543: Chapter 543 Eternal Seal, Endless Solitude

Then— hum! It was as if an invisible bell wave rippled outward.

Everyone saw it. This emerald-gold leaf floated quietly in the center of the blazing Nirvana fire, unmoved.

Like a lotus in fire, a boat in a catastrophe.

The leaf unfolded, and with every subtle tremor, it rippled a circle of emerald-gold halo.

This ripple was gentle yet resilient. As it spread, a wisp of extremely pure, extremely ancient, and majestic vitality, like a trickling warm current, was precisely injected into Jian Tanghuang's strongly beating heart meridian.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The heartbeat, accompanied by the injection of vitality, became increasingly powerful and magnificent—like an ancient war drum Awakening from slumber, beginning to beat slowly and firmly!

The moment Wanyan Shu's golden pupils saw the patterns on the leaf, they suddenly shone to the extreme! He recognized it!

"World Tree leaf..."

Wanyan Shu murmured, his voice dry and hoarse, like an old man on the verge of death reciting a long-forgotten yet unforgettable sacrificial text, every word trembling.

"This aura... This Power of Primordial Creation... It cannot be wrong... This is... that person's Disciple!"

"That person's Disciple." These five short words, spat out from Wanyan Shu's trembling soul voice, were like a meteorite burning with the beacon fires of eternity, smashing fiercely into a completely dead, frozen lake!

The remnant souls of the one hundred and eight Sword Masters—including Lu Changzhi—froze in that instant.

It was not silence. It was a dead stillness where even thoughts were instantly frozen.

In the Void Realm, even the low roar of the Divine Phoenix Life Wheel rotating and the crackling sound of the blazing Nirvana fire seemed to be suddenly drained and isolated by an invisible force.

Only the heartbeat coming from Jian Tanghuang's chest remained, growing louder and more soul-shaking—Thump! Thump! Thump!

Each beat was like a giant hammer, wrapped in the dust of time and the gravity of the galaxy, striking fiercely at the hearts of every remnant soul that had endured through eternity and was already riddled with holes!

Many of the Sword Masters' illusory figures even trembled slightly because of this, rippling!

"Ancestral Realm... Heaven Lord?"

The Red-Haired Swordmaster's action of bending down to pick up the charred wooden sword had long since frozen in mid-air. The charred wooden sword hung three inches below his fingertips, but he forgot to pick it up, merely staring blankly at Wanyan Shu, then at Lu Changzhi, his red hair moving without wind.

"Which Ancestral Realm Heaven Lord... are you talking about?"

His voice was filled with confusion—and a trace of deeply hidden terror that he was unwilling to admit.

Wanyan Shu did not answer immediately. His golden pupils remained locked tightly onto that emerald-gold leaf, as if he wanted to carve every one of its patterns into his own soul marrow that was about to dissipate.

Deep within his pupils, the core of obsession that had supported his eternal remnant soul and made him willing to keep watch in this silence was emitting a faint but clear cracking sound. Crack... crack...

This was the collapse of cognition, the subversion of predetermined fate, and the endless starlight that surged in, causing him fear and confusion after the curtain of despair was forcibly torn open.

"Which other one could it be?"

Wanyan Shu's voice became even hoarser, like coarse sand grinding with difficulty against thick bronze, every syllable exhausting his strength, yet carrying a kind of desperate confirmation:

"The supreme Dominator of the Primordial End-of-Law Era, who wielded the Power of Primordial Creation, held the Xuanhuang World Tower, used the World Tree as the supreme Dao foundation, and ruled over the Origin Realm of the Myriad Heavens and Worlds, the place of the Ancestral Origin of all Daos—"

He paused, the light of his remnant soul flickering violently. Finally, he spat out that honorific title which had almost become a taboo in the eternal silence, yet carried endless legends and complex emotions:

"The sole ruler of the Primordial Ancestral Realm—" "Taichu Heaven Lord."

The moment these four words fell, the Nirvana fire in the Void Realm seemed to freeze for an instant. It was not suppressed. It was pressed by the eternal weight carried by these four words themselves, losing the courage to leap.

The burning flames even collapsed slightly inward—as if avoiding an unmentionable name.

The remnant souls of the one hundred and eight Sword Masters shook in unison. On those faces etched by the wind and frost of time, soaked in the smoke of war, and polished by endless silence until only the edges of obsession remained, the same expression appeared at this moment—

This was not awe of a powerhouse. Awe was too shallow. This was a stagnation of extreme complexity: it was the terror of suddenly hearing a taboo name; the trance of recalling a distant back; and even more, the bone-chilling shame and fear surging from the deepest part of their remnant souls when the monstrous blood debt from eternity ago, which they could not repay and would never be able to repay, was suddenly revealed by a corner.

It was as if countless invisible chains, following those four words, were wrapped again around their already illusory soul bodies.

"Taichu Heaven Lord..."

The Red-Haired Swordmaster finally mechanically picked up the charred wooden sword on the ground, but his fingertips trembled violently. The charred, twisted sword body, like a broken mirror, reflected his currently equally twisted, pained, and confused soul face. This wooden sword seemed heavier than a world.

The Void Realm fell into a brief, near-vacuum silence. Even the rotation sound of the Divine Phoenix Life Wheel became distant and blurred.

Lu Changzhi looked at the shining, vitality-filled emerald-gold leaf at Jian Tanghuang's Dantian. In his gray-white pupils, the ice-sealed obsession that had settled for eternity and a certain belated relief collided and merged like two torrents.

The last trace of hesitation belonging to the individual "Lu Changzhi" regarding the instinct for survival in his eyes—like lingering snow under the sun, completely dissolved. Replacing it was the absolute determination that only a "Sword Master" would possess, a resolve to burn the bridges and cut off all paths of retreat.

He turned his head. His gaze swept past his side extremely slowly.

Sword Ruthless stood frozen in place, like a stone statue that had suddenly lost all joint support. The cracks in his gray eyes that represented pain and obsession now completely exploded and spread—like an ice surface being shattered by a heavy hammer.

What surged in his eyes was no longer shock, but monstrous panic and fear that almost drowned his remnant soul.

This pair of eyes, which had once watched the destruction of the Myriad Heavens and Worlds coldly and had never had the slightest ripple even when witnessing the withering of all races, were now bloodshot—the embodiment of violent fluctuations in soul quality—staring fixedly at Lu Changzhi's figure, as if wanting to nail him in place.

The Sword Intent around his body, which was originally as condensed as ten-thousand-year black ice, became chaotic and scattered everywhere due to his agitated state of mind, emitting a faint but harsh sword hum. Like the whimper of a dying beast.

Wanyan Shu's golden pupils contracted violently, the light flickering uncertainly, like the final struggle of a candle in the wind. The golden light that had guarded him for eternity flickered and swayed, about to be extinguished, and his remnant soul itself was trembling uncontrollably.

He was completely immersed in the shock brought by the "reappearance of the Taichu Heaven Lord's Legacy," which was enough to subvert his cognition, as well as a more direct, more instinctive fear—the bone-chilling fear of being about to witness his best friend go to his death.

His usual demeanor of planning and strategizing, steady as a mountain, had long since shattered completely.

His gaze extended to the surroundings. The remnant souls of the one hundred and eight Sword Masters were dim, like dying sparks, their soul shadows flickering, and fine soul light constantly drifting away from their edges, like burnt-out ashes.

They could completely dissipate in this eternal Void Realm at any moment.

These people... Lu Changzhi's "heart"—or rather, the core of his remnant soul—shrank slightly.

These people were once brothers who had ridden the starry sea side by side with him, their sword tips pointing where all races retreated. They were comrades-in-arms who had drunk victory wine with him and slept in the snow of the battlefield together. They were the top combat power who had jointly supported the backbone of the Myriad Heavens and Worlds during the most glorious era of The Sword Lineage.

Eternal imprisonment, endless solitude. They held on to the last wisp of obsession, not to survive—but to guard the last spark of the Sword Master's Legacy, to wait for that slim chance of reversing the universe that might never come.

Looking at their increasingly thin, transparent, and verge-of-collapse Divine Souls. Sensing the ancient malice deep within the Myriad Heavens and Worlds that was stirring and about to break the seal.

Taking one last look at the already awakened, brilliant, and eye-catching Divine Phoenix Bloodline within Jian Tanghuang, as well as that emerald-gold leaf of life symbolizing infinite possibilities and the connection to that existence—Lu Changzhi slowly closed his eyes.

No hesitation. No struggle. Not even a sigh.

When he opened his eyes again, in those gray-white pupils, only one thing remained—determination.

Throughout eternity, he had calculated all heavenly secrets and carried the burden of all living beings, yet he had never made a decision for himself. This was the first. And it was the last.

He raised his hand, and a wisp of gray-white light appeared at his fingertips—this was the only remaining, eternal, and undissipated Origin Sword Intent in his remnant soul.