As Meng Hao's voice reached his ears and echoed about, Hai Qingdong felt a hand pat down onto the top of his head....

BOOM!

Hai Qingdong's eyes went wide as the skin on his head ripped and tore. In the blink of an eye, his entire body collapsed into pieces.

In that moment, all traces of Hai Qingdong existing in the world vanished. The teleportation portal winked out.

Having been killed a third time in a row by Meng Hao, he was now truly and utterly dead!

In the moment of his death, as the blood and gore drifted about, his Echelon mark began to glow softly, and then floated toward Meng Hao.

"Can't believe a word that Yuwen Jian says!" he thought. "Earlier he told me that he had killed Hai Qingdong once before. From the look of things, that was complete nonsense!" That notion had occurred to him earlier when he killed Hai Qingdong for the second time. Now, he gave a cold harrumph as he reached out and grabbed the Echelon mark.

The mark instantly fused into Meng Hao, causing an intense, stabbing pain in his forehead. Now a more complicated mark had appeared on his forehead, and if you looked closely, you couldn't tell that there were actually two symbols there. It looked complicated and ornate, as if it had undergone profound transformations.

At the same time, a tremor ran through Meng Hao, and he felt something like an indescribable power flowing out of the mark on his forehead. Simultaneously, his Demon Sealing Hexing Magic spontaneously began to flow, as the legacy of the League of Demon Sealers merged with the aura of the Echelon mark.

When that union occurred, Meng Hao's body shook violently, and a massive roaring like the destruction of Heaven and Earth filled his mind. It reached out to his soul and caused an invisible beam to fly up into the sky.

Meng Hao looked up into the sky, and realized that he was surrounded by a pillar of light. The light, with Meng Hao in it, shot rapidly upward, breaking through all obstacles, emerging from the Windswept Realm and piercing out into the Heavens.

Without stopping, it rose higher and higher. In the blink of an eye it had pierced through everything to appear... in the Mountain and Sea Realm!

He now hovered at an indescribable height, looking down at nine mountains arranged together. A sun and a moon orbited around them, and there were also nine seas. Furthermore, he was even able to see all of the living things in the Nine Mountains and Nine Seas.

Beyond that, outside of the Nine Mountains and Nine Seas, seemingly attached to the Realm and yet below it, were three land masses.

One of them... was the Windswept Realm!

Meng Hao's eyes widened as he looked from the three lower land masses up to the Nine Mountains and Nine Seas. He could see Planet South Heaven, and his parents, standing atop the Tower of Tang. He wanted to call out in greeting, but no sound came out.

He also saw his sister practicing cultivation in the Emperor Immortal Sect. He saw many familiar faces in the Ninth Mountain and Sea. He saw Fatty, Chen Fan, Wang Youcai... and in the Nine Seas God World, he saw Granny Nine and the others sitting cross-legged in meditation as they waited for the Windswept Realm to re-open.

Feeling mentally shaken, he looked over at the Ninth Mountain, and on the very peak, he saw an enormous eye that suddenly turned to stare at him in confusion.

He saw Ke Jiusi sitting in meditation in the Ancient Demon Immortal Sect. He looked over at Planet East Victory, and saw the clone of the Fang Clan Patriarch.

The clone originally was sitting there like a statue, but then suddenly he raised his head and peered through the void toward Meng Hao, looking slightly startled.

Meng Hao began to pant as he looked over all of the Nine Mountains and Seas. This was not his first time experiencing such a thing. He remembered something similar happening aboard the ship in the Milky Way Sea.1

Right now, he couldn't help but think of the deep impression left upon him by the old man on that ship.

As Meng Hao hovered there silently, he couldn't hold back from turning his head to look toward the Fourth Mountain. He began to tremble when he saw... Xu Qing!

Obviously, she had no way of knowing that he could see her. He felt very close to her, and at the same time, oh so far away, which caused his heart to twinge with pain.

She sat cross-legged in a river of stars, with Dharma Protectors meditating close by. She looked exactly as she had before reincarnation, simple and cold.

"Qing'er...." he murmured.

Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, a tremor ran through Xu Qing. Her eyelashes fluttered as she opened her eyes. A look of confusion could be seen in her eyes.

Some of the old women sitting next to her immediately approached.

"Mistress, what's wrong?"

Xu Qing didn't respond at first. She just stared out into the void.

Finally, she said, "It was like... someone was calling out to me." Her gaze eventually came to rest... in the direction of the Ninth Mountain and Sea.

As Meng Hao gazed at the Fourth Mountain and Sea, deep inside that very mountain, a pair of eyes suddenly focused on him for a moment, then looked away.

Meng Hao could sense it, shifted his gaze, and found himself looking at a huge statue. An incredible pressure emanated out from the statue, which Meng Hao found completely shocking. It was far, far more powerful than the pressure of any other person he had ever encountered.

Suddenly, an archaic voice projected out from the statue: "Ah, so you're on a mental journey, Meng Hao, my young friend. There is no need to worry about Xu Qing. I've accepted her as a disciple. Young friend... I wish you a safe and sound mental journey."

After a moment, Meng Hao clasped hands and bowed. Then he looked deeply at Xu Qing one more time, before turning his attention back to the Nine Mountains and Seas at large. He saw Patriarch Reliance floating through the starry sky of the Eighth Mountain, humming a little tune, seemingly without a care in the world.

All of a sudden, a tremor ran through him. He had no hair on his body, but if he did, they would all be standing on end.

"Who is it! Who's spying on me!!" he roared.

"Dammit, it feels like... like that little bastard Meng Hao! AHHHH!!

"The Patriarch has fled all the way here, and y-y-you... you just won't give up, huh?!?!" After looking around for a moment, he stared off blankly into the void for a while, then suddenly began to laugh heartily.

"Oh," he roared complacently, "so you're way over there. Come on, you bastard scoundrel. Come get me if you can!"

Meng Hao snorted coldly, but then suddenly, his eyes went wide. Because of the current state he was in, he suddenly saw something on Patriarch Reliance's back, in a seemingly ordinary corner of the State of Zhao.

There on Patriarch Reliance's back, right in the middle of the State of Zhao was... a door!!

That door radiated soft light, and as soon as Meng Hao caught sight of it, his heart seized. There was something very familiar about that door, something like the aura of the Ancient Demon Immortal Sect.

"The legacy of Lord Li!!" Meng Hao's eyes widened, and his heart began to pound as he realized that apparently, the legacy of Lord Li was actually on Patriarch Reliance's back!

He had little time to consider the matter as he found himself rising higher up within the pillar of light, flying higher and higher up into the void above the Mountain and Sea Realm.

He brought the trembling of his heart under control as he looked up into the vault of the void, and suddenly, a gleam of anticipation appeared in his eyes. He realized that all of this was most likely happening because of the Echelon. Although he wasn't sure exactly what was happening, he did know... exactly what the Mountain and Sea Realm was!

"33 Heavens, huh...? According to what I learned from the Sixth Generation Demon Sealer, breaking through the 33 Heavens is the Mountain and Sea Tribulation!" His eyes glittered as he began to speed faster and faster.1

He wasn't sure how much time passed, but eventually he broke through some sort of barrier and found himself looking at a path!

A path among the stars!

There were 33 Realms on that path, which seemed like 33 layers of successive seals that completely enveloped the Mountain and Sea Realm.

The beam of light took him along the path, and he pierced through one Realm after another. Eventually, he broke through the 33rd Realm, and it seemed like he was just on the verge of being able to see the truth about what was beyond. However, in that exact moment, a beam of golden light glittered in his eyes, until that was all that he could see.

Everything shattered!

A tremor ran through him, and the light around him began to collapse. The stream of his soul that was in the light began to recede, but before it did, a Heaven-rending Earth-crushing voice boomed out.

"Thou shalt call me... Dao Fang!"

Back in the Mountain and Sea Realm, in the Windswept Realm, on the National Aura Mountain of the Seventh Nation, Meng Hao trembled, let out a cry, and then coughed up a massive mouthful of blood. He staggered backward, his face pale white.

The mark on his forehead flickered rapidly, then slowly faded. His Demon Sealing Hexing Magic also faded away.

"What was that golden light?!?!

"And that voice. Dao Fang. Dao Fang.... Why does that name sound so familiar. Where did I hear it before!?"1 He began panting, and before he could recall anything more about the name, a brilliant beam of light rose up from the central temple of the Windswept Realm.

It was fully 30,000 meters wide, and it shot up into the sky as if to tear open the Heavens. Indescribable ripples spread out, and once again, that world of mountains and statues opened up.

All eyes were fixed up above, including all of the Echelon cultivators. No matter what they were doing at the moment, everyone felt their hearts pounding as they looked overhead.

The entire battlefield surrounding the central temple went silent, and everyone looked in shock at the unprecedentedly bright pillar of light.

In the world up above there was a mountain hidden in the mists behind all of the other mountains and statues. It was the tallest mountain in that world, and all of a sudden... that mountain crumbled into pieces and then reformed into a statue.

That statue looked like a celestial warrior, shocking to the extreme. As soon as everyone saw the face of the statue, they were astonished to see... Meng Hao!

At the same time, a cold, archaic voice echoed out, seemingly emotionless. It filled the entire Windswept Realm, echoing out through the sky.

"Meng Hao, Echelon cultivator from the Ninth Nation, has killed another Echelon cultivator, a criminal act--"

Before the voice could finish speaking, more words echoed out, although this time, they didn't seem to be completely devoid of emotion like before. Grim ripples spread out, and if you listened closely, you would be able to tell... that the voice actually seemed to be different than the first one!

"The reward... is an Ancient Treasure, Heavenly Champion Immortal Ax!"

Meng Hao's voyage through the Nine Mountains and Seas happened in chapter 685. For those of you who like to analyze all the details of the story, I recently updated the footnotes in that chapter with some new informationMeng Hao reached his conclusions about the Mountain and Sea Tribulation in chapter 1026Dao Fang was mentioned twice in the story before, in chapter 731 and chapter 887. In Chinese, it's 道方 dào fāng. Dao is the same as "the Dao" and Fang means "square." It's also the same Fang as the Fang Clan