Chapter 45: This Is Impossible

Inside the cave dwelling.

Han Li slowly opened his eyes, withdrawing his spiritual sense from within his body, a trace of weariness appearing on his face.

After composing himself, he flipped his hand and took out a pale blue Cloud Crane Herb, placing it in his mouth to chew, a contemplative expression on his face.

After a moment, he let out a long breath and suddenly spoke:

“Fellow Daoist Mo Guang, would you come out and talk?”

As his words fell, the shadow before him twisted and stretched, and a man with disheveled hair, clad in a black robe with skin as dark as ink and a face somewhat resembling his own, stood up from it.

The man looked at Han Li in silence.

“Mo Guang, have you ever seen a secret technique that uses chains imbued with the power of some law to seal another’s nascent soul?” Han Li asked directly.

“Is your nascent soul’s seal related to this?”

After two years of recuperation, Mo Guang had recovered somewhat, but his manner of speaking remained somewhat mechanical.

Han Li nodded and gave him a general account of his nascent soul’s current condition.

“Based on my judgment, in your situation, you must first restore your magic power before you can rely on secret techniques to make your nascent soul break free from its bonds. However, conversely, your nascent soul is now bound by these law chains, making it impossible to cultivate, let alone restore your cultivation. This has formed a self-contradictory deadlock,” Mo Guang said after a moment of silence.

“I’ve roughly deduced what you’ve said, and the situation is even worse than you describe. Even if I were to self-destruct my physical body and have my nascent soul seize another body, I still couldn’t escape this technique,” Han Li said with a frown.

“You recently made a trip to this sect’s scripture library. Did you find anything?” Mo Guang asked again.

“I read quite a few texts, but they were almost useless.” Han Li sighed helplessly.

“If that’s the case, I suspect that the level of secret techniques in this realm is insufficient to solve this problem. Only by finding a way back to the Immortal Realm might we hope to find another method to resolve this,” Mo Guang replied after a long silence.

…

In a certain place in the Immortal Realm, a dense forest of unknown name.

The forest was shrouded in mist and miasma, filled with towering ancient trees over a hundred zhang tall, some verdant and thriving, others withered and decaying, and still others entirely purple-red, quite peculiar.

Deep in the forest, there was an open area about several thousand zhang wide, with few tall trees, only patches of low shrubs, appearing somewhat out of place compared to the surrounding environment.

In the very center of this area stood a strange ancient tree that towered into the clouds.

The tree was entirely blue-black, at least a hundred zhang in diameter, with a straight trunk and few branches, not a single leaf, looking bare, like a giant pillar holding up the sky.

What was even more peculiar was that at a certain point high up on this ancient tree, seven or eight slanting branches supported a huge gray bird’s nest, which from a distance looked like an upside-down tattered straw hat.

An incredibly large, bizarre bird was lying in the huge nest, whimpering softly, appearing to be in great pain.

The bird was covered in arrow-like feathers, with an enormous head and a somewhat slender neck. Near its chest hung a giant pouch that expanded and contracted with its breathing.

Suddenly, the bird’s neck straightened, its head lifted high, and its eyes were full of vigilance as it looked in a certain direction, the pouch on its chest pulsing rapidly.

A sound of air being torn rang out!

At three points along the edge of the area, the trees shook violently, and a figure leaped up from each, then shot straight toward the giant nest.

The three were all dressed in black tight-fitting clothes, leaping out at exactly the same time, their movements identical. What was even more astonishing was that their builds and faces were exactly the same—all handsome, with sharp-eyed young men’s faces.

The three closed the distance to the giant nest at an indescribable speed, leaving afterimages in the air, but then their figures blurred and vanished.

“Chirp!”

Startled, the strange bird’s chest pouch swelled, and it suddenly opened its mouth toward the southeast, letting out a sky-shaking roar.

Rolling sound waves, with a狂暴 momentum, carried countless dense green wind blades, sweeping toward the tall trees ahead.

“Rumble—”

Like thunder rolling, countless wind blades formed an arc-shaped high wall. Wherever they passed, low shrubs were uprooted and ground to dust, and tall trees were snapped and shredded.

Carried by the dust, these fragments became part of the torrent, continuing to surge madly into the dense forest without losing momentum.

In the void to the southeast, the two black figures that had disappeared earlier suddenly flashed out from the dust and air waves, rapidly descending toward the ground.

At the same time, green light suddenly flashed on both of them, and their figures immediately became blurry, their speed irregularly fast and slow, flickering in the air.

The overwhelming wind blades could not touch them at all.

The giant bird’s head roared without cease, and dense wind blades, carried by the sound waves, swept in all directions.

The two figures strolled through the wind blades as if on a leisurely walk, their forms appearing and disappearing, completely unaffected as they charged straight at the giant bird.

Seeing the two getting closer, the giant bird looked down at its body and let out a long, mournful cry.

The fleshy pouch under its neck swelled rapidly, soon becoming as large as its body, and continued to expand.

Seeing this, one of the black-clad youths became furious:

“Beast, you still want to self-destruct? Dream on!”

As soon as the words fell, the third black-clad youth, who had been hidden, appeared without warning in the void before the giant bird’s head.

He held a pitch-black long blade, and with a slight flick of his wrist, a black light flashed, instantly slashing across the bird’s throat.

A loud “puff-puff” sound erupted, and a powerful burst of energy gushed from the wound, carrying a large amount of blue blood, spurting like a fountain over ten zhang high.

When the blue blood fountain had sprayed out, the fleshy pouch under the green bird’s neck shrank back to its original size. Its head tilted and collapsed into the giant nest, its feathers stained with blood.

Beneath it lay a white giant egg stained with blue blood, leaning against the bird’s belly, looking very lonely.

The three black-clad youths expressionlessly jumped down from the giant bird’s head, walked to under its wings and tail, rummaged through the thick feathers, and each pulled out a shimmering feather.

Just then, a yellow light suddenly lit up on one of their waists, accompanied by a rapid buzzing sound.

The other two saw this and immediately flickered over to the black-clad youth. Their figures blurred and merged into one.

Then, the black-clad youth took a round communication disk from his waist, briefly scanned it with his spiritual sense, and immediately his face changed. Frowning, he exclaimed:

“This is impossible…”

With that, a hint of ruthlessness flashed in his eyes. He waved his hand to collect the giant egg, then leaped, turning into a gust of wind that whistled away into the distance.