123: Chapter 124 The Emperor's Arrival and the Fall of the Dao Stele

Several months later, Shen Moyan, who was adrift on the Boundless Light Sea, unexpectedly encountered a group of relatively normal Cultivators.

These people wore robes adorned with myriad beast patterns and rode upon various exceptionally divine spiritual birds and exotic beasts. The leading elder had a profound aura; he was a Nascent Soul Realm Beast Cultivator.

Relying on secret techniques from their Immortal Lineage, their minds were closely linked with their bonded beasts beneath them. Using the beasts' nature, they partially neutralized the erosion of the mutated Spiritual Qi, barely maintaining their sanity.

"Young friend, you still retain clarity of spirit? Come up, quickly!"

Upon seeing Shen Moyan, the Nascent Soul Beast Cultivator showed surprise in his eyes. With a flick of his sleeve, a gentle force pulled Shen Moyan onto the back of a giant Azure Simurgh.

"Thank you for your aid, Senior!" Shen Moyan hurriedly expressed his gratitude.

"Sigh. With the apocalypse upon us, as fellow Xian Cultivators, it is only right to help one another."

The elder sighed, then guided the Azure Simurgh, leading the group as they swiftly flew in the direction opposite the black sun.

Sitting on the Azure Simurgh's back, he looked down below.

Mountains and rivers lay shattered, beacon fires blazed across the land. The former paradise had turned to scorched earth. Cultivators slaughtered each other in a scene of utmost brutality.

In Shen Moyan's heart, there was neither sorrow nor joy; he just felt something was missing.

They flew like this for several years, traversing countless shattered continents and islands. The surrounding mutated Spiritual Qi grew increasingly dense.

Then, one day, a sound akin to the splitting of heaven and earth came from the highest reaches of the firmament.

The entire Shanhai Realm trembled violently.

Everyone looked up in terror.

They saw, beside the high-hanging black sun, an unimaginably massive heavenly pillar, its surface carved with countless profound Dao patterns, tearing through layers of space, descending from beyond the heavens with an unstoppable momentum!

With its descent, the density of the surrounding mutated Spiritual Qi increased exponentially.

"What is that?!" the members of the Sacred Sect of Beast Taming exclaimed.

The heavenly pillar's descent was faster than thought, swiftly traversing the vast, boundless expanse of the Boundless Light Sea.

"Oh no! Run!"

The Nascent Soul Beast Cultivator's face changed drastically. He frantically urged the Azure Simurgh, trying to evade the oncoming storm.

But it was too late.

The heavenly pillar, carrying supreme power capable of crushing all Realms, passed by the Boundless Light Sea.

The Boundless Light Sea, the instant the heavenly pillar swept past, instantly shattered like fragile glass.

Several days later, it ultimately transformed into four relatively independent, Vast Seas.

"The Vast Sea, the Shattered Star Sea, the Void Sea, the Twilight Sea..."

Protected by the Sacred Sect of Beast Taming's defensive barrier, Shen Moyan survived by chance. Witnessing this scene, his mind was shaken to an indescribable degree.

"So this is the reason the Four Seas of later generations formed..."

Merely by passing by, the scattered ripples had shattered the boundless, endless Boundless Light Sea into four pieces.

In the distance, the heavenly pillar landed.

It stood, propping up the sky, piercing through heaven and earth.

The shockwaves from its impact had yet to subside; the Four Seas churned, the earth's veins wailed.

An indescribable sense of sorrow and desolation assaulted Shen Moyan's mind.

It was a lament.

The Heavenly Dao was lamenting!

Something cold and icy landed on Shen Moyan's forehead.

He trembled slightly and looked up.

A sky full of pure white silently drifted down.

It was snow.

The heavens had begun to snow.

This was no ordinary winter snow. This snow was bone-chillingly cold, containing an ineffable sense of sorrow.

Between heaven and earth, all was bleak and desolate.

Only the light from that distant stele appeared exceptionally glaring and out of place amidst the snowy curtain.

Shen Moyan reached out and caught a snowflake.

The snowflake did not melt in his palm; instead, it transmitted a needle-like stinging pain.

This will... this feeling... Shen Moyan's pupils constricted violently, his heart gripped as if by a cold hand!

Exactly the same!

Exactly the same as the feeling he had experienced back in the lower plane of Great Qǐ!

"Heaven sheds ember-snow! An omen of the Dao's collapse!"

The Sacred Sect of Beast Taming Disciples who had survived the shockwave were pale as paper.

"It's a Fate Controller! A Fate Controller has fallen! And... it's four! Four Fate Controllers have fallen!!" The Nascent Soul Realm elder sensed the grief of his bonded Azure Simurgh.

"What?! Fate Controllers have fallen?!"

Hearing this, the Disciples beside him were thunderstruck.

Fate Controllers were supreme beings who wielded the authority of heaven and earth, nearly immortal!

They were the cornerstone upholding the Shanhai Realm. The fall of a single Fate Controller was a cataclysmic tribulation shaking heaven and earth. The fall of four Fate Controllers... that was simply the end of the world.

Shen Moyan saw that beneath the profound black sun hanging supreme above all, four colors began to glow on the heavenly pillar.

Purple, white, crimson, blue—each color distinct. Vast, boundless Dao Rhyme halos began to flicker intensely.

Burial snow fell across the vastness; heaven and earth shared the grief.

The glowing Xian Dao Realm colors on the stele's inscriptions, set against the backdrop of the pure white sky, did not appear sacred. Instead, they radiated an indescribable glare and eeriness.

Shen Moyan's pupils trembled violently. In his mind, the subsequent chapters of the 'Scripture of Severing All Manifestations' were gradually being completed.

[The 'Scripture of Severing All Manifestations' has been completed up to the Guizang chapter and has been recorded in the Bookmarks.]

This was Dao Blight!

The widespread dissemination of Cultivation Techniques in the later Shanhai Realm—this was the phenomenon of Dao Blight!

That distant heavenly pillar was the origin dao preaching stele!

"What kind of Dao is this..."

Sensing the aura of the heavenly pillar, countless pieces of information flooded their Seas of Consciousness. The Beast-Taming Sect members on the Azure Simurgh's back trembled violently, murmuring:

"The Twisted Immortal Path..."

Suddenly, a Cultivation Technique uniquely suited to each of them appeared in their Seas of Consciousness.

"Qi Gathering, Mortal Transformation, Purple Mansion, Guizang, law of tribulation..."

"This is a supreme Great Dao! A supreme Great Dao comparable to the immortal Dao!"

"Purple Mansion? I remember that was the unique Cultivation Technique of the first Human Emperor, the Purple Tenuity Fate Controller, wasn't it? Why does it appear on there?"

"To Cultivate the Twisted Immortal Path, one needs to kill Xian Cultivators?"

"Using Xian Cultivators as ginseng can accelerate Cultivation progress and accumulate Dao Rhyme?"

The Beast-Taming Sect members on the Azure Simurgh began eyeing each other, killing intent gradually rising.

Shen Moyan inwardly sighed, sensing trouble. He hurriedly activated his Innate Divine Ability, 'Moistening'. When time resumed, the sounds of clashing and slaughter rose and fell behind him.

The heavenly pillar erupted with four beams of light, illuminating the Four Seas. Newly born Xian Dao Cultivators sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain, engaging in brutal slaughter with the remnants of the old immortal dao. The process of the world's Dao lineage changing hands advanced at a visible pace.

In the wilderness, Shen Moyan stood amidst the wind and snow, coldly observing the transition between the old and new eras, his heart like frozen ice.

He stared fixedly at that dao transmission stele, his gaze seeming to pierce through the halo of order to directly perceive its innermost essence.

"Fate Controllers have fallen..."

"So... that's how it is..."

A cold, cruel, yet perfectly explanatory truth that resolved all his doubts surfaced in his mind.

"This is no stele for transmitting the Dao..."

"This is... a tombstone!"

"It's a tombstone... that the black sun in the sky, the Xuanhuang Emperor Lord... erected for the era He personally ended, for the four fallen Fate Controllers!"

Why could the dao transmission stele transmit the Dao?

Because it carried and reformatted the plundered legacy of Dao Rhyme from the slain old era!

It shattered, recombined, and limited the Dao and laws of the Fate Controllers, turning them into Cultivation Techniques for later generations to practice!

This was a new order built upon the corpses of the old epoch!

"Wait, four? Aren't there five Fate Controllers in total?"

Shen Moyan felt something was strange.

"The Five-Colored Heavenly Realm has five Fate Controllers. The current dao transmission stele only has purple, crimson, blue, and white—these four colors."

"Where did the cyan go?"

"Or rather, where did the Qing Ming Fate Controller go? Did He not die?"