669: Chapter 669: A Single Stroke Depicts the Magnificence of Mountains and Rivers

This battle of Karma spanning the River of Time was like a boulder weighing hundreds of millions of tons, crashing into a lake that had been silent for eons.

Where the ripples touched, folds in space-time exploded outward in layers, piercing through barriers stacked up by era after era.

Those existences that should have slept forever in the dust of time—those forgotten by history, buried by legends, and deliberately erased by the Myriad Heavens and Worlds—suddenly opened their eyes at the touch of these ripples.

Their eyelids were as heavy as mountains, and every blink was accompanied by the flickering of stars.

Their breaths were like ancient storms, stirring up monstrous waves in abysses unknown to anyone.

The eternal night finally welcomed the first ray of dawn that did not belong to this era.

The deepest part of the Taiqing Secret Realm was a void that even light could not penetrate.

Yet, right in the center of this void, a yellowed painting of mountains and rivers floated, like a forgotten gate to the world.

This scroll had existed for who knows how many years; the edges of the paper were already frayed, yet the ink remained as fresh as if it had just been applied.

The mountains and waters in the painting breathed like living things; clouds and mist swirled between the towering peaks, and one could vaguely see ancient pavilions dotted along the cliffs.

Waterfalls poured down from a thousand-zhang height, only to turn into mist in mid-air, merging back into the Concept of the painting.

Just as the aftermath of the Celestial Maiden's horizontal Sword Qi—a Sword Qi capable of severing fate, tearing through Karma, and piercing through the Myriad Heavens and Worlds—brushed against the surface of the scroll, a sudden change occurred!

The stream in the painting, which had been winding and flowing for who knows how many years, suddenly stopped flowing.

The ripples on the water solidified into eternal sculptures, and even a single splashing droplet hung suspended in mid-air, refracting light that did not belong to this world.

The weeping willows by the stream no longer swayed in the wind, and every willow leaf was frozen in its most outstretched posture, as if time itself had been pressed on pause within the scroll.

The entire scroll fell into a strange, absolute stillness.

This stillness lasted for three breaths—for a Mortal, it was merely the blink of an eye, but for those capable of perceiving the essence of time, these three breaths were as long as three eras.

Then, the scroll moved.

It was not that the scene resumed its flow, but rather that a certain existence within the painting chose to step out of it.

He took a step from an ancient stone bridge—this bridge spanned the frozen stream, and the bluestone slabs of the bridge had been worn as smooth as a mirror by countless years.

His steps were light and firm, his robes fluttering in the windless air, as if he were merely casually crossing a threshold, walking from one room to another.

Yet what he crossed was the boundary between the painting and reality, the chasm between illusion and truth, and the invisible cage built by eons of time.

He wore a moon-white Confucian robe; the fabric looked ordinary, yet it faintly shimmered with a Dao charm that transcended the Laws of heaven and earth.

His face was gaunt, his cheekbones slightly high, and his jawline was soft yet resolute.

His eyes seemed to contain the radiance of ten thousand volumes of poetry and books—not as a metaphor, but literally glowing!

This radiance, which had accumulated endless wisdom and insight, also seemed to hide the depth of reversing galaxies, making one feel as if they would be sucked in and lost in endless classics and truths upon a single glance.

His hair was tied up with a simple wooden hairpin; the hairpin looked plain and unremarkable, yet it exuded an ancient aura that was as long-lived as heaven and earth.

He appeared to be only forty or fifty years old, his skin well-maintained, with only a few shallow lines at the corners of his eyes.

But the sense of time accumulated in those eyes was older, deeper, and more vast than the River of Time itself!

Literary Saint.

This name once shook the Myriad Heavens in the primordial era, making gods and demons tremble and Heavenly Emperors look sideways.

He was the supreme existence who entered the Dao through literature; he did not walk the path of Cultivation, did not practice Divine Abilities or Spells, but used only a brush, an inkstone, and a chest full of righteous Qi to write out his own Dao.

A single stroke captured the grandeur of mountains and rivers, a single character suppressed the demons of the Myriad Heavens and Worlds, a single poem could cause galaxies to reverse, and a single passage could make the Heavenly Dao resonate.

He had vanished from the world for too long, so long that even the oldest classics only dared to record his existence with the word "rumor," so long that even those old monsters who had lived for millions of years thought he was just a phantom in myths, so long that he himself had almost forgotten what the present world looked like.

At this moment, he stood in the Void Realm of the Taiqing Secret Realm; he was not stepping on any solid entity, yet he walked as if on flat ground.

His gaze pierced through layers of world barriers—those barriers woven from spatial Laws, capable of trapping all living beings, were like transparent crystal in his eyes.

His sight crossed countless planes, passed through layer after layer of dimensions, and finally landed in the direction of the River of Time.

There, an earth-shattering battle was taking place.

"Hmm?"

His voice was as gentle as jade, yet it carried a sense of indifference that saw through all things, as if everything in the world was within his expectations, and nothing could surprise him.

But he was indeed a little surprised.

"That little girl from the Celestial Race has actually grown to such a state."

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, revealing a gentle smile. This smile contained both gratification—like the satisfaction of a teacher seeing their most proud student achieve extraordinary accomplishments—and the pride of an elder watching a Junior succeed, as well as a faint sense of nostalgia, as if he were recalling some afternoon from a long, long time ago.

"Back then, when she was comprehending the Dao by the River of Time, she was just a little girl who couldn't even sort out the threads of Karma."

He shook his head, the smile in his eyes deepening, "Yet now she can strike out a Karma Sword Qi that spans ten thousand miles… Ah, time truly spares no one."

His voice echoed in the void, carrying a sense of emotion after experiencing the vicissitudes of life.

However, just as his voice fell, his gaze suddenly tightened slightly, and the kind smile on his face suddenly froze—like a calm lake broken by a pebble, with ripples spreading outward.

"Hmm?"

His brows slowly furrowed, and deep lines appeared on his previously smooth forehead, "That brat actually didn't die either?!"

His gaze became deep, as if tracing some extremely distant memory, passing through layers of mist, returning to that era long buried.

Countless scenes flashed in his pupils—clashing armors and horses, rivers of blood, heaven collapsing and earth splitting, all things wailing.

Those scenes were too fast and chaotic, as if a history book accelerated a hundred million times was flipping before his eyes.

"He clearly should have… already perished along with that era. That battle, I watched with my own eyes as he…"

He did not finish his sentence; his voice stopped abruptly, as if that ending was too heavy, too much for even him to easily speak aloud.

He shook his head and did not continue, only adding a layer of gravity to the depths of his eyes.

This gravity was different from the previous surprise; it was a deeper worry, a vigilance against unknown variables.

"Interesting, it's getting more and more interesting."

Meanwhile, from the depths of the Nine Nether Hell, a response came.

These were two pairs of eyes, opening simultaneously across endless darkness.

The first pair of eyes was as deep as eternal night, without a trace of light, as if capable of devouring all brightness.

The pupils reflected the Reincarnation trajectories of hundreds of millions of dead Souls—those trajectories were dense, crisscrossing, forming a network so vast it was unimaginable.

Every node was the fate of a Soul, and every line was an entanglement of Karma.

The owner of these eyes was named Ming Zhu.

The second pair of eyes was as blazing as molten lava, with the Karmic Fire of judging sins burning in the pupils.

This fire was not fire from the Mortal world, but a sacred fire capable of burning all sins and purifying all filth. The owner of these eyes was named Ming Huang.

They stood side by side at the peak of the Nine Nethers, the darkness beneath their feet rolling and surging like a substance, with countless dead Souls wailing, struggling, and sinking within it.

This was the kingdom of death, the end point of all life, and also a place of eternal, unchanging silence.

Ming Zhu's voice was the first to sound, old and hoarse, as if speaking for the first time after sleeping for too long in a coffin, every word carrying the aura of decay and a heavy echo: "I didn't expect that after eons of time, the little fellow from back then would be able to stand on their own."

His tone held emotion, gratification, and also a trace of faint loss—the kind of loss that comes from watching a Junior grow up and realizing that one has already grown old.

Ming Huang nodded in agreement, his voice completely different, as hot and powerful as a volcanic eruption: "Indeed, we old folks have aged, and it is time to yield this world to the young, isn't it?"

His words carried a hint of testing, a hint of banter, and a hint of imperceptible unwillingness.

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