Tianyi ignored the old man flying towards them. His only thought was to quickly solve Lei Jingye as soon as possible. He forwent any fancy technique and appeared in front of Lei Jingye with his fist reared back.
With his current body, each punch would hold the power of an immortal monarch. The sound barrier consecutively broke as his punching speed exceeded Mach Three, and just as it was about to land on Lei Jingye, a red lotus appeared.
"Hmpf," Tianyi increased the strength of his punch, intending to shatter the Red Dragon Lotus, but before he could, a dazzling light erupted from the immortal artifact.
The Red Dragon Lotus had self-destructed.
The explosion barely budged Tianyi, but at least it stopped his punch for one second. In that one second, Lei Jingye's body flew into the distance with blood and burns covering his entire body.
Tianyi wanted to chase, but he knew it was too late, so he waited. Waited for the smoke to clear, revealing not a single singed hair or a lock out of place. He locked eyes with the old man a mere hundred meters away from him.
"Are you prepared for your death?"
Out of the corner of his eyes, Tianyi could sense an incarnation of the old man exuding immortal qi of earth, carrying Lei Jingye to safety.
He ignored the old man and pointed a finger at the earth incarnation. An orb of energy appeared on the tip, but before the beam could fire, the immortal monarch appeared and grabbed Tianyi's hand.
Tianyi smiled as he felt the old man try to crush his finger with physical strength. He wasn't good at memorizing names and faces, but he made a point to memorize the top echelon of the Anti-Heaven Alliance.
"Monarch Fiveseal," Tianyi said as his free hand reached toward him.
It was an action that Monarch Fiveseal replicated. Both of their hands were clenched together as they tried to crush the other with brute strength. However, Tianyi clearly held the upper hand as Monarch Fiveseal felt his hand deform under Tianyi's strength and himself pushed back.
Two figures popped out, each holding the same features as Monarch Fiveseal but wearing a green and red robe, respectively. They were his incarnation of wood and fire.
The two incarnations pincered Tianyi and attacked him with their fists. In response, a cloak seemingly sewn from the night sky appeared on Tianyi. Space twisted, and both incarnations' attack missed their mark.
In response, two more incarnations appeared. The metal incarnation, water incarnation, wood incarnation, and fire incarnation joined forces to attack Tianyi. With each attack, Tianyi found it more difficult to twist space.
Finally, the fire incarnation broke through his spatial distortion and landed a punch on his head. He didn't even twitch. He turned his head and opened his third eye.
The fire incarnation attempted to escape but was a step too slow. Tianyi's eye laser dismembered its arm, causing it to destabilize. Monarch Fiveseal frowned as he recalled the injured incarnation.
He wanted to take a step back, but Tianyi wouldn't let go.
"I admit, for someone who cultivates the inferior of the Five Element Method, your strength surprises me," Tianyi leisurely said as he continued to wrestle with Monarch Fiveseal. 'Since I can't kill Lei Jingye, let's kill his master, his greatest backing!'
As Tianyi mentioned to Daoyi before, the Five Element Sect had its foundations rooted in the inferior version of the Five Element Method disseminated by the Buzhou Immortal Sect. They proclaim the greatest orthodoxy in the practice of the five elements, but this claim was a joke with the existence of the Buzhou Immortal Sect.
Sometimes, Tianyi wondered if the Five Element Sect was a mole prepared by the Buzhou Immortal Sect. However, none of this mattered at this moment.
If the Five Element Sect was the Buzhou Immortal Sect's mole, Sect Master Xia would stop him from killing Monarch Fiveseal if he didn't want to kill Tianyi for killing Xi Longyi.
Monarch Fiveseal only grunted as his three incarnations continued to attack Tianyi. The elemental qi they exuded increased with the passage of time, but nothing definite. Whatever attack they managed to land did nothing more than dirty Tianyi's clothes.
Finally, Monarch Fiveseal smiled. Although his hands were close to meatballs, thanks to Tianyi nearly crushing all the bones in his hand, his earth incarnation had returned. With the arrival of his earth incarnation, his fire incarnation appeared again, with all its limbs.
Tianyi narrowed his eyes. He could sense that Monarch Fiveseal's mastery of the five elements exceeded his, perhaps even exceeding Sect Master Xia, but so what?
The five incarnations surrounded Tianyi. Under their feet, a formation began to form, and Tianyi felt the space around him stabilize. He could no longer easily teleport to twist space as he liked anymore. Furthermore, little motes of light ranging from red, black, green, white, and yellow began to appear on his body.
"The Five Element Refining Formation?" Tianyi spoke aloud.
"In the space of the five elements, even the Law of Space is nothing!" Monarch Fiveseal said as he absorbed the motes of light from Tianyi, and his hands healed themselves.
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Tianyi felt Monarch Fiveseal's strength increase as he started to be pushed back. His response? Use more strength!
Monarch Fiveseal's expression turned grave as Tianyi started to push him back once more. His hands would have been crushed to a pulp had it not been for the constant healing provided by refining Tianyi into immortal qi of the five elements by the Five Element Refining Formation.
"Is that all?" Tianyi asked. Seeing no response, he sighed. 'Where's all the smack talk?'
He decided to start attacking now. Tianyi's skin resembled his cosmic cloak, not just him but his whole body. After that, his body started to deform into a ball shape. Seeing Tianyi's action, Monarch Fiveseal wanted to unclasp his hands, but he discovered that he couldn't get free.
Monarch Fiveseal operated the Five Element Refining Formation to its maximum. However, instead of red, black, green, white, or yellow motes of light, black motes of light appeared. The moment he tried to absorb them, his expression turned severe.
"Chaos, this is immortal qi of chaos!" Monarch Fiveseal said. He could absorb the immortal qi of chaos, but it would do more harm than good for him. Sure, he could replenish his energy, but the damage done to his body was not worth it.
As Monarch Fiveseal attempted to escape, Tianyi's Chaos Refining Formation enlarged itself to over a hundred meters, appearing like a large black hole in reality in the Northern Region of the Heaven Continent.
The Fleeting Mist Sect had already begun to evacuate its members. They had already detected that they could not interfere when Tianyi fought Xi Longyi and Lei Jingye. Now, in the clash of immortals, they were less than ants, so they evacuated even faster, wanting to flee as far as possible.
Tianyi still remembered that Elder Shan had some friendship with Sect Master Yun, so he made sure that their clash wouldn't affect them as much as possible. Still, a stray thought occurred to him. 'I wonder what ever happened to the Yan Nie?'
Ridding himself of unnecessary thoughts, Tianyi's body popped out of the Chaos Refining Formation. He used his own body to form the Chaos Refining Formation, so his control had increased. If his body had still been of flesh and blood, then the Chaos Refining Formation would be formed from his blood.
Tianyi ignored the prying gaze his battle with Monarch Fiveseal attracted. He clasped his hands together.
"Earth."
Inside the Chaos Refining Formation, Monarch Fiveseal's earth incarnation was encased in a layer of rock, trapping and sealing it.
"Fire."
Next was the fire incarnation. Its body was encased in flames and seemed to dissolve into the fire. It merged with the rocks encasing the earth incarnation and transformed into a molten orb of lava.
"Metal."
Like the previous two, Monarch Fiveseal's metal incarnation was encased and merged. The molten orb of lava turned into a molten core.
"Wood."
The molten core gained a fiery cloak akin to a fire being introduced to wood.
"Water."
The molten orb started to cool down, but parts and bits still burned like lakes of fire. Or rather, oceans of fire as the molten core resembled a primal planet.
Outside, Tianyi squeezed his hands together harder, and the Chaos Refining Formation started to shrink.
Nine Heavens Style - Planetary Purgatory
When the black orb shrunk to less than thirty meters, Tianyi started to frown. The clouds above the Northern Region started to move and gather towards his Chaos Refining Formation.
Like the rings of Saturn, the clouds circled the black orb, but the more they circled, the more Tianyi felt his control over his Chaos Refining Formation loosen. No matter how much qi he used, it was a decline he could not prevent.
He unclasped his hands and reached out. His hand disappeared into a ripple in the air. When he pulled out, he was holding a palm-sized primal planet, the one he created using Monarch Fiveseal's incarnations.
A second later, the primal planet disappeared, reappearing inside the Nine Heavens Universe, orbiting Ninth Heaven as the tenth celestial object. 'I can't call it zeroth heaven. Plus, it's really lacking, so let's just call it dwarf heaven, like the dwarf planets.'
Tianyi didn't have time to be distracted as he felt his control over the Chaos Refining Formation disappear entirely. As someone had taken a hammer to a glass orb, the Chaos Refining Formation started to crack and shatter.
He didn't pay attention to the formation and stared at the sky, where clouds started to conglomerate. Hundreds if not thousands of clouds condensed into a single figure that Tianyi recognized as the Cloud Goddess.
"Cloud Goddess, kill him, kill him!!!" Monarch Fiveseal, who had been saved, shouted as he was brought next to the Cloud Goddess's incarnation.
He no longer had the steady confidence he displayed every time and instead had a hint of madness shining through his eyes. It was no wonder as Tianyi cut off and stole the formations he had nurtured. He had originally planned to use his five formations to break through into the Extremity Immortal Realm, after all. With their severance, not only was his soul injured, but he felt something missing in his comprehension.
The Cloud Goddess said nothing and stared at Tianyi. Tianyi felt as if she could peer through him and into his Nine Heavens Universe. He knew that it was only his imagination, but maybe she could see through his disguise.
Finally, the Cloud Goddess sighed. "I'll see what I can do. Return first."
Without waiting for Monarch Fiveseal to do anything, the Cloud Goddess's body transformed into a white jade scepter. It glistened magnificently with engravings of clouds adorning it.
It literally shot at Tianyi like some sort of ICBM missile. So fast was its speed, so accurate was its trajectory that Tianyi didn't even have time to react as he found himself buried in the ground. Once buried, the cloud scepter turned back into a cloud and encased Tianyi, trapping him within.
When Tianyi saw the formation trapping, his eyes lit up with delight. Ignoring the offensive method with purely his body, Tianyi sat in a lotus position and started to comprehend the formation.
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Sect Master Xia appeared in the Northern Region with two more head elders. He glanced at the fleeing Monarch Fiveseal but directed his gaze back to the giant hole in the ground. He turned towards his fellow elders. "You remember the plan, right?"
Assignment Hall Head Elder Brightwing nodded. "After being critically injured by the Cloud Goddess and trapped to die, we will save him so as to incur his gratitude."
"Then let's go," Sect Master Xia said.
The three leaders of the Buzhou Immortal Sect formed a triangle around the formation formed of white clouds and began breaking it. Sect Master Xia started to frown when he discovered that the formation started to resist halfway through.
He couldn't help but think if something had gone wrong. Sect Master Xia shared a glance with his fellow head elders and redoubled their efforts. Soon, the formation trapping Tianyi broke, revealing Tianyi completely uninjured except for his broken armor and clothes.
Sect Master Xia's eyes widened. "You're completely fine?"
Tianyi only gave a knowing smile, but that smile didn't reach his eyes. "You sure had a good plan."
"I don't know what fellow daoist is talking about, but it is good that you are uninjured." Despite Sect Master Xia's calm appearance, his heart skipped a beat. 'Could he know?'
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Inside Tianyi's inner universe on Eighth Heaven, his third clone Donghai Longzi sat in a lotus position. On his leg was Xi Longyi's immortal rank saber.