Chapter 68: Chapter 68—An Unprecedented Feat
Chapter 68—An Unprecedented Feat
"Why do you think I’m willing to show my true form?" the Shadow who had kicked away the wood roared. The other Shadows fell silent.
’Good,’ Lei Cheng thought, grinning inwardly. ’Go ahead. Show me.’
He watched the Shadow who had shouted. ’This has to be its real body. I just need one clear glimpse now.’ Everything he’d done since using the illusion intent had been for this single moment.
"You really think this brat can kill me?" the Main Shadow hissed. "He’s just a kidnapped child. He can’t break my Bizarre Rule."
The other Shadows nodded in agreement. "Right—if anyone came to challenge the rule..."
"It wouldn’t be someone we caught ourselves."
"We kidnapped him."
"There’s no way he came willingly." Their certainty had become the strongest pillar supporting their own defeat.
’What do you know,’ Lei Cheng mused, sneering internally. ’Pride is exactly what’s blinding you to the truth.’
Crack! Crack! The Shadow’s body convulsed, black fog bleeding out alongside threads of transparent silver energy. Its entire body was covered with the black and transparent silver sphere of fog. Bone-snapping sounds echoed from it. A few moments later, the fog vanished, revealing a black skeleton dotted with countless tiny crimson eyes. Its skull bore no nose or mouth like a human’s—only a round crimson orb above and, below it, a gaping crack leading into an endless void strung with black saliva and a coiled black tentacle-tongue. It no longer resembled any creature that should have existed beneath heaven.
Black energy flared outward, shockwaves shattering everything within several kilometers.
’Good thing everyone’s far from here,’ Lei Cheng was relieved—the Shadow had carefreely chosen an isolated corner street, inadvertently saving countless lives. ’Fate, perhaps.’ The Shadow’s random actions had protected the people.
"Well?" The Shadow spread its bony hands, grinning. "Afraid now? I’m impressive, aren’t I?"
"Indeed," Lei Cheng said. "You’re finally using the form you were born with—the one you’re truly suited for."
’This is exactly why I provoked it into revealing this,’ he thought. The Shadow had shown its true self specifically because it couldn’t invoke full power in its shadow state. "In this form, I’m at full strength," the Shadow skeleton declared. "In my shadow state, I could only unleash seventy percent of my true strength—now you should tremble."
The air was oppressive and heavy, filled with black energy. Ants and other insects on the ground died instantly.
Skeleton glared at Lei Cheng’s body and froze. The other clones hadn’t reacted either. "No change," one muttered. "He’s standing exactly the same." Uncertainty spread through every Shadow at once.
"He’s not just some kid."
"He came here to hunt us."
The Shadows’ confidence cracked. One even tried to flee.
Lei Cheng casually picked at his ear. "I believe I’ve just broken your Bizarre Rule, haven’t I?" He focused all his senses and didn’t dare blink, ’I wonder what happens now.’
Crack! Crack! Glass-like fractures spread through the air. The skeleton dropped to its knees, screaming, "Ahh!" The gray energy, bleeding from its body and dispersing into the sky. Black cracks split across the boundary of the domain above.
"Your domain," Lei Cheng said, smiling faintly. "It’s breaking." The prison that had trapped a part of the city was finally beginning to collapse. He shook his head. "I’m simply too strong for you."
He snapped his fingers, and white-silver light spread outward. Across the outer city, people blinked in confusion—a young woman recalling she’d been helping "that young man."
"Young Master Lei," Constable Zhu paused mid-walk, wondering how he’d forgotten his own task entirely. Reactions varied wildly: some locked their doors in fear, others grabbed weapons and rushed outside. The slum residents reacted most fiercely of all—an old man grabbing an axe, declaring, "I’m already near death—better to die helping that young man." An old woman pulled out a heavy stick right behind him. "Indeed, we old people must at least do some good before death." Many followed suit, checking the streets in search of him.
Zhu Lin wandered the alleys, muttering, "Where is he?"
Without realizing it, every one of them had already survived the Shadow’s domain.
Back at the confrontation, Lei Cheng dropped the illusion, returning to his true handsome form—neatly tied white-gold hair, eyes glowing white-gold themselves.
The sight made the Shadow tremble, its nonexistent heart somehow racing up into its throat.
"What kind of trickery is this?" it demanded, a bony finger shaking as it pointed at him. It questioned every decision it had made since kidnapping him. Memory flooded back—dropping the skeleton in a sack, the taunting note, the confident challenge it had sent.
"Trickery?" Lei Cheng said flatly. "Something that kidnaps defenseless children has no right to lecture me about deception."
"This isn’t over," the Shadow snarled. More than a hundred identical skeletons rose from the ground at once, each a perfect copy.
’Shadow Intent, and it has a few more Intents?’ Lei Cheng mused, studying them. "I sense multiple Intents here I can’t quite identify. Care to enlighten me?"
"Damn you!" the Shadow shrieked. "Don’t you fear facing a thousand of me?!"
More clones kept surging up from the earth by the second. They all hissed, shaking the street, "Keeee."
Lei Cheng closed his ears for a moment.
"A thousand?" He echoed calmly. "Whether it’s one clone or a thousand, the outcome won’t change."
"Life Intent." He snapped his fingers. Boom! Bang! Massive green vines tore from the ground, binding clusters of ten skeletons at a time before detonating with green energy, obliterating them instantly. Noticing this, skeleton clones had tried to jump on him before they crossed one meter; large green vines tied them up. "Life explosion." Bang! Boom!
Within moments, the entire horde had been reduced to a haze of black dust choking the sky.
"I imagine you’ve noticed," Lei Cheng said, gesturing at the drifting ash. "A thousand clones make no difference at all."
Numbers alone had never been capable of overcoming an absolute difference in strength.
The Shadow stared, then laughed bitterly. "No wonder I lost track of you. You’re not just cunning—you’re genuinely powerful." Its crimson eye locked with his gaze, expression shifting from amusement to something graver. "I have to give you credit."
"Credit for what?" Lei Cheng tilted his head.
"You’re a pure mortal, aren’t you?" It exhaled.
"Mortal?" Lei Cheng asked back.
The skeleton clarified, folding its arms. "Within my domain, you can’t wield any of your cultivation at all except for intent."
"True," Lei Cheng admitted, showing his fist. "Right now I’m no stronger than an ordinary person—weaker, even, than a Level One modern martial cultivator." He paused, "But I can use my full intent." His right hand lit up with white golden flames, "Supreme Nine Yang intent."
Clap! Clap!
The skeleton clapped its bony hands slowly. "Then my name will be remembered alongside yours, through history itself." It looked skyward. "Remember it: Qi Hai."
Its body ignited with intense black light.
"What?" Lei Cheng scowled and activated his Life Intent instantly, green vines erupting from the ground and covering him tightly from every side.
The skeleton detonated. A massive beam of black light tore into the sky, and the entire Bizarre Domain began to collapse around them. Crack! crack! In the end, pride refused to let the shadow bizarre accept defeat at another’s hands.
"I didn’t expect it to commit suicide." Lei Cheng released his vines once the shaking stopped. The multiple streets, about tens of kilometers around him was in ruins, shattered into debris. He caught a single white particle drifting down from above, glancing up to find countless more falling like snow.
’So the domain truly dies with the creature that spawned it,’ he thought.
Then the sky shifted to gold. A pink petal drifted down. He caught it—followed by a steady rain of rose petals on him.
"What’s this?" Lei Cheng froze. "Don’t tell me killing it didn’t end it?"
The city fell silent, as everyone’s bodies stopped moving; they couldn’t move despite trying hard.
"What’s going on?" They wondered, but somehow they were calm as if instinctively they knew they would be fine.
"So you achieved a grand feat." Hua Mingyue had a wide smile as she glanced in the direction of Lei Cheng from the garden of Lei Courtyard.
[ Ding! ]
A notification chime rang out—not within his mind this time, but from the sky itself, audible to everyone.
"What’s this sound?" He glanced around, wondering if anyone might be present.
[ Lei Cheng’s name shall be noted in the Records of the Ninth Heaven—the very first cultivator to kill a Bizarre Creature of a higher level than him, within its own Bizarre Domain, and under one day! ]
A voice echoed from the heavens, constantly shifting between the sweet voice of a young woman, the mellow voice of a mature woman, and the commanding voice of a powerful man.
The voice paused for a moment and continued with joy,
[ An unprecedented feat.]
Everyone instinctively looked toward the heavens as they regained control. Even those who understood nothing about cultivation could sense that they had just witnessed a moment that would be remembered for generations.
Lei Cheng’s jaw dropped. ’No one has ever done this before?’
A beam of blue light descended from the heavens, settling over his body.
[ Cultivator Lei Cheng—please proceed to claim your reward.]
[ Heavenly Dao is impressed by you! ]
"A reward?" Lei Cheng’s expression turned cautious. "Is Corrupted Dao focusing its eyes on me?" He felt a chill down his spine as he sensed a flooding energy within him, granted by the heavens.
