Dustin suddenly felt his body sink, as though he were carrying mountains upon his back — even lifting an arm became nearly impossible.
The ground beneath him rolled and heaved, his footing unstable. All around, countless deadly stalagmites and rock walls closed in, sealing off every escape route.
Summoning his final breath of true essence, he poured it into his sword. The blade flared with a last clear brilliance; swordlight spun like a wheel, shielding his body.
Clang! Clang! Boom!
Sword qi clashed madly with stone; shards flew, dust filled the air.
Dustin’s sword remained sharp — every swing shattered vast swaths of rock — but the stone seemed endless. The instant he cleaved through one wave, more rose from the earth to take its place.
And that crushing gravity field heavily restricted his movement and strength, draining him with every motion.
His face turned ghostly pale, breath ragged like an old bellows; the flesh between his thumb and forefinger had split, blood dripping freely.
“Heh… a dying struggle.”
Houtu laughed softly. Her jade-like hands formed a new seal, pointing to the two colossal stone dragons entwined in the carvings of the palace ceiling. “Awaken… my guardians!”
The massive stone dragons, once mere ornaments, suddenly flared with crimson light in their eyes.
With an ear-grating grinding of stone, their enormous bodies came alive.
Dust and rubble fell away, revealing scales beneath that shimmered with an earthy yellow spiritual glow.
They let out silent roars, broke free from the ceiling, and dived down — each like a flying mountain — hurtling toward Dustin trapped amidst the rising stone forest.
Their claws could rend steel; their tails swept with the force of a hurricane.
With the stone dragons entering the fray, Dustin was thrust into a total dead end — no way up, no way down.
The earth below surged like waves, the crushing gravity pinned him in place, and now two mighty dragons bore down from above.
“Dustin!”
Margaret’s heart nearly stopped as she watched, wanting to rush to him but unable to approach through the raging earth and stone.
Dustin’s gaze was calm. Even facing certain death, he did not panic.
While parrying the dragons’ strikes with all his strength, he focused the remnants of his divine sense, observing closely.
He noticed that the two dragons’ movements subtly pulsed in rhythm with Houtu’s hand seals and the earthy yellow aura flowing around her.
The restless ground beneath him — its energy source also led back to her.
Defeat the leader to end the battle.
He had to strike at Houtu herself.
But how to break through the forest of stone and the dragons’ blockade?
A fierce glint flashed in Dustin’s eyes.
He deliberately left an opening — when blocking a dragon’s claw, he moved a fraction slower.
His sword aura was torn apart, his left shoulder raked open with deep gashes to the bone. The immense impact hurled him backward into a rising stone wall; blood gushed from his mouth, his aura collapsing, looking one breath away from death.
“It’s over,” Houtu said, a flicker of triumph in her eyes.
After such injuries and with the gravity suppression, he could no longer fight.
She directed her dragons — their jaws wide — to tear into the seemingly fallen Dustin, while countless stone spears erupted from the ground, lunging toward his back.
But in that split second, the dying man’s eyes blazed brighter than the stars.
This was the chance he had waited for.
Ignoring the oncoming dragons and stone spikes, Dustin channeled the last trace of his Xuanqing True Qi — burning even part of his life essence to muster it — into his right index and middle fingers.
Two fingers like a sword, he pointed toward the dais where Houtu stood.
This strike had no thunderous aura, no dazzling light — only a power so condensed it seemed to pierce through space itself, straight to the source.
“Xuanqing… Spirit Lock!”
It was not an attack on the body, nor a soul seal, but one of Dustin’s deepest trump cards — a secret art that disrupted the link between a cultivator’s spirit and energy.
Against a fully alert Houtu it would do little, but now — her mind slightly relaxed, her full focus on controlling her spell — it became the straw that broke the balance.
Houtu felt a sharp invisible needle pierce into her consciousness. The connection between her, the stone dragons, and the surging earth energy suddenly froze — just for an instant, but an unmistakable one.
That instant was enough!
The two dragons, mid-bite, stiffened in place.
The stone spears halted, mere inches from Dustin’s back.
And at that moment, he had already calculated his angle.
Using the rebound from the stone wall behind him and the brief distortion of the gravity field, his body moved like it had no weight — slipping through the narrow gap between the two dragons’ jaws in an impossible arc.
At the same time, his left hand flung out several Armor-Piercing Golden Edge Talismans — rare high-grade charms inherited from Liyuntian’s hidden cave.
They streaked as golden bolts of light — not at Houtu, but at the two dragons, whose crimson eyes, their energy cores, were momentarily unprotected.
Puff! Puff!
Two sharp sounds — the golden lights struck home. The talismans’ armor-piercing and edge-breaking power exploded instantly!
The stone dragons let out silent howls. Their huge bodies convulsed violently; the red light in their eyes went out, the earthy aura over their scales dimmed and collapsed. At last, they crashed to the ground as lifeless rubble, shaking the palace with a thunderous boom!
With the dragons gone, the upheaving earth stilled — Houtu’s disrupted focus had broken the spell.
She coughed blood, her face turning pale, eyes filled with shock and disbelief.
Never had she imagined that her opponent, cornered and exhausted, could still unleash such a cunning strike — exploiting the tiniest flaw in her spell’s flow.
And in that flash of stunned distraction, Dustin’s figure appeared before her like a ghost through the dust and debris.
His face was paper-pale, his breath weak to the brink of collapse — yet his eyes burned with fierce light, the flame of life itself.
He did not raise his sword.
Instead, his fingers came together once more, glowing faintly gold — a sealing rune of immense purity, aimed directly at Houtu’s smooth forehead.
Houtu’s pupils shrank. She tried to dodge, to summon an earth shield — but Dustin’s strike was the culmination of all his will and precision, faster and sharper than thought.
“No—!”
Her desperate scream echoed as Dustin’s fingertip gently touched her brow.
“Xuanqing… Origin Seal!”
The pale-golden rune sank into her instantly. The mighty earthen aura around her burst like a pierced balloon, dissipating in an instant.
Her body shuddered violently, her eyes dimmed, and her strength drained away. She collapsed softly to the ground, encased in a cocoon of golden light — utterly immobilized.
Three battles. Three victories.
He had defeated Qingmu, Xuanming, and now Houtu — all in succession.
Dustin could hold on no longer. He spat a mouthful of blood, swayed, and barely managed to remain standing by leaning on his sword.
Then he raised his head, looking up at the dais — where the last one standing, Aokun, glared down at him, killing intent rolling like a storm. - Marinien
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