The silence that followed the resumption of time was more profound and terrifying than the roar that had preceded it. It was a dead silence, the kind that follows a cataclysm.
Li Yu stood in the center of it all, his body still thrumming with the residual power of his breakthrough into the Celestial Leviathan Form. The newfound strength felt alien, a foreign entity cohabiting his own flesh. His first thought, an instinct, was for his retainers. He turned and strode towards the golden, shimmering shell of Kui's aegis.
The shield dissolved into motes of light, revealing a pale, sweat-drenched Kui and a grim, shocked Jian Xuan. They were alive. A wave of profound relief, so intense it was almost painful, washed over him. He then looked towards the crater where the two combatants had fallen from the sky.
He walked over to Spine first, his steps feeling unnaturally heavy, each footfall seeming to press down on the world with a new, sovereign authority he did not yet understand. The great beast was struggling, his massive form trembling, his powerful aura all but extinguished.
He was a terrifying sight, a beast over a hundred meters long, covered in thick, stone-like scales that were now cracked and bleeding from his reckless battle and the subsequent fall. A frill of venomous-looking spines around his ancient, draconic head was flattened in places, and his breathing was shallow. He had enough strength to remain conscious, a testament to his own 7th stage Core Formation realm cultivation, but he was wounded and barely able to move.
He had already been injuried during his fight with Elder Tian Long and Li Yu's own soul attack had been the last nail driven with extreme force.
As Li Yu approached, Spine's eyes, filled moments ago with a burning, all-consuming rage, now looked at him with something else entirely. It was not fear. Spine was an ancient and proud creature who feared little. It was a profound, world-shaking awe, the kind of shock one feels when witnessing something unexplainable.
His personal vendetta, the burning fire that had defined his existence for over a century, was momentarily forgotten, completely eclipsed by the sheer, reality-warping power he had just witnessed erupt from his master.
A short distance away, Elder Tian Long lay in a similar state. The arrogant, powerful peak Core Formation expert was now a broken man, his body trembling uncontrollably on the ground. The terror in his eyes was absolute. He had come here tonight expecting to be the undisputed master of the situation, a lion descending upon a few troublesome rats.
He had never, in his wildest, most arrogant dreams, imagined he would encounter a being like this. He frantically scanned the area with what was left of his spiritual sense, a desperate inventory of his forces. The five powerful Core Formation experts who had accompanied him, his trusted subordinates, were sprawled on the ground, their life forces flickering and weak, their spirits battered into a deep coma from which they might never awaken.
He then looked out at the hundreds of other warriors, the Foundation Establishment and Qi Condensation disciples… their life forces were simply gone. Extinguished. The horror of this realization settled in, cold and absolute. He had not led his forces into a battle; he had led them into a slaughterhouse.
Li Yu, his own allies confirmed to be alive, finally allowed himself to fully assess the consequences of his actions. His spiritual sense, now imbued with a new, strange weight from his breakthrough, swept out over the battlefield.
The result was chilling. The hundreds of Foundation Establishment and Qi Condensation cultivators from both the Golden Tide Clan and the Beast Revolution Faction were dead. Their spirits had been utterly extinguished by the roar. The five Core Formation experts who had been on the ground were dead as well.
A feeling of cold, terrifying horror crept into Li Yu's heart once again. He once again thought this was not the result he had expected. He had used Death's Roar before. He had gauged its strength. He knew it was a powerful, disorienting attack.
Against a large group like this, he had anticipated that it would knock almost everyone out, and that perhaps the very weakest among them, those with unstable foundations or weak wills, might perish from the shock.
But this… this was different. This was not a controlled technique; it was a cataclysm. The power he had unleashed was completely beyond his control, its effects wildly unpredictable. It had killed every single cultivator below the Core Formation realm with absolute finality, and some in the earlier parts of core formation were dead as well. The sheer lack of control was what truly terrified him. It was the fear of a man who had pulled the trigger on a pistol, only to see it fire like a cannon.
Was this a one off event, some kind of strange effect because his soul and body was at a critical place and the result was a freak accident? Was that the effect that will always be now? He would have to go somewhere alone to test it, over and over again until he was sure.
A wave of nausea and fear washed over him. 'What if this had happened in a different place?' he thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. 'What if we had been fighting in a crowded city? What if his friends had been here? Or Fat Pig? Or the merchants from the Jade Sea Pavilion?'
He pictured their faces, imagined their weaker cultivations caught in that indiscriminate, absolute wave of soul-annihilation. The thought was a dagger of ice in his gut. The power he had unleashed did not distinguish between friend and foe.
He looked at Jian Xuan, at the trickle of dried blood on his lip, and at Kui, who was still pale and shaking, and a new, profound sense of gratitude filled him. He was thankful, so deeply and utterly thankful, that Jian Xuan had been there, that his Soul Formation cultivation had been strong enough to shield them from the worst of the blast.
He was thankful that Spine's own powerful cultivation had allowed him to survive. An accident of this magnitude, the unintentional murder of his own friends and loyal retainers, would have been a blow that would take a long time if ever to recover from. It would have crushed his spirit for a long time.
He looked at his own hands. He was no saint; he had long accepted that before. He had killed, and he would kill again to protect himself and the people he cared for. But he did not want to be a mass murderer, a walking calamity who could erase hundreds of lives with an uncontrolled burst of power.
His fear was not of the blood on his hands, but of his own ignorance. The soul within him was a terrifying weapon, and he had just learned, in the most brutal way possible, that he did not truly understand it.
'This power,' he vowed to himself, his expression a mask of grim resolve, 'this terrifying, unpredictable power. I have to master it my soul.'
The five survivors of the cataclysm remained in their own bubbles of stunned silence, each lost in their own thoughts, the gravity of what had just happened settling over them like a physical weight. Li Yu stood tall, grappling with his newfound, terrifying power.
Jian Xuan stood as a silent guard, his face a mask of shock and deep, profound contemplation as he completely re-evaluated the nature of the quiet young man he had sworn to follow. The soul can be this powerful, it can have miraculous effects. The barrier towards the 3rd level of soul formation cracking more than ever.
Kui, the ever-practical merchant, was for once completely speechless, his mind unable to calculate the profit or loss of a situation that was so far beyond the realm of normal business it might as well have been a divine intervention.
On the ground, Spine's personal all-consuming vendetta was slowly being ignited once again after he had processed what had just happened. And a short distance away lay Elder Tian Long, a broken man whose entire worldview had been shattered, his arrogance replaced by the simple terror of a man who knew he had no way out, not against this monster of a boy.