In the distance, the Immortal bird turned around and instantly fled.
Lu Yin viciously drove his scythe into Ming Yu’s body, piercing straight through. The bird’s aura weakened drastically.
“If you don’t want to be hunted down by the Plume Immortals, then kill those things!” Lu Yin shouted in a deep voice. Of course, he was addressing the Immortal Lord, who hesitated. Given their level of power, they had never anticipated being put in such a situation.
Lu Yin shouted again, “If you don’t, I will kill you! There is more than one Dao Sword inside of you!”
The Immortal Lord immediately moved, having Luo Chan teleport them about as they hunted the various birds beneath the great tree.
Luo Chan trembled. It was a tool that the Plume Immortals used to keep an eye on the Immortal Lord, but at heart, it was also just an insect. At this moment, it did not know whom it should obey. The key point was that Ming Yu had already been reduced to a miserable state and was doomed to die. What should it do? Luo Chan had no idea.
Run? It could run, but it also could not. It could not leave the Immortal Lord.
Lu Yin had seized control of the Immortal Lord’s fate with the Dao Sword, while the Plume Immortals had similarly seized the Immortal Lord’s fate with Luo Chan. The Immortal Lord could not break free from either side. Everything depended on who held the upper hand and who fell to a disadvantage.
Lu Yin pulled his scythe back. Crimson blood dripped from it. He raised it high and pressed it against Ming Yu’s neck. At this moment, the bird’s aura was fluctuating. It could be killed at any moment.
The edge of the scythe sliced into Ming Yu’s neck as Lu Yin stared at it. “You are the strongest creature I have fought so far. If not for the Immortal Lord, I really couldn’t have dealt with you, but it’s all over now. You are the first, but you won’t be the last. The Plume Immortals will all die.”
With that, he reversed the blade and sliced it halfway through Ming Yu’s neck, leaving the Plume Immortal teetering on the edge of life and death. With that, he threw it into a Zenith Mountain. There was no need to kill it just yet.
Lu Yin still needed to use the Plume Immortal to increase his karma, but he was currently pressed for time. There was also no saying when the decisive battle at Vestigium would end.
Lu Yin turned to look at the Plume Immortals’ great tree. The Immortal Lord’s Green Stalk Realm had already spread throughout the area, enveloping all the creatures that had been left behind to guard the tree. But even now, the Immortal Lord still hesitated to act.
Lu Yin took a deep breath. He could not end his state of fusing with three lines of divine energy. As soon as he did so, he would find it difficult to even move. His current injuries were even worse than what he had suffered when fighting against Ni Ren.
Thinking of this, Lu Yin vanished, teleporting away. When he reappeared, he was within the Green Stalk Realm, face-to-face with the Immortal bird.
“Immortal Lord, you dare to betray the Plume Immortals? The Plume Immortals will never spare you!” the bird screamed.
The Immortal Lord felt incredibly aggrieved. The Plume Immortals held their life in their talons, but so did Lu Yin.
Before that thought could even finish, divine energy sliced through the void, tearing apart the Green Stalk Realm, much to the Immortal Lord’s shock.
The Immortal bird was gravely wounded by the attack, and Lu Yin casually collected it and threw it into a Zenith Mountain. Every Immortal being was a precious treasure. After that, he kept teleporting about, slaughtering the birds that were still protecting the tree. Every blink saw another bird die. Countless creatures withered and fell like rain. Although these beings were as insignificant as ants before the great tree, they still produced a rain of blood that stained many of the leaves red.
Lu Yin put away Aberrant. In front of him, the last bird had just died, and its corpse fell.
He turned to look at the Immortal Lord. The creature remained silent, saying nothing at all.
Lu Yin teleported again to appear above the tree. Looking down at the great tree from high above, he raised a hand and sent a beam of divine energy crashing down, intending to shatter the tree.
However, the tree’s toughness far exceeded what he had expected. It actually rivaled the defenses of a two-law Immortal. By this time, Lu Yin had already expended a great deal of divine energy, and he did not have enough to completely destroy the tree.
Fortunately, he discovered the broken transparent sword, which should belong to Obscura’s Transparent.
Lu Yin grabbed it in one quick motion. There was still some lingering divine energy in the broken transparent sword. This divine energy was gentler than any he had ever sensed before, strangely so. If ordinary divine energy were like an unbridled wild horse, then this divine energy was a horse that had been tamed. Divine energy remained divine energy, but its nature had changed.
At this moment, Lu Yin’s mind and reasoning were still being suppressed by divine energy, so he could not think too much. He tightly held the hilt of the sword, shrouded it with his own tri-colored divine energy, and then slashed downward.
A massive crack opened up, spanning the entirety of the Plume Immortals’ great tree.
The Immortal Lord stared on in shock. The Plume Immortals Civilization had always lived in the canopy of this great tree, and it had just been split apart, and by a human no less.
They were aware of some bits of the grudge that existed between the Plume Immortals and humanity. Could this be considered karmic retribution?
Lu Yin tightened his grip on the hilt of the sword. Scene after scene flashed through his mind. He saw Plume Immortals joyfully flying above the Second Rampart, driving countless people to miserable deaths. He had only started to collect the blood debt. With a low roar, he split the tree completely in two.
At that moment, the transparent sword in his hand also shattered.
At the exact instance that the great tree was split apart, the entire cosmos changed before Lu Yin’s eyes. In that moment, he saw a colossal tree that filled the entire Aevum Inch, stretching endlessly across the vast expanse. He saw Mother Trees connected to it, each of which was only a small branch that grew from one of the tree’s limbs. He saw the whole omniverse shrouded in some kind of power, and he also saw a great river surging across space.
The vision lasted for only an instant, and then everything before his eyes returned to normal.
What he had just seen? Was it an illusion?
He looked at the broken tree, raised his hand, and touched it. Dust to dust, and earth to earth.
It did not matter that the tree had belonged to the Plume Immortals; the tree itself was not at fault.
His heart suddenly skipped a beat. A vast amount of motes of green light, more than ever before, emerged from the great tree and poured into Lu Yin’s inner universe.
He had never absorbed so much green light from any individual Mother Tree before. One could even say that all of the lights he had absorbed so far could not even compare to what he gathered at this one time.
The green lights flew into his inner universe like countless fireflies. Upon merging with the motes of green light that he had absorbed before, a green ribbon stretched across the stars.
Staring at the ribbon of green light, Lu Yin thought of the Nirvana Tree Path: a tree as the source, with its branches unfolding into all things.
Lu Yin’s mind guided things in his inner universe, and the green lights gradually took the form of a tree. Although he had created the Nirvana Tree Path, Lu Yin had never cultivated it himself. It had not yet been the right time. He had been waiting for a certain feeling, a feeling that everything would fall naturally into place, but that feeling had never appeared.
At this moment, that feeling finally arrived. The motes of green light gave him the sense of becoming a tree, as though they should be used to form his Nirvana Tree Path.
So far, every cultivator that he imparted the Nirvana Tree Path to had only received a single mote of green light, but Lu Yin himself was going to use them all.
As the form of a tree gradually appeared, Lu Yin spread his arms out. His entire body seemed to merge with something, and a warm current flowed through his limbs and bones. He did not even know what the warm current was, but it still appeared. He felt as though someone were watering him, helping him grow. It felt wonderful. It was a comfort that he had never experienced before, as if he had been immersed in the source of life itself.
His body was transforming, he could feel it. As he slowly moved his arm, the void collapsed. Such immense physical strength. Was he twice as strong as before? Three times? Even more?
Suddenly, the green lights scattered apart, and Lu Yin’s eyes snapped open. He exhaled a mouthful of turbid air. Gone?
He had failed. His attempt to cultivate the Nirvana Tree Path himself had failed. Even with so many motes of green light, had he still failed? Exactly how many more did he need?
He raised his hand and stared at it. His improved physical strength had not vanished; the transformation had merely stopped. Even though it had only lasted for a short amount of time, his physical strength had risen greatly, and his body’s durability had also increased.
If he fought Ni Ren or Ming Yu again in his current state, he would not be reduced to such a sorry state as before. At the very least, he would no longer have to rely solely on divine energy to defend himself.
He looked down. It was time to leave.