Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal? Chapter 864: A Sage's Dharma Body, Severed by a Single Sword

Outside the furnace.

The time for half an incense stick to burn had elapsed.

Taishang Laojun's smile stretched broader and broader across his face.

With a gentle caress of his flowing beard, he exuded absolute certainty of triumph.

"The disturbance within the furnace has died down. Evidently, that vile beast is nearly fully refined."

"Looks like that thing lacked true prowess, only armed with some pesky, strange divine powers...

Clearly, the Lingxiao immortals require some strict discipline. Does even this trivial sword cultivator demand this old man's personal intervention?"

The Nine Heavens immortals shivered inwardly, hunching their shoulders and avoiding Taishang Laojun's frosty stare.

Luckily, following that remark, Taishang Laojun's expression softened back to its benevolent look.

Rising to his feet, he adjusted his robes and headwear, readying himself to unveil the furnace and claim the pill.

"Congratulations, Laojun! Felicitations, Laojun!"

"Laojun's intervention yields remarkable results as expected! Regardless of that fiend's hubris, it couldn't evade the Dao Ancestor's grasp in the end!"

A wave of immortals surged forward with praises and adulations.

The Haotian Emperor nodded approvingly too, his creased forehead easing as he chuckled and remarked, "Now that this threat is vanquished, the Celestial Court enjoys peace."

Yet.

Right as Laojun extended his hand to raise the furnace cover.

*Crack.*

A barely audible but harshly piercing crackle suddenly echoed.

In the tense hush of anticipation, it boomed like thunder.

Laojun's hand halted in midair.

His grin froze solid, eyelids spasming wildly.

This noise...

Something's amiss!

In his earlier days, sans such cultivation or the Eight Trigrams Furnace, he once pushed an immortal pill refinement to breakthrough. Upon opening then, a akin crack had sounded, resulting in—a successful pill, but his furnace exploded from the strain.

He had mourned that lost furnace for ages.

And never forgotten the episode.

Thus, hearing a parallel sound now raised every hair on his body.

"Hmm?"

Taishang Laojun glanced down at his Eight Trigrams Furnace, forged impervious over eons, unbreachable even by the Immortal-Slaying Platform.

Upon its mirror-smooth surface, pulsing with Great Dao rhythms, a... fissure had stealthily formed.

A split pried from within.

Right then.

*Boom—!*

A fist bulge erupted on the Eight Trigrams Furnace.

As though fists hammered the inner walls from inside.

*Crack, crack...*

Fractures spiderwebbed outward swiftly.

*Boom, boom, boom—!*

Through a barrage like a tempest's fury.

Fist marks and palm prints bloomed nonstop on the furnace's exterior. In the instant Taishang Laojun stood dumbfounded, the whole vessel bristled with dents.

Intricate, dense fissures webbed over the colossal furnace entirely.

Next, a dread-inducing, ferocious heat surge— a hundredfold fiercer than the Six Ding Divine Fire—gushed madly via those splits.

Even nearby space warped and charred.

"This... that sword cultivator wasn't refined at all, he... he's breaking free?!"

"No... impossible!"

Taishang Laojun's eyes bulged, pupils swirling with astonishment, rage, and incredulity.

No hint remained of a Three Pure Ones Sage's poise.

"This is the Eight Trigrams Furnace! This old man's Innate Spiritual Treasure! How could it ever..."

*BOOM—!!!*

Before he could finish.

A cataclysmic blast rent the Nine Heavens' cloud vaults.

That Eight Trigrams Furnace, scourge of gods, demons, wicked spirits, supreme herbs, and godly arms through endless refinings.

Before every gaze.

Detonated.

Myriad purple-gold shards streaked like meteors ablaze, each fragment inferno-hot, toppling and razing countless halls.

And amid that boundless blaze and wreckage.

A silhouette rose steadily.

Behind him sprawled a thoroughly blackened savage beast—it was Taotie.

That silhouette stood bare, his skin aglow with molten gold-red rivers, as if hammered from raw blaze and heavenly tribulation.

Pale hair atop his head fluttered madly within the blaze. The Six Ding Divine Fire, once scattered, slowly gathered back, solidifying into fiery armor of molten flames encasing his body.

Chen Huaian gripped his fist tightly, twisted his wrist, and the Chaos Divine Sword reemerged in his grasp.

Now, rings of golden-red flames coiled around the sword blade. Evidently, the Six Ding Divine Fire's power had been absorbed into it as well, fueling its forging process.

Chen Huaian lifted his gaze.

Golden flames blazed in those eyes, piercing painfully into the immortals' vision, fixing unyieldingly on Taishang Laojun, whose complexion had drained of color atop the clouds above.

"Old thing." Chen Huaian's voice rasped, deep and gravelly.

As if scorching coals ground together inside his chest.

"Back then, was it this broken furnace, and this so-called 'divine fire', that you used to burn this Venerable One's foolish monkey?"

His tongue flicked out, tasting a stray thread of flame on his dry lips.

It tasted bitter.

The acrid bitterness from Sun Wukong's refinement over seven times seven, forty-nine days.

A wicked grin curled at Chen Huaian's lips, baring his shining white teeth.

"Have to admit... the taste of this fire is truly bitter."

"Since it's so bitter..."

Deliberately, he hoisted his sword, its tip aimed straight at the sky.

"Then why not invite you, old man, to also taste... the suffering this Venerable One's monkey endured!"

Taishang Laojun trembled all over. Staring into those eyes, long-buried memories abruptly resurfaced in his thoughts.

"These eyes... this karma..."

Laojun stumbled backward, his horsetail whisk quivering.

"You are... Zhunti Daoist?!"

In response came a sword wail that rent the heavens and earth.

*Zheng—!!!*

Chen Huaian slashed with his sword.

This strike wasn't a stab or a cleave.

It was—a deluge.

As if tipping the mightiest oil vat across heaven and earth.

*Rumble!*

The pristine qi-shrouded Nine Heavens shifted hue instantly.

Not to black or white, but a crimson evoking utter despair.

Heavenly flames cascaded down.

The sword qi from that swing, enveloped in Six Ding Divine Fire, became a fiery ocean spanning ten thousand miles. Like a celestial river in reverse, it thundered toward Lingxiao Hall.

Cloud banks burst into flames, melting into rivers of lava.

Space itself scorched open, exposing dark streams of chaotic void.

"Not good!! Retreat quickly!!"

Beyond Lingxiao Hall, myriad Heavenly Troops and Generals had no chance to cry out before their armor liquefied, vaporizing soldiers and gear alike into faint wisps of smoke.

"This fire... this fire can't be blocked!!"

A Golden Immortal called forth his natal immortal treasure to resist, yet the divine-iron shield dissolved like candle wax upon grazing the red sword glow.

With a agonized shriek, half his form blackened instantly, he escaped in a pathetic streak of light.

Heat.

Intense, searing heat.

All of Nine Heavens transformed into a colossal steam vat.

Even mighty Great Luo and Quasi-Saints paled, raising barriers of divine radiance and falling back step by step, powerless as the Celestial Court's grand glazed tiles and dragon-wrapped pillars fractured and flaked under the onrushing inferno.

This one sword stroke.

Incinerated Lingxiao.

Right in the heart of that fiery sea.

Taishang Laojun's dharma body resembled a bug encased in amber.

"Wretched beast, do not run rampant! This Six Ding Divine Fire was refined by this old man. How could you harm this old man?"

His words barely ended.

A thread of sword qi shot from the blaze.

That sword qi bore not just Six Ding Divine Fire but also thick, ink-black chaos.

Taishang Laojun's expression twisted in horror. Frantically, he swung his horsetail whisk and invoked the Tai Chi Diagram to fend off the descending flames.

Yet it proved too late.

And far too sluggish.

*Swish—*

A razor-thin, blinding golden streak, seemingly beyond time's grasp, sliced through the flame-filled sky.

Laojun froze in place.

No pain registered.

Just an eerie cold at his throat, as if scorching heat had vaporized his divine soul in a flash.

His view whirled chaotically.

The world inverted.

A blood-red heaven filled his sight.

A decapitated figure in Eight Trigrams robes tumbled slowly.

That fire... burned so fiercely.

Every bit as scorching as the monkey's howls from back then.

*Thump.*

The white-haired, white-bearded head thudded to the ground, rolling afar. Before halting, surrounding sword qi reduced it to a pile of pale ash.

A single sword.

Celestial flames devoured the world, the Dao Ancestor slain.

Deadly silence gave way to exploding wrath.

"AHHHHHHH!!!!"

In the Tushita Palace, high above the Thirty-Three Heavens.

This holy domain, eternally cloaked in fog and haze, abruptly detonated.

A horrifying blast wave roared outward, scattering the vast sea of clouds around it.

Taishang Laojun, deep in secluded pill-refining, spewed a gush of primal vital essence while unleashing a piercing, agonized scream that echoed across the Three Realms.

"You vile beast!!"

"You wrecked my treasured furnace! Annihilated my dharma body!!"

"This Venerable One and you... shall be eternal foes!!!"

*Boom!*

The grand gates of Tushita Palace shattered wide open.

An enormous, limitless Sage aura surged forth, laden with boiling rage and lethal intent—like a primordial savage beast stirring to life—barreling straight toward the South Heaven Gate...

Like a massive tsunami!

...