Chapter Seventy-Four: Death Means Being Boiled in Five Cauldrons

The soul quaked violently.

That sliver of sword light erupted within his spirit, unleashing an even greater surge of sword energy and intent, stirring the entire cauldron city into turmoil.

The soul’s attention was consumed by erasing the sword and thunder light from within itself, leaving no room to deal with Xu Zhong and the others.

“We have to seize this chance to escape.” Xu Zhong, quick-witted, glimpsed the soul and instantly grasped the opportunity. Raising his arm in a shout, he led the others toward the soul’s mud pill palace: “Into his niwan!”

The others, bewildered and unsure of the situation, nevertheless followed Xu Zhong and charged into the soul’s niwan.

The niwan was vast, suspended between chaos and reality.

Xu Zhong took the lead, standing resolutely within it.

In an instant, countless thoughts surged forth from the niwan, transforming into cultivators who lunged at Xu Zhong.

Drawing on the power of the soul’s shadow aspect and the five luminances, these phantasmal cultivators wielded the arts with a prowess nearly rivaling that of the yang aspect itself.

Xu Zhong’s expression remained unchanged as he bellowed, “Thunder Ancestor, Thunder Ancestor, Thunder Ancestor…”

Thunder roared. Bolts of lightning descended wildly from above, piercing the soul’s niwan and pouring into Xu Zhong’s own.

“Yellow Dragon Form!” Xu Zhong’s soul transformed into a yellow dragon, quelling the turmoil within the niwan.

The thunder spread, each strand as thick as a barrel, spitting arcs of electricity and reverberating with the thunder’s roar.

The newly formed thoughts were annihilated by the lightning in an instant, shattered to dust.

Seeing this, the others found their courage and joined Xu Zhong in shouting, “Thunder Ancestor, Thunder Ancestor, Thunder Ancestor!”

Thunder light erupted across the niwan, merging and stacking to form a misty thundercloud that hovered above, discharging bolts of lightning and raining down thunder.

The niwan was soon engulfed by lightning. Even within their own undivided niwans, the five of them felt the currents of thunder surging.

But their bodies remained alive, their niwans unopened; that primordial chaos could contain endless lightning.

Unless the thunder gained consciousness like a soul—only then might it harm Xu Zhong and his companions.

Otherwise, the thunder merely shook their spirits.

“Aaah!” The soul was terrified.

The niwan was his foundation, the root of his existence. If it were destroyed, his end would be near.

The thunder reflected from the niwan onto his body; before their eyes, thunder dragons swam across him, arcs of lightning swallowing his awareness, severing his soul and spirit, and scorching his inextinguishable aura.

“You are courting death!” he roared, sealing away the thunder and sword energy of the Thunder Ancestor and Si Tu Nan, then stepping forward, appearing instantly in the niwan.

He was met by a blade of sword light.

Though it was three hundred miles long, to him it was no more than three strands of hair. A mere breath scattered the sword light to nothing.

“Such a feeble glow, and you dare—” Yet before he could finish, the sword light within him broke the seal and once more slashed at his soul.

He was split asunder yet again.

“Thunder Ancestor, Thunder Ancestor, Thunder Ancestor!”

Lightning crashed down upon the soul.

Cracks appeared, splintering his spirit.

Thunder boomed!

The yellow dragon, flung against the cauldron wall by the soul’s attack, seized its chance and awoke once more.

It was the cauldron spirit.

When the Thunder Ancestor used it to contain the demon’s head, it was but an ordinary vessel. After soaking in the demon’s blood, however, it gained sentience.

The yellow dragon lunged at the soul, baring its fangs, exhaling breaths of yin and yang, intertwining into twin dragons that took the shape of immense shears, slicing toward the soul.

Originally, the soul and spirit were fused as one, but were now severed by these shears.

There was a double “pop”—and the soul and spirit split into ten entities: three spirits and seven souls.

The sword and thunder light also divided into ten, each falling upon one of the three spirits or seven souls.

The connections between the three spirits and seven souls were visible to the naked eye, strands of silver like lotus fibers, peculiarly distinct.

“Good, good!” The soul cackled madly, forcibly drawing the three spirits and seven souls together with those silver threads. Reaching out, he grasped the ends of the filaments and, like an embroiderer, began stitching the spirits and souls together. His needlework was so neat that the seams were nearly invisible.

This scene reminded Xu Zhong of the stitches he had seen on that enormous heart in the outer realm.

“None of you will leave here alive,” the soul hissed.

The five luminances manifested about him.

A shaft of wood energy ran through the five, as though a great tree had threaded them together, causing them to revolve around it.

“So the Golden Core isn’t a pill after all,” Xu Zhong thought.

“Golden Core” was a general term, referring to the unification of the five luminances’ powers.

The great tree was the golden core of the soul’s shadow aspect.

Suddenly, the tree emanated a mysterious radiance. Its roots stretched into the void, its branches retracting inward.

Within this glowing haze, Xu Zhong glimpsed a cauldron at the four corners of this secret realm.

At the same time, his own limbs were pulling inward toward themselves, though his body was nowhere to be seen.

“So it’s true what the ancients said: ‘A true man who has not partaken of the Five Cauldrons in life will be cooked in them in death,’” Xu Zhong mused.

Then, the yellow dragon and the soul clashed again.

The five of them chanted Thunder Ancestor’s name with wild fervor.

Suddenly, the yellow dragon dove into the thundercloud, tearing and devouring it. In an instant, arcs of lightning grew along its scales, transforming it from a yellow dragon into a thunder dragon.

As the Thunder Ancestor’s artifact spirit, though merely a utensil, it could wield a sliver of his power.

Now, the thunder dragon coiled through the sky. With a single breath, thunder rained down, engulfing the cauldron.

The soul was undaunted, summoning true fire with a wave of his hand, conjuring a vast sea of flames.

The fire blazed against the thunder, a spectacle of unimaginable grandeur.

He ceaselessly summoned his physical body.

“Even Thunder Ancestor couldn’t kill me, Wei Yan; do you think this broken cauldron can?” Wei Yan laughed, thrusting an arm through the barrier of the realm, reaching the edge of the cauldron.

A sudden popping sound—like a bubble bursting—signaled the arm’s entry into the cauldron.

A surge of wood energy burst from Wei Yan, enveloping the arm, which then performed a one-handed seal.

Instantly, wind and cloud churned within the cauldron. Red lotuses blossomed everywhere; from their centers stepped cultivators who bent down, plucked the lotuses, using the stems as spear shafts, petals as red tassels, and the intertwined stamens as spear tips.

Armed with red-tasseled spears, they leapt onto the thunder dragon, attacking it in formation.

Though these lotus-born cultivators were weak, their numbers overwhelmed—the thunder dragon’s body was soon crawling with over ten thousand of them.

“Is this the art of turning all plants into soldiers? Or the bean-sowing soldiers technique? Perhaps both,” Xu Zhong muttered.

He, too, possessed similar arts among his five luminances, though they required external aids.

Wei Yan, however, conjured creations from nothing.

A single shake from the thunder dragon sent thunder coursing through the clouds. Many cultivators and several dragon scales and a spatter of dragon blood were thrown off.

Xu Zhong quietly collected several scales and slipped them into his storage pouch.

The others followed suit.

While the mighty ones fought, all they could do was hide in remote corners and pray to avoid the crossfire.

The fallen lotus cultivators turned to seeds upon death.

Xu Zhong gathered a few of these as well.

“Waji! Waji!”

Other surviving seeds, seeing Xu Zhong collect their comrades, were enraged and attacked him with their spears.

“Thunder Ancestor, Thunder Ancestor!”

A bolt of lightning crashed down on his head, the stray arcs obliterating the lotus cultivators.

Xu Zhong grunted, coughing up blood.

“The thunder’s growing more sentient…”

Their niwans were sealed; thunder should not harm them, but now the tribulation was beginning to strike their bodies.

A sense of foreboding crept over Xu Zhong.

The others noticed too, huddling together. “What now?”

Xu Zhong shook his head. “I don’t know.”

He pointed to the battle raging above them. “They’re not finished yet. Maybe we can use this chance to climb the cauldron wall.”

The others looked up as he indicated.

Suddenly, a black moon appeared above the cauldron’s mouth, swirling and shifting to reveal a patch of white—it seemed to be an eye.

They were startled.

The cauldron was so vast—what kind of eye could cover its opening?

“Something’s here?” the eye’s owner called to a companion.

At that moment, the world spun.

“We’re being poured out!” Xu Zhong’s heart leapt.

A cauldron is a vessel, a pot for cooking food. The food cannot escape, but the one holding the pot can pour it out.

“This is our chance.”

He summoned the purple jade gourd, conjured sword energy to bind the group, and dashed for the exit.

He pushed himself to the very limit, so fast his clothes caught fire from the friction.

In a flash, they, along with the thunder dragon and Wei Yan, were poured out by the owner of the eye.

With a crash, Xu Zhong’s body grew immense as he emerged from the cauldron, startling several cultivators who stood gaping.

They seemed to be in a cave.

“Run!” Xu Zhong shouted and charged for the exit.

The others, regaining their true forms, ran after him.

The cultivators who had achieved the soul state were left bewildered, unable to react. The cauldron appeared empty; they didn’t even notice it had vanished from their hands.

All they saw was the thunder dragon, once the size of a fingernail, swelling to monstrous proportions, thunderclouds swirling at its claws. Even a single arc of lightning vaporized them, leaving not even dust.

Upon their deaths, a colossal soul avatar materialized beside the thunder dragon, casting spells with a sweep of its arm.

Thunder shook the mountains, the entire massif shattering beneath the storm.

Xu Zhong and his companions, fleeing for their lives, glanced back to see black clouds overhead—each one tens of yards across, made of broken rock.

They ran desperately to avoid being crushed.

Outside on the plains, cultivators picking herbs heard the commotion, looked up, and were struck dead by falling debris.

Panic swept the grasslands; all fled for their lives.

Above, the thundercloud grew ever larger, resonating with the world beyond, summoning the faint outline of thirty-three layers of thunderclouds.