Chapter 44 Scraping Gold Powder
It was not that the surrounding light had been blocked, but rather that all vitality, Immortal Qi, and even the invisible Karma Laws between heaven and earth were being completely suppressed and devoured by the ferocious Aura on the zhutian sword, which had been dormant for countless epochs, the very instant it was unsheathed!
"My Lord! He is about to strike! That sword is strange, retreat quickly!" The Heavenly Soldiers within the Zhu-Xian Lu-Shen Great Array, feeling the extreme Sword Intent that seemed intent on slicing their Souls into fragments, cried out in terror.
The Golden Immortal commander's expression also changed wildly. Without hesitation, he burned the Immortal Origin within his body and raised his Hunyuan Immortal-Slaying Saber high, preparing to meet what was surely destined to be a world-destroying, earth-shattering peerless strike.
However, the terrifying scene they anticipated—of Sword Qi sweeping across ninety thousand miles and a single strike shattering the Nine Heavens—did not occur.
Lin Yuan did not unleash any Sword Qi at all.
His figure vanished abruptly from where he stood, leaving behind only a blurred afterimage.
The next second, when the Immortals caught sight of him again, he had already eerily bypassed the layers of blockade of the [Zhu-Xian Lu-Shen Great Array] and appeared directly at the very top of the magnificent Southern Heaven Gate archway.
Amidst the stunned gazes of tens of thousands of Immortals, Lin Yuan, acting as if nothing were the matter, crouched on a massive crossbeam carved with patterns of Nine Heavens Dragons.
He casually pressed his left hand against the beam to steady himself, while his right hand flipped the infamous zhutian sword, using its sharp tip, capable of severing Heavenly Dao Laws, to press against the primal chaos red gold on the surface of the archway.
Immediately after, Lin Yuan performed an action that caught everyone off guard and even felt absurd.
He was like an extremely experienced craftsman doing carpentry repairs on a Mortal street, following the texture of the archway, and began to slowly, focusedly, and rhythmically... scrape off gold powder.
"Click—click—shhh—"
Accompanied by an extremely harsh, teeth-gritting sound of metal friction, large swathes of primal chaos red gold powder, shimmering with nine-colored divine light and containing the Aura of the Immortal Realm's Origin, were cleanly scraped off by the edge of the zhutian sword.
The gold powder drifted down and was caught by Lin Yuan with his free left hand with great proficiency.
"You... you..."
The Golden Immortal commander waiting in battle Formation below was so shocked that he could barely hold onto his Immortal-Slaying Saber; he nearly tumbled right off the back of his Qilin.
He had originally prepared himself to die heroically and serve the Immortal Court faithfully, with his lethal Saber Qi already circulating to its limit within his Meridians. But he never expected that this malevolent star, wielding a supreme, ferocious sword capable of killing even an Immortal King, would run to the Southern Heaven Gate, which represented the highest majesty of the Immortal Realm... just to scrape a layer of skin off the archway?!
"You maniac! What on earth are you doing?!" The Golden Immortal commander's voice became sharp and cracked due to extreme shock and disbelief.
While focused on scraping the gold powder from the archway, Lin Yuan muttered without turning his head, his tone full of nonchalance as if it were a matter of course: "I already said, I really am just a sweeper in the backyard of the Taixuan Dao Sect. Since I'm a sweeper and handyman, if the renovation in the courtyard at home is broken, I have to figure out how to patch it up myself, right?"
"That teapot I use for brewing tea was sitting on the table the other day and accidentally got a layer of paint chipped off by that so-called decree of yours. I saw that the quality of the primal chaos red gold on your Southern Heaven Gate archway is quite good, and it's even mixed with some star essence. I figured I'd scrape some off to take back and re-gild my teapot; the size is just right."
Lin Yuan's words were spoken with extreme sincerity, as if he were truly just a simple old farmer asking for some scraps to repair a teapot.
However, these words, falling into the ears of the tens of thousands of Immortals at the Southern Heaven Gate, instantly transformed into the most terrifying and extreme psychological torment in the world.
From the perspective of these Immortals who considered themselves superior and were accustomed to controlling the destiny of all things, it was absolutely impossible for an ant from the Lower Realm to do something so absurd. Every movement and every word of Lin Yuan, under their overly tense nerves, was infinitely magnified, leading them to imagine a terrifying, incomprehensible scheme!
"No... this isn't just scraping gold powder! Look at the core of the Great Array!"
A True Immortal with extremely high attainment in Formations suddenly pointed at the violently trembling Zhu-Xian Lu-Shen Great Array in mid-air and screamed in terror.
The Immortals looked on in horror, only to see that with every sword stroke Lin Yuan made to scrape off the primal chaos red gold powder, that supreme-grade Immortal-tier Great Array, formed by tens of thousands of Immortals and touted as flawless, began to experience large-scale collapses in its Formation patterns!
"He is stripping away the Luck of the Immortal Realm's plane! He saw through our Formation core's Karma Foundation at a single glance!"
"My god! He actually used those seemingly Mortal actions to directly erase the Divine Sense imprint left by the Immortal Emperor on the Southern Heaven Gate from the root!"
"He said earlier he was a sweeper... and he said the renovation at home was broken and needed repairs... I understand! I finally understand!"
That Golden Immortal commander's eyes were bloodshot, as if he had pierced through some terrifying heavenly secret, and his whole body was shaking uncontrollably, "The so-called chipped teapot paint is simply a metaphor! In his eyes, this vast Immortal Court is nothing more than a teapot in his hands! He is disgusted that the Laws of the Immortal Realm have decayed, and he intends to reshape the order between the Immortal and Mortal realms! He wants to tear down the Southern Heaven Gate of the Immortal Realm to repair the tattered plane barriers of the Lower Realm!"
"By scraping away the gold powder in this most humiliating way, he is telling us that in the eyes of this 'sweeper,' the eternal dignity of the Immortal Court is not even worth as much as a layer of teapot paint!"
Insane!
This monster from the Lower Realm was not here to fight at all; he was here to completely "sweep" the entire Southern Heaven Gate out of the myriad worlds!
A desperate emotion known as "Dao Heart collapse" spread wildly among the tens of thousands of Heavenly Soldiers and generals like a plague. Many True Immortals with weak wills even vomited blood amidst the "click-clack" sound of the gold scraping, and their Immortal cultivation began to uncontrollably backflow and dissipate.
Meanwhile, above the archway.
Lin Yuan knew nothing of the collective "imagining" and self-intimidation of the Immortals below, nor did he care. The Formation-breaking nodes he had identified using [Max-Level Comprehension] were surprisingly effective.
A moment later.
The Southern Heaven Gate archway, originally resplendent, majestic, and sacred, symbolizing the supreme face of the Immortal Court, had been forcibly scraped by Lin Yuan with the zhutian sword until it was pitted and uneven, as if gnawed on by a pack of starving wild dogs, revealing the dull and rough stone base underneath.
And the once menacing Zhu-Xian Lu-Shen Great Array below, because the primal chaos red gold had been scraped away and the Formation nodes lost their energy conduction, completely turned into a scattered rain of light, vanishing with a boom into the Void Realm.
"Whew... that's about enough."
Lin Yuan stopped his movements and looked with satisfaction at the fist-sized ball of primal chaos red gold powder shimmering with a mesmerizing luster in his left hand.
He fished out an empty porcelain jar that had previously held seafood porridge, and very carefully stuffed the ball of supreme Immortal gold—enough to make the various Holy Lands of the Lower Realm fight until their brains spilled out—inside, then tightened the lid and tucked it away.
Lin Yuan stood up from the now bare crossbeam and casually brushed the small amount of dust from his trench coat.
His dark, deep eyes slowly pierced through the layered Immortal mists behind the Southern Heaven Gate, finally locking onto the hall at the deepest part of the Immortal Realm, radiating eternal light and supreme power—the Lingxiao Treasure Hall.
"The material at the entrance is scraped well enough; this quality is indeed much more solid than the trash sent by those nouveau riche in the Central Province."
The corners of Lin Yuan's mouth curled into a smile that was extremely lazy, yet made all the Immortals feel a chill down their spines.
The zhutian sword in his hand turned slightly, its tip pointing directly at the deepest part of the Immortal Court.
"I heard Old Wan, who washes dishes at home, mention that the chair your Immortal Emperor, that old guy, usually sits on seems to be made from a single solid piece of top-grade Myriad Spirit Gold Essence? That thing is excellent furniture material."
Lin Yuan sighed, as if he had made a very difficult decision: "Since I'm already here, I might as well work a little harder today and get all the furniture Materials missing in the backyard of the Immortal Palace all at once."
"Let's go, don't just stand there."
Lin Yuan looked down at the Golden Immortal commander below, who had completely lost his fighting spirit, his tone as casual as if greeting a neighbor: "Lead the way, let's go meet your Immortal Emperor."
The moment his words fell, Lin Yuan, carrying that rusty, ferocious sword and barefoot, walked forward unhurriedly along the bridge paved with white jade.
Outside the Southern Heaven Gate, the tens of thousands of elite Immortal Court garrison troops, at that moment, actually retreated to both sides in unison. Not a single person dared to make a sound, let alone raise the weapons in their hands.
They were like a group of puppets stripped of their Souls, watching helplessly as the youth who claimed to be a "sweeper" walked as if strolling in a courtyard, crossing the boundary that symbolized life and death, Immortal and Mortal, and swaggered into the absolute forbidden zone of the Immortal Court.