416: Chapter 416 Upgraded to Immortal Artifact, Slaying Taiyi!

“immortal execution platform!”

He summoned that dark, cold execution platform, stained with countless mottled dark-red bloodstains, and suspended it at the highest point of the furnace fire.

“Merge!”

Lu Yuan's hands turned into a blur of phantoms, too fast for the naked eye to capture, as he struck out one supreme Artifact Refining hand seal after another.

As the hand seals were struck, the faint sound of the Dao harmonizing echoed from the void, and tiny golden lotuses even bloomed and withered in mid-air.

Under the terrifyingly high temperatures of the dual Heavenly Flames, which could even collapse space, the extremely precious Immortal materials finally began to melt slowly, turning into the most pure, radiant metallic liquid.

Under the precise guidance of Lu Yuan's massive Divine Sense, these liquids turned into thousands of thin threads, seeping bit by bit into the pitch-black body of the immortal execution platform.

“Buzz, rumble—”

As the Immortal materials continued to merge, the immortal execution platform began to undergo a violent transformation, emitting a dull hum like a Vicious Beast awakening.

The originally pitch-black body now surprisingly revealed streaks of eye-piercing, dark-gold Karma runes.

These runes moved and crawled across the platform like living creatures, interweaving into eerie and grand scenes.

There were ancient gods and demons with twelve wings on their backs, ten thousand feet tall, being ruthlessly cut in two, their divine blood staining the starry sky red.

There were ancient Immortals and Buddhas with ten thousand halos suspended behind their heads, nailed firmly to copper pillars with iron spikes, their Buddha blood turning into a surging sea of blood as they wailed; there were even countless phantoms of Immortals lined up in long queues, stretching their necks in despair to be slaughtered under the guillotine.

It was as if this execution platform had truly slain gods and Buddhas across the heavens and slaughtered an entire era in the distant past!

Above the secret room, hazy gray Chaos Qi faintly interwove with the Law of death representing absolute silence. The void was directly torn apart, forming a miniature thundercloud brewing a destructive Lightning Tribulation. The thunder was dull and oppressive, as if the heavens would not allow such a lethal weapon to exist.

But under the suppression of the ancient and heavy myriad things mother qi cauldron in mid-air, billions of strands of Profound Yellow Qi fell like waterfalls, firmly pinning down the thundercloud like a pillar holding back the sea. This shocking Phenomenon was suppressed within the secret room, not leaking out in the slightest.

Three days later.

“Success!”

Lu Yuan's eyes shot out brilliant light as he let out a great shout, striking the final, extremely complex hand seal into the execution platform.

“Boom!”

The immortal execution platform suddenly erupted with a blood-gold light that pierced through the void, and the entire body transformed from pitch-black to a purple-gold that hid a bloody glow.

Especially that high-hanging guillotine blade; a wisp of grayish-white Death Qi flowed along its edge, and it now emitted an ultimate sharpness that made even Lu Yuan himself feel his Soul tremble.

Low Grade Immortal Artifact!

After being refined through a massive amount of top-tier Immortal materials, the immortal execution platform finally broke through its original shackles and ascended into a true Immortal Artifact!

Its Karma-locking ability had undergone a qualitative leap. Now, with only a faint medium, it could ignore any defensive Formation, cross the vast barriers of the Immortal Realm, and achieve true 'words become Law,' a certain kill through Karma!

“Taiyi True Immortal, your time of death has come.”

A cold smile curled on Lu Yuan's lips as he took out the gold-stamped decree that Taiyi True Immortal had previously sent down from his storage space.

Although this decree had lost its power, it still retained the most primal Divine Soul aura of Taiyi True Immortal.

“Sacrifice!”

With a thought, Lu Yuan mercilessly threw the complete Divine Soul of a Late-stage Mysterious Immortal he had previously slain into the immortal execution platform.

“Ah—! No!”

Amidst the shrill, fear-filled screams of that Mysterious Immortal's Divine Soul, the phantom of the guillotine on the immortal execution platform suddenly fell.

In an instant, it was ground into the purest Soul Origin, becoming the fuel to activate this peerless Immortal Artifact.

The blood-colored runes across the entire immortal execution platform were instantly lit up, emitting an eerie red light.

Lu Yuan tossed the decree into the immortal execution platform, formed hand seals, and the Chaos Golden Immortal Law within his body surged into it like a bursting dam.

“Karma lock, strike!”

“Crack!”

A sound of a guillotine blade falling, seemingly from the Nine Serenity Hell, echoed within the secret room.

An invisible, intangible blood-colored Blade of Karma, visible only on the level of Karma, instantly split through layers of void.

It caused no spatial fluctuations; instead, it followed the thread of Karma connecting the decree to its master. With an incomprehensible speed that ignored the Laws of physics, it crossed the endless, vast starry sky and headed straight for a remote mining area in Daluo Heaven.

...

Daluo Heaven, Black Gold Mining Area. The environment here was harsh, the sky forever shrouded in a thick layer of lead-gray clouds, devoid of sunlight.

The bone-chilling Black Astral Wind blew day and night, carrying slag as sharp as knives as it ravaged the desolate land. Spiritual Qi was extremely scarce; every breath felt like swallowing thorny grit.

Taiyi True Immortal was sitting in a crude stone hut built from discarded Ore, the walls leaking wind from all sides.

He no longer had the high spirits he possessed during his Ascension; he was now dressed in rags, his face as withered as a dried corpse.

He was staring fixedly at the pitifully small mining output in the ledger on the dilapidated stone table, so worried he was pulling out his already thinning gray hair.

“Damn Lower Realm ants! How dare they play me!”

He cursed through gritted teeth, his bloodshot eyes bulging and looking incredibly hideous. “Ten years! A full ten years! Where are the promised ten thousand Mahayana Cultivators? Because my performance is at the bottom, I’ve already been warned three times by the deacon above! If I can't hand over the quota of immortal ore next month, my consciousness will be stripped, and I'll be thrown into the deepest waste mine pit to serve as fertilizer!”

“No, I can't wait anymore! Even at the cost of a hundred years of cultivation, I will send down an Incarnation to the Lower Realm and capture all those worthless descendants to serve as coolies!”

A flash of madness and ruthlessness crossed Taiyi True Immortal's eyes as he suddenly stood up, preparing to set up a cross-realm altar.

Just then, his heart suddenly gave an unprovoked leap. An unprecedented, hair-raising sense of mortal crisis descended upon him without warning.

This sense of crisis came too fast and too violently, even exceeding the scope of his perception of danger.

He felt as if he were no longer an Immortal, but a lamb waiting for slaughter, targeted by an ancient primordial beast.

“What's going on?”

He looked up in terror, wanting to release his Divine Sense to investigate the surroundings, and the weak Immortal power in his body instinctively tried to mobilize to form a shield.

But in the next instant, this was a dimensional strike that transcended space and time.

There was no earth-shaking sound, no spatial-tearing edge, only an absolute silence that stifled the Soul.

“Puchi!”

A faint sound, yet infinitely amplified in his mind.

At the center of Taiyi True Immortal's brow, a smooth blood-red thin line split open without warning.

This Blade of Karma was not a physical blade; it cut more than just Taiyi True Immortal's Physical Body—it directly severed his thread of fate and his very existence in this world.