Chapter 1025: Breaking Restrictions, Seeing Treasure
At this moment, in Ning Cheng’s senses, the entire Five-elements Star had become something akin to a steep slope while he continued to go down and down.
Ning Cheng also encountered more corpses of powerful cultivators along the way. From the looks of it, he wasn’t the only one who discovered the Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura. Other people must have entered this place before he had even reached it. It’s just that these people couldn’t reach the end before dying. But more importantly, these cultivator corpses were in the same condition as Yan Jinqing, stripped and devoid of all remnant dao rhythms.
Just then, a torrent several times stronger than the previous attack on his Sea of Consciousness blasted into his Sea of Consciousness.
“Kacha….” Ning Cheng’s Starry Sky Sea of Consciousness made another cracking sound, and Ning Cheng felt his consciousness being torn into shreds. The terrifying pain caused him to roar out in pain. Even the Dark Nether Devourer couldn’t devour the attack in time.
Ning Cheng could no longer contain the build-up of blood in his body and immediately retched. Yet, despite the situation, Ning Cheng didn’t have the slightest thought of retreating. Lowering his head, he even charged forward while pushing the Dark Nether Spirit Devourer to its limit to swallow this raging torrent attacking his Sea of Consciousness.
In this way, Ning Cheng kept rushing ‘down’ while operating the Dark Nether Spirit Devourer to grind down the attack in his Sea of Consciousness. As for Empyrean Consciousness Transmutation Pills, Ning Cheng treated them as sugar candies and popped them one after another. As for the potential after-effects, Ning Cheng turned a blind eye to it under the current circumstances.
“Boom……” Suddenly, an invisible restriction blocked Ning Cheng’s path. Outside this restriction were several more cultivator corpses; from the looks of it, they had only recently fallen. Unfortunately, although they had better luck finding this place than Ning Cheng, they didn’t have the strength of Ning Cheng, costing them their lives after reaching this place.
Ning Cheng ignored the corpses on the ground as his focus shifted to the scene in front of him. Although invisible, Ning Cheng could sense a huge spherical restriction in front of him, but more importantly, he saw five completely different streams of aura flowing harmoniously within this spherical restriction. Each aural strand contained an ineffable dao rhythm that sounded like morning bells and evening drums. It obviously didn’t produce any sound, yet it could penetrate the depths of one’s heart and soul. As a result, it ‘sounded’ like a huge drum roaring in one’s heart.
This was definitely the Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura. Ning Cheng held back the ecstasy in his heart and raised his hand to crack open the restriction in front of him.
“Puny ant, if you dare to break this restriction, this saint will not rest until your soul is devoured and refined for a million years.” When Ning Cheng was about to break the restriction, a voice that was so cold that it could chill one’s marrow sounded in Ning Cheng’s ears.
Ning Cheng suddenly looked up, and a faint shadow appeared behind the huge restriction. This shadow seemed to be composed of countless dao rhythm auras. But more importantly, these dao rhythm auras fused at speeds visible to the naked eye.
“So it’s you; you tricked all these people into coming here to devour their dao rhythms, foundation and spiritual root, right? What a vicious cultivation method.” Ning Cheng flicked his hand, and a spear suddenly appeared in front of him.
“Haha, the world’s cultivation methods are only divided into useful and useless. Does it matter if it’s vicious or non-vicious? Just like your cultivation method that can devour spiritual consciousness, it’s very useful. Otherwise, I’m afraid you wouldn’t have reached this point.” The shadow showed a faint smile.
Ning Cheng found that this shadow had grown a bit solid as he finished that sentence. Sensing that change, Ning Cheng immediately understood a few things. This shadow was constantly growing while devouring. It was just like his Seven Bridges Spirit Technique. After integrating with the netherworld’s worldly laws, it had also slowly started to solidify.
Because of this, Ning Cheng became more and more certain that this fellow, most likely, couldn’t move from this place. He could only attack through that torrent that blasted into the victim’s Sea of Consciousness. Cultivators who couldn’t defend or devour the foreign spiritual consciousness that entered their Sea of Consciousness could only watch as their Sea of Consciousness exploded.
As for this fellow in the Five-elements Star, it would quickly move to seize their dao rhythm, foundation and spiritual roots after killing those cultivators. Under such a form of seizure and consolidation, once this fellow grew to the point of moving at will, he might not even have the ability to resist.
“I will give you some of the Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura, but you must cooperate with me. As for the specific method of cooperation, we will talk about it after I give you the Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura. Otherwise, even if I let you into this forbidden restriction, you could only look at the Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura with red eyes. I can tell you that this Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura isn’t something that can be taken away by ordinary things. On the other hand, I can use the forbidden restriction to let you take it.” The shadow behind the forbidden restriction kept a close eye on Ning Cheng, trying to gauge his reaction.
“If I agree…….”
After hearing Ning Cheng’s ‘agreement’, the shadow spoke even more calmly. “It’s best if you agree. That way, we both can gain something; otherwise, you wouldn’t get anything and will have to die…….”
As the shadow reached this point, his form turned even more solid. However, before he could finish this sentence, the spear in Ning Cheng’s hand blasted toward the restriction. At the same time, Ning Cheng also finished his sentence, “….. it would be a strange thing.”
At this moment, Ning Cheng fully understood why the Cheerful Treasure Chamber of Commerce leaked the Five-elements Star’s location before the auction started.
There was only one reason, and that was that this shadow’s cultivation level wasn’t enough. It must have made an agreement with the Cheerful Treasure Chamber of Commerce, and they must have first sent a small number of cultivators here to improve this shadow’s strength. Once this shadow’s strength reached a certain level, they would then let more cultivators come over and let the shadow’s strength rise again.
It was like first giving some porridge to a famished person to get accustomed to before giving him big fish and meat. Having been pitted by the Cheerful Treasure Chamber of Commerce for no reason, Ning Cheng had already written down the grudge in his heart.
“Boom…. Katcha…..”
This spherical restriction, although powerful, had a slight crack that occasionally spat out the Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura. Ning Cheng was also a proficient master in the Dao of Arrays. Therefore, his attack, although simple, landed a precise strike at that crack in the forbidden restriction.
If not for the Dark Nether Spirit Devourer and the Empyrean Consciousness Transmutation Pill, he wouldn’t have reached this far before his Sea of Consciousness shattered and his foundation and spiritual roots stripped away. Facing such a fellow who would try to kill him sooner or later, Ning Cheng wouldn’t be Ning Cheng if he willingly compromised. What’s more, this fellow’s body hadn’t solidified yet.
“You’re looking for death…….” The shadow shouted angrily, and a dozen torrents immediately swept into Ning Cheng’s Sea of Consciousness.
Ning Cheng staggered, spewing out several mouthfuls of blood wildly. Even his face turned white beyond comparison. His current appearance was that of a pale white servant bay, but after losing so much blood, his face no longer showed any hint of blood flowing through it.
Not good; if this went on, his Sea of Consciousness would crack apart under those torrents.
As Ning Cheng frantically operated the Dark Nether Spirit Devourer, his spiritual consciousness began to stretch out, forming a spiritual consciousness domain around him.
Ning Cheng’s spiritual consciousness domain had long since taken shape, but only using the spiritual consciousness domain against spirit techniques wasn’t effective. As such, he had never used the spiritual consciousness domain’s defence. But facing a life-and-death situation, he was forced to use the spiritual consciousness domain.
Unfortunately, this spiritual consciousness attack from this shadow was simply unstoppable; unless one could also use a spiritual consciousness attack of the same level.
Therefore, Ning Cheng’s spiritual consciousness domain had just formed when nearly forty to fifty raging torrents of consciousness blasted over.
“Puny ant, go to hell!” Seeing Ning Cheng continue to attack the spherical restriction, the shadow finally went berserk and mobilised more energy to deal with Ning Cheng.
“Kaka…..Kaka……” Cracking sounds started to emerge from Ning Cheng’s spiritual consciousness domain as it could no longer bear this level of spiritual consciousness attack. In just a moment, the torrents broke through the domain and poured into Ning Cheng’s Sea of Consciousness, causing a few more cracks to emerge in Ning Cheng’s Sea of Consciousness. But at the same time, cracking sounds erupted from the invisible spherical forbidden restriction under Ning Cheng’s spear.
However, it also pushed Ning Cheng’s purple mansion to the limit and showed signs of cracking. But Ning Cheng ignored it and immediately grabbed a handful of pills, swallowed them, and started pushing his spiritual consciousness domain to stretch out wildly. That terrifying attack just now, if not for his spiritual consciousness domain blocking it partially, his Sea of Consciousness might have exploded.
“Boom-Boom……” The shadow’s torrent of consciousness seemed to have gone crazy and smashed down on Ning Cheng’s spiritual consciousness domain again. However, Ning Cheng felt happy internally because this time, the attack wasn’t as powerful as half the last one. He understood that it wasn’t because the shadow’s strength had decreased but that more people must have rushed to this place. After all, this shadow still wasn’t powerful enough to take care of everything.
Sure enough, Ning Cheng had just thought of this when several shadows landed not far from Ning Cheng. One of the cultivators even exclaimed, “Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura…….”
Then, those figures completely ignored everything else and took out their artefacts to bombard this spherical restriction.
“Aah…..” Two miserable screams suddenly came from two Dao Raising Holy Emperors who had just attacked the restriction and immediately died. They had only managed to reach this place because of Ning Cheng’s containment. Now that they wanted to attack the spherical restriction, the shadow naturally wouldn’t let them do as they wished. Ning Cheng could resist his torrent of consciousness attack, but it didn’t mean that others also had such means to resist such a terrifying attack.
However, the Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura was just too attractive. Therefore, even though two Dao Raising Holy Emperors had fallen before them, the people who came after them still attacked the forbidden restriction frantically.
This also greatly reduced the pressure on Ning Cheng and his spear once again blasted at the widening crack on the spherical restriction.
With one more attack, the spherical restriction finally clicked and broke open, creating an opening about ten feet wide. Ning Cheng didn’t waste any time and immediately rushed inside. Following Ning Cheng were two Dao Transformation Holy Emperors, one Dao Raising Holy Emperor and a brocade-robed man.
Although Ning Cheng’s spiritual consciousness had only been briefly swept by the surroundings, he still recognised the brocade-robed man. This guy had arrived before him and hid at the outer edge of the Five-elements Star, called Jing Xihua. This fellow knew how to spot the most opportune time and fought to the death to take the lead to directly seize the fruits of victory.
However, Ning Cheng didn’t have the time to pay attention to these fellows. He wanted to seize as much Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura as possible and escape. Since everyone could enter now, it meant that who grabbed the most was up to chance.
He didn’t believe that the shadow would stop like this. After all, that shadow had devoured many cultivators’ dao rhythms, foundations and spiritual roots. The only thing that he currently lacked was completing the fusion. Once the other party finished the fusion process, and if he was still here, that would be the time of his death.
An indescribably dao rhythm aura washed over Ning Cheng’s body, immediately soothing his body and calming his Sea of Consciousness. Even his comprehension of dao rhythm and the Five-elements Spirit Technique became much stronger in his instant.
“Big Brother, this little brother really didn’t misjudge you. Let me bathe in your light…….” Jing Xihua vanished from behind Ning Cheng, but he didn’t forget to thank him, even elevating Ning Cheng to ‘big brother’.
Noticing a delicate-looking jade bottle in Jing Xihua’s hand as he left, Ning Cheng immediately recalled what the shadow had mentioned. That, this Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura wasn’t something that could be taken away by simple objects.
As Ning Cheng thought of this, he heard the two Dao Transformation Holy Emperors behind him exclaim, “Not good, we don’t have anything to take away this Five-elements Primal Chaos Aura.”
At the same moment, the number of cultivators flocking to this place suddenly increased several-fold, and the shadow could no longer care about dealing with a sole Ning Cheng.
