Li Qingshan could not help but cup the Swelling Earth of the Nine Heavens firmly with both hands. His entire body trembled gently.
This power did not fill his body all of a sudden and make him feel like he was about to explode. Instead, it was filled with boundless thickness and sincerity, wrapping him inside gently.
The Swelling Earth of the Nine Heavens did not require refinement, nor could it be refined. If he wanted to use it, the power would be there for him to use. If he did not want to use it, the power would just be in there.
The spiritual qi within all spiritual stones would be depleted, but its power was endless.
Gu Yanying gazed at the small mountain. Even with the powerful eyesight of a kunpeng, Li Qingshan was as tiny as a grain of sand from several thousand kilometres away. She said in worry, “Xiaoming, why isn’t he out yet? Don’t tell me something’s happened to him?”
Rāhu Xiaoming said mysteriously, “You care a lot about him!”
“I do!” Gu Yanying smiled without trying to hide it.
“You should be careful of damaging your heart of cultivation because of personal feelings.”
“Thank you for your warning. I’ve been carefully keeping it under control the entire time. However, if my heart of cultivation is sturdy enough, why would I be afraid of some measly personal feelings? I’m still lacking in this area. I hope I can be like him in the future.” Gu Yanying smiled.
“Fair enough. I really do wonder who taught this guy.”
Rāhu Xiaoming thought about Li Qingshan. He was basically covered in personal feelings. He never treated his feelings as an obstacle and sometimes he was so optimistic that he almost seemed naive, yet he was able to advance valiantly. He clearly was not particularly bright, yet he was able to keep an open mind and think through everything. Rāhu Xiaoming really could not help but feel admiration for him.
However, there was one exception, which was during their journey right now. He had virtually been too attached to personal feelings, and he had been far too narrow-minded. He wondered what kind of charms Xiao An possessed to make someone like him become so attached to her.
“Must be someone from beyond the Nine Heavens!”
During the several decades Gu Yanying spent with Li Qingshan and Rāhu Xiaoming, she felt like her horizons had become much broader. Her view was no longer limited to the tiny nine provinces, and her identity as some daughter of some Hawk God was even less worth mentioning.
Rāhu Xiaoming jokingly said, “Perfect. If he keels over, we don’t have to go to the nine provinces anymore.”
“No, we still have to return to the nine provinces.” Gu Yanying was determined. Whether it was for a promise or because of her personal feelings, the destination of this journey definitely would not change. “We should at least lay him to rest in the earth!”
“Alright, then may our fellow Li live to a ripe old age!”
Rāhu Xiaoming shrugged, but that was expected. If she did not have even this amount of determination, what gave her the right to travel with him?
“Look, he’s come out, and he seems very happy!”
Li Qingshan leapt out of the cracks and stood on the tiny mountain. He roared mentally, “You two bastards, have you said enough? You’re the ones who’re going to keel over. You’re the ones who’re going to be laid to rest in the earth! You’re the ones who’re going to live to a ripe old age!”
Despite being thousands of kilometres away, their consciousnesses were linked. They could even sense each other’s stronger emotions, or how would Gu Yanying be able to tell from so far away that Li Qingshan was happy or not?
Gu Yanying said, “Hah, how is the Swelling Earth of the Nine Heavens? Is it as wondrous as the rumours say it is?”
“The Swelling Earth of the Nine Heavens is filled with wonders, but how can it be used so easily?” Rāhu Xiaoming said. The more pure the power and the closer it was to being a fundamental power, the more difficult it was to use. That was simply how the world worked.
“Hmph, just you watch!” Li Qingshan spread his legs, brought his left hand to his waist, and gripped the Swelling Earth of the Nine Heavens firmly in his right hand, lifting it high into the air. He called out inside, “Grant me your power! I am Li Qingshan!”
An invisible, great power immediately spread through outer space. Even the mountains shook, let alone the tiny asteroids. Even the world fragments began to move, gathering towards his hand. Originally, the pulling force could influence world fragments, but the effect was nowhere close to this.
At that instant, his hand seemed to become the centre of the universe. Even the kunpeng had to swing its wings to resist this pull.
“This…”
Not only was Gu Yanying speechless, but even Rāhu Xiaoming was dumbfounded. How was he still a Daemon King? Was the Swelling Earth of the Nine Heaven’s greatest effect bestowing power to others and not for constructing some blessed land of cultivation? No, that was impossible. Fundamental powers of the world did not possess any so-called will, so it was even more impossible for it to “bestow” any power. That must have been the case.
“He’s just yelling out randomly. Don’t take him seriously,” Gu Yanying said. Xiaoming’s emotions were far too intense, so intense that even she heard his thoughts. She had known Li Qingshan for many years, so she was clearly much more familiar with his personality.
“Alright then!”
Rāhu Xiaoming could not help but smile wryly. Perhaps only he could wield the power within the Swelling Earth of the Nine Heavens in such a simple and crude way, and perhaps the Swelling Earth of the Nine Heavens existed exactly for him. His strength increased far more than a dozen times. Rāhu Xiaoming had never heard of a third heavenly tribulation cultivator that possessed such power. Even he, a son of the Rāhu clan, was not capable of something like this in the past.
“But what’s he trying to do?”
The endless pull attracted everything there, whether it was the Atmospheric Wind Essence, the Earthen Magnetic Poles, the countless mountains, or the world fragments.
“Can’t you just ask him? Hey, Qingshan, we’ve already witnessed your powers. You can come back, and we can continue on our way!” Gu Yanying called out inside as she hid behind a large mountain to avoid the violent asteroid rain.
“Heh, I haven’t even done much!” Li Qingshan was not just doing this to show off his power. When the first asteroid arrived before his eyes, he said sternly, “Watermirror’s Image, both real and an illusion!”
Beneath his feet, the mirror-like water surface instantly spread hundreds of kilometres away. The asteroid fell into it, produced a ripple, and vanished.
At the same time, in the small world, a meteorite shot across the sky. The sparks it created from the friction against the air made everyone raise their heads!
In the Abstruse temple. Li Guinian stood up and arrived outside in the courtyard. He furrowed his brows, Is it a regular meteor or a daemon star?
The Watermirror’s Image could do more than create clones. It could also transfer items between the main body and clone, except this ability had become rather pointless as his clone became more and more useless. Only when his clone ascended to godhood did he finally use it again to transfer spiritual qi.
Inside the small world, everyone who gazed at the night sky was stunned. Before the first meteorite had even landed, a hundred, ten thousand, a hundred thousand meteorites descended at the same time, drowning out the original stars and filling the entire night sky.
The grand and glorious sight was like a dream. It was as if they had returned to a decade ago when the kunpeng spread its wings and took off.
Above a busy city, Li Fengxian watched on in an enamoured manner. She murmured, “Father, is it you?”
On the top of a large tree, Li Yuanfei scratched his head. “What’s the old man doing now?” Who else apart from him could create such a great disturbance?
On the snowy mountain in the northern region, Xue Bing was dressed in white clothes with her hands empty, no longer wielding a sword. A stream of water wrapped around her, contending against the bolts of tribulation lightning. It was constantly dissipated before constantly recovering again, completely unleashing the flexible nature of water while condensing it into ice from time to time.
As the leader of the Snow Mountain hall, she had a lot of responsibilities and did not devote herself to cultivation like Yang Miaozhen either, so she cultivated much more slowly. However, after many years of accumulation, she had finally reached this point. She had already mastered the Gui Water Method of Condensing Qi completely and had added her own variations to it.
Now, as she faced the tribulation in an attempt to ascend, she was already sixty percent confident that she would succeed.
Even at most, it would only be sixty percent. By the standard of mortals, she was already an old person. Even with her preserved youth, she had already gained many white hairs on her head. If she continued to wait, she would not even have a sixty percent chance anymore. She could not help but become slightly envious of Hu Xian’er. She did not cultivate quickly, such that she still had not ascended even now, but the length of her lifespan was well beyond anything she could rival.
The incident in the sky distracted her momentarily, and she felt the heavenly tribulation suddenly go through some kind of change, but she did not think too much about it. She focused on overcoming the tribulation.
Gu Yanying said in surprise, “He’s trying to become a space-devouring beast!”
Rāhu Xiaoming frowned. “Everything else won’t be too difficult, but the world fragments aren’t that fun to deal with! Do you know how many innate abilities he possesses? Doesn’t a Daemon King only have four?”
Gu Yanying laid out her hands and shrugged. “Even a mighty son of a god like you doesn’t know, so how would I know?”
By now, the first world fragment had finally been pulled over to Li Qingshan. His face became stern as well. He was not doing this to put on a fireworks show for the small world. What everything boiled down to was whether these world fragments could overcome such a great distance and be transported to the small world.
The world fragment fell into the Watermirror’s Image and immediately produced an unprecedented ripple. It was not immediately sucked away like the asteroids either. Instead, it was stuck there, leading to a strange sight where one half was in outer space and the other half was in the small world.
So it doesn’t work? But it shouldn’t be a definite no. It’s the cultivation of my Spirit Turtle Transformation that’s still too weak.
Li Qingshan and his mirror clone gazed at the two halves of the world fragment and frowned at the same time.
