Sage Monarch

Tai Cangyi, the very same person who had provoked Yang Qi with his Destructive Sound Wave back before the ceremony began and then singled him out in the fighting, was about to die.

For Yang Qi, not killing him had never been an option.

Therefore, he used an explosively violent attack to wipe him out of existence. He used the Heaven-Burying Bow and a Heaven-Wasting Arrow, shattering Tai Cangyi's personal domain and piercing into his sea of energy to wipe out his soul.

The Heaven-Wasting Arrow smashed through Tai Cangyi's defensive true energy like a boulder crushing a drinking glass, then proceeded directly into his body.

An agonized scream rang out as a gaping hole appeared in his chest and bronze blood and gore sprayed out. Tai Cangyi was bronze inside and out, and even his sage motes looked like bronze chains.

'Recover! I have to recover immediately! I can't believe he has another immortal item! An immortal bow and arrows!'

Suddenly, he waved his hands out in front of him and shouted, "True Bronze Invulnerable Battle Magic!"

RUMBLE!

Veins popped up on his hands and spread out to cover the rest of his body, healing it along the way. Then he shouted, "Divine Physicality Hand!"

A shining, illusory hand appeared, which grabbed onto the Heaven-Wasting Arrow and held it in place, preventing it from stabbing into his soul.

"That's not going to work," Yang Qi said. "I want you dead. Therefore, nothing can save you."

Propelling himself with his Angel Wings, he shot forward with such incredible speed that no one could even track his movement.

His speed bordered on that of light, making it seem almost as if he didn't exist. A Demi-Immortal might have been able to catch him, but ninth step Epic Saga Sages had no hope of doing so.

Although he wasn't necessarily invincible against opponents beneath the Demi-Immortal level, he was certainly an opponent that no one could ever hope of cornering.

In the briefest of moments, he put himself directly in front of Tai Cangyi and reached out with both hands. This wasn't the Hand of the One God; instead, the weeping of ghosts and wailing of gods could be heard, accompanied by the darkness of an enormous black hole. Within the black hole was the essence of the Hell of Mahānata, a glorious darkness and gloom that formed the perfect foil for radiance and light.

"That's… the power of hell…." A look of terror overtook Tai Cangyi's face as he felt himself being dragged toward the black hole.

"Self-Detonation!" he said decisively. Suddenly, his essence power exploded with the force of a fiery volcano, and bronze blood sprayed out in all directions as his body shattered.

"Blowing yourself up? Ah, I see. Hoping that the magical laws of life and death in here will allow you to be reborn outside. Sorry. Hellfire Crucible, come forth!"

WHIZZZ!

An ancient and enormous crucible appeared, slowly rotating as it descended from above, pulsing with the power of the cosmos. In the blink of an eye, Tai Cangyi's blood and shattered remains were dragged inside.

"No!" he screamed. "I refuse to accept this! I'm the most powerful genius among the Truebronzefolk. I'm destined to become a Demi-Immortal! How could I perish here!?"

Struggling to free himself, he pulled his body back together, whereupon the bronze immortal pellet once again appeared in his forehead.

Yang Qi didn't even bother to look at Tai Cangyi struggling within the Hellfire Crucible. Waving his hands, he caused the crucible to shrink down rapidly.

"Tempestuous Sagefire can Immolate Immortals. What Joy Be There in Life? What Torment Be There in Death? The Dust Returns to the Void; the Pure Lands of the Halls of Heaven Are Eternal and Deathless…."

Tai Cangyi's screams gradually grew quieter and quieter, until they were nothing but whimpers. Then they faded away entirely and his immortal pellet flew out of the crucible and into Yang Qi's hand. He looked at it, then pushed it into his ancestral aperture.

In the blink of an eye, it was dissolved by his blood.

The Myriad Bronzes Divine Pellet was a precious treasure of the Truebronzefolk, but it was completely useless for Yang Qi. However, the materials which had made it up, as well as its immortal motes and general power, could be beneficial to his Strength of the Hell-Crushing Godmammoth.

In the blink of an eye, power from an immortal world coursed through him, causing his five viscera and six bowels to tremble.

Inhale, exhale!

Suddenly, an immense tempest sprang up;

Yang Qi's single breath was enough to shake mountain ranges and dry up seas.

It took a moment before the onlookers could react.

"He's dead! Tai Cangyi died too, and his immortal item was taken and absorbed by that cultivator from the Yore-Wilds, Yang Qi! That guy is a fiendish monster! Nothing is left of the Yore-Wilds but broken-down ruins. How could someone this strong come from there?"

"Regardless, he can actually kill people in the World of Mirages, which makes him a miracle. You can't judge him with common sense. No wonder! No wonder the spectacularly and nearly-immortal Invincible Dugu of the Invincible Society accepted him as a disciple. The people from the Invincible Society are freaks, one and all!"

"No, this Yang Qi is more than a freak. You know, there's only one word for people who defy description. He's a god!"

People were starting to come up speechless in their attempts to talk about Yang Qi, and were resorting to words like 'god'.

It was just like the saying, what people can't describe, they attribute to the gods.

Yang Qi was so strong that certain common expressions didn't seem appropriate for him, such as 'freak', 'hellion', 'shocking', 'consummate genius', 'rarely seen in ten thousand years'….

When people ran out of exclamations, that meant that the person they were trying to talk about was essentially a divine being. Omniscient. Omnipotent. Omnipresent.

Just like the legion of gods.

"Not even the Invincible Society's Eldest Brother is like this, and he defeated three thousand societies, crushed the Legalist Collegium, and fought back against prime elders. Not even he could actually kill people in the World of Mirages."

Discussions raged, and expressions of terror, anger, fear, and mute shock could be seen everywhere. As of this moment, Yang Qi was the focus of everyone in the World of Mirages, as well as the elders in the Titan Emperor Collegium who were observing the proceedings.

"Run! Get out of here! Our Everlasting Alliance isn't a match for him!" The remaining dozen or so experts from the Everlasting Alliance were already terrified to death of Yang Qi and weren't in the mood for fighting. Right now, the only thing they wanted to do was escape the World of Mirages with their lives.

"None of you are going anywhere. You threatened my family and friends, which is something I can't tolerate. You're all going to die in this place!" Yang Qi stamped his foot, and the space in the area shattered, transforming into pure primal-chaos.

WHOOSH!

Suddenly, he split into a host of shadowy clone projections which shot toward the fleeing experts.

A scream rang out from the west as one of the experts was felled with a fist strike.

In the north, three experts exploded like fireworks, and were sucked into a black hole. Their sage motes, quintessence-blood, vital energy, power, and magical treasures all vanished.

They were completely and utterly dead.

Something like a megamammoth appeared off in the distance, and a moment later a whole host of experts exploded. In no time at all, everyone from the Everlasting Alliance was dead.

More than a dozen experts had been wiped out, quickly and cleanly.

The reek of blood filled the World of Mirages, filling everyone present with deep fear and leaving them with jaws hanging open. Of course, none of them dared to do a single thing, fearful that Yang Qi would wipe them out. After all, he had just crushed the Everlasting Alliance as easily as if they were dried-up weeds.

"Dead. They're all dead."

"We absolutely, positively must not do anything rash. If we provoke that fiend, we're all going to be dead."

"So what do we do?"

"It would be better to just kill ourselves than wait to be killed by him. At least that way we can get out of here safely."

"But if we kill ourselves, we'll become freshman students. We'll be sent to the mines for years without even a scrap of freedom. Can you really accept that?"

"Everyone calm down," Yang Qi said, looking around. "As long as you accept your place, I won't kill you." Suddenly, his energy began to surge mightily; he had just absorbed the quintessence-blood and vital energy of over a dozen mutant humans, which gave him command of the natural laws of many other worlds. For example, the Bright Sun Truebronze Body gave him deep understanding into suns and bronze. The Icejade Ultrafrigid Body gave him control over the magical laws of frigid coldness. And there were others.

Only a few breaths of time had passed and he was already in the position to break through to the Eternal Sands Step.

"We're not going to do anything," a nearby expert said.

"Fine then," Yang Qi replied. "I'm going to clear out the World of Mirages. You people do as you wish until the ceremony is over. If anyone tries to take treasures that belong to me, or fight me, then don't blame me for being merciless. You all saw what I can do just now. Anyone who I kill here will not be reborn outside. Death here is real death." With that, he blurred into motion to go collect the various treasures, power seeds, and spirit stones.

The other students could only look on with envy, and none of them dared to even move.