Chapter 1664 Escaping Great Calamity （1）
Upon the sacred mountain.
The moment the head opened its eyes, the shreds of Sun Hao’s separated vital spirit within the flesh body instantly perceived the existence of the main consciousness with extreme clarity. Moreover, it sensed the main consciousness’s formidable willpower—unyielding, determined to Battle Heaven and Earth, resolved to cling fiercely to life.
This powerful willpower made the vital spirit consciousness all the more battle-ready.
The Wild Wilderness Body Immortal Technique violently surged within his body. The mysterious aura evolved from the Ten Thousand Extinctions Ancient Graveyard tempered this inner force into the Barbaric Decapitated Deity Art, circulating wildly.
On Langeling Island, Sun Hao opened his eyes. Amidst a flurry of pear blossoms, he rose higher and higher, just about to soar into the sky when a ripple in his divine sense alerted him to the unusual changes in his Spirit Separation and main body.
A boundless fighting spirit, powerful enough to Battle Heaven and Earth, pierced into the sky as if to shatter the very heavens.
The headless body roared towards the sky.
The Square Shield and Iron Hammer seemed to summon streaks of lightning.
Abruptly, the mouth on his navel, the huge eye, and the pair of ears vanished into his flesh body, rushing towards the Dantian within.
Inside the head, Sun Hao’s Nascent Soul, which had been sitting cross-legged all along, seemed tugged by an unseen force. It formed a hand seal and thrust it violently outward.
The head and the main body, separated by tens of thousands of miles, achieved a mysterious connection.
The hand seal of the Nascent Soul form and the True Essence within the flesh body transcended space in that instant, forging a mysterious link.
The hand seal flew into mid-air, triggering the True Essence force within the flesh body. With a resounding boom, a colossal phantom manifested within the Lower Void space. The Nine Provinces Region became instantly visible.
This phantom possessed two heads and six arms, its towering battle aura immense and majestic. Upon closer inspection, it should have had three heads, but the central one was inexplicably missing.
The myriad races of the Lower Void were filled with dread, uncertain what powerful Middle Void Great Power Cultivator had appeared in the Lower Void to cause trouble. Tianxu City flickered, faintly visible in the sky, as a voice echoed down in surprise: "Which fellow Daoist descends into the Lower Void? And for what urgent matter?"
The phantom paid no heed. With a fierce roar, it bellowed: "Head, come..."
One of its six arms reached down as if retrieving something from somewhere within the Lower Void. As the object landed in its grasp, the phantom abruptly grew taller. A formidable, stern, blood-colored head smashed forth in the center. Its two arms gave a slight bow towards Chongtian City and declared: "Passing through. Departing now."
With that, the phantom vanished downward like a funnel, disappearing swiftly.
Passing through? The guarding cultivator of Tianxu City felt bewildered. How could there be such a foolish Great Power Cultivator who simply 'passed through' the Lower Void? If every Great Power Cultivator caused such disruptions whenever passing through, peace in the Lower Void would be impossible to maintain.
The thought had barely formed.
A massive crack tore open in the sky.
A gigantic head extended once more. Jodan roared: "I sensed the aura of that Human brat emerging! Tell me, where is he?"
The guardian of Tianxu City had long been replaced. Unable to recall events from such a distant past, and already displeased by this recurring 'passing through', he shouted back: "Jodan! Don’t think I fear you just because you’re at the late stage! This constant nuisance, is it enjoyable? The Human brat is long gone! If you’re chasing him, go elsewhere! Stop disrupting my Lower Void!"
Jodan was stunned for a moment. He touched his forehead between his eyebrows, and a third eye abruptly opened, sweeping across the Nine Prefectures.
To his surprise, he found the aura of the Human brat permeating everywhere within the Nine Prefectures, as if he had cultivated a Divine Manifestation. Yet, upon careful inspection, no tangible presence could be found.
An intense irritation gripped him. Jodan muttered: "It seems he really escaped to Middle Void."
Filled with displeasure, he roared towards Tianxu City again: "Well, I just like passing through! Bite me! Annoy me enough, and I’ll swing by for another ‘passage’ every few hundred or thousand years..."
Despite his words, the enormous human head withdrew back into the crack in the sky.
Upon the sacred mountain.
The Jianghe Tribe was shocked beyond measure, uncertain what had transpired.
Earlier, the tribe’s Warriors hadn’t detected anything amiss with Sun Hao. They merely felt the phantom in the sky seemed to have been roared into existence by the Saint King.
When the first overwhelmingly powerful phantom appeared in the sky, the Saint King himself seemed petrified, his furious roar cutting off abruptly.
As both phantoms appeared and vanished, the Saint King stood silent upon the sacred mountain, not daring to breathe a single heavy breath. Only after the two phantoms vanished completely did he finally recover.
Holding a shield in one hand and a hammer in the other, Sun Hao stood tall upon the sacred mountain. His body quivered slightly. The mouth formed at his navel, a pair of eyes manifested on his chest. Raising shield and hammer aloft, he roared towards the heavens endlessly from his headless form, the sound lasting long into the night.
Many Jianghe Tribe Warriors stifled laughter inwardly—even the Saint King had things he feared! Only after those two powerful phantoms vanished did he dare roar defiantly again...
But none of the Jianghe Tribe Warriors knew that Sun Hao’s prolonged roar towards the heavens was, in truth, a celebration of his rebirth.
A true rebirth.
The tribulations of the Peerless Sword Bone and the Purple-Gold Grand Thunder Ring had only truly and completely passed at this very moment. Sun Hao had genuinely stood up once more within the Void Realm.
Each step of cultivation thus far brought immense hardship. This particular peril surpassed all his previous calamities.
At the final moment, Sun Hao had even escaped by severing his head. Passing through untold years, he had only just arduously regained his footing on the Righteous Path of cultivation.
The cultivator's path is bitter, each step fraught with hardship.
To scale the heights requires unyielding tenacity, a fighting spirit capable of piercing the heavens, and the fierce resolve to cling to life.
Standing atop the Sacred Mountain, Sun Hao transformed into the Witch Soul avatar. He roared towards the sky, the sound echoing long and ceaselessly.
Sun Hao’s current state was that of a Witch Soul incarnation, and this Witch Soul had brought him immense surprise.
Unexpectedly, severing his head had inadvertently secured him a monumental opportunity. His flesh body had, without conscious effort, gained the recognition of the battle spirit of the Xingtian Great Witch, whose combat prowess was unmatched among the ancient Great Witches. Within the Ten Thousand Extinctions Ancient Graveyard, slaughtering countless ferocious creatures stained with the battle spirit’s traits, he eventually fused with a trace of Xingtian’s fragmented soul. The moment his main consciousness returned, his Spirit Separation, accompanied by the fragmented soul, automatically reunited, transforming into his fifth soul—the Witch Soul—that now hung aloft within his Sea of Consciousness.
The fascinating part was how drastically this fifth soul differed from his other four souls. The others possessed no shred of self-awareness. Even the Chenxiang Sword lacked selfhood before Grandma Sparrow awoke. But the Witch Soul had a powerful self-awareness, carrying potent memories of people and deeds it needed to remember—memories it clung to with fierce obsession.
Digesting fragments of latent memories from his Spirit Separation, Sun Hao instantly understood the situation. Simultaneously, a flicker of gratitude stirred within him.
Had his vital separation spirit lacked that intense drive to remember specific people and events, he might have needed much longer to ultimately overcome his tribulation. The formidable willpower of his vital spirit was the fundamental reason he awakened and recovered ahead of time.
Xiao He had been like both a mother and lover to the vital spirit. She nurtured its growth and bestowed it with tenderness, finally perishing in its arms when her Lifespan Vitality expired. It was the vow to remember her that spurred the vital spirit to awaken the main consciousness prematurely.
Precisely. With the awakening of the main consciousness, his Spirit Separation truly remembered Xiao He, never to forget her again.
Possessing autonomous consciousness within a cultivator’s Soul and Spirit usually bodes ill—it often leads to poor Compatibility Level and other issues. However, Sun Hao’s fifth soul was an exception. Because intrinsically, the vital spirit was Sun Hao—two entities sharing one origin. It was akin to Sun Hao dreaming, then waking with vivid, etched memories of whom and what transpired within that dream, memories he could not forget.
Assimilating the vital spirit’s latent memories was equivalent to Sun Hao recalling a multitude of past events. These recollections seamlessly became part of his own memory. Coinciding with his main consciousness’s recent slumber, these memories seamlessly integrated as core memories.
After roaring ceaselessly for a long stretch, Sun Hao’s surging emotions gradually calmed.
Standing on the Sacred Mountain, he began to carefully sense the changes within.
The transformation of his flesh body was even greater than Sun Hao had imagined. All this time, his physical form had continuously advanced with fearless vigor. The Wild Wilderness Body Immortal Technique had evolved into the Barbaric Decapitated Deity Art. The greatly enhanced efficacy of this technique pushed his physical cultivation, forcing it beyond the Jade Body stage, directly reaching Ancient Solid Essence.
Ancient Solid Essence was a realm legendary even among Unity Realm Supreme cultivators. He hadn't expected his bewildered, separated spirit’s cultivation to produce such staggering results.
Truly unanticipated! Utterly fearless, the vital spirit pressed forward with indomitable strength, inadvertently achieving a profound resonance with the core principles of the Barbaric Decapitated Deity Art, thus triggering such marvelous transformations. Had it been his main consciousness cultivating, he likely could not have achieved such an effect.