567: Chapter 567 The Tribulation of Ascension

The High Priest's head hung low, almost as if it would shatter the ground.

These hands, which once held the authority of the Demon Realm and could turn clouds and rain, were now like withered vines, gripping the staff tightly. The knuckles made an unbearable "clucking" sound, so pale it seemed they would pierce the skin and burst with blood in the next moment.

"And us..." His voice sounded like it was squeezed out of an old, broken bellows, carrying the scent of blood and decay. "We, these old things who have lived for tens of thousands of years and pride ourselves on protecting the Demon Race... in front of that thing, we can't even... stand steady."

He suddenly raised his head, his turbid eyes filled with scarlet bloodshot lines. The wisdom and depth he once possessed were gone, leaving only naked humiliation and fear.

"Do you know what that is?!" His voice suddenly rose, sharp as the screech of a night owl. "That is not a Divine Ability! Not a Law! It's not even any kind of 'thing'! — It is the antithesis of 'existence' itself!"

The staff struck the ground heavily, emitting a hollow, despairing echo.

"It doesn't even have a physical form! It doesn't even have Divine Thought fluctuations! It is just a... a lingering glance, accidentally cast over from the depths of the endless Void Realm, from the absolute opposite side of the 'Dao'!"

He trembled violently, as if frozen by an invisible cold current.

"The thirty-six layers of the Demon Realm's mountain-protecting arrays? The clan-protecting barrier blessed with ten thousand years of demon runes?" He grinned, his smile uglier than crying. "In front of It, they are like dewdrops under the sun; 'pop', they shatter at a touch."

"Our proud Demon Race Legacy? Those ancient Restrictions that claim to be able to withstand the attacks of a Heavenly Immortal?" His voice grew quieter, yet more piercing. "It doesn't even need to touch them... they themselves, at the edge of Its 'existence'... disintegrate, dissolve, and return to 'nothingness'."

He closed his eyes, tears rolling down the gullies on his face, hitting the ground and splashing up imperceptible droplets.

"The God Lord... your father, at the Peak of Earth Immortal, a half-step Heavenly Immortal, a being only one kick away from pushing open the gates of the Immortal Realm..."

The High Priest's voice suddenly deepened, trembling like a sleepwalker. "He burned three thousand years of cultivation, unleashing his strongest move, 'Demon Swallows the Heavens'... That strike could make stars fall, make rivers flow backward, and make Heavenly Immortals retreat three steps..."

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down, as if swallowing the bitterest poison.

"Landing on that twisted 'Void' Domain surrounding It..."

The High Priest's voice choked up completely. After a long time, he squeezed out a few words from between his teeth:

"Not even a ripple... nothing."

"It was like a speck of dust falling into a bottomless, light-swallowing, sound-consuming eternal abyss."

He opened his eyes, and for the first time, complete and pure despair appeared in those old eyes that had witnessed the rise and fall of the Demon Race for ten thousand years.

"We cannot win, Wutian." His voice was as light as a sigh. "Exhausting the power of the entire clan, burning ten thousand years of Luck, gambling everyone's lives... we still cannot defeat even one incomplete... gaze, cast across endless time and space by It."

"In the end..." The High Priest's voice was so weak it was almost breaking. "It was the God Lord, risking the permanent shattering of his Origin, forcibly awakening a projection of the Ancestral Artifact — the Ancestor Demons Halberd, plus... plus the last Origin brand of the Chaos Thunder Demon Body within that child Wufa, which had not been completely extinguished even while suffering and struggling under the erosion of that evil thing..."

"Two forces, using Wufa's body as a battlefield and a furnace, using his life as fuel, and his will as chains... only then did they barely manage to Seal that thing back into the deepest part of his Divine Soul."

"It is only a temporary imprisonment, Wutian." He looked up, tears streaming down his face. "It is only using his every minute, every second of Divine Soul burning... as the barrier of the prison!"

The High Priest finally collapsed, his whole body hunched and kneeling, as if his spine had been pulled out.

"We are too weak... laughably weak! Pathetically weak!" He beat his chest, making a dull "thud-thud" sound. "We cannot save him! We don't even dare to tell the truth!"

"We are afraid... afraid that the Taichu Continent will know it has been targeted by such an existence, afraid that the myriad races will panic, afraid that morale will collapse, afraid that before the real calamity even arrives, this world will first... fall apart from within!"

"So we remained silent! So we let him carry all the sins alone! So we watched helplessly as he, in that dark, sunless Graveyard of Ancestral Sins, burned that Seal with his own Divine Soul day and night, buying time for the entire Taichu!"

"We are cowards... we are trash... we are... unforgivable accomplices!"

The last few words were almost roared out, blood foam mixing with tears, echoing among the cold stone pillars of the great hall.

Dead silence.

Even the sound of breathing disappeared.

Wutian stood in the center of the great hall, like a statue just thawed from ten thousand years of ice.

Every word of the High Priest was like a red-hot branding iron, fiercely branded onto his Soul.

Those descriptions stirred up a world-ending storm in his mind, tearing apart all the hatred, anger, confusion, and obsession he had held for the past hundred years, and reshaping them into sharper, heavier, and darker forms.

But there was not a trace of expression on his face.

All the raging waves, all the heart-burning and bone-eroding pain, were pressed deep into that flesh and blood body, compressed, and compressed again, until they turned into an absolute, suffocating dead silence.

He slowly raised his right hand and held it before his eyes.

This hand, with large knuckles, covered in calluses, had a newly opened crack at the web between thumb and forefinger, and the dark red blood scabs had already turned black.

The knuckles were covered in thick calluses from years of holding a blade, and on the back of the hand, crisscrossing scars were layered, like a dense, bloody map recording countless life-and-death encounters.

The newest one slashed diagonally from the wrist to the base of the finger, the flesh rolled back, just healed, glowing with a hideous pinkish-white.

This was a hand that had crawled out of Hell, and had voluntarily walked back into Hell countless times.

He watched quietly, his gaze sweeping over every scar.

Then, he spoke softly.

His voice was so steady that there was not a ripple, yet it made everyone who heard it feel a bone-chilling cold from the depths of their marrow.

"So that's how it is."

Three words.

Fell lightly.

But it made the air in the entire ancestral hall suddenly solidify, as if an invisible mountain had crashed down.

It was not killing intent, not pressure, but something deeper and more terrifying — it was the ashes left after hope had completely burned out, the dead silence after towering rage was frozen by absolute zero, the moment of absolute silence that makes the Soul tremble before an entire star collapses inward.

"I understand."

He lowered his hand, turned around, his black robe tracing a resolute arc, and walked toward the overly dazzling sunlight outside the hall.

His footsteps on the cold stone floor made a clear and monotonous sound, as if tolling a funeral bell for an era.

"Wutian!"

His father's voice came from behind.

The Demon Race God Lord, who was once as majestic as a prison and made all the myriad races of Taichu bow their heads, now had only endless exhaustion in his voice, and a kind of almost humble compromise.

"Whatever... you want to do, go ahead and do it. Your father... will not stop you again."

Wutian's footsteps paused ever so slightly before the huge shadow of the hall door.

He did not look back.

Sunlight surged in from outside the hall door, stretching his straight, spear-like figure long, casting it directly into the kneeling darkness and regret behind him.

He just responded very lightly, almost inaudibly:

"Hmm."

Then, he took a step out, stepping into the glaring light that filled the sky and earth.

The sunlight that day was so scorching it seemed to want to burn through the heavens, so bright that nothing could hide.

But in his eyes, only an endless, lifeless gray remained.

The truth was revealed.

It turned out that his younger brother, whom he had hated for a hundred years, resented for a hundred years, and fought for a hundred years to clear of false charges, was never a sinner.

He was a hero.

A hero who, in the darkness unknown to anyone, shouldered the world-ending calamity alone, using his Divine Soul as a prison, pain as chains, and eternal loneliness as a barrier.

The reason he remained silent, the reason he pleaded guilty, and the reason he was willing to be imprisoned in the graveyard forever, was because he knew better than anyone what kind of terrifying secret was sealed within his body.

Once this secret was made public, it would not bring redemption, but only panic, suspicion, recrimination, and an early collapse that would sweep across Taichu.

His younger brother used everything he had — his reputation, freedom, future, and even the pain of being misunderstood by his closest kin — to buy decades of fragile peace for this world that he loved deeply but perhaps never truly understood him.

Wutian stood under the sky full of false light and slowly closed his eyes.

Hot liquid, without warning, broke through the steel-like restraint, surging from the corners of his eyes, sliding down his cold cheeks, gathering at his jaw, dripping, and silently sinking into the dust beneath his feet.

This was the only time, and the last time, after learning the truth, that he allowed himself to show weakness.

It only lasted for a short moment.

When he opened his eyes again, deep within his dark golden pupils, all the softness, sadness, and hesitation belonging to "Wufa's brother" had been burned away.

Replaced by a resolve colder than eternal ice, darker than the abyss, and harder than obsession.

He raised his head and looked at the vast, seemingly clear sky, as if wanting to look through this fragile barrier and directly at the cold deep space hidden behind it, which had birthed the "Void".

His voice was not loud, but it echoed clearly between heaven and earth, carrying a power that could cut through the past and pierce the future:

"I am going to the Immortal Realm."

It was not a plea, not a declaration, but an unquestionable anchor thrown into the torrent of fate.

"The Void Clan comes from beyond the heavens. Taichu has no solution."

"The Immortal Realm must have the answer. There must be a way to destroy the Void and break the Restrictions."

"As long as I achieve Ascension, as long as I find it, I can come back."

Every word was clear, like a blood oath, branded into the Void Realm:

"Break open the Graveyard, and bring him out."

"Wipe that thing out, clean and thorough."

"And then..."

His voice finally showed a trace of imperceptible ripple that could make the listener's Soul tremble:

"Bring him home."

From that moment on, the word "Cultivate" lost its meaning for Wutian.

He began a most insane sacrifice of his own life.

Others Cultivate for longevity; he Cultivated to burn out enough light to illuminate eternity within a limited time.

The Ancient Burial Ruins, the graveyard of time and space, where the Laws were as chaotic as a shattered mirror; if a Nascent Soul Cultivator stepped in, they would face certain death.

He fought inside for three years, contending with chaotic time and space, battling wandering ancient vengeful spirits, and struggling against his own timeline that was constantly being torn and reorganized.

When he stepped out of the Burial Ruins, he carried the skull of an ancient Void Beast on his shoulder, with a collapsing time-space vortex behind him, and in his eyes, phantoms of the past and future intertwined were reflected — that was the mark left after peeking into the Laws of time and space.

Beneath the Dragon-Severing Abyss slept the Taichu-recognized strongest Loose Cultivator — "Blood Butcher of the Eight Desolations". That was an old monster who had lived for eight thousand years, who verified the Dao through killing, his body wrapped in the resentment of countless Soul Transformation Cultivators.

Wutian sought him out, no nonsense, only the most primitive slaughter.

That battle shattered seven mountain ranges, evaporated three great rivers, and the sky was stained blood-red for three days without fading.

He won, walking out of the abyss carrying the Blood Butcher's life-bound demon weapon, "Soul Splitter".

The price was: seventy percent of his bones were shattered, his internal organs were displaced and ruptured, and his heart stopped three times during the battle — each time it stopped, it felt like an eternal sinking, only to be forcibly dragged back to the human world by the overbearing vitality of the Ancestor Demons Bloodline.

He treated every breath as the last time he would draw in Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi; every punch was poured with all his will and strength; every time he closed his eyes to face a strong enemy, he was prepared for eternal sleep.

He was not afraid of death.

He was only afraid of dying too late — too late to hold his brother's hand before he was completely swallowed by the "Void".

He could clearly feel that the power within him named "Ancestor Demons" was rising and transforming at an unprecedented speed, bit by bit approaching the legendary critical point — the Tribulation of Ascension.

This power surged in his Bloodline like a volcano about to erupt.

But he also clearly felt that in the dark, from the direction of the Graveyard of Ancestral Sins, that ceaseless, weak, yet stubborn will of resistance was like a candle in the wind, under the erosion of the "Void", becoming increasingly precarious, like a violin string that could break at any moment.

Time had become a sharp sword hanging over his head.

Every minute and every second that passed was like a cut on his brother's lifeline.

He knew —

The time left for him was not much.

This sense of urgency turned into the most intense flame, burning his Divine Soul, driving him to rush toward that path to the Immortal Realm, full of thorns and destruction, with an even crazier and more resolute posture.