Lin Mu knew that the Sword Core Dao Embryo, once unleashed, burned its power rapidly. When that strength was spent, the Grand Elder would weaken severely for short ti.
WHOOSH!
Lin Mu sprang into action.
SHING! SHING!
His two swords lashed out, sending two powerful arcs of light that intercepted one of the Epherachs attacking the Grand Elder.
"Grand Elder!" Lin Mu shouted.
"Let's do it together!" the Grand Elder replied, raising his sword, Solemn Sentinel.
"Afternoon Pine: Great Slaughter Pine!" Lin Mu cried, releasing a technique that birthed a towering yellow tallic pine tree. Each of its countless branches launched volleys of sword intent like a storm of divine needles.
"Dividing the Firmant!" the Grand Elder roared, swinging his sword. WHOOSH! SLASH!
His attack was vast and rciless.
Even though the Epherachs tried to scatter, two of them were caught in its path. Their bodies were split horizontally, vertically, and diagonally in rapid succession. The slashes multiplied endlessly, reducing them to dust. The very remnants of their existence were shredded apart by the intensity of the sword intent.
anwhile, Lin Mu's Great Slaughter Pine suppressed the remaining
Epherach, covering the area in a forest of lethal energy that left the Hollow immobilized.
"HAAH!" the Grand Elder shouted, lunging forward. His sword pierced straight through the Epherach's back.
BOOM!
The strike exploded through the creature's torso, tearing it apart.
SHING! SHING! SHING!
The endless flurry of the Great Slaughter Pine followed up, pulverizing the fragnts until not even dust remained.
The combined might of Lin Mu and the Grand Elder annihilated the last of their foes. The air trembled from the aftermath, the lingering sword intent humming through the battlefield like a choir of blades.
But none could rest. The ritual was still ongoing, and the Ancestor's chants echoed once again in the distance.
With ten of the Epherach hollows now destroyed, the battlefield trembled with the fading echoes of their deaths. The imnse pressure that had burdened the Transcendents and Lin Mu began to ease, though the air still vibrated with residual Baleful Qi.
Only five of the monstrous hollows remained, their forms flickering between shadow and substance as the remnant powers of their fallen kin bled into them along with the Baleful Energy being channeled into them by the Ancestor. Three of the slain creatures had fallen to the Abbot's serene yet devastating strikes, three more had perished beneath Lin Mu's twin blades and Grand Elder Huo's Solemn Sentinel, three were cleaved apart by the Xian Sword Sect Patriarch, and one had been frozen by Elder Ice Drake's rciless frost before being crushed.
The Darkhan Emperor, however, stood apart. His aura crackled faintly with lightning, but the ground around him was littered only with the smoking remains of partially maid hollows that still regenerated.
"What are you doing, junior? Still haven't killed even one?" The Xian Sword Sect Patriarch asked with a disapproving frown, his tone like a chisel scraping at pride.
The Emperor clenched his fists. His thunderous qi fluctuated with irritation. Though his power was imnse, he had only managed to blast away the limbs of several hollows, their limbs reforming monts later in a storm of black
vapor.
Even Lin Mu, who was catching his breath after his own battle, raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't he wield lightning? It should restrain the hollows. How is he still struggling?"
Indeed, lightning was the embodint of pure Yang, the antithesis to the shadows and corruption that gave the Epherachs form. Yet sohow, his strikes lacked the refinent necessary to annihilate them completely.
"Amitabha," the Abbot of the Silent Lotus Temple intoned with a faint, teasing smile. "It seems the young Transcendent has yet to master the true rhythm of the heavens."
The Emperor's face darkened further.
He wanted to retort but could not. Every other Transcendent here had thousands, even tens of thousands of years more experience than him. He had seen Lin Mu slay the twisted Hidden Cave Ancestor earlier and then help Grand Elder Huo with another hollow.
In comparison, his performance appeared pitiful.
His jaw tightened, his eyes flashing with frustration. The anger within him surged uncontrollably, erupting outward as his qi exploded in violent
thunderclaps.
"That's enough!" he roared, his voice booming across the crypt.
The air around him rippled as his Dao Embryo awakened.
RUMBLE.
The heavens seed to answer.
Lightning arced violently across his form as the manifestation of his Dao took shape: a colossal drum materialized behind him, its surface glowing with sigils of pure thunder. The Dao Shell that surrounded it resembled a grand stage of jade and bronze, upon which two mighty mallets were bound by chains of
lightning.
"Thunder God Drum," the Emperor intoned, his voice low yet commanding. He grasped the mallets, his arms thrumming with divine resonance.
BOOM. The first strike shook the world. An ocean of lightning cascaded outward, filling the crypt with endless radiance. Each bolt that burst from the drum's surface sang with the wrath of the heavens, shredding the lingering shadows.
BOOM.
The second strike split the floor of the crypt apart, even going so far as to crack the pillars in the distance.
Black clouds churned above, revealing the storm that had gathered from his power alone. Thunderclouds rolled like beasts across the heavens, and lightning as thick as ancient trees writhed within.
"Storm Call Symphony!" the Emperor shouted, his hair whipping wildly in the turbulent winds.
He began to beat the drum in rhythm.
DAM. DAM. DAM.
Each strike of the mallets drew a response from the sky.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The heavens themselves trembled, sending torrents of lightning crashing down
like divine punishnt.
Each bolt that fell was vast enough to vaporize mountains. The hollows screeched, their shrill cries echoing through the storm. Their dark, mutated bodies twisted under the assault, their skin blistering and crackling as the lightning tore away layer after layer of corruption.
The Baleful Energies tried to help them recover, but the streams of the dark energy were interrupted by the thunderstorm that was wreaking havoc upon the hollows, leaving them helpless.
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