I Was Forced to Marry a “Trash” Cultivator, But She Turned Out to Be a Reborn Empress!

Chapter 223: Void Rift, Nascent Soul Perfection

The instant the Sun and Moon Boat pierced the pitch-black curtain of light, the world turned upside down.

Space twisted violently. Heaven and earth lost their meaning.

Qiu Ruoli’s vision plunged into darkness. A crushing pressure, like an invisible titan’s hand, squeezed her internal organs until she gasped for air.

Skreee—!

Thousands of ghostly shrieks pierced her eardrums. The sound seemed to crawl up from the depths of the Nine Nether Hell, laden with infinite resentment and madness.

Her Divine Sense felt as though it were being impaled by ten thousand needles. Every nerve in her body screamed in agony.

Pfft!

Blood sprayed from her lips. The crimson droplets floated into the void, turning into perfect spheres before being shredded into red mist by the violent spatial turbulence.

“Hmph.”

Shen Xian snorted coldly. With a flick of his sleeves, two streams of light—one gold, one silver—shot out into the abyss.

In the suffocating darkness, that radiance was blinding, like the first rays of creation.

The Sun and Moon Boat detonated with brilliance. The sun and moon totems carved into the prow roared to life, twisting and elongating until they manifested as two phantom dragons. They coiled around the hull, weaving an impenetrable barrier of gold and silver light.

The moment the barrier solidified, the chaotic turbulence was walled off.

Only then could Qiu Ruoli see clearly.

The void was a shattered mirror. Countless jagged fragments of space drifted by, flickering with dangerous, refracted light. Some shards reflected twisted, impossible landscapes; others radiated a heart-stopping, abyssal darkness.

Wreckage littered the expanse—shattered Dharma Treasures, desiccated skeletons, and even the severed hull of a massive ancient warship, now covered in eerie, pulsating black veins.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Suddenly, the darkness ruptured. Countless bloody vortexes exploded open like greedy maws.

From these rifts, colossal skeletal hands reached out.

The arms were pale to the point of transparency, their joints studded with razor-sharp bone spurs. Thick, black ichor dripped from their fingertips, hissing as it corroded the very fabric of space.

“Void Bone Demons!” Qiu Ruoli gasped, her voice trembling.

She had read the Sect’s forbidden archives. These monstrosities were born within spatial rifts, evolving solely to hunt cultivators foolish enough to traverse the void.

Every single one of them possessed power equivalent to the Golden Core Perfection realm. Worse, they hunted in packs. Even a peak Nascent Soul cultivator would flee upon seeing a swarm.

And now, over a hundred of them were lunging at the boat.

They clawed frantically at the light barrier. The black ichor dripping from their claws sizzled against the gold and silver shield, rising in plumes of acrid green smoke.

Qiu Ruoli’s despair deepened as she looked into the distance—dozens more blood-red vortexes were opening.

She instinctively formed hand seals, desperate to contribute, to fight, to do something.

But Shen Xian merely stood with his hands clasped behind his back, a cold, mocking sneer curling his lips.

“Courting death.”

He tapped the gunwale with a single finger.

Hum—!

The Sun and Moon Boat shuddered. The Zhou Tian Star Chart engraved along the hull ignited with blinding silver fire. Three hundred and sixty phantom stars detached from the ship, rising to form a magnificent celestial constellation in the void.

BOOM!

The stars unleashed a torrent of destruction.

Three hundred and sixty beams of starlight tore through the darkness. The Void Bone Demons didn’t even have time to scream. Under the bombardment, their bodies dissolved like snow thrown into a furnace.

The front ranks were instantly pulverized into bone dust. The shockwaves ripped the demons behind them into fragments.

Ripples of destruction oscillated through the void, clearing a path.

The Sun and Moon Boat surged forward. Spirit flames of gold and silver erupted from the stern, fueled by runes that forcibly tore a stable passage through the chaos.

Qiu Ruoli watched, stunned. Where the ship passed, the violent spatial turbulence was forcibly smoothed flat. The twisted fragments of space calmed under the ship’s light, stabilizing as if commanded by an emperor.

This overturned everything she knew.

Even the Tianyao Sect’s most treasured flagships could not carve a stable tunnel through a void storm. This Sun and Moon Boat possessed capabilities that defied the logic of ordinary Dharma Treasures.

She didn’t know that Shen Xian had already reforged this vessel, imbuing it with trace amounts of spatial law.

Just as her shock reached its peak, a shadow fell over them.

It was absolute. It blotted out the void’s faint light, drowning the ship in the shade of death.

A skeletal hand, thousands of feet tall, broke through the darkness.

Each finger bone was like a pillar supporting the heavens, wrapped in pitch-black demonic runes. In the hollow of its palm, a ghostly green soul-fire raged, emitting a Pressure that threatened to crush the soul.

“Nascent Soul Perfection… A Void Bone Venerable!”

Qiu Ruoli’s face went deathly pale. Her knees buckled. Under that terrifying Pressure, her spiritual power solidified in her veins. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.

The skeletal palm descended.

CRACK!

The void groaned. The Sun and Moon Boat’s barrier wailed, spiderweb cracks spreading rapidly across the gold and silver shield. The hull screamed under the strain.

Shen Xian’s eyes flashed with cold electricity.

A crimson sigil ignited between his brows—the Li Fire True Seal.

In an instant, he was engulfed in raging flames. He stood on the deck like a Fire God descended to the mortal coil, the heat radiating from him so intense it turned the surrounding space into white vapor.

This was the hallmark of the Nascent Soul realm: the manipulation of Heaven and Earth Laws.

“Rise!”

Shen Xian commanded.

Spiritual Qi from a hundred miles around collapsed toward him. Within his Dantian, his Nascent Soul opened its eyes and wove a complex seal.

Thousands of crimson threads materialized in the void, each humming with the pure, destructive essence of Li Fire.

The giant bone palm crashed down. Shen Xian did not dodge.

He clenched his right fist.

The crimson threads snapped together, weaving instantly into a colossal flame sword, hundreds of feet long. The fire dancing upon the blade was not ordinary flame—it was True Fire, infused with Law.

SLASH!

The flame sword met the bone palm.

There were no fancy techniques. This was a brutal collision of Law and raw power.

The void convulsed. Shockwaves shattered the nearby spatial debris.

Massive cracks ravaged the Bone Venerable’s fingers. The flame sword shattered inch by inch, its energy spent.

ROAR!

The Void Bone Venerable bellowed in pain and rage. Its aura spiked, and a tsunami of death energy rolled toward the ship.

Shen Xian’s gaze remained impassive.

His Nascent Soul pulsed with power. A small crimson cauldron shot from his sleeve, expanding in the wind until it was the size of a mountain.

The Burning Heaven Cauldron.

Purple lightning runes etched on the cauldron flared. A torrent of violet thunder spewed from its mouth, weaving a net of lightning across the void.

Simultaneously, a bronze compass rose above Shen Xian’s head, unleashing a pillar of divine fire.

Fire met Thunder.

The two energies merged, tripling in intensity. The flames turned from red to a blinding, purification white. The oncoming tide of death energy evaporated instantly.

Now that he was a Nascent Soul cultivator, Shen Xian could finally unleash seventy percent of his True Spirit Treasures’ potential!

The Bone Venerable, undeterred, charged again. Its massive body pressed down like Mount Tai, its sheer mass threatening to pulverize the ship.

Qiu Ruoli felt like an ant beneath a falling boot.

Shen Xian moved his fingers.

“Form.”

The sky full of white fire coalesced, twisting into a massive Flame Dragon. Inside the dragon’s eyes, a spark of intelligence flickered—a wisp of Shen Xian’s own divided spirit.

The dragon roared, intercepting the giant. It clamped its jaws onto the Bone Venerable’s wrist, the white flames spreading along the demonic runes like a plague.

Qiu Ruoli stared, her mouth slightly open.

This battle was beyond her comprehension. Golden Core cultivators fought with techniques; Nascent Soul cultivators fought with the very principles of the world.

The Bone Venerable shrieked, swinging its other hand in a desperate slap.

Shen Xian calmly raised his hand.

Dong!

An ancient bell manifested, suppressing the chaotic void.

The Mountain-Suppressing Chaotic Sky Bell.

As the bell tolled, visible soundwaves rippled outward, freezing space. The Bone Venerable’s movements slowed by thirty percent, as if it were moving through molasses.

Then, the reliefs carved upon the bell began to move.

“True Spirit Manifestation.”

A roar shook the void. A Profound Earth War Dragon, hundreds of feet long, tore itself free from the bronze surface.

Composed entirely of heavy, profound yellow crystal and etched with ancient scripts, the War Dragon swung its massive tail.

BANG!

Three of the Bone Venerable’s finger bones exploded into dust. The shards ignited, burning with inextinguishable golden fire.

The Bone Venerable went berserk. Ignoring the flames consuming its body, it lunged, changing its slap into a grasping motion, attempting to crush the War Dragon in a suicide grip.

“Die.”

Shen Xian’s Li Fire True Seal blazed like a third eye. He slammed his palms together.

The Mountain-Suppressing Chaotic Sky Bell descended, spewing a pillar of towering divine fire. Trapped by the bell’s suppression and the dragons’ assault, the half-step Soul Formation monster had nowhere to run.

Its massive skeletal body began to fracture. Inch by inch, bone by bone, it shattered, turning into a rain of white dust that drifted into the dark void.

Silence returned to the rift.

Shen Xian landed softly on the deck. His face was slightly pale from the massive expenditure of Spiritual Qi, but his aura remained terrifyingly sharp.

Inside him, his Nascent Soul worked furiously, repairing the minor strains on his meridians.

Qiu Ruoli slumped against the railing, realizing her back was soaked in cold sweat.

She finally understood why Nascent Soul cultivators were addressed as “True Lords.” The gap between her and him wasn’t a river; it was an ocean.

‘I must break through,’ she vowed silently, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the rail. ‘I must reach the Nascent Soul realm!’

She looked at Shen Xian’s back. Complex emotions churned in her chest.

The Sun and Moon Boat accelerated, vanishing into the depths of the void.