Just before they flew out of the mountain range, a sharp, deafening sound, like glass shattering right next to their ears, interrupted them.
Mo Lingtian instantly patted the dragon, halting its movement. He looked up at the sky.
A few meters above them, the fabric of space was violently tearing open. A pitch-black spatial rift expanded, and from within it, a terrifying cold energy leaked out. It was an aura that completely suffocated every living thing in its wake. The sheer pressure forced even Tu Xin down from the sky where he was levitating.
A figure slowly stepped out of the spatial rift, hovering high in the sky. He wore flowing azure robes, and his eyes burned with a cold, relentless light.
The crackling void rift hummed with a freezing, destructive power, distorting the natural light around him. Every step he took forward sent visible shockwaves through the air, freezing the cultivators watching from thousands of meters away in absolute, paralyzed terror as they witnessed true power. He was an Immortal, the vice captain of the squad that the young monk belonged to.
He had arrived after seeing the young monk's soul tablet shatter, immediately joining the investigation of the ocean massacre as ordered by his captain. Now, his gaze was locked entirely on Mo Lingtian.
"You... you killed him?" the vice captain's voice echoed. An icy fog spread across the sky, turning the entire mountain into a massive monument of dark ice.
"Yes. He attacked me viciously," Mo Lingtian replied, shielding himself, the dragon, and everyone on its back from the piercing cold energy the Immortal was releasing.
"Mo Lingtian, this person is in the late stage of the Immortal pathway. This is an impossible fight," the chief commander warned from within Mo Lingtian's Sea of Consciousness.
"Senior, the gravity law..."
"That is just a basic gravity domain law. It is nowhere near enough to deal with him," she replied.
"Good. I like how straightforward you are. Now, you have just two options. Come with me to accept an interrogation, or you pay for his death with your life," the vice captain stated emphatically, staring at Mo Lingtian with menace written all over his face.
"Sorry, I refuse," Mo Lingtian replied, looking up at him.
"Good! It makes it easier to explain why I killed you," the vice captain said. He took one more step forward, immediately enacting his own law of gravity and his domain, the domain of ice over the entire region.
The frozen mountain range was instantly decimated, including the death zone whose energy was already dissipating.
The gravitational law pressed heavily down on Mo Lingtian and his companions, slowly cracking through the energy barrier he had set up. The dark ice simultaneously attacked the shield, trying to crawl over their skin.
"Take them far away on my signal," Mo Lingtian ordered as he struggled to keep the barrier intact.
"Master," the dragon murmured.
"Listen to me! You will only hold me back. Just take everyone far away as fast as you can on my signal," Mo Lingtian yelled.
"You still have time to discuss? It seems I am being too lenient," the vice captain said as he swiftly raised his hand toward the sky.
Instantly, the clouds above shifted, spiraling into a spinning tunnel of dark, cold essence. The air temperature plummeted as the weather forcefully turned gloomy, windy, and freezing.
"Leave now," Mo Lingtian whispered. Immediately, the dragon took flight, soaring swiftly away from the mountain range with Wang Ping and the others.
"Do you think you can escape my domain? Today I will show you the true power of an Immortal," his voice echoed. Raw cold energy blasted through the entire region, spanning thousands of meters.
"This is the power of my Dark Ice Domain," the vice captain continued, drawing his hand down. The tunneled clouds followed, warping around the entire area like a massive dome and instantly transforming into dark, cold essence.
He had literally transformed the sky into a massive cage of ice.
The dragon could not go further. The expanding dome caught up to it, blocking its flight path. The cold energy, however, could not seep into them, as their bodies had recently been transformed by the power of death.
Mo Lingtian swiftly brought out his needles, forty-three in total fusing them with death energy as they floated above his palm. Without looking back, he controlled the needles, making them fly straight toward a corner of the dome. They effortlessly broke open a pathway for the dragon, and the beast swiftly flew through the gap with the others on its back.
"Interesting. Your needle technique is too weird. No wonder you could cause that massacre at the ocean," the vice captain said, visibly shocked by the unexpected crack in his domain.
"Senior, let me use the death domain," Mo Lingtian communicated to the chief commander.
"No! You absolutely cannot! Your domain laws are too special; no one can be allowed to find out. If he survives and spreads the news outside, you will definitely be hunted down by everyone," the chief commander replied, a hint of nervousness in her tone.
"I am confident I can kill him. I only need one thing from you," Mo Lingtian replied with certainty. "I need you to use your time law within my domain."
"I can't. Even though the laws of your domain are very special, your cultivation is too weak to superimpose over his domain. And even if you were to successfully exert your domain over his, my interference will attract powerful existences. By that time, everything will become much more complicated than it already is," the chief commander explained.
"Dark Ice Lotus, fall!" the Immortal's voice echoed. From the clouds forming the domain, cold essence immediately drew out, flowing endlessly into the center of the Immortal's palm to form a massive ice lotus.
With a casual wave of his hand, the ice lotus drifted downwards. It expanded enormously in size as it fell toward Mo Lingtian, spinning slowly as its frozen petals majestically shifted.
"Can you handle five Sovereign Immortals?" Mo Lingtian asked the commander, summoning his needles back as they arranged themselves before him.
"What are you planning?" she replied.
"If I promise you only five Sovereign Immortals will show up, would you be confident enough to take action?" Mo Lingtian said, positioning the needles at random distances in the sky as he watched the descending lotus.
"It's not like I have a choice. If you die, I won't survive either," the chief commander replied with a sigh.
"Young man, what are you still doing with those needles? You better show some real skill, or you will die here," the Immortal laughed as he watched Mo Lingtian randomly positioning needles in the air against his falling ice lotus.
With a final flick of his finger to the right, Mo Lingtian threw the last needle to a specific point in the air. Using his own body as the source, he drew power from his hybrid core, linking all the needles together using thin golden threads. The threads wrapped the needles in a dense, volatile mixture of death and void energy.
"What kind of energy is this?" the Immortal frowned, watching the energy warping around the needles.
"Senior, this is a meridian acupuncture technique," Mo Lingtian said. He then rotated the entire arrangement of needles floating in the air completely upside down.
Now inverted, the random arrangement of the needles was revealed to be an intricately detailed diagram of the human body's meridian system. Every golden thread flowing between the needles mapped the exact pathway of Qi, and the needles themselves were the sealing points of those pathways.
"What kind of trick is this?" the vice captain muttered to himself as he saw the massive diagram formed behind Mo Lingtian. He immediately increased the weight, speed, and pressure of his ice lotus as it crashed down toward him.
"Seal," Mo Lingtian's voice echoed coldly. All forty-three needles instantly shot past the descending ice lotus, charging straight toward the Immortal to attack him from all directions.
"Do you think mere needles can break through my body?" the Immortal scoffed. He flexed his Immortal physique, generating a shockwave intended to dispel the needles before they could even touch his clothes.