Li Yu stood alone in a silent, frozen world. His mind, usually a calm sea of analytical thought, was a storm of confusion and dawning awe. His first, logical suspicion was that this was the effect of some terrifying, hidden artifact used by the enemy. A treasure that could stop time itself.
He scanned the frozen figures of his foes, searching for any sign of an activated talisman or a glowing array. He found nothing. Furthermore, the logic was flawed. Why would he, one of their primary targets, be the only one unaffected? The chilling, undeniable truth settled over him: this was not their doing. This was his. The power he had just unleashed had, somehow, broken the world.
As he stood in the heart of this stillborn moment, grappling with the impossible reality of his own power, he felt a new presence. The space before him shimmered, and his Leviathan soul emerged from his body, not at his command, but of its own volition. This was only the second time it had ever done so.
It did not appear as a simple manifestation of energy. Here, in this strange, timeless space, it manifested in its true, colossal, majestic form. It was a massive being, its form perfect, a powerful body was covered in shimmering, crimson-gold scales that carried intricate profound patterns.
The magnificent creature swam through the frozen air, its movements a display of silent, absolute, and regal authority. It coiled its vast, serpentine body around Li Yu, its scales warm against his skin. It was not a threatening gesture; it was a protective one. It wrapped him completely, faster and faster, until he was encased in a cocoon of crimson-gold scales and pure, opalescent light, sealed away from the frozen world outside.
Inside the cocoon, a profound transformation began. An intense, unbearable heat erupted from the nascent soul, pouring into Li Yu's body. It was not the burning heat of a forge, but a deeper, more fundamental heat, the heat of creation itself. He felt his body being broken down and reforged at a molecular level.
His bones, already incredibly dense, began to crack and reform, becoming heavier, stronger, infused with a faint, golden light, if looked at closely you could see faint runes etched upon them. His muscles were torn apart and woven back together, each fiber now imbued with an explosive, primal power. It was an agony that transcended mere pain, a baptism of fire that threatened to burn his very consciousness to ash. Thankfully, it happened in an instant and the pain faded.
Just as he felt he was about to be consumed by the transformative fire, a new understanding, a piece of innate knowledge from his unique cultivation path, flooded his mind. This was it. The final step. The very peak of the physique before the body could no longer be considered truly 'human'.
The 9th level of his body forging. The Celestial Leviathan Form.
The moment this knowledge settled in his mind, the nature of the transformation deepened. He could feel the very boundary between his physical body and his nascent soul begin to blur. It was no longer a clear distinction between flesh and spirit, but a hazy, shimmering, interconnected state of being.
His soul was in his flesh, and his flesh was in his soul. A new kind of authority, a weight that was both physical and spiritual, settled into his very presence. This was the final step before his body became a true divine vessel.
The process reached its crescendo. The heat subsided, replaced by a deep, resonant roar. It was not a sound he heard with his ears, but a vibration he felt in his very soul. It was the roar of his leviathan soul, a triumphant, world-shaking declaration. He had broken through.
The cocoon of light and scales began to unravel. But the soul did not simply retreat. Instead, the colossal, sixty-foot-long being began to flow back into his body, a rushing river of pure, crimson-gold energy. As the torrent of power surged through his newly reforged meridians, he could feel something incredible happening.
The soul was not just returning to his sea of consciousness; it was integrating with his physical form in a way it never had before. As the river of light passed through him, it left behind a trail of infinitesimal, shimmering particles, like golden dust. These microscopic fragments of the soul's very essence were left behind in every single cell of his body.
He could feel his cells, hungry and newly empowered, absorbing these tiny bits of the divine beast. He could feel them evolving, growing stronger, their fundamental nature changing. His connection to the leviathan soul was no longer just a spiritual one; it was now a physical, biological reality. His body was, in the most literal sense, becoming the body of a leviathan.
The moment the last trace of the soul was fully reabsorbed, the world lurched back into motion.
WHOOSH!
Sound crashed back in, a deafening wave of explosions, screams, and the furious clash of the battle that had been frozen just an instant before. The wind, the dust, the light—it all resumed its natural course. From the moment time had stopped to the moment it resumed, only thirty seconds had passed.
But in those thirty seconds, the world had changed completely.
The hundreds of cultivators from the Golden Tide Clan and the Beast Revolution Faction, who had been frozen mid-charge, their faces masks of aggression, suddenly went limp. Their eyes rolled back in their heads, and they collapsed to the ground like puppets with their strings cut, a silent, falling tide of bodies.
The five Core Formation experts who had accompanied Elder Tian Long, powerful figures in their own right, crumpled with them, their auras extinguished in an instant. Li Yu did not know if they were dead or unconscious, but the effect was one of absolute, instantaneous devastation.
In the sky, the frozen image of the battle shattered. Spine and Elder Tian Long, their power and momentum suddenly gone, fell from the sky like stones. They crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and shattered earth, their powerful auras completely depleted. They were both still conscious, but they were wounded and had no power left to fight.
Within the golden shell of Kui's aegis, the two occupants were still standing, but only just. Kui was pale, his face beaded with sweat, and he was leaning heavily on the interior of his own defensive shield for support, his eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror.
Jian Xuan was standing tall, but a thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, and his face was a mask of profound, utter shock. He had felt the roar. As a Soul Formation expert, his soul was his fortress, and he had poured all his energy into shielding both himself and Kui from the blast.
But the sheer, indiscriminate, overwhelming force of the soul attack had shaken him to his very core. It was not a weapon; it was a cataclysm. 'This was a purely indiscriminate soul attack…' his mind raced, trying to comprehend the sheer scale of the power he had just witnessed. 'It felt… ancient. Unfiltered. Far stronger and more terrifying than the focused, blade-like soul attack he used on me in his rage. What in the heavens is that soul of his?'
Li Yu, too, was stunned, perhaps the most stunned out of everyone there. He stood in the center of the now-quiet battlefield, looking at the field of fallen bodies, at his dazed companions, at the powerless forms of Spine and Elder Tian Long. He didn't know what had just happened. He had intended to unleash his Death's Roar, to muster his soul's strength to end the fight quickly.
But the result—the time froze, the soul's intervention, his own breakthrough into the Celestial Leviathan Form, and this silent devastation—was something else entirely. This was not the power of his Death's Roar.
These people were not random bandits, most were in foundation establishment and those 5 that came with Elder Tian Long were early to mid core formation. Elder Tian Long himself and Spine were upper and peak core formation. This wasn't the power he knew from this technique.
This was something else, something terrifying, and something he did not understand at all. He was left standing in a field of bodies, more powerful than ever, but also more confused and perhaps even a little frightened of the true nature of the soul that resides within him.