"What... did you say?!!"
"Pfft!"
The Divine Calculator spat out a mouthful of old blood, spraying it all over the abacus.
Zishu Ling and the numerous cultivators supported the Divine Calculator with horror in their hearts.
The Immortal Seed Grotto-Heaven was right before their eyes, yet they had done absolutely nothing, and Senior Divine Calculator had suffered a severe injury!
"Clatter, clatter, clatter!"
This time, even without the Divine Calculator flicking the abacus, the abacus itself was jumping up and down!
"One hundred and twenty-seven people? Divine Calculator, are you saying we have three extra people among us? Absolutely impossible. Quick, look and see who the strangers are."
"Absolutely impossible. Under our Spiritual power, how could anyone possibly sneak in? How did the Li Clan people know our whereabouts?"
"Fellow Daoist, stay away from me."
The crowd was instantly thrown into panic, guarding against one another.
A powerful cultivator swiped his Dharma eyes open, and everyone's expressions changed even more drastically.
They saw that where they stood, centered on the Divine Calculator, his art of destiny was spreading in all directions through spiritual energy.
But these threads, clearly used for divination, were shattering inch by inch, like broken hair tossed into the sky!
"Not good, the Divine Calculator's art of destiny has suffered a backlash!"
Terror descended.
"Divine Calculator..."
Among the crowd, Zishu Ling continuously used Spiritual power to sustain the Divine Calculator's vitality.
But with the threads of destiny broken, where was the vitality to be found?
The destinies the Divine Calculator had divined over tens of thousands of years had gone against the Heavenly Dao.
Now, all this karma fell squarely upon him.
His body aged at a speed visible to the naked eye.
A dignified Void Refining realm expert, coughing up blood mouthful by mouthful, he grabbed Zishu Ling's arm in sheer terror.
"The... the things I calculated... were all... wrong..."
"Here... there are people who are... better at..."
"The art of destiny."
"And... two of them!"
In the rainy night.
The Divine Calculator's vitality was extinguished.
As the night rain beat down, the one hundred and twenty-three cultivators all stared in horror and vigilance at the pitch-black surroundings.
The rainy night felt like the gaping maw of a prehistoric ferocious beast.
Cold sweat poured down their faces, a sense of crisis erupting in their hearts.
It seemed that no matter where they fled, they would be swallowed whole by an unknown great terror!
Three...
Three unknown cultivators had silently sneaked in among them, these experts who were viewed as gods by the people of the world.
If it weren't for the Divine Calculator losing his life, they wouldn't even have known what happened.
Like headless flies, they kept a vigilant watch on everyone around them.
.......
"Disperse, maintain a safe distance."
Outside the Immortal Seed Grotto-Heaven, the numerous cultivators had already fallen into complete chaos before even breaching it.
No one cared anymore about what heavenly materials and earthly treasures were inside, nor did they care how many people were hiding within, much less whether they would alert the Li Clan and cause them to flee.
The gazes they exchanged were filled with suspicion and vigilance; there were simply too many possibilities hidden among them.
At this moment, two people stood shoulder to shoulder: a white-robed old man with red hair, and a Daoist-robed woman holding a small bamboo pole.
The two watched with great interest as the crowd of cultivators devolved into a disorganized, paranoid mess.
"Little Tree, your skills have grown quite a bit." Li Yaoqing touched the small gourd at her waist, a thick black iron ring worn on her left wrist.
With a soft click, the gourd opened, and a fine white powder drifted silently through the barriers the crowd used to ward off the heavy rain.
The white powder drifted barely three inches before merging seamlessly into the spiritual energy.
Hearing Li Yaoqing's praise, the Old Tree—who usually appeared stern and fierce to most clansmen—actually became bashful.
"My innate talent shatters delusions; he basically walked right into the line of fire. But it wasn't entirely my doing.
Yaowen has been manipulating the destiny of Azure Cloud Prefecture through the Prefecture Lord's Token for hundreds of years.
I secretly coordinated with him; the deeper he calculated, the more the destiny of heaven and earth backlashed against him."
He looked around, growing increasingly excited.
Having cultivated with the old Li family for many years, he had finally broken his bloodline limit to become an ancient tree.
During the battle in the Western Frontier, he hadn't done anything.
Perhaps since the day his leaves grew increasingly vibrant, the combative bloodline of the old Li family had silently rubbed off on him.
Rather than calculating fortunes for those brats, he much preferred taking root in the earth like he used to in Azure Cloud Region, wildly thrashing his root tendrils and letting his towering canopy cast its shadow over the entire Azure Cloud Prefecture.
"Should we strike now?"
Changsheng, following him, was a burden on him.
But now, having Li Yaoqing by his side was entirely different.
The Divine Art wielded by Li Yaoqing, combined with his existence as a true spirit of heaven and earth's flora, gave him more than enough courage to challenge anyone—including the one hundred and twenty-three people present.
"What if they run away? Wait a little longer. Little Tree, don't be too overconfident; none of these people are simple."
Li Yaoqing casually replied.
At this time, the enemies who had come to Azure Cloud Prefecture and were now wary of each other suddenly erupted into chaos.
Zishu Ling had ultimately overestimated herself.
In such a crisis-ridden moment, no matter how she tried to stop them, no one cared about her status as a member of the Zishu royal bloodline.
"Wait!" Zishu Ling shouted furiously, finally bringing everyone to a halt.
It wasn't because her voice was loud.
It was because...
The crowd saw the terror in her eyes. "We now... have one hundred and twenty-five people left!"
There were three extra people.
But now... one person was missing, silently vanishing into this cold, rainy night.
Suppressing their wildly pounding hearts and the fear emanating from the depths of their souls, they looked around.
They had never been to a place this dark before.
Among the crowd.
Li Zhiheng silently arrived behind a Golden Core realm cultivator.
The Heavenly Dao Divine Heart was influencing human desires, including fear.
"Thump... thump..."
He could hear the heartbeat of the person in front of him.
This kind of heartbeat was simply the best cover for the Heavenly Dao Divine Heart.
He looked around at everyone, but everyone seemed completely blind to his presence.
Then, he openly and brazenly grabbed the person's neck.
Under the pressure of immense Spiritual power, the person cried out and died. Yet no matter how miserably he screamed, the people around him seemed as if they hadn't seen a thing.
"Even a Golden Core realm dares to come."
Only then did Li Zhiheng's field of vision dissipate.
Just like after Yuanwu died back then, when he stood outside Yuanshang's room watching Yuanshang, he was clearly still somewhere else, yet it felt as if he had done many things.
Li Zhiheng stroked his Heavenly Dao Divine Heart.
Ever since that day, he felt his human emotions and desires returning, and he had also mastered a new method.
"The human heart is driven by emotion. When the human heart reaches its absolute extreme—whether it be terror, joy, despair, or sorrow—at the very end of that path, they will meet me."
Li Zhiheng exhaled a long breath. Looking at the terrified cultivators in all directions, he said expressionlessly, "Feel the fear. I await you at the edge of despair to come meet me."
"Not good!"
"Another fellow Daoist has disappeared."
"Flee... we must flee quickly!"
"We can't flee; there are enemies in the rainy night!"
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