearable torturing of hell had become nothing all of a sudden.
In that instant, she became as certain as she could be that this was exactly what she wanted.
Suddenly, a hand gripped her wrist firmly. The force was so great that it almost crushed her bones.
The Featherfolk King no longer possessed any elegance or demeanour with his appearance. He glared at Gu Yanying in an extremely vicious fashion, but his eyes were also filled with a smear of pain. It was exactly because Gu Yanying had made bodily contact with him that he was now under the influence of the hot winds of hell, allowing him to recover his clarity faster.
He squeezed out a few words from between his teeth, “Don’t even think about it!”
“Just let go! You’re completely unworthy of something like this!”
Gu Yanying’s voice was hoarse as she gripped the dark azure feather firmly. Compared to the difficulty she had faced getting her, even the pain of her bones shattering was nothing.
“I’m unworthy? Even your father doesn’t have the courage to say that! You’re just a measly half-daemon!”
The Featherfolk King rapidly recovered, but the flow of the white light around him was still sluggish. Although the hot winds of hell had given him clarity, he was clearly unaccustomed to this kind of pain.
“He’s not worthy either!” Gu Yanying put her pride and arrogance on full display.
“How arrogant!”
“With you, even on the verge of death, you don’t have the courage to put up one last fight and ascend. With him, he’s a hawk raised and reared by a person. No matter how hard he struggles, he’s unable to erase the imprints of the past. Both of you only possess strength, but that’s it. You might dominate the nine provinces, but that’s all there is to the two of you!”
Gu Yanying seemed to be smiling, but her expression was extremely twisted. It was filled with endless delight.
Li Qingshan was surprised as well. He never imagined she would be hiding such arrogance and wildness behind her casual and graceful demeanour. Even with her father, she had begun to look down on him a long time ago. However, that did suit his tastes more.
“Well said! Let me lend you a hand!”
His arms suddenly tightened, cutting off the Featherfolk King’s response, but he was blocked by a layer of faint white light. For a moment, he was unable to claim his life.
However, the exhaustion was fading away and their auras basically rose at the same time. Li Qingshan’s advantage in close combat gradually became evident, while his innate abilities slowly recovered too. He unleashed the power of tremors as hard as he could. Even though it was still extremely feeble, it could demolish the Featherfolk King’s equally-feeble light.
In that moment, the Featherfolk King’s bones crackled throughout his entire body. Countless of them were broken. He used everything he had in him to contend against Li Qingshan.
The daemon qi and spiritual qi collided together and the storm they produced dispersed all the clouds within several hundred kilometers, revealing the vast expanse of the Cloud province.
Over a dozen streaks of white light rose into the air, as if they had pierced the sun. They shot over.
Bai Jie was utterly furious. Having fallen asleep, she fell the entire way down, until she slammed heavily into the ground. It was not enough to kill her, but she was still scuffed up and she was all dirtied too, breaking the rule of never setting foot on the ground.
However, it was exactly because she fell down that she left the vicinity of the sleepy bug, allowing her to recover so quickly.
The featherfolk all worked together, tempted to tear Li Qingshan to a thousand pieces!
Li Qingshan frowned, not because of these featherfolk—even if they had twice the number, he would not be afraid. Instead, it was because the dark azure feather had trembled slightly. Once the Featherfolk King recovered enough strength to power the feather, then all of their efforts would go to waste.
However, killing him before both of them had completely recovered was almost impossible. No matter how much he had declined and become enfeebled, his foundation still belonged to the peak of the third heavenly tribulation.
“Caw!” Gu Yanying suddenly opened her mouth and emitted a sharp, strange call, like the sorrowful cry of a crow. It was filled with an ominous vibe.
Li Qingshan found it to be extremely familiar. He immediately recalled what it was, The Death Bringer Curse!
It was one of Mo Yu’s innate abilities, something almost akin to a curse. It could directly reduce the enemy’s lifespan. In the past, it was exactly this curse that had shaved off a century from his lifespan. Only when Mo Yu died was this curse released.
However, from beginning to end, it had never affected him in any shape or form. He was extremely young and he possessed the various bloodlines of the demonic and divine. His lifespan was immeasurably long.
However, now that it had been used on the declining Featherfolk King, it was a terrifying, lethal strike.
In that instant, time seemed to speed up. Wrinkles rapidly crawled across the Featherfolk King’s handsome face and he gave off a strange smell. That was the stink of a person on the verge of death.
Streams of white light flowed around him like dancing snakes, dispersing away in the surroundings. His aura declined even more.
That was the spiritual qi he had collected from this world. Now, it was time for him to return it to the world.
Even celestials would face decay one day.
In the face of death, supreme and aloof cultivators were insignificant like ants, like blades of grass.
Gu Yanying used this to pluck the azure feather from the thick wings. All that remained was a stream of white light attached to it.
So this is her final trump card?
Li Qingshan raised his thick brows. Just like the talismans and scrolls of human cultivators, there was nothing strange with daemons condensing their innate abilities into a single spell. Mo Yu definitely would have been extremely cooperative with her too.
“How dare you!” The Featherfolk King was overcome with surprise and fury. His voice was old and filled with despair, “I’ll make you perish with me!”
“Do you have that courage?” Gu Yanying said in disdain, instead goading him along. With Li Qigshan alone, it would be pointless even if the Featherfolk King committed self-destruction. Instead, it would save quite a lot of trouble.
“I will never die!”
Streaks of white light shot out from the Featherfolk King’s eyes, ears, mouth and nose, before turning into thousands of ribbons. However, they ignored Li Qingshan and Gu Yanying, wrapping around Li Fengyuan instead.
In that instant, all of them became blood-red.
For the sake of maintaining his life, he went as far as to drain the phoenix blood without any regard. His spiritual qi immediately stopped leaking away and the spread of the wrinkles slowed. His old face became filled with an unnaturally healthy glow.
Li Fengyuan’s cultivation was insufficient, so he was still asleep, but his face immediately paled. His aura rapidly declined and his eyebrows were firmly locked together, like he was in a nightmare.
“You’re asking to die!”
Li Qingshan fell into a rage. He unleashed the Frenzy of the Tiger Demon, cutting through all the white ribbons with his fingers, before punching in the Featherfolk King’s face. He then opened his huge mouth, revealing a row of sharp teeth. His head had already become a tiger’s biting down on the Featherfolk King’s wings and ripping away forcefully.
With a rip, the wings were mostly torn apart, sending blood everywhere.
Gu Yanying ripped through the white light too, plucking the azure feather from him completely. However, before she could even celebrate, the azure feather shook violently, erupting with a glow that matched the sky. It faded in and out, as if it was about to drift away from this world.
“Hahahaha, if I can’t obtain it, then don’t even think about obtaining it either!”
The Featherfolk King condensed a head from light and laughed madly, but it was filled with brutality. At the end of the day, he was just unable to refine the azure feather and inherit the power and legacy within, which was why they managed to steal it from him like this. However, he had still been in possession of it for such a long time. Using his last bit of connection, he tossed the feather beyond the nine provinces.
Gu Yanying’s face changed. Were all of her plans, all of the risks she had taken, just going to fall to shambles like this?
Under Bai Jie’s lead, the featherfolk cultivators assembled a formation and surrounded them.
“Let go now!” Li Qingshan said.
“No!” Gu Yanying was determined. She no longer needed the hot winds to maintain her consciousness, so her destroyed appearance gradually recovered. Her expression softened, “Qingshan, you can go. Our debts have been settled. I still want to make one last gamble!”
Li Qingshan made up his mind and gripped Gu Yanying’s hand firmly. He unleashed the power of tremors as hard as he could in an attempt to overwhelm the azure feather, but he felt the same vastness and spaciousness as Gu Yanying was experiencing. This was not something he would suppress or overwhelm.
With a thrum, the azure feather emitted a rumble that shook up the space there, almost beyond the limits of hearing. It soon split open the space there and vanished with Li Qingshan and Gu Yanying.
“First father!” Li Fengyuan woke up from his sleep and just happened to see this, which left him devastated.
“Your majesty!” Bai Jie said in concern, only to see the spiritual qi begin to disperse from the Featherfolk King again.
“They’re just asking to die!” The Featherfolk King said, but he felt no joy at all. He had not just lost the azure feather in this battle. He had used up his last bit of life too. He was in danger of dying at any moment.
At this very moment, the cry of a crane echoed through the sky.
A colossal red-crowned crane shot towards Clouded city like a shadow. It was one of the Ten Daemon Kings, the Cloud Shadow Crane King.
“You old bastard, you’ve come too late! Too late! What you want is already gone. It won’t ever return again,” the Featherfolk King said feebly.
The white crane turned into a skinny but vigorous old man with a red crown and large robes, staring at the headless and almost-wingless Featherfolk King in shock. He struggled to believe there was actually someone in the world who could injure him to such an extend and steal the feather that he dreamed about every single day.
He was one of the few avian great Daemon Kings in the world. He had begun coveting the azure father a long time ago, but he never found an opportunity. He never imagined someone would beat him to it.
Sensing the lingering drowsiness in the space there, he immediately came to a certain understanding. Had they used the power of the forbidden area in the north?
He asked with a frown, “Who did it?”
“Li Qingshan and Gu Yanying.” The Featherfolk King hid nothing, uttering their names as he grinded his teeth.
“So it’s them!” The Cloud Shadow Crane King was surprised. He had heard about these two people a long time ago. In particular, Li Qingshan’s feats of dragon slaying in the Ink sea had shocked the entire world, but he also found this rather difficult to accept. Neither of them were pure avians. Couldn’t the azure feather just choose a suitable owner?
“Where are they right now?”
“Who knows where they’ve died,” said the Featherfolk King. Leaving the protection of the world and traversing through space was not an easy feat. There was basically no chance of surviving. Even if they survived somehow, they could not return to the nine provinces again.
The Cloud Shadow Crane King was unsurprised. Since they were bold enough to challenge the Featherfolk King, they had to pay a price. It was already astounding enough that they had made it so far.
“You’re lying. My first father will never die. He’ll definitely come back and punch in your damned head again!” Li Fengyuan threw himself at the Featherfolk King with tears in his eyes.
“Shut up!” The Featherfolk King grabbed Li Fengyan by the throat furiously, until he returned to his original form.
“Phoenix!”
The Cloud Shadow Crane King was surprised again. He had heard that the phoenix had reappeared in the Green province a long time ago, but he had never seen it for himself. He could not help as he was overcome by a sense of attachment and reverence, which only confirmed his thoughts.
He said solemnly, “This is the lord of us avians. Please release him, fellow.”
“The lord of avians? That’s exactly what I’m eating, the lord of avians!”
The Featherfolk King sensed his life flow away. He had already reached the verge of death, so there was no longer anything holding him back anymore. HIs head condensed from light suddenly surged and split open in the middle, like a huge, vicious mouth. He swallowed Li Fengyuan in a single gulp.
