historical

"Steady yourselves! The enemy leader is a Nine-Headed Peacock. Their Hormonal Glow can cripple the battle prowess and reasoning of members of the opposite sex, leading the victim to worship at the peacock's feet!" Qiu Meng barked at the Nameless Sword Mountain disciples, relying on his Immortal Wills to resist and break Zhiji Jing's hold over the male side of the sect. Many failed to recover. But assisted by Qiu Meng's Immortal Wills, the likes of Zi Zuixian and Bai Renyi regained their senses.

Not that it'd do the sect any good.

"What...the hell is this?" Alongside other sect disciples, Bai Renyi and Zi Zuixian recovered fast enough to see a coalition of colorful meteors flying into the Nameless Sword Mountain.

Thanks to Xiao Hu's melody, the weakest members of the Third Horde had strength equal to Divine Transformation, meaning that any one of these random meteors could blast through the Nameless Sword Mountain's paltry defenses.

At least, that was how it was supposed to be. But with a reaction speed that far exceeded his cultivation level, Qiu Meng joined his hands in a succession of mudras. The Nameless Sword Mountain's walls broke to let the beast horde pass, with detached stones and boulders shifting around the invaders like the coiling tails of a boa constrictor.

"Scattered Essence Fusion!" Sensing something amiss, Zhiji Jing gave her orders, commanding the Third Horde's 100 million beasts to unite in another one of the Myriad Beast Gang's formations. Energies went from one beast to the next, blitzing across the 100 million mass to connect the energies of all troops.

A sparkling orb of multicolored energies took shape at the center of the formation, firing dazzling Qi blasts towards Qiu Meng.

More sophisticated than the Chimeric Beast Fusion, the Scattered Essence Fusion enabled the Third Horde's troops to operate independently, while still creating an energy core that combined and magnified all their forces.

More importantly, so long as the energy core wasn't destroyed, the Third Horde's mysterious beasts...couldn't be killed.

This swift decision of Zhiji Jing turned out to be a lifesaver. The beams fired at Qiu Meng rebounded against invisible walls before breaking into energy particles. Right afterward, the unthinkable occurred. The Nameless Sword Mountain rose into the sky, its entire structure breaking and morphing into an impregnable stone maze that split and sucked the Third Horde's troops into chunks of 1,000 each.

Worse, irresistible spatial laws kicked in, downright causing the Third Horde's massive troops to shrink into dwarf-sized monsters.

"What...is going on here?" It happened in the blink of an eye. Barely had the troops taken note of the strange energies fluctuating throughout the mountain that the spatial laws worked their magic, reducing both their size and battle prowess.

"Futile effort." Still, that was insufficient. Led by Zhiji Jing, the 25 horde leaders bulldozed through the maze, spreading their restricted Holy Senses as they sought the Eye of this formation. All formations had the same weakness: the Eye. The Eye was the root from which the formation operated. Destroy the Eye, and the formation would break down.

No matter how Qiu Meng executed this herculean feat, he couldn't escape this rule. Sweat trickled down the reincarnated immortal's face. His eyes turned red, the mudras intensified, succeeding one another at a speed that the naked eye couldn't follow.

Still, in spite of it all, Qiu Meng stayed composed.

The Nameless Sword Mountain rose faster into the sky. But underneath, in the crater that it left behind, ear-splitting cracks resounded, spreading across the land as an armored entity broke free of the underground to leap into the sky. Over 300 meters tall and crafted in brownstones, this colossus blitzed through the air, with one step appearing above the Nameless Sword Mountain, and dropping its longsword on the Third Horde's leaders.

The strength of a Loose Immortal rippled from that colossus, piloted by the two Immortal Wills inside Qiu Meng's soul.

Without delay and in perfect tandem, the 25 Third Horde leaders raised their hands towards the longsword. The Scattered Energy Fusion kicked in, casting a barrier that met and resisted this formidable blow in one resounding boom. Zhiji Jing and her subordinate leaders flew back, leaving the maze before stabilizing themselves in the air.

They weren't the only ones. Propelled by irresistible gravitational forces, all beast experts above the Ordained Beast rank found themselves ejected from the Nameless Sword Mountain's various maze blocks.

In the same breath, the 29th Horde's experts got sucked in, excluding those above Ordained Beast level. Thus, Xiao Hu's melody now worked against the Myriad Beast Gang experts, who due to their enhanced strength, couldn't step into the maze — unless they first obliterated this sword-wielding colossus.

"So this was the Nameless Sword Mountain's biggest secret and trump card? A puppet incarnation...of the Nameless Sword Emperor?" Zhiji Jing realized at last. Her sapphire eyes narrowed into a frown, her dark-blue chignon breaking due to the explosive collision and letting her hair fall over the upper half of her back.

'Indeed. Though an unfilial and backstabbing scoundrel, Feng Jian still had some heart left in him, and not only fused his Loose Immortal Will with the Nameless Sword Mountain but also buried a quasi Loose Immortal version of himself underneath, in the hope that, should I one day return to the world, My Venerable Self would have enough cards to establish a dominant force in the East. By combining that puppet with my Immortal Will, I can unleash strength slightly above a genuine Loose Immortal,' Contacting Zhiji Jing through a mental message, Qiu Meng said.

'My Venerable Sel—oh no, it's you?!' Instantly, the ancient peacock connected the dots, and as the young boy's true identity appeared in her mind, Zhiji Jing's eyes widened in disbelief.

'Other than the one it was created for, who else could control the Nameless Sword Mountain so flawlessly. Splendor, if not for me, you would have never found your way to the Golden Lotus. I didn't expect that in this life, you would become my enemy. Is Bai Daji really worth it? Would you believe me if I said that...Bai Daji doesn't have a future?' Qiu Meng seriously asked.

But as soon as she heard Daji's name from Qiu Meng, the initial stupor in Zhiji Jing's eyes vanished, replaced by murderous rays and infinite coldness.

'If there's one thing that we can never get back, it is the past. Now, I am no longer the Splendor of the East, but Zhiji Jing of the Myriad Beast Gang. Daji and her vision are the only things I want to fight for, and since you threaten them, Celestial Grandmaster, you will have to die again.'