181: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: Altar Mutation and the Arrival of the Heavenly Tribulation

The deep hum showed no signs of stopping.

Instead, it intensified.

Buzz—Buzz—Buzz—

The sound penetrated the Law barrier of Burial Immortal Valley, no longer confined to this nascent blessed land.

It used the world Origin that Lin Fan had just grasped as a medium, like a stone thrown into a calm lake, stirring up ripples that spread boundlessly throughout the entire Cultivation World.

By the East Sea, an old Cultivator who had just sensed a hint of Dragon Vein recovery suddenly awoke from his meditation, blood oozing from his mouth and nose, his face filled with horror as he looked at the sky.

In the extreme northern snowfield, nascent water droplets instantly froze into ice before they could fall, and all living beings prostrated themselves on the ground, trembling, as if the end of the world had arrived.

Mortal Dynasty.

Within the imperial city.

The clamor of the marketplace abruptly ceased.

Peddlers and porters, princes and nobles, everyone stopped what they were doing, an indescribable palpitation gripping their hearts.

The sky seemed to be collapsing.

At this moment, all living beings in the entire world felt that ancient, majestic, yet oppressive aura of ending and death coming from the altar.

Great disaster loomed.

Lin Fan floated in the air, his brows furrowed tightly for the first time.

What he felt was clearer than anyone else.

Just as the hum reached a certain critical point, a new pressure, billions of times more terrifying than the previous “reckoning” force, descended with a crash from the depths of the Void Realm above the Nine Heavens.

This time, it was no longer an invisible and intangible force.

It carried a clear, utterly cold “Will.”

This Will, like an invisible giant hand, instantly enveloped the entire world.

It did not attack Lin Fan’s immortal Physical Body.

Instead, it directly grabbed at the link between him and the world’s Origin.

It wanted to strip him of his Dominator authority.

It wanted to completely uproot him from this world.

Lin Fan’s pupils suddenly contracted.

He clearly felt that his ability to mobilize the power of the world’s Origin was being forcibly suppressed and cut off by a higher-dimensional Law.

The mountain Law, which he had previously controlled like an arm, now felt heavy and sluggish.

What made his scalp tingle even more was that.

That Will even began to infiltrate his Divine Soul, attempting to analyze, interfere with, and even erase his [Rebirth Counterattack] System rules.

What it wanted to do was not just kill him.

But to completely erase the very concept of him “courting death without dying” from the Law level.

[Warning.]

[Detected unknown Advanced authority attempting conceptual erasure of host.]

[Rebirth mechanism is experiencing strong interference.]

[System Soul Energy is at risk of overload.]

[Warning! If death occurs in this state, the success rate of Rebirth is less than 0.01%, with a risk of permanent annihilation.]

For the first time, the System’s prompt tone was accompanied by red garbled code, on the verge of collapse.

Lin Fan’s heart instantly sank to rock bottom.

Permanent annihilation.

These four words, like four insurmountable mountains, heavily pressed upon his Divine Soul.

Death, for him, had always been just a process of refreshing rewards.

But this time, death might be the true end... Far beyond the forbidden zone.

In the ice crystal-covered valley.

Li Hanyue’s beautiful face, which had just shown a faint smile, instantly turned pale.

Pfft.

She suddenly spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, which splattered on the ten-thousand-year Mystic Ice in front of her, like blooming red plum blossoms.

An indescribable, immense pain and pressure, originating from the deepest part of the Soul alliance, made her delicate body tremble violently.

She could clearly “see” that.

Lin Fan’s Divine Soul was being frantically torn and squeezed by an boundless gray storm representing absolute order, as if to crush him into the most insignificant dust.

He was in danger.

A danger she could not comprehend, transcending all her knowledge, and possibly truly fatal.

This thought made Li Hanyue’s heart feel as if it were tightly gripped by a cold large hand.

She did not hesitate in the slightest.

She didn't even have time to wipe the blood from the corner of her mouth.

She instantly gathered all her mental energy and circulated the Mystic Ice Art within her to its extreme.

The pure, cold, and eternally tranquil power of the Yin, no longer gently nourishing, transformed into the most resilient chain, and through the link of the alliance, injected itself desperately into Lin Fan’s collapsing Divine Soul world.

She could not fight against that storm.

But she could become the only island in the storm where Lin Fan could find refuge... Li Hanyue’s power, like a clear spring, flowed into Lin Fan’s Divine Soul, which was about to be completely engulfed by the gray storm.

That familiar coolness, carrying her unique aura, instantly gave his chaotic Will an anchor point.

He did not resist head-on.

Because he simply couldn't.

In the face of this power representing the heavenly dao will, he, a newly promoted world Dominator, was as insignificant as a toddler facing a fully armed giant.

However, even giants have weaknesses.

That is, they are not flexible enough.

A hint of desperate resolve flashed in Lin Fan’s eyes.

He gave up contending for the world’s Origin, allowing that Will to strip away his control layer by layer.

He poured all his mental energy into his Sea of Consciousness, onto the “Heavenly Dao Fragment” that had just come into his possession, sparkling like a diamond.

He no longer passively endured.

Instead, he began to actively reverse-analyze the power that sought to erase him.

“Reckoning...”

“Order...”

“Eradication...”

“Where is the flaw... where is the flaw...”

His Divine Thought, like billions of probes, frantically pierced into the gray storm, capturing fleeting Law Veins in the instant of being shredded and Rebirth.

Found it.

Lin Fan’s Will captured a key point.

This “Heavenly Dao reckoning” was not an indiscriminate attack; its core was to target “anomalies.”

That is, him, the one who shouldn't exist and couldn't be understood by it, the one who courted death.

Then.

Let me make you understand even less.

Lin Fan hardened his heart and made an extremely “courting death” decision.

He completely released all defenses on his immortal Physical Body.

He even actively exposed the most core sliver of Origin Qi in his Divine Soul, bound to the System, to the reckoning Will.

Like a naked gambler, he pushed his last chip, his very life, onto the gambling table.

Come.

Kill me.

Let you see enough.

Let you concentrate all your power on this one point.

This action was nothing short of a provocation.

In the Void Realm, the reckoning Will, which had been in full suppression, noticeably paused for an instant.

As if a precise machine encountered an incomprehensible program that actively sought death.

Immediately after.

An enraged, even more immense, and terrifying power gathered from the Void Realm.

Above the sky, the gray storm began to rotate violently and contract.

Finally.

At the core of the storm, a giant, indescribably vague and indifferent “Eye” vaguely appeared.

It had no pupils.

No emotion.

What it had was only pure indifference, representing the ultimate order of the Universe.

As soon as it appeared, the time and space of the entire world seemed to freeze.

All things lost their meaning before it.

eye of the heavenly dao.

This was the true manifestation of the Will of the higher-dimensional Heavenly Dao.

Its gaze, or rather, all its power, precisely locked onto the sliver of Origin Qi that Lin Fan had exposed.

Eradication.

An irresistible Will, composed purely of the concept of “eradication,” descended.

Lin Fan’s immortal Physical Body could not withstand this Will for even a single instant.

From skin, to bones, to Divine Soul.

It disintegrated inch by inch.

Turning into the most complete Void Realm.

His existence seemed to have been cleanly erased from this world by an eraser.

However.

It was precisely at that absolute “zero point” when he was completely erased.

At that final critical point between his existence and non-existence.

[Rebirth Counterattack, triggered.]

Boom.

A completely opposite force, carrying endless vitality and rebellious Will, burst forth from that erased “zero point” with a roar.

Lin Fan’s figure re-condensed in the Void Realm.

But this time, he did not waste a single shred of power to reshape his Physical Body.

In the instant of his Rebirth, he gathered all the Dao rhyme of “breaking before building,” the power of the Yin transmitted by Li Hanyue, all his understanding of this world, and even the “Heavenly Dao Fragment” itself.

Everything.

All converged into a single point.

A point of light, containing the ultimate mockery and rebellion against the Heavenly Dao Law, dazzling to the extreme.

Then.

He aimed at that high and mighty, indifferent “eye of the heavenly dao.”

And fiercely struck it.

This strike.

There was no sound.

No light explosion.

The dazzling point of light precisely struck the blurred “eye of the heavenly dao.”

Time, at this moment, seemed to stand still.

That giant eye, representing absolute order and unchanging through the ages, for the first time, showed a slight, violent tremor.

Visible cracks, one after another, frantically spread across its blurred outline.

Disorder.

Rampage.

Lin Fan failed to destroy it.

But his strike, like the most virulent virus, successfully contaminated the core order of the “eye of the heavenly dao.”

The reckoning force that had originally gathered to erase him instantly lost control.

They began to backfire.

Not backfiring on Lin Fan.

But backfiring on the reckoning mechanism itself.

“Hiss—”

An indescribable hiss, as if from the deepest reaches of the Universe, filled with pain and bewilderment, resounded through the Void Realm.

The eye of the heavenly dao, with the crack that ran through it, quickly retreated like a tide, disappearing into the Void Realm.

The terrifying pressure that enveloped the entire world also dissipated.

The hum of the altar gradually weakened, finally falling silent.

The sky returned to clarity.

Thud.

Lin Fan’s reshaped immortal Physical Body fell from mid-air, heavily hitting the ground, his aura extremely weak.

Although he successfully repelled the eye of the heavenly dao, he also paid a huge price, with both his immortal Physical Body and Divine Soul on the verge of collapse.

But he smiled.

Because in his Sea of Consciousness.

That “Heavenly Dao Fragment,” after being scoured by the eye of the heavenly dao’s energy and fused with his final strike, became more complete and profound.

His understanding of higher-level Law also reached a new height.

Lin Fan gasped, looking up at the calm Void Realm.

He knew.

This was far from over.

This was merely a casual “scrutiny” from the higher-dimensional Heavenly Dao towards him, an “anomaly.”

And his counterattack, though successful, had also completely exposed himself to “its” sight.

Perhaps even enraged “it.”

A true Era Calamity, dominated by a higher Will, might come sooner and be more brutal than he imagined.

And the altar beneath his feet, which had just fallen silent.

Seemed to be the “switch” that ignited all of this.