Chapter 1257

Inside the licorice regional wall, Fang Yuan’s ancient sword dragon transformation moves freely while the five immortals fight constantly against the wall’s pull. Tai Bai Yun Sheng has already cast his cloud ring five times, each cast tremoring his immortal aperture and inflicting huge losses, before Fang Yuan climbs above the group and rains sword light dragon breath on their heads. Ying Wu Xie answers with an immortal killer move, Soul Howl, its power completely covering the sky without touching his own allies. Fang Yuan has no method to guard his soul against soul path attacks. He is struck directly. But his soul’s foundation is extremely robust and he endures the howl completely, and guts Gu, only a mortal Gu but one from Dang Hun Mountain and beyond ordinary, means a soul injury would not matter. Dang Hun Mountain is a secluded domain of heaven and earth whose dao marks are so enormous their total surpasses even a rank nine Immortal Gu’s, though the chapter notes the two cannot truly be compared. ^{ch. 1257}

Shi Nu raises a giant hand of soil and rock to shield the group from the dragon breath. While the hand is badly mauled, Hei Lou Lan fires a hidden ray of crimson light through it at Fang Yuan, and he guesses Shadow Sect’s methods let a strength path immortal use fire path without dao mark conflict. The ray is fast enough that the slightest inattention would have struck Fang Yuan, but three breaths future vision warns him and he dodges it easily, and the earth hand soon collapses under the dragon breath. Fang Yuan summons a tiger year beast to fight at his side. Ying Wu Xie answers with an extremely similar method, Soul Beast Summoning, calling three ancient soul beasts that the regional wall cannot restrain because they come from the Door of Life and Death. Hidden from them by Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s Ghostly Concealment, Fang Yuan tears one soul beast’s head off, severs another’s thigh, and pierces the third with dragon breath, thinning all three without killing them, since soul beasts have no clear weak point. Ying Wu Xie only watches, certain he can summon three more the same way. ^{ch. 1257}

Fang Yuan then abandons the soul beasts, activates Sword Escape, and bursts forward in a blur to strike Tai Bai Yun Sheng, the weakest of the five immortals. The blow collapses Tai Bai Yun Sheng’s cloud ring and tears open his stomach, but Fang Yuan’s rushed speed keeps him from using full strength, and he strikes with claws only because ice has sealed his dragon mouth. The ice is Bai Ning Bing’s doing, and Tai Bai Yun Sheng barely survives. Fang Yuan breaks the seal and looks back to find his own scales crusted in the same thin ice. Hei Lou Lan drags Tai Bai Yun Sheng clear and works every healing method she has, but his wound carries sword path dao marks her methods cannot clear, and he faints with his life still hanging by a thread. Tai Bai Yun Sheng had just wished aloud for Man as Before, the healing Gu that went with Landscape as Before when he traded both to Fang Yuan and took up cloud path in their place. Ying Wu Xie sees that Fang Yuan had marked Tai Bai Yun Sheng from the start, always picking the weakest first, and Bai Ning Bing judges that restricting Fang Yuan’s speed must come before anything else if they are to force him back. ^{ch. 1257}