521: Chapter 521 On Life and Death

He severed all contact with the outside world, immersing his entire mind in Cultivation.

Day and night, he absorbed the Death Qi from the River of Forgetfulness; the viscous corpse water, which even a Golden Immortal would avoid, was the best resource for his Cultivation.

He opened every pore on his body, greedily devouring the Death Qi contained within the river water like a sponge absorbing water.

Every wisp of Death Qi that entered his body surged through his long-dried Meridians, bringing tearing, excruciating pain.

But he did not care in the least. Pain? What did that matter? As long as he could step into the Immortal Lord Realm, what did it matter if this Physical Body was completely destroyed?

What he pursued was to control death itself with his own will.

He wanted to comprehend the Profound Truth of the Great Dao of Death from this endless death, thereby condensing the Immortal Lord mark and taking that final step.

Ten thousand years of sitting in meditation, ten thousand years of Cultivation, ten thousand years of enlightenment.

He was finally approaching the threshold.

"Death... the end of all things, everything returns to nothingness."

The Su Family Grand Elder muttered to himself; the Death Qi around him had become dense to the extreme, faintly condensing into a prototype of a gray-black rune in the Void Realm.

This was the Immortal Lord Dao Fruit mark that was about to take shape!

He was only a sliver of enlightenment away from a successful Breakthrough.

He was immersed in a wondrous state of Dao enlightenment; in his perception, all things in heaven and earth were moving toward death.

Stars would extinguish, Spiritual Qi would be exhausted, mountains and rivers would weather away, and seas would dry up.

All existence, no matter how powerful or glorious, had nothingness as its final destination.

Death was the destiny of all things, and what he wanted to do was to become the spokesperson for this destiny, to become the Incarnation of death in the human world.

The Death Qi around him reached an unprecedented concentration at this moment.

The twisted patterns faintly outlined a terrifying scroll of all spirits perishing.

In the scroll, there were collapsing mountains and rivers, exhausted rivers, extinguished suns and moons, and all living beings turned to ashes.

Everything was moving toward death, everything was returning to nothingness.

Only the last sliver was missing!

The heart of the Su Family Grand Elder, which had long been as dead and silent as withered wood, could not help but produce a trace of excitement.

Ten thousand years, a full ten thousand years of sitting in meditation, ten thousand years of suffering, ten thousand years of waiting.

Finally, was it about to bear fruit?

However, just at this moment.

"Swish... swish..."

A slow and rhythmic sound of rowing broke the silence of tens of thousands of years on the banks of the River of Forgetfulness.

The Su Family Grand Elder opened his eyes abruptly; those eyes, originally completely dead and silent, now suddenly shot out two terrifying, ghostly green rays of death light.

The light was like substance, piercing through the thick fog of Death Qi above the River of Forgetfulness, shooting toward the direction the sound came from.

Who dared to trespass into his Forbidden Ground of Dao enlightenment?

The death light illuminated the distant water surface, and then, the Su Family Grand Elder saw a scene that made his pupils shrink.

He saw that on the surface of the River of Forgetfulness, which was full of corrosiveness and which even Golden Immortals dared not easily set foot on, a small boat had appeared at some unknown time.

The small boat was pitch black, and at the bow stood a ferryman wearing a coir raincoat and a bamboo hat.

Even more bizarrely, this small boat had a very shallow draft, almost just lightly resting on the river surface, as if it were not hindered at all by the viscous liquid.

The small boat was pitch black, and at the bow stood a ferryman wearing a coir raincoat and a bamboo hat.

The ferryman held a green bamboo pole and lightly tapped it in the River of Forgetfulness, and the small boat glided along with it.

The Su Family Grand Elder's first reaction was absurdity; the River of Forgetfulness had no other shore, so where did the ferry come from? Moreover, this was the Forbidden Ground of the ancestral grounds of the foreign Underworld Clan; who dared to ferry here? And who could ferry here?

But the next second, the sense of absurdity in his heart was replaced by a chill.

Because the green bamboo pole in the ferryman's hand tapped lightly into the River of Forgetfulness.

With just that light tap, the bamboo pole submerged into the viscous dark red river water, making a soft "gurgle" sound; the surrounding corpse water and vengeful spirits actually scattered the moment they touched the bamboo pole, as if they had encountered some terrifying existence.

The small boat glided forward silently for a distance, and the direction the small boat was heading was actually the very reef where he was!

The Su Family Grand Elder's eyes turned completely gloomy.

His withered body slowly stood up, and his worn Daoist robe fluttered loudly in the wind formed by the Death Qi.

A pressure, like substance, spread from his body, causing circles of Lianyi to rise on the River of Forgetfulness.

This was the pressure of the absolute Peak of the Golden Immortal Realm!

Under this pressure, the surrounding Void Realm began to twist and deform.

The rolling of the river water became more intense, and countless vengeful spirits let out even more shrill wails.

Even the huge Nether Iron reef let out a creaking sound under this pressure, unable to bear the burden.

"Who are you?"

The Su Family Grand Elder looked coldly at the ferryman, his voice as cold as ten-thousand-year ice.

"How dare you trespass on the River of Forgetfulness... while I am comprehending the Dao!"

The moment the word "trespass" fell, the death pressure that shrouded the entire water area suddenly condensed, turning into an invisible giant hand, fiercely crushing toward the small boat!

He wanted to crush this uninvited guest, along with that eerie black boat, into powder!

A "crack, crack" bursting sound came from the Void Realm; it was the sound of space itself beginning to shatter under this pressure.

The river water was pressed downward, forming the shape of a huge palm print.

The pressure in the center of the palm print was enough to instantly crush a ten-thousand-foot-high mountain into powder.

However, the ferryman seemed not to have noticed this terrifying pressure capable of destroying heaven and earth.

He still stood at the bow, still slightly lowered his head, with only a small portion of his chin exposed under the brim of the bamboo hat.

The coir raincoat remained motionless in the raging Death Qi storm, not even a single blade of grass fluttering.

He only gently shook the green bamboo pole in his hand.

"Swish..."

The small boat continued to glide forward, and the death pressure capable of shattering the Void Realm landed on the boat, only to disappear without a trace as if a clay ox had entered the sea.

Immediately after, a long sigh came from under the bamboo hat.

"Sigh..."

The sigh was very light, yet it clearly reached the ears of the Su Family Grand Elder.

The sigh carried a complex emotion—there was pity, there was regret, but more so, it was a sense of detachment and compassion after seeing through the Reincarnation of worldly affairs.

"Sitting in meditation for ten thousand years, only seeking death..."

The ferryman's voice was hoarse and weathered, each word seeming to be squeezed out from the cracks of time, carrying a heavy sense of the passage of time.

"I see you are so obsessed with death, yet you haven't even touched the threshold; it is truly pathetic."

Pathetic—these two words were like two ice thorns, fiercely piercing into the Su Family Grand Elder's Dao Heart.

The Su Family Grand Elder's expression instantly became extremely ugly.

Flames of anger ignited in his ghostly green eyes, and the Death Qi around him rolled violently like boiling magma, condensing behind him into a hundred-foot-tall phantom of a Great Demon God.

The phantom was pitch black, its face twisted and ferocious, entwined with billions of vengeful spirits, emitting a terrifying pressure capable of making an Immortal Lord look sideways.