PD -Chapter 164 The Great Battle Approaches

The instant the sphere of lightning collided with the shadow, countless electric serpents exploded outward. A shrill, agonized scream rang through the air…

Then the figure, which had lunged to within less than ten centimeters of me, was blasted apart in an instant.

I instinctively took a step back and raised an arm to shield my face.

The shadow dispersed completely, obliterated by the explosion. A fearsome Underworld Rakshasa had been killed with a single shot.

The other shadow remained where it stood. It had been furious and ready to charge at me again, but the moment it saw me raise the gun once more, its figure wavered and it stopped in place.

“A mere mortal dares attempt to wield an ancient divine artifact. You are courting your own destruction!”

After throwing out that warning, the shadow shattered the glass window and fled into the darkness of the night, disappearing without a trace.

Both of my hands were already drenched in sweat as I gripped the gun. Seeing the Rakshasa escape, I had no intention of pursuing it.

Letting out a sigh, I lowered the weapon and wiped the sweat from my forehead.

Those three shots alone had consumed an enormous amount of my spiritual power.

Yet the combination of this gun and its bullets was absolutely terrifying.

In the past, facing two Rakshasas at once would have been an extremely troublesome battle for me.

Now, however, I could practically defeat one with a single shot.

It was almost unbelievable.

This test firing had not only shown me the immense power of the Black Jade Gun, but had also revealed my greatest weakness—my lack of spiritual power.

If I wanted to win the coming battle, I would have to change that.

Lost in thought, I looked around at the wrecked room and couldn’t help sighing. It took me quite a while to come back to my senses.

By then, Liu Xiaopeng and Shentu had already come upstairs.

“As expected, Old Que didn’t disappoint,” Shentu said thoughtfully as she looked at the gun in my hands.

“The next battle will decide life or death.”

As she spoke, she turned her gaze toward me.

I slowly turned around and placed the gun back into its case.

“In three days, we’ll set out to find them.”

Looking toward the distant horizon beyond the window, I spoke slowly.

After casually cleaning up the room, I transported the incredibly powerful weapon back to Zhu Zhu’s bank vault and locked it away once more.

As for the remaining three days…

I once again had Zhu Zhu arrange for me to stay at the mountain retreat hotel where I had previously secluded myself for cultivation.

I needed to make one more breakthrough.

I had to push past my limits and elevate my abilities to an entirely new level.

Only then could I truly unleash the full power of the Black Jade Gun.

In the coming confrontation against Lucifer and the Five Ghost Emperors, only by giving everything I had would there be even the slightest chance of victory.

Once again, I took out The Heavenly Mysteries Record and turned to the pages I had never dared to study before.

For a very long time, I had believed that the complex formations and highly taxing spells recorded in the latter part of the book were things I would never need in my lifetime.

I had always thought that the techniques in the earlier chapters were more than enough.

Even if I never landed any major geomancy commissions, I could still make a decent living by catching the occasional ghost and cleansing a few haunted houses.

Looking back now, I couldn’t help but sigh.

I never expected reality to prove me wrong so quickly.

The section before me was titled:

The Supreme Three Caverns Divine Incantation Scrolls.

Those words alone filled an entire page.

The collection consisted of seven volumes, each recording extraordinarily advanced spells and secret Daoist arts.

Practicing them would not only greatly increase one’s spiritual power, but also grant mastery over secret techniques capable of drawing upon the forces of Heaven and Earth themselves.

Within these seven volumes were numerous new Daoist arts of various attributes, along with advanced versions of techniques I had already mastered.

For example, the Golden Light Spell could, through relentless training and increased spiritual power, eventually evolve into the Great Golden Light Spell.

And so, over the next three days, I entered into traditional Daoist bigu cultivation.

For twenty-four hours a day, without interruption, I tempered my spiritual power and deepened my understanding of Daoist spells and techniques.

When it was finally over, my spiritual power had at last broken through its bottleneck and entered an entirely new stage.

In Daoist cultivation, there are four major realms, ascending from lowest to highest:

Refining Essence into Qi (Lianjing Huaqi)

Refining Qi into Spirit (Lianqi Huashen)

Refining Spirit into Emptiness (Lianshen Huanxu)

Refining Emptiness into Union with the Dao (Lianxu Hedao)

At this moment, I had already surpassed the stage of Refining Qi into Spirit and stepped into the threshold of Refining Spirit into Emptiness.

This realm refers to the point at which one’s spiritual cultivation reaches a sufficient level for spiritual power to begin nourishing the Yang Spirit even further, strengthening it until it returns to its origin and gains the ability to perceive all things hidden within the void.

Within this realm, I could clearly feel not only a tremendous increase in spiritual power…

But also a much sharper intuition and perception of everything around me.

After those three days, I slept deeply for an entire night.

Then, under Shentu’s guidance, Liu Xiaopeng and I traveled into Sichuan.

Under the cover of darkness, the three of us entered a dense primeval forest.

Shentu had previously mentioned that within Ebian Yi Autonomous County in Sichuan, along the mysterious latitude thirty degrees north, lay a perilous wilderness known as Heizhugou—the Black Bamboo Valley.

There, hidden deep within the mountains, existed the dimensional rift connecting the Three Realms.

According to Shentu’s deduction, the Five Ghost Emperors and Lucifer had been hiding within that rift, using their own power to widen it, hoping to merge the Three Realms into one and plunge existence into chaos.

Even though moonlight filtered down through the forest canopy, the countless giant trees blocked nearly all of it.

The darkness was so complete that one could barely see a hand in front of their face.

The forest was also teeming with venomous insects and ferocious beasts.

Fortunately, all three of us now possessed spiritual power to protect our bodies. We were no longer ordinary people.

We advanced rapidly through the wilderness, our spiritual senses fully expanded.

By the time dawn’s first rays appeared on the horizon, we had already penetrated deep into the heart of the forest.

There, we began discovering traces of extremely bizarre creatures.

In fact, only half an hour earlier, I had used the Great Golden Light Spell to kill a Hellhound Cerberus.

“Hell’s Cerberus, the celestial Azure Ox mounts of immortals, and even Yellow-Eyed Demons from Western Christianity…” Liu Xiaopeng sighed after cutting down a Yellow-Eyed Demon with the Immortal-Slaying Sword. “This place is a complete mess.”

“We’re getting very close to the rift,” Shentu said.

Then she suddenly launched herself into the air.

She no longer seemed concerned about revealing our position as she sped deeper into the forest.

Grinding my teeth, I activated Flying Thunder Dash and chased after her alongside Liu Xiaopeng.

About ten minutes later, a massive cliff abruptly appeared ahead, cutting across the forest as though the earth itself had been severed.

Far below the cliff, a mesmerizing blue glow reflected upward.

Startled, I followed Shentu as she dove downward.

Only then did I realize that beneath the cliff flowed a broad river.

And yet, despite temperatures hovering around twenty to thirty degrees Celsius, the river had frozen solid into an icy waterway.

Where there is something unnatural, there is always a hidden cause.

Which meant there had to be a secret concealed beneath that frozen river.

Shentu landed atop the ice and turned to look at Liu Xiaopeng and me.

Then she pointed toward the frozen surface.

The meaning was obvious.

This was the place.