Chapter 179: Ruthless “Asset Liquidation” and the “Purification” of the Dao Heart

Lei Qianjue felt that he was about to go mad.

He had been swept into a bizarre and violent lightning purgatory.

The sky here was filled with endlessly rolling purple tribulation clouds, every single cloud containing destructive power;

the ground here was surging, flowing golden lightning plasma, its heat sufficient to incinerate all things, its electrical force enough to tear apart the void.

In the air, every wisp of spiritual energy was saturated with violent lightning power. For someone like him who specialized in lightning techniques, this place should have been heaven, the very source of his strength.

In fact, at the beginning, it truly was so.

When he realized where he was, boundless ecstasy surged in his heart.

To his astonishment, cultivating here was more than a hundred times faster than in the outside world!

The deficit in strength caused by burning his essence blood and forcibly driving lightning techniques was recovering at an astonishing speed, even faintly showing signs of breaking through to the mid–Nascent Soul stage.

“Hahahaha! Heaven helps me! Chu Feng!”

“Did you really think that throwing me into spatial turbulence would kill me?”

“You never imagined this would be my blessed land!”

“When my power is fully formed, I will definitely tear you into pieces, grind your bones to ashes, and let you know the consequences of offending my Lei Family!”

Lei Qianjue sat cross-legged within the lightning plasma, crazily devouring the surrounding violent lightning energy. As he felt the power within his body rise steadily, that primitive and pure sense of might intoxicated him, making him unable to extricate himself. The venomous hatred and killing intent in his heart expanded accordingly.

Compared to his狂喜 and madness, the nearby Murong Tian remained transcendentally calm from beginning to end.

He merely stood there quietly, like a reef amid the violent lightning, unmoving.

The ancient, unadorned longsword in his hand pointed obliquely toward the ground. At its tip, there was not the slightest flicker of lightning, yet it emitted a cold and merciless aura.

Those eyes devoid of emotional fluctuation calmly swept across this lightning world, as if he were analyzing a set of cold, precise data.

“Lightning law intensity exceeds external levels by three thousand seven hundred sixty-two point three percent.”

“Spiritual energy contains ‘heart-demon induction factors’ at extremely high concentration, already reaching the critical threshold.”

“Long-term exposure here yields a ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent probability of mental erosion.”

“Conclusion: This location is a ‘power trap.’ Its core purpose is to induce cultivators to overdraw their potential, ultimately degenerating into ‘energy puppets’ that know only power, and becoming ‘nourishment’ for some unknown existence.”

He reached this conclusion, but did not warn Lei Qianjue.

In his eyes, Lei Qianjue had already gone from a “strategic partner” to a “high-risk asset.”

And when it came to risk, his handling method had always been only one—divestment, or rather, complete “liquidation.”

He cultivated the Supreme Forgetting of Emotions Record. His Dao heart was spotless and free of dust, naturally unaffected by the “heart-demon induction factors” within this lightning purgatory.

He merely waited quietly, waiting for the optimal moment of “liquidation.”

Time passed, little by little, amid the violent thunderclaps.

The aura on Lei Qianjue’s body grew stronger and stronger, climbing from early Nascent Soul straight into mid–Nascent Soul, and even pushing toward the late stage. The lightning surrounding him became ever more solid, ever more destructive.

Yet his eyes grew increasingly bloodshot, his expression ever more deranged. His mouth continuously emitted meaningless roars, like a beast completely devoured by power.

He had already fallen entirely into the false illusion of surging strength, losing all perception of his surroundings, leaving only endless greed and possessiveness toward power.

Finally, when his aura rose to a certain critical point and the lightning power around his body reached saturation, he suddenly stood up from the lightning plasma and let out a long howl that shook heaven and earth.

The lightning power around him completely lost control, transforming into thick, pitch-black annihilating divine lightning bolts, each as thick as a water barrel. Like headless flies, they blasted wildly in all directions, tearing horrifying rifts into the surrounding space.

On his face, there was no trace of rationality left—only endless greed and fanaticism for power, and bone-deep hatred toward Chu Feng.

“The timing has arrived.”

Murong Tian calmly uttered four words. His voice was light, yet carried an unquestionable resolve.

He moved.

There was no earth-shaking momentum, no dazzling techniques. He merely walked step by step toward the completely crazed Lei Qianjue, gently raising the longsword in his hand, the tip pointing straight at Lei Qianjue’s dantian.

“Lei Qianjue, as a ‘partner,’ your ‘value’ has already been exhausted.”

“Now, proceed with the final ‘asset liquidation.’”

His voice remained ice-cold and devoid of emotion, as if he were reading out a business contract drafted long ago—every word permeated with merciless rules.

“Roar!”

Lei Qianjue seemed to sense a fatal threat and let out a beast-like roar.

He forcibly mobilized all the out-of-control lightning in his body, condensing it into a ferocious and terrifying black lightning dragon. Its eyes were blood-red, its gaping maw radiated annihilation as it lunged toward Murong Tian to devour him!

This strike was already infinitely close to the full-power attack of a late–Nascent Soul cultivator, even faintly touching the threshold of Nascent Soul Great Perfection—enough to burn mountains, boil seas, and destroy a small world.

However, Murong Tian merely calmly thrust out a single sword.

Still so plain and unadorned, without the slightest flourish. On the sword edge, there was no surging spiritual energy, no dazzling light.

Still so precise and calm, as if this sword strike had already been deduced thousands of times in his mind, avoiding all possible variables.

“Logical flaw one: energy form overly dispersed, core cohesion below seven point two three percent.”

“Logical flaw two: attack path singular, lacking variation; predictability exceeds ninety-one point seven percent.”

“Logical flaw three: the driving core—namely your consciousness—has completely ‘crashed’ and is incapable of effective decision-making.”

The sword tip pierced, without the slightest deviation, straight into the black lightning dragon’s brow.

There was no explosion, no thunderous roar, not even a ripple of spiritual energy.

That violent black lightning dragon was like a punctured balloon, silently collapsing in an instant, reverting into the purest lightning origin and dissipating into the air, as if it had never existed.

The crazed, twisted expression on Lei Qianjue’s face froze.

His blood-red eyes finally recovered a trace of clarity, but what replaced it was boundless terror and despair.

“You… you…”

He wanted to say something—beg for mercy, curse in rage—but Murong Tian’s sword had already pierced through his dantian.

“Puchi.”

Runes flowed along the longsword, and a cold, domineering force with a powerful suction surged from the sword tip.

Lei Qianjue discovered in horror that the lightning Dao origin he had painstakingly cultivated for hundreds of years, the vast power he had just devoured, was being continuously siphoned through this bizarre longsword into Murong Tian’s body!

His cultivation, his vitality, everything he possessed was being mercilessly stripped away.

“No… don’t… please… spare me…”

He let out his final, heart-rending plea, but to Murong Tian, that sound was no different from wind brushing past his ears—utterly meaningless.

Murong Tian ignored his begging, merely calmly sensing his own cultivation surge from late Nascent Soul, smashing through the bottleneck and finally stepping firmly into… Nascent Soul Great Perfection!

The aura around him was as deep as an abyss, as imposing as a mountain. With every gesture, it was as if he could stir the laws of heaven and earth.

Only after Lei Qianjue had been completely drained into a withered corpse did he slowly withdraw the longsword. The blade was unstained by even a drop of blood, still cold and moonlike.

“Liquidation complete.”

He kicked aside the desiccated corpse, which instantly turned to ashes amid the lightning.

Then he bent down, picked up the storage treasure that Lei Qianjue had dropped, swept it with his divine sense, and transferred everything inside into his own ring.

The entire process was smooth and efficient, as if he had rehearsed it countless times before.

After finishing all this, he raised his head. His gaze seemed to pierce through endless space, looking toward a certain direction.

There lay his other “target” on this journey.

“Next.”

His figure moved, transforming into a merciless streak of sword light that vanished into the depths of the lightning purgatory, leaving behind not the slightest trace of attachment.

At the very instant Murong Tian departed, the breakthrough aura released after draining Lei Qianjue spread like a tide, shaking the entire spatial turbulence—and causing the Jianmu Leaf in Feng Zhiruo’s hand to suddenly tremble, pointing toward the very same direction.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep