548: Chapter 548 The Arrival of Dan Sha

Su Ming's face was pale, his lips bitten until they bled. He frantically poured the last bit of his Ruoshui Art spiritual energy into the fragment: "Hold on for me!"

Every breath felt as long as an eternity.

After a full stick of incense, the blue-green cold flame finally exhausted its medicinal power and dissipated as green smoke. The Earth Fire Vein's pulsing regained a relatively regular rhythm under Qing Yang's soothing. The crisis was temporarily averted.

Su Ming's hands dropped powerlessly. The star-patterned steel was dim and lusterless, with three deep cracks appearing on its surface, nearly cutting the fragment in half. He carefully placed it into his Storage Pouch.

Qing Yang sat cross-legged where he was, not wiping the blood from his face or turning to look at Su Ming. However, the fire-control hand seals his withered hands were flicking had subtly changed their rhythm—every time spiritual energy was injected, it carried a faint pause that mimicked the steady characteristics of starlight. He was silently absorbing Su Ming's ideas.

Lin Yu sighed tiredly: "This old man really is an Alchemy maniac. He integrated your technique into his system in such a short time."

The pill room returned to a dull calm. Ying poked its head out from Su Ming's sleeve and gave a weak chirp.

Lin Yu's voice became profound: "Don't celebrate too early. The Red Sun Root losing control on the sixth day was just the Earth Fire's small temper. On the ninth day, when the heaven-mending pill truly forms, the pill calamity brought down by the Laws of heaven and earth won't care about any starlight."

His voice held a rare sense of awe: "That will be the true dead end."

The seventh day. A fragile balance was maintained within the pill room.

The blood scabs on Qing Yang's forehead mixed with sweat. Every flick of his crack-covered fingers subtly mimicked the steady rhythm of starlight. But this state consumed Divine Sense at a terrifying rate—the old Grandmaster, who had sealed his furnace for a century, was now breathing heavily, his back hunched like a puppet that could fall apart at any moment.

Su Ming's condition was even worse. The Ruoshui Art could no longer operate normally, the lake in his Dantian was nearly dry, and his Meridians throbbed with pain from the prolonged squeezing of spiritual energy. Ying shrank into his sleeve, unable to even emit a weak chirp.

The eighth day. The last batch of auxiliary materials was added to the Pill Furnace. The emerald-green pill liquid inside the furnace began to contract violently, condensing toward the center. A strange fragrance penetrated the thick outer walls of the Pill Furnace, permeating the entire pill room.

From just inhaling a trace of this fragrance, Su Ming's parched Dantian actually showed a sign of recovery.

Lin Yu's soul body flickered violently within the ring: "A prototype of the Laws!" His voice carried suppressed excitement. "The heaven-mending pill has already begun to condense a prototype of the Laws! What can repair a dao foundation isn't the medicinal power itself, but that wisp of heaven-mending Law condensed within the pill liquid!"

Su Ming didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the space above the Pill Furnace, where a mass of grayish-black mist had condensed at some point. The mist churned silently, emitting a heart-palpitating aura of destruction.

Lin Yu's excitement vanished instantly: "That's... the Embryonic Cloud of the Pill Calamity. The Medicinal Pill hasn't even formed yet, and the Heavenly Dao has already begun to lock onto this place. When the pill forms on the ninth day and the pill calamity descends, that will be the true life-or-death moment."

Qing Yang also saw the gray mist. No expression showed on his withered face, but his fire-control hand seals became even more precise and frenzied.

The ninth day.

Without any warning, the Pill Furnace began to vibrate violently.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

Muffled metallic clashing sounds came from within the furnace, as if something were frantically ramming against the furnace walls. The emerald-green pill liquid spun rapidly inside, and every impact caused the entire Pill Furnace to radiate visible shockwaves of spiritual energy.

Su Ming's cushion was pushed back half a foot by the shockwave. He gripped the Green Jade Pendant on his knee—a life-saving item bestowed by Master Xuan Heng.

"It's coming." Lin Yu's voice was low to the extreme.

Above the roof of the pill room, the grayish-black mist expanded within seconds to cover the entire courtyard. An indescribable sense of pressure penetrated the thick mountain, seeping into every inch of the pill room. This wasn't a pressure of magical power or a Divine Soul impact, but the rejection of the transgressor by the Heavenly Dao itself.

The essence of the pill calamity is that the heavens and earth cannot tolerate it.

The heaven-mending pill's ability to repair a Cultivator's dao foundation is too overbearing; the Heavenly Dao does not allow such a thing to easily exist in the world. The pill calamity will destroy the pill and kill anyone who tries to protect it.

"Focus!"

Qing Yang gave a hoarse roar and slammed his hands down. A pillar of crimson-gold light erupted from his palms, crashing fiercely into the fire eye beneath the Pill Furnace.

"Boom!"

The Earth Fire erupting from the eight fire eyes instantly surged threefold. The entire pill room was illuminated like the inside of a smelting furnace, and the surrounding bluestone walls began to soften under the high temperature, with viscous lava flowing down their surfaces.

Qing Yang was burning his essence blood.

He was using the most violent power of the Earth Fire to force the heaven-mending pill to complete its final condensation—before the pill calamity fully descended.

The humming inside the Pill Furnace reached its peak. The emerald-green pill liquid contracted frantically under the extreme heat, and a terrifying aura of life erupted from the furnace, clashing violently with the grayish-black Evil Qi at the dome.

It was at this very moment.

The pill calamity descended.

The grayish-black mist penetrated dozens of feet of mountain rock, ignoring all the protection Formations of the pill room, and poured in from all directions like physical tentacles. When the mist touched the bluestone walls, the stone silently turned to dust.

Countless grayish-black tentacles surged frantically toward the Pill Furnace, tearing the air as they passed, the space warping into visible folds.

Su Ming pressed his left hand on the Green Jade Pendant and shielded Ying tightly in his arms with his right.

Qing Yang let out a low growl that hardly sounded human. His withered body suddenly stood up, his hands frantically forming seals in front of his chest as he struck one crimson-gold Pill-Protecting Spiritual Seal after another toward the Pill Furnace. Every time a spiritual seal collided with a pill calamity tentacle, a piercing "sizzle" rang out, like cold water being poured into boiling oil.

But this could only delay, not stop it.

Qing Yang's essence-blood-burning pill-protecting seals were like a mantis trying to stop a carriage before the endless torrent of the pill calamity. In just ten breaths, Qing Yang's face was deathly pale, his arms were trembling violently, and his finger bones emitted an overburdened creaking sound.

Su Ming watched the frantically approaching pill calamity tentacles; the destructive power carried within that grayish-black mist made one's Soul tremble.

But he also saw something else—though the pill calamity was terrifying, those tentacles weren't attacking randomly as they surged toward the Pill Furnace. They were following a certain trajectory, seemingly along the path of the Array Patterns on the furnace's surface, tracing that sliver of phase difference between the pill liquid and the Earth Fire's pulsing.

A crazy idea exploded in Su Ming's Sea of Consciousness.

"Master, will the pill calamity corrode Divine Sense?"

Lin Yu's soul body trembled: "No! The pill calamity is the power of the Law; it only targets the pill itself! It won't actively attack Divine Sense!"

"That's enough."

Su Ming suddenly looked up, a flash of determination in his eyes. He released Ying from his arms and his hands quickly began sketching in the void.

Not defense, not attack.

He was actually using his Divine Sense to mark the trajectories of those pill calamity tentacles, then guiding them to be precisely introduced into the bottom of the Pill Furnace.

"You're crazy!" Lin Yu cried out in shock.

Su Ming wasn't crazy. He was a Formation Master, and at this moment, he was using Micro-Observation to analyze the movement patterns of the pill calamity tentacles, then using his Divine Sense to guide them, following that sliver of phase difference between the pill liquid and the Earth Fire's pulsing, cutting into the bottom of the furnace and wrapping around it layer by layer.

He was using the pill calamity as a substitute for star-patterned steel.

"That sliver of phase difference is the gap created by the lack of synchronization between the pill liquid and the Earth Fire's pulsing. The pill calamity is a Law; it is purer than starlight. As long as it can be introduced into that gap, it can serve as a stronger gasket than starlight."

Su Ming spoke extremely fast, and his hands moved even faster.

Countless minute Divine Sense guidance lines shot out from his Sea of Consciousness, guiding the pill calamity tentacles to precisely cover the bottom of the Pill Furnace along the gaps of the phase difference. The moment the grayish-black mist touched the Pill Furnace, it strangely ceased its frenzy, instead acting like a dense membrane, wrapping around the bottom of the furnace.

The phase difference was isolated by the pill calamity itself.

That fatal misalignment between the pill liquid and the Earth Fire's pulsing was perfectly filled by the pill calamity Law. The balance inside the furnace, which had been on the verge of collapse, completely stabilized at this moment.

Qing Yang was stunned.

His bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the grayish-black membrane at the bottom of the furnace, his withered lips opening and closing in vain, unable to say a single word.

This kid actually used the pill calamity to refine a batch of heaven-mending pills.

But the price was also terrifying. Although the pill calamity did not actively attack Divine Sense, it was the existence of the Law itself; even a close-range contact was still enough for its crushing weight to be fatal to Divine Sense.

Blood flowed simultaneously from Su Ming's nostrils, the corners of his eyes, and his ears. He was bleeding from all seven orifices.

That was a sign that his Sea of Consciousness was on the verge of collapse. His Divine Sense guidance lines snapped inch by inch under the crushing weight of the pill calamity Law, and every time one snapped, his Soul felt as if it were being torn apart.

Su Ming gritted his teeth, maintaining the last few critical guidance lines.

Ying emerged from his sleeve, letting out a shrill cry of sorrow. It desperately unfurled its charred wings and landed on Su Ming's head; that Blood Contract actually managed to help Su Ming bear a sliver of the pill calamity's crushing weight.

Just at the final moment when Su Ming's consciousness was fading and he was about to fall into darkness.

Inside the Pill Furnace, an emerald-green light erupted.