Despite pulling with all his might, all Xu Guanwen managed to do was to cause a few small pebbles to skip merrily across the boundless earth. At the same time, dark shadows rippled across the full moon in the sky, and a flash of light flickered across the dead branch sitting next to the jade hill.

For obvious reasons, Xu Guanwen was deeply astonished to find that he had failed to lift Wei Yuan’s Dao Foundation. He immediately mustered his full strength and pulled again!

There was a series of loud cracks, and... all four of his talons snapped in half. As it turned out, he had accidentally overexerted his bird foot Avatar. A cry of pain escaped his lips as blood drained away from his face in an instant.

Suddenly, a beam of light flashed through the sky. It was impossibly fast.

Xu Guanwen’s scream suddenly turned into a full-throated howl as a gigantic, diagonal wound stretched across his bird foot Avatar. The beam of light had sliced his Avatar in two!

An Immortal Lord’s divine thought was beyond even the ability of a veteran Avatar to endure, not to mention that Xu Guanwen wasn’t guarded in the slightest. It was no superficial injury either. He was literally teetering on the brink of death and could pass onto the afterlife at any moment. Forcing down the tearing pain of his primordial spirit temporarily, he wobbly flew into the sky and tried to escape.

It was at this moment his surroundings changed. Qingming had acknowledged a master and become one with the Great Realm. Before, Wei Yuan could only manifest about a hundred zhang of his Dao Foundation. But now, that range had expanded to a thousand li.

With a thought, Wei Yuan manifested a thousand zhang of the Great Realm and applied all of its mighty, worldly force onto Xu Guanwen. He was able to slow down the man’s ascent to a crawl.

Under normal circumstances, one thousand zhang of worldly power was far from enough from being able to shackle an Avatar. However, Qingming was an immortal object, and the Great Realm was a peerless Dao Foundation. One plus one turned out to be greater than two, which was why Xu Guanwen slowed down to the point where it looked like he was trying to swim out of a quicksand.

Not wanting to die as a matter of course, Xu Guanwen struggled with all his might. His Dao energy pouring out like a broken dam, Wei Yuan felt his reserves dipping below half in the blink of an eye! It was truly difficult to suppress an Avatar’s dying struggles.

In fact, Xu Guanwen’s Avatar had already been severed by the Immortal Lord’s divine thought. The reason it hadn’t fallen apart yet was because he was holding it by force using his mystic energy. Therefore, all Wei Yuan needed to do was buy some time until the old man had spent every drop of mystic energy. Then, he would be able to end him permanently.

Alas, not even Wei Yuan possessed the Dao energy necessary to endure Xu Guanwen’s death throes until the end. Another blink of an eye passed, and his reserves were nearly depleted. As the restraints binding the Avatar depleted rapidly, it looked like it was only a matter of time before he would break free.

It was at this moment the full moon in Wei Yuan’s sea of consciousness spat out a wisp of black qi. It was much bigger and thicker than the three advanced fortunes he had received earlier. At the same time, a thought was transmitted into his mind.

There was no time to think things through. Wei Yuan immediately cycled Outlawed by Heaven and Earth with his new fortune, and his surroundings instantly turned as mid-noon to evening. At the same time, a terrible, ancient aura descended from somewhere and enveloped it all, cowering all sentient creatures and suppressing everything to the ground.

Wei Yuan leaped into the air with the dead branch in his hand. Then, he stabbed it into the bird foot Avatar!

A bloodcurdling scream escaped Xu Guanwen’s throat as the bird foot he forcefully glued together using his mystic energy split apart on its own. Then, it began crumbling in earnest.

Wei Yuan had stabbed the Avatar using a branch of the Bay Laurel Immortal Tree. It was also an immortal object and an extremely high level of existence. Combined with the fortune suppression of Outlawed by Heaven and Earth, the young man was ultimately able to crush Xu Guanwen’s Avatar in one strike.

The Avatar crumbled, and Xu Guanwen collapsed to the ground in despair. He hit the ground with a loud thud and faced toward the sky. He was unable to move a muscle.

Meanwhile, the Shaman had just shaken off the intimidation effects of Wei Yuan’s fortune. As soon as he broke free, he let out a roar and swung a several-zhang-long appendage straight at the young human!

In response, Wei Yuan activated Qingming with a thought and commanded it to convert the essence of the world. With its aid, Wei Yuan’s manifested Dao Foundation boasted far greater strength than usual. Everything within a hundred zhang was converted into the Pure Realm of Humanity in the blink of an eye! 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Bubbles immediately started appearing all over the flesh hill’s skin before exploding, spewing dark green body fluid. It was as if he was being cooked alive in a pot of boiling oil. Not only that, the body fluid evaporated into bluish smoke the instant it made contact with the clear qi.

The Shaman screamed in pain as he panickedly withdrew his outstretched limb. Then, he started racing toward the exit. Things were different, however. Earlier, his entrance had been soundless, traceless, and as swift as the wind. But now, he was slow, sluggish, and melting with every step he took.

But despite his horrendous condition, Wei Yuan knew very well that clear qi alone was nowhere enough to kill the Shaman. He was that strong.

Wei Yuan squeezed out a few droplets of Dao energy from his depleted reserves and pointed at the Shaman. A stone sword immediately shot out of his finger and caught on fire as it was soaring through the air. It instantly nailed one of the Shaman’s appendages, pinning him in place and burning him alive.

This was a new Dao technique Wei Yuan had learned in the past couple days. He called it: Immortal Sword, Fake Sun.

The flesh hill struggled for a bit but soon discovered that he couldn’t break free. So, he got ready to cut off the arm to save the body, literally. But before he could do so, a golden cauldron suddenly appeared in the air and grew to two zhang in radius in no time at all. When Wei Yuan pointed at the Shaman, the cauldron burst into flames and crashed right on top of him, trapping him and burning him mercilessly!

This was another Dao technique Wei Yuan had picked up just a second ago. Of course, he didn’t have a name for it yet.

Once more, Wei Yuan squeezed out a few droplets of Dao energy he thought he didn’t exist and pointed at the sky. A delicate, translucent jade hill immediately popped into existence and started descending toward the Shaman like a meteor. Speeding as it descended, it smashed both the golden cauldron and the flesh hill into fine pieces of paper. It also inflicted a gigantic pit about a hundred zhang wide in radius and over ten zhang deep on the ground!

There was a terrible boom, and the partially collapsed hall finally could not withstand the abuse any longer. It collapsed completely and nearly buried Wei Yuan alive. A short while later, the young man burst out of the earth and struggled to his feet. Then, he raced over to the giant pit and looked into it.

He had already retrieved the jade hill. The Immortal Sword Fake Sun and the golden cauldron he didn’t have a name for yet had also turned back to two shattered rocks on the surface of his Dao Foundation. At the bottom of the pit lay a fresh pancake of flesh and liquid. It was emitting a dark green aura that was quickly purified into bluish smoke by the clear qi. When the bluish smoke rose into the sky, it transformed into a drizzle that nourished the ground with life.

Enduring the pain of depleting his Dao energy completely, Wei Yuan let out a long, painful breath. Finally, it was over.

It had to be said that an Avatar was truly difficult to kill. First, Xu Guanwen had been struck by the Immortal Lord’s divine thought. Later, Wei Yuan had employed every trick in his arsenal to slow him down. Despite this, he still nearly failed to prevent Xu Guanwen from escaping. He would have been doomed if he did not have the Immortal Lord’s divine thought. In fact, he would have failed to end the Avatar if the moon had not granted him a wisp of fortune and advised him to use the branch of the Bay Leaf Immortal Tree. Looking back, he could not help but feel waves of lingering dread washing over him.

To be honest, Wei Yuan wasn’t going to act rashly. He was going to keep it cool and slowly engage his enemy in a duel of wits and courage. However, he never imagined that Xu Guanwen would be so depraved as to surrender hundreds of thousands of mortals to a foreign race. As a result, he was so furious that he skipped right to the courage part of his plan.

It was also because Wei yuan was out of choices. If Qingming had not acknowledged him as its master, he could not have defeated Xu Guanwen. Even if he successfully struck a grievous blow using the Immortal Lord’s divine thought, there was no way he could have stopped the man from escaping. If Xu Guanwen managed to escape, then the only thing he could have done was to escape immediately. Otherwise, the Avatar would have stabilized his wounds and come after him. Even escape would become a luxury if that had happened.

The area around the main chamber was now a shambles of broken walls and crumbling ruins. Even the few barely surviving structures had collapsed utterly thanks to the jade hill’s meteoric descent. The multi-limbed Shaman was on par with a spirit-nurturing stage cultivator, but the jade hill had still killed him in one strike. Wei Yuan now had a first-hand understanding of the sheer power his jade hill possessed.

Suddenly, Xu Guanwen’s silhouette floated out of a pile of rubble. It was his primordial spirit.

Noticing that the silhouette was glancing back and forth and plotting an escape, Wei Yuan instantly suppressed it with Outlawed by Heaven and Earth before reaching out, sucking Xu Guanwen’s primordial spirit into his sea of consciousness. Then, he placed it in front of the full moon.

The shadow in the moon stirred and consumed Xu Guanwen’s primordial spirit and soul in one gulp. At the same time, he received a thought from the moon that his mind automatically interpreted as: Good boy!

Staring at the seven thick wisps of fortune floating before his eyes, Wei Yuan desperately resisted the impulse to kowtow to the moon.