Paragon of Sin

"..." Wei Wuyin's declaration was met with a resounding silence. It was so abrupt and utterly thorough that only his footsteps and faint keening of his saber force could be heard. Even Xue Yifei, who was clenching her teeth in pain from the Yin Dragon Soul within her Mind's Eye throbbing about with rapid activity. Her hazel eyes saw Wei Wuyin's tall, domineering, and strong back and couldn't help but flash with a hint of disbelief.

Fortunately, Yuan Longshi was similarly startled and no longer attempted to interact with his Yang Dragon Soul, so the pain she felt was lessened. Normally, he hated that using his Yang Dragon Soul to harness his bloodline powers brought pain to Xue Yifei. But seeing her wreathed in pain at this moment hadn't caused the bleeding heart pain he felt before. 

Is this because she abandoned him? She didn't choose him? In the depths of his heart, only he knew that answer. 

To understand why everyone present, even Qi Lang, were unfailingly sent into a unified silence, one had to understand the generally accepted belief of alchemists. 

In the cultivation world, Alchemists cultivated methods that allowed them to harness, refine, generate, and manipulate alchemical energies. These methods held no offensive, defensive, or even supplementary methods for combat, and focused purely on the Dao of Alchemy.

Furthermore, unlike the Martial Dao, alchemists had to devote their time to mastering the seven traits of alchemy alongside this, each usually having a cultivation method. By default, any alchemist needed to master a minimum of eight cultivation methods and train in manipulating alchemical energies, a type of energy that has no combat ability. 

This and their experimentation, repeated practice, legitimate concoction, and standard degree of cultivation consumed far more time than others. It was considered the most time-consuming and difficult Creationist profession because of this difference from others. This didn't include the typical failures, injuries from those failures, long concoction time for successes, studying, revision, and theory-crafting.

An Alchemist cultivated the Dao of Alchemy which was broader than most Daos and had a very, very high requirement on intelligence and time. In the Myriad Monarch Astral Territory, no, the entire Tri-Vision Starfield, there wasn't a single Alchemic King below the age of five hundred, and the average age to officially reach that level neared closer to eight hundred years old.

An Astral Core Realm expert, one who had just ascended, had a little over a thousand years of lifespan. As expected, most Alchemic Kings were in the Astral Core Realm. Because of this difficulty and disparity of time versus achievements, it produced a widely accepted opinion that alchemists, regardless of how talented they were, had the lowest combat potential out of all cultivators.

This included architects and forgers.

Even the King of Everlore wasn't an exception. He was renowned and given such a title because of his ability to create Kings of Lore rather than being one. He was a Kingmaker. And his combat ability, even with pellets, was essentially useless. He relied on a group of servants, guardians, and opportunists who sought his favor and ability to cultivate.

While he had protective treasures such as talismans, arrays, and whatnot, his combat ability personally was considered quite poor to nearly non-existent. As someone who cultivated an Alchemic Wood Soul, he didn't have any means to kill an opinion with his astral force.

When Wei Wuyin waltzed out of the protective ward and said those domineering words, it was like a bolt of thunder had collectively struck everyone present. They didn't know how he possessed the gull to do so. If he had called forth every Astral Core Realm expert to fight on his behalf, they would be shocked. If he tried to recruit Yuan Longshi, they would be intrigued by the development. But for him to personally announce that he would kill Yuan Longshi, an elite expert with considerable ability and could fight above his phase, this wasn't something their minds could register.

However, Wei Wuyin never once considered their thoughts or beliefs. To him, he was always a fighter first and an alchemist second. While it has been a while since his stint in the Scarlet Solaris Sect, he had always been one who fought fiercely for himself. He killed decisively, slaughtered in droves, and fought with a saber in hand.

From an honorary disciple to an outer disciple to an inner disciple to a core disciple, none of these things were achieved without a pile of corpses and rivers of blood forming beneath his feet. While the Inheritor of Sin and the Black Skeleton had changed his view on life, he had never lost his edge.

Yuan Longshi was the first to break out of his flabbergasted state. His eyes trailed to Qi Lang in the sky who had a solemn and ugly expression. Even now, Qi Lang's astral force was primed to act. It seemed that even he hadn't accepted Wei Wuyin's statement of handling Yuan Longshi alone.

What Yuan Longshi didn't know was that Qi Lang was still more knowledgeable in Wei Wuyin's affairs. When he first was inducted into the sect, he had only been in the Qi Condensation Realm, and the Eighth Stage at that, yet he brutally killed an Earthly Elite disciple with his bare hands. The recorded video of it still sent shivers down his experienced spine. It hadn't circulated very much as the event was swiftly buried in the news of a faction's inevitable demise, but he got his hands on it out of curiosity.

And he knew...

Wei Wuyin was not some soft target.

"Yes, Heavenly King Wei." Qi Lang spoke respectfully and retracted his astral force. Wei Wuyin was not an individual that acted carelessly. This could clearly be seen how the entire Bloodforge Continent was checkmated from day one without ever knowing. Their entire continent was about to fall to the plans of this Heavenly King and they still had no idea. Even he was terrified at the exceptional depth Wei Wuyin showed.

Yuan Longshi's heart shivered slightly as a wisp of foreboding entered his heart. He realized Qi Lang's relaxed stance and expression, and he turned towards Wei Wuyin who walked without a hint of fear or uncertainty. His heterochromia eyes observed and inspected this man before him. He tried to catch a glimpse of Wei Wuyin's cultivation.

However, for some inexplicable reason, it was like he was seeing an empty void. This caused his heart to drop several degrees in temperature. Even with his powerful senses and firm spiritual foundation, he couldn't even perceive a hint of his cultivation base. The only idea he had was the saber that was held in his hands, but it was exceptionally odd.

It wasn't condensed with Qi or Astral Force, and simply refined and exceptionally high-quality energies. He could barely discern what besides elemental and the predominantly evident saber energies. 

"Shall we begin?" Wei Wuyin's words were coolly said with a hint of excitement. It had been a while since he could truly let loose. Since the event with the Black Skeleton, his cultivation had grown by leaps and bounds, and his cultivation base was peerless. This led to him not finding a match for so long.

Even the Long Chen before, despite their cultivation base being the same, was absolutely not on equal grounds in the Myriad Monarch Sect. With merely his Elemental Natal Soul's cultivation, he utterly decimated him into near-death. If it wasn't for Xiang Ling's interference, perhaps Wu Yu would've been forced to make an earlier appearance.

"Hm?" Now that the idle thought entered his mind, it seems that that gorgeous and bed-wild woman had likely saved his life and not the other way around at that time. It seems he had to pay her back for that, even if it was unintentional. 

"Well, if you won't start, then I will." Wei Wuyin grew tired of Yuan Longshi not taking the initiative. With the condensed form of Element in his grip, he blurred slightly. It was incredibly strange to those who saw him because his form was very blurry as if he was both there and not there.

Shing!

Yuan Longshi's eyes shrunk into needlepoints as he felt the piercing saber slash towards his throat from behind. With a bellowing roar, he twisted his body and unsheathed his saber, instinctively striking towards the sensation of danger.

Clang!

Two sabers met, one made from energy and one forged, but the one that was forged was cut through by half an inch. Yuan Longshi was startled as a tremendous amount of strength surged from his saber into his arm and then his body.

Boosh!

He shot backwards from this strength, his body unable to stabilize as shock suffused his entire mind. Before he could react to what just happened, saber light descended from below and he once more relied on his instincts to block upwards. The two sabers once more clashed and Yuan Longshi felt an extremely domineeringly chaotic force smash his arm. 

Before he could stabilize himself, his figure was blown into the ground and crashed into the ward that protected the continent. Layers and layers of ripples flowed through the array and one could tell that an immense amount of astral essence was consumed to defend against it.

"Ha...haaa…" Yuan Longshi's breathing was chaotic as his legs sunk unnaturally into the protective layer and the ground it protected. It seemed even the film wasn't capable of repelling his body. As for his body that was covered in blood-red symbols and marks, his bare naked chest was sliced into like meat with even bone being seen. From each cutting wound, flickers of saber light existed.

Woosh!

Wei Wuyin arrived a few meters away from him, his silver eyes piercing and calm. He seemed to be an Immortal descending to deal with a pest, utterly carefree and easy. 

Yuan Longshi's entire body was screaming at this moment as he hurriedly used his draconic force to push out the saber energies that contaminated his blood, bones, flesh, and meridians. Due to this, random spurts of silvery and crimson liquid shot out like a miniature geyser.

"You!" He had always been the one to shock and awe his opponent, forcing them to say this baffled word, but now he was using it. He understood how it felt. When he engaged with Wei Wuyin, he realized his physical energies were far, far more abundant than his own. It was like his physical body was a planet and clashing with him felt being smashed by one. Furthermore, he noticed his cultivation base!

He didn't have the unnatural ambient influence that Sky Rulers contained or heightened spiritual aura that Soul Idol experts had, and it was fundamentally basic. He was merely at the World Sea Phase, the First Stage of the Astral Core Realm! Yet his movements were like a ghost and his attacks were like world-splitters.

"Two strikes. My next one will be lethal, you shouldn't hold back lest you lose your life because of it." Wei Wuyin 'kindly' offered. He seemed willing to even give Yuan Longshi a breather. Yuan Longshi's pride as a genius was decisively crushed at this moment.

Wei Wuyin was a little bit older than he was, yet he was an Alchemic King and stronger than he was at the World Sea Phase. 

The spectating crowd could barely see the two interactions. It was like Wei Wuyin had said a few words and Yuan Longshi was severely injured. If it wasn't for the previous battle between Qi Lang and Yuan Longshi, and the obvious stakes on the line, they would suspect that Yuan Longshi was a paid actor.

And knowing this left their jaws dropped and mouths agape in utter disbelief!

Xue Yifei's eyes were wide. Her heart raced like a thousand horses, unable to believe or accept what she had just seen. She had never believed for a moment that Wei Wuyin was actually an expert!

The old man said with a trace of astonished wonder, "I've never seen such depths before."

"What?" Xue Yifei mindlessly questioned. Her eyes never left Yuan Longshi and Wei Wuyin's body, but her head tilted in the old man's direction.

"For a brief moment, I saw his astral core." The old man had a unique spiritual method that could gauge the size of a person's astral core, and it surprisingly was capable of grasping just a peek whenever Wei Wuyin attacked. "It was big, thick, and filled with unimaginable power!"

If someone didn't know what he was talking about, they might make certain...assumptions. Regardless, Xue Yifei understood and her heart sped up even more. Just as she was about to ask for clarification, her sea of consciousness started to rumble ceaselessly. Her Mind's Eye felt as if it was being stabbed as the Yin Dragon Soul sleeping beside it was waking up.

She screamed in horrific pain, clutching her head.

On Yuan Longshi's side, his eyes glowed slightly as the pupils of his eyes sharpened until it became draconic. He was instigating his Yang Dragon Soul to interface with his bloodline powers!

Boom!

The surroundings were pushed apart even with the astral array's protection as the faint, indistinct image of a dragon's silhouette was forming behind him. He seemed primed to draconify at the slightest moment.

Wei Wuyin's eyes brightened.