Liu Wuxie blocked the two men’s path with a smile, but the smile only sent chills down their spines. Though Liu Wuxie might seem harmless, they could sense a bone-chilling murderous intent behind his smile.

Those who kill must be prepared to be killed. While Liu Wuxie never initiated any violence, he wouldn’t let anyone who dared provoke him go.

"Fight!" The two men exchanged a glance and knew there was no path of retreat. With Liu Wuxie in the front and Liu Xin’er behind them, they knew they could only fight their way out.

Just facing Liu Xin’er alone was a headache, not to mention they had to face someone with unfathomable strength like Liu Wuxie, who felt like an immovable mountain before them.

"Come and die!" Liu Wuxie declared. He had lost his patience and wanted to end the fight swiftly, lest other enemies might be hiding in the ambush.

He raised the Heretic Blade to the sky once again and unleashed True Strike, creating a curtain of blade auras.

This scene left Liu Xin’er, who was standing nearby, gaping in astonishment and with a look of disbelief on her face.

"What kind of technique is this? How can it be so powerful?" Liu Xin’er murmured, her voice trembling. She had met countless experts, but none were comparable to Liu Wuxie.

As for Liu Xing, he had already grown accustomed to all the extraordinary feats around Liu Wuxie.

The Heretic Blade split into two and shot toward the two men, accompanied by a crushing force of laws that descended upon them. This strike contained the power of a true dragon, mingled with a hint of the ancient deity’s power. Together, the merged forces created an earth-shattering might.

"I can’t accept this!" The curtain of blade auras enveloped the two men before they could even put up any resistance.

As Liu Wuxie had speculated, despite their cultivation, the two men’s actual combat power was only in the fourth to the fifth level of the Nascent Transformation Realm. This was the result of their poor foundation.

If their strength had been truly at their supposed level, Liu Xin’er would have struggled against them.

After collecting the three interspatial rings, Liu Wuxie scanned them with his divine sense before he broke into a smile. To his surprise, the three rings contained 150,000 high-grade spirit stones.

While it wasn’t an astronomical sum, it was enough to finance his current cultivation. After all, he had just spent hundreds of thousands of spirit stones on his recent purchase, leaving his reserves dangerously low.

But this unexpected windfall could support him until the Heavenly Spirit Celestial Academy’s recruitment. He aimed to push himself to the peak and restore the glory of the desolate world.

Ever since he set foot in the Central Plains, the oppression of laws here had compressed his physical body and the desolate world, and it was up to him to perfect them.

"Big Brother Wuxie, you’re too strong!" Liu Xing exclaimed despite expecting this outcome. He could hardly contain his excitement after witnessing Liu Wuxie’s strength.

Although Liu Xin’er said nothing, the admiration in his eyes already spoke volumes. Even in the Liu Clan, there weren’t many first-tier disciples capable of killing opponents in the eighth level of the Nascent Transformation Realm with one strike, and Liu Wuxie could be ranked in the top five.

Faced with their admiration, Liu Wuxie merely brushed it off with a smile. The trio continued their journey, quickening their pace, wary of any further ambushes along the way.

Two hours later, the Liu Clan’s gate finally came into view.

"I hope the two of you won’t speak to anyone about today’s events," Liu Wuxie said. He didn’t want his parents to know that he had visited One Sword Shakes Mount Spirit and nearly died there.

In the Southern Province, Liu Wuxie spent most of his time alone, without anyone to care for him. But things were different now as he had a home, family, and parents. He didn’t want them to worry about his safety.

Liu Xin’er and Liu Xing nodded; they, too, didn’t want their parents to know about it.

When the trio returned to the Liu Clan, they parted ways like nothing had happened.

After dinner, Liu Wuxie applied for a cultivation chamber as he planned to enter a period of seclusion.

His grandfather soon approved the application. With the patriarchal token, Liu Wuxie could gain unrestricted access to any cultivation chamber in the clan.

When Liu Wuxie returned to his quarters, he didn’t immediately take out his purchases but treated himself to a good night’s rest. He was drained from the battles, and he knew it would be unwise to cultivate now.

Although cultivation was like rowing against the current and progress was mandatory, achieving a balance between effort and rest was necessary.

At the break of dawn, Liu Wuxie headed to the clan’s cultivation chambers with the patriarchal token given by his grandfather. Despite the limited number, the Liu Clan’s cultivation chambers were of the highest quality.

After Liu Wuxie presented the patriarchal token, he was soon assigned an individual cultivation chamber. The cultivation chamber wasn’t large, but it was more than adequate for his current needs.

When Liu Wuxie entered, he sat cross-legged and took out the Celestial Descent Bead, placing it beside him. The bead gave off a faint stream of energy that assisted Liu Wuxie in comprehending his dao.

The first item he took out was the mysterious feather. The moment he brought it out, the Earth-Binding Chains flew out from his soul sea and hovered before the feather.

Liu Wuxie looked at the feather quietly. It gave off a profound aura that perfectly harmonized with the Earth-Binding Chains. The mysterious aura was constantly merging into the Earth-Binding Chains, and it didn’t take long before he noticed that the laws on the chains became more complete. This meant the Earth-Binding Chains were using the mysterious feather to strengthen themselves.

He now knew why he couldn’t refine the Earth-Binding Chains all this time. It turned out that the Earth-Binding Chains could only be strengthened using the Spirit Clan’s laws.

When the feather slowly drifted down, and Liu Wuxie caught it, he noticed that it had lost all the weight along with the sharp aura that was once on it. On the contrary, the Earth-Binding Chains had grown sturdier after absorbing the Spirit Clan’s laws on the feather.

"Come back!" Liu Wuxie commanded with a thought, and the Earth-Binding Chains returned to his soul sea.

But another surprise awaited Liu Wuxie. The feather retained a fragment of the Spirit Clan’s memory, which quickly fused with him. The memory was fragmented, and Liu Wuxie saw a utopia where many Spirit Clan’s members lived, soaring freely through the skies.

Just when Liu Wuxie was about to delve deeper to find the Spirit Clan’s location, the memory ended abruptly.

Although there were no clues about the Spirit Clan’s location, Liu Wuxie was certain that they existed somewhere in this universe; he just needed further investigation to determine their exact location.

After the energy in the feather had depleted completely, Liu Wuxie stowed it away carefully. But strengthening the Earth-Binding Chains meant a sharp increment in Liu Wuxie’s strength.

Liu Wuxie removed the Heretic Blade and allowed it to hover before him. He planned on re-forging it into an origin artifact within ten days. He had to arm himself to the teeth before the Heavenly Spirit Celestial Academy’s recruitment.

"Profound metal essence, my hope is on you now," Liu Wuxie muttered. That meteorite held the utmost importance among all the materials he had purchased.

As he formed intricate hand seals, terrifying demonic flames gushed out from the depth of the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron.

When the demonic flame gushed out, Fiery suddenly emerged from Liu Wuxie’s clothes and nestled beside him, absorbing the flame hungrily. But Liu Wuxie paid no mind to it, and he was convinced that Fiery was a fire-attributed profound beast. It had shown no progress in growth even after being together for so long, aside from growing noticeably rounder.

One by one, the forging materials bought by Liu Wuxie began to hover in mid-air. His blacksmithing skills hadn’t waned after coming to the Central Plains and had become even more exquisite instead.

Mysterious and intricate spiritual runes hovered in the air as they began to merge with the Heretic Blade. The blade began to stretch longer, soon resembling a longsword, though it still retained a single-edged design.

It took Liu Wuxie a whole day to melt the meteorite, and he wondered if re-forging the Heretic Blade would trigger another thunder tribulation like last time. But even if he knew there would be a thunder tribulation, it wouldn’t deter him from upgrading the Heretic Blade.

As materials began to fuse into the Heretic Blade, the aura it gave off began to rise. Just as he had anticipated, dark clouds started to form over the Liu Clan when he was upgrading the Heretic Blade.

The phenomenon alarmed countless people, who rushed out of their houses. They all thought divine punishment was descending upon the Liu Clan.

"Thunderclouds! Why are there thunderclouds?!" Only those who made a breakthrough to the Heaven Profound Realm would have to face the baptism of thunder tribulation, but it had been years since the Liu Clan had produced a powerhouse in the Heaven Profound Realm. They began to wonder if an ancestor was attempting such a breakthrough.

But news soon came back that the Liu Clan’s martial field was the epicenter of the thunderclouds. This was unusual as young disciples primarily used the place to train.

An investigation soon took place, and it was revealed that the disturbance originated from Liu Wuxie’s cultivation chamber. It swirled around the chamber in the center, and rumbling lightning threatened to obliterate everything beneath.

In mere hours, thousands of people had gathered outside Liu Wuxie’s cultivation chamber. Everyone stared in awe and horror, unable to believe the scene unfolding before them.

"Father, are we going to just wait and do nothing? The thunderclouds are too terrifying, and how can Wuxie withstand it with his cultivation in the Astral River Realm?" Liu Dashan asked anxiously.

His understanding of Liu Wuxie was only limited to what had happened in the past few days, and he knew nothing of Liu Wuxie’s life in the past.

Liu Xiucheng furrowed his brows as the appearance of the thunderclouds meant Liu Wuxie had defied the natural order in some way, but he didn’t know what the latter was doing. Moreover, he might disrupt Liu Wuxie and could lead to dire consequences if he rushed in now.

"Carry on waiting!" Liu Xiucheng said. When his divine sense penetrated the cultivation chamber, his worry lessened after seeing that Liu Wuxie was forging an artifact.

There were typically two causes of tribulation. The first involved committing a sin that provoked heaven’s wrath, and the second came from creating something that defied the world’s natural order, thus prompting heaven to destroy it.

Liu Wuxie’s situation belonged to the latter.

"Everyone evacuate the area within a thousand meters, and no one is allowed to get close!" Liu Xiucheng soon ordered everyone to leave for safety. After all, even those in the Nascent Transformation Realm would struggle against such a powerful tribulation.

It didn’t take long before the surroundings were cleared of disciples, leaving several elders in the True Profound Realm behind.

"Father, will Wuxie be alright?" Liu Dazhi asked, his face pale with worry.

"He’ll be fine!" Liu Xiucheng wasn’t certain, but he chose to believe in Liu Wuxie. Moreover, it was too late for him to intervene as the tribulation had already formed, and he couldn’t reverse the process.

The crowd soon dispersed. But as the tribulation was still brewing and wouldn’t descend anytime soon, Liu Dazhi decided to stay behind, prepared for any emergencies, while everyone else, including Liu Dashan, retreated further away.

"Profound metal essence, fuse!" Liu Wuxie finally began to fuse the profound metal essence now that the Heretic Blade was almost done forging. The moment he began fusing the profound metal essence in, a thunderclap echoed.

The loud rumble made Liu Dayue leap in fright, and his hair stood on end. This was the first time he had heard of such an intense thunderclap that even the cultivation chamber trembled.

Profound metal essence was an ideal material for forging weapons due to its unparalleled sharpness. It was rare, but Liu Wuxie had been fortunate to find one.

As the Heretic Blade transformed, the blade flickered between reality and illusory as though it had merged into space.

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