Chapter 337: The Final Explosion (Fourth)
Two unrestrained bursts of elemental fire erupted from Bai Yunfei’s fists. They covered the surrounding hundred meters in waves of burning fire within just half a second. Then, Ta Shan’s body fell from it!
Two deep impressions could be seen on both sides of his neck. The Terra Armor in those areas had been blown to pieces while the rest of the armor on his body crumbled apart.
In just a few moments, the Terra Armor completely disintegrated!
The two punches Bai Yunfei had unleashed on Ta Shan allowed elemental fire to flow into Ta Shan’s body, destroying both flesh and bone.
Besides the total destruction that was happening in Ta Shan’s body, the real point of interest was the punches’ separate flows of energy.
They were flowing in two completely different patterns!
That… was an impossibility in itself!! Each and every soul cultivator—even those with dual affinities—elements would flow in a certain pattern no matter how weak or strong their control was!
Ta Shan could confirm that the two halves of elemental fire were flowing in completely different patterns!
Even more shocking was that, the two halves were converging right toward the center of his chest!
“N-no!!” Despair from his impending doom began to creep up into Ta Shan’s spirit. His eyes were filled with desperation, but with time, his desperation turned into an indignant frenzy…
“Killed by the hands of a Soul Ancestor whelp, how will I ever get over this shame!! How could I… Ta Shan, die at the hands of this gnat!!”
He howled at the sky before bringing his right hand down onto his chest!
“Origin essence… scram!!”
During the final moment between life and death, Ta Shan was forced to do something completely reckless… he destroyed his own origin essence!!
To destroy the origin essence was to relinquish control over the elements of the world. As such, destroying your essence fireseed meant forcibly dropping your own strength to the level of a late-stage Soul Warrior!
There’d be no way to train in an element they destroyed without a miracle!
If a Soul Exalt like Ta Shan were to do such a thing, nothing would differentiate him from a cripple…
Ta Shan would do it for the sake of saving his own life! For the sake of self-preservation, he’d do anything to kill the one who forced him to such a state!
The fact he was doing this was crazy in itself, but he was still capable of some rational thought. Instead of choosing to ‘explode’ his origin essence, Ta Shan chose to ‘destroy’ it. If he had chosen to destroy it, then the resulting explosion would be ten times as big, but nothing would remain of his body…
Back when Tang Xinyun was suffering from the effects of the Soul Refining Palm, Xiao Binbai chose to destroy her essence fireseed so that the resulting energy would overwhelm the eroding effects.
Destruction of the origin essence meant not being able to cultivate, but at the same time, it would give an instant burst of power at that moment!
Since Ta Shan sacrificed the ‘earthseed’ in his body, his strength would improve drastically. He would become a… mid-stage Soul Exalt!
With the power of the earthseed surging through his body, the elemental fire running rampant in it was quickly overtaken. Not even a second had passed before the elemental fire was expelled. Then, Ta Shan’s body was basked in an eye-piercing orange light. There was a slight explosion before he snapped his neck up, giving Bai Yunfei, who was several hundred meters away, a near-insane glare.
The moment he glared at Bai Yunfei, he could feel the tip of his head start to grow dimmer. The sky that had been cloudless earlier was starting to cloud over, and a feeling of death was starting to surround him!!
“This is…”
……
Several seconds before Ta Shan’s final gambit, Bai Yunfei had just used the twin Eighty-one Fold Fist Force before being blown away by the force of his own technique. Thrown back a few dozen meters, Bai Yunfei managed to stabilize himself.
The fire around his body hadn’t lessened after his attack, giving him a rather carefree feeling about the affair. Though after using the twin Eighty-one Fold Fist Force, both of his arms felt a twinge of pain due to the blowback.
Still, the amount of power flowing through his body gave him an unprecedented level of strength he just couldn’t describe.
This feeling of ‘carefreeness’ that came after knocking away Ta Shan persisted for only a second longer before his right hand flew to his chest.
Gasping in pain, Bai Yunfei’s eyes started to dilate. The color in his face drastically dispersed. The intolerable pain he was feeling from the burn had come back with a vengeance!
The burning pain he was feeling was many times stronger than when Bai Yunfei had eaten the fireseed spirit mushroom. It felt as though his very soul was being used as a source of fuel to burn his very nerves.
He couldn’t stop the pain, he couldn’t alleviate the pain, and worse—he couldn’t control it either!!
“Dammit! This again! I feel like my body’s about to explode!!” Bai Yunfei gave a mental howl as the energy in his body gradually started to overwhelm his senses. The pain was becoming so unbearable that he could hardly prevent himself from panicking.
The changes going on in Ta Shan’s body alerted Bai Yunfei of his situation. Eyes snapping to the man, Bai Yunfei was about to try and attack the man while he was down, but before he could move, his eyes flicked over to the left to where the Cataclysmic Seal was!
“I’ve got it! I can do this!!” Joy burst forth from his head as Bai Yunfei realized the most optimal method of attacking in his current situation. Without any hesitation, he slapped his chest with his right hand and roared mentally to himself, “Why fight? Just go into the Cataclysmic Seal already!”
By this point, he was already aware of the conflict in his body. Both essence fireseeds were currently fighting in his origin acupoint for ‘territorial rights,’ resulting in the uncontrollable power that was running rampant through his body.
Author Note: For the sake of differentiating between the two fireseeds, let us call the fireseed gained from eating the fireseed spirit mushroom ‘first fireseed’ and the one in Bai Yunfei’s Cataclysmic Seal ‘second fireseed’.
After his command, the two fighting fireseeds came to a screeching halt in his origin acupoint. The second fireseed was slowly dragged from his body before materializing outside of it in his hand.
Before anything else could happen, Bai Yunfei threw the second fireseed at the Cataclysmic Seal so fast that it resembled a shooting star. The second fireseed melted into the brick the moment they touched.
“Bzzzz…” Once again, the Cataclysmic Seal started to hum and radiate elemental fire while Bai Yunfei tried to keep it from exploding.
Back in Curopia City, Bai Yunfei had been in a moment of mindless rage when he had used this move. Right now, he was in a completely sober moment of clarity, and his connection with the Cataclysmic Seal was many times stronger than before. As soon as the essence fireseed was in the brick, Bai Yunfei felt as though he had turned into the Cataclysmic Seal. Every single pulse and every wave of power were clear to him. They were all available for him to control!
Though it felt as though an eternity had passed, what was going on in Bai Yunfei’s body and the Cataclysmic Seal took place roughly before Ta Shan could destroy his own essence earthseed and repel the twin Eighty-one Fold Fist Force…
Narrowing his eyes in concentration, Bai Yunfei willed the Cataclysmic Seal to where Ta Shan’s head was many times faster than before!!
“This is my strongest attack…
“Die!!”
While Ta Shan was glaring at him, Bai Yunfei let loose a furious roar and brought his hand down!
With this final word, the Cataclysmic Seal began to expand in size before smashing Ta Shan to a pulp. By the time it hit the ground, it was already eight hundred meters long, large enough to block out Ta Shan’s sight of the sky, and with that, the brick was smashed deep into the ground!