662: Chapter 662 Heavenly Gods Look Down on Ants Raising Their Arms

“Perish together?”

The Heavenly Maiden parted her vermilion lips, slowly crushing those words on the tip of her tongue. Her voice was as soft as a feather falling into stagnant water, unable to stir even a single ripple.

She tilted her head slightly, the corners of her mouth curling up—a curve so faint it was almost non-existent, so subtle that it would be missed if one did not pay close attention.

Yet in this smile, there was no madness, no anger, and not even a hint of despair.

There was only a calm that could freeze and shatter the Soul—this calm was the indifference of a god of the Nine Heavens looking down on an ant raising its arm, the pity of an eternal chess player watching an opponent make a terrible move, the apathy of a heaven-reaching mountain looking down at the surging tides at its base.

This kind of calm was more Soul-crushing than any hysterical roar.

Because it only demonstrated one fact—from beginning to end, the Heavenly Maiden had never viewed the Nether Maiden as an existence of the same Rank.

Even if she had summoned the Scythe of Endings, even if she had sacrificed the entire River Nether, in the eyes of the Heavenly Maiden, it was nothing more than the dying wails of a defeated dog.

“You are not worthy.”

The moment those words fell, the Heavenly Maiden drew her sword.

Gripping the hilt with both hands, she drew the Sword of Causality inch by inch from the River of Time.

This movement was slow to the extreme, as if she were drawing a primordial treasure embedded in an ancient Divine Stone, where every inch of extraction crushed the bones of the years.

The moment the blade separated from the river water, a bizarre hum exploded between heaven and earth—it was not the crisp ring of metal, nor the crashing of water waves, but the wailing of karmic lines snapping inch by inch, the groans of destiny being torn apart, and the painful cry of the River of Time itself on the brink of being ripped open!

The instant the Sword of Causality left the river's surface, the entire river suddenly collapsed!

Three feet!

A full three feet!

A three-thousand-mile stretch of the river sank in unison, and the majestic power being drawn away surged into the blade like ten thousand rivers flowing into the sea!

The river water swirled frantically around the blade, forming a colossal vortex that swallowed all things, while the Sword of Causality sat firmly in the eye of the vortex like an insatiable Taotie Vicious Beast, greedily devouring every devourable power around it!

The moment the power poured in, the deep blue blade began a violent transformation.

The blue faded completely, and the color became so faint it was transparent—an almost invisible blue. This was a hue formed by crushing the purest color of the sky into powder, refining the deepest essence of the ocean into crystals, and then tempering it through countless ages!

This was a form that could only be manifested when the power of Karma reached its absolute limit. Legend had it that only the core of the River of Time's Origin possessed such brilliance!

This was a color that transcended color itself, a supreme hue that could not be captured by the naked eye and could only be perceived by the Soul!

On the blade, countless karmic lines suddenly emerged, glaringly clear. Each one seemed to be sketched by a divine brush, with lines fluid to the extreme, slowly swimming within the transparent blade like billions of awakened spirit snakes, every curve emitting a warm yet fierce glow—

This light was not blinding, yet it was as warm as the first ray of sunlight descending through parting clouds in winter, and like an eternal guiding lantern on a long journey through the dark night.

At the same time, the Nether Maiden violently erupted!

She could wait no longer—she knew that if she allowed the Heavenly Maiden to build her momentum to the Peak, she would be doomed eternally!

She had to strike before the Sword of Causality reached its strongest state, and she had to sever the momentum the Heavenly Maiden had accumulated!

Gripping the Scythe of Endings tightly with both hands, the Nether Maiden raised the blade high above her head.

The gray gem on the scythe suddenly burst with a blinding light—this light did not radiate outward but instead contracted and pulsed inward like a frantically beating heart, with every tremor unleashing a destructive wave capable of crushing galaxies!

She slashed down fiercely!

The moment the Scythe of Endings slashed down, the Void Realm was torn open with a hideous rift spanning heaven and earth, and pure power of endings gushed out like a bursting flood!

Wherever this power passed, light was completely devoured, sound was utterly annihilated, and time itself froze and solidified!

At the same time, the grayish-black phantom behind her crashed down—like a mountain, like a Peak, like the entire weight of a world, descending upon the Heavenly Maiden's head with the crushing momentum of billions of tons!

The Void Realm rolled over by the phantom collapsed in sheets, the chains of Karma shattered inch by inch, and all things were being wiped out by their roots from this world!

Those Souls of the River Nether, who had been arrogant and domineering earlier, now shrunk back into the depths of the River Nether, not even daring to poke their heads out, their Soul flames nearly extinguished from fright!

The two forces overlapped and fused, converging into an apocalyptic storm of endings!

This was no ordinary storm; it was a torrent of destruction projected by the Law of Endings. Wherever the storm passed, the chains of Karma maintaining the operation of the myriad worlds snapped at a touch like rotten wood and decaying grass.

The Void Realm shattered layer by layer like thin paper, and time flowed backward in Chaos like mud; all things were completely wiped out from their source, as if they had never existed in this world!

Everything returned to zero, leaving not a single blade of grass!

The Heavenly Maiden struck with her sword at the same time.

As the Sword of Causality slashed out, there was no towering Sword Qi, nor any dazzling divine light; there was only an almost invisible, transparent ripple slowly spreading out.

This ripple was extremely faint, so faint that it would be ignored if one did not pay close attention.

It spread extremely slowly, like a drop of ink slowly dispersing in clear water, or a ring of ripples silently expanding in the stagnant water of an ancient well.

Yet wherever this unremarkable ripple passed—even nothingness itself was "snapping"!

It was not collapsing, nor was it shattering; rather, its very right to exist was stripped away from its Foundation by a single strike of the sword!

That Void Realm, which was originally empty, became something even more absolute than "nothingness" after the ripple swept past.

This sense of absurdity was beyond words—it was like thinking "emptiness" was already the end, only to realize at this moment that "emptiness" also had Nine Heavens, and this sword strike had carved out the deepest, most extinguished layer!

The two taboo techniques were about to collide head-on!

The entire end of the endless Void Realm was convulsing violently. This was no ordinary tremor, but the dying spasm of a world on the brink of collapse!

Dense cracks exploded across the barrier of the Void Realm, spreading frantically from the center like a colossal net that blotted out the sky, covering the entire firmament!

From every crack emerged something more primitive than Chaos and wilder than disorder—these were the remains of shattered Laws, the omen of the end before the complete disintegration of the world's order!

With this collision, the end of the endless Void Realm would be completely erased from the level of Karma!

It would not be shattered or destroyed; rather, just as an eraser wipes away writing on paper, this region would be permanently erased from the River of Time, without leaving even a single trace!

And this erasure would trigger a chain reaction that would sweep through the Myriad Heavens and Worlds like an apocalyptic tsunami!

Countless worlds would collapse into dust in an instant, countless karmic lines would snap at their roots, and the fates of billions of living beings would be torn into powder in this split second—they would not even have time to perceive death before they turned into the dust of nothingness.

The Heavenly Maiden was well aware.

She knew what kind of catastrophe this sword strike would bring, and how many innocent worlds would perish because of her.

The Nether Maiden was also well aware.

She knew what kind of disaster this scythe slash would cause, and how many skies would collapse because of her.

Yet neither of them stayed her hand!

To take a step back was death; to hold back even a fraction was defeat!

At this stage, any concession would mean throwing everything they had risked their lives for to the dogs!

They had wagered everything; there was no turning back!

The two destructive forces approached at extreme speed.

One hundred zhang.

Fifty zhang.

Ten zhang.

Just at the lightning-fast instant before they were about to collide—

At the end of endless time and space, something descended.

It did not fly over, nor did it manifest; it "descended"—as if that thing had stood there since the beginning of ancient times, never leaving, but simply because no one before had been qualified to glimpse its true form!

It lay dormant in the deepest folds of time and space, hid in the tightest crevices of Karma, and concealed itself in the shadows behind all existence, waiting only for this destined moment to "allow" itself to be exposed to the world!

And now, when the two taboo techniques were on the verge of colliding, when the end of the endless Void Realm was about to be erased, and when the fate of the Myriad Heavens and Worlds hung by a thread—it finally revealed itself.

A Bronze Immortal Palace, vast and boundless!

It floated at the highest point of the endless Void Realm, blotting out half the sky, casting a shadow that spanned thousands of miles across the Void Realm like an immortal divine mountain traversing the ages to suppress the horizon!

But what truly caused one's Soul to Fly Away and Spirit to Scatter was not its size, but something far more terrifying—a mere palace, yet it gave the oppressive feeling of facing an entire world, an entire Universe, and an entire dimension!

It seemed to be an independent existence towering above the myriad worlds, looking down on the heavens and suppressing the eight wildernesses. It had no need to prove how strong it was, because "existence" itself was its greatest trump card and its strongest majesty!

Its bronze-colored body was covered in mottled patina, but this was not a trace of erosion by time, but the crystallization of accumulated Laws—every speck of patina was a sealed heavenly rule, and every heavenly rule was sufficient to support the operation of a great world!

Geometric shapes of rules and irregular natural textures were distributed in an interlocking pattern, forming a totem on the palace body that was complex to the extreme yet suffocatingly harmonious!

The design of the immortal palace was ancient to the point of being almost crude, without carvings or decorations, devoid of splendor or color. There were no magnificent murals, nor any brilliant jewels, only the simplest and plainest lines and contours, as if it were the final stroke left at the end of life by a peerless Grandmaster who had returned to simplicity.

Yet precisely because of this extreme simplicity, it instead exuded a majesty that made the heavens submit—a majesty that required no decorative accompaniment, a supreme Aura capable of suppressing all things solely by the word "existence"!

The moment the Bronze Immortal Palace descended, time suddenly froze.

This was no metaphor, no figure of speech—it was a literal, physical, absolute, and indisputable pause!

The waves of the River of Time froze in mid-air. The spray that had been churning and roaring a moment ago was now pinned to a frozen scroll—some rising, some falling, some shattering, some fusing—all completely still as dead objects at this moment!

The fragments of Karma hung suspended like ice, no longer colliding or churning, all their restlessness forcibly pressed to a halt by a brutal force!

The storm of endings was like a venomous snake gripped by its vitals, frozen stiff in mid-air, unable to advance even a fraction of an inch!

Even the two taboo techniques of the Heavenly Maiden and the Nether Maiden, which were about to collide, were suppressed together in absolute stillness—

The transparent ripple slashed out by the Sword of Causality stopped three inches away from the storm of endings, frozen like a painting;

The grayish-black waves swept up by the storm of endings stopped three inches away from the ripple, unable to move a single step.

A line of separation, yet it felt like an eternally impassable chasm!

A power capable of simultaneously suppressing the Sword of Causality and the Scythe of Endings—the terror of this Bronze Immortal Palace had already far exceeded the limits of what any imagination could reach!

Subsequently, three figures slowly stepped out of the immortal palace.

Their action of stepping out of the palace gates was extremely casual, yet every single step landed heavily on a rhythm that was mysterious to the extreme.

This was no beat, no tempo, but the very first footstep when heaven and earth were first created, the very first heartbeat when the Universe was born, the very first pulse of the Origin of all things!

They were not walking—they were conducting an ancient ritual that could not be traced back, with every step offering a devout tribute to some supreme existence!

Three people, three bronze masks.

The material of these masks was mysterious and difficult to discern, neither metal nor jade, neither wood nor clay, but a bronze color deeper and older than the immortal palace itself, as if carrying the accumulation of billions of years of time and condensing the heavy vicissitudes of countless eras.

There were no facial features or expressions on the masks, only contours so minimalist they were outrageous—two narrow openings at the eyes, behind which was a bottomless darkness, as if connecting to a bottomless abyss of another dimension.

The bridge of the nose was slightly raised like an ancient mountain ridge; the lips were a straight slit, showing no joy or sorrow, no anger or irritation, displaying not a shred of emotion.

Yet it was precisely such an expressionless mask that caused the Heavenly Maiden's pupils to suddenly contract to the size of pinpricks!

Because on the mask, she saw an eye.

It was not carved, not painted, and not decorated—

Rather, the mask itself was gazing at her!

Every inch of this expressionless bronze mask was looking at her, and every angle was locked onto her!

It was as if the entire mask was a giant eyeball traversing heaven and earth, and from the moment she stepped into this Void Realm, or even earlier and further back at every single second, she had never escaped the gaze of this eyeball!

This gaze was cold, ancient, and silent, penetrating the eternal river, burning so intensely that her Soul trembled in fear!