380: Chapter 380 The Nine Provinces Boil in Celebration of Ascension, A Millennia-Old Wish Turns to Ashes

Above the heavens, at the edge of the massive rift tearing through space, the gray-white Logic Cold Fire gradually faded. In its place, a ten-thousand-foot golden light, as solid as substance, emerged.

That unimaginably vast, grand gate, carved entirely from flawless white jade, had completely solidified from a phantom projection into a physical form, firmly embedded in the sky above Qingyun Valley. On the gate's frame, the lifelike carvings of "Dragon and Phoenix bringing prosperity" seemed as if they might break through the walls at any moment to soar through the Nine Heavens. From the seam of the tightly closed doors, wisps of milky white mist continuously drifted outward.

As soon as this mist touched the air of the Qingping Realm, it transformed into glass-colored petals fluttering across the sky.

With a gust of wind, a rich, dizzying fragrance instantly spread across tens of thousands of miles. This scent was like thousand-year-old wine mixed with the flowery powder of countless rare plants. Even a small breath would make one feel as if they were floating like an immortal, with every bone in their body softening and every inch of their Meridians cheering in joy.

Immortal music lingered, and auspicious colors radiated in a thousand streaks.

For the Cultivators of the Qingping Realm, this was no mere phenomenon; it was the ultimate myth recorded in the deepest parts of their Sect's ancient texts and branded into their Bloodlines—one that had not appeared for a full million years.

The Ascension Gate!

At the bottom of the East Sea, thirty thousand feet deep in the ocean abyss.

This place was perpetually devoid of sunlight, and the bone-chilling pressure of the seawater was enough to instantly crush a piece of refined iron into a thin sheet. Beneath the thick silt of the seabed lay an Ancient Bronze Coffin covered in dark red seaweed. This ancient coffin had rested here in silence for a full two thousand eight hundred years, even tainting the surrounding seawater with the thick stench of a rotting corpse.

Suddenly.

A strange fluctuation, accompanied by immortal music, penetrated thirty thousand feet of seawater and forced its way into the ancient coffin.

"Bang!"

A dull explosion erupted on the seabed.

The bronze coffin lid, weighing tens of thousands of catties, was sent flying by a violent force from within. It tumbled through the water and crashed into a dark trench in the distance, kicking up a massive cloud of murky silt.

A hand so shriveled that only a layer of grayish-blue dead skin covered the bones suddenly reached out, death-gripping the edge of the coffin. Sharp fingernails scraped against the bronze, producing an ear-piercing screech.

Immediately after, a withered old man with long white hair disheveled like weeds slowly sat up from the ancient coffin.

His eye sockets were deeply sunken, and his two cloudy eyeballs were filled with gray Death Qi. The Daoist robes on his body had long since rotted into tattered strips, hanging off his gaunt ribs. This old monster's Lifespan had already reached its end; to cling to life for a few more years, he had not hesitated to suppress himself at the bottom of the deep sea, entering a state of turtle-breathing suspended animation.

But at this moment, from within his frame that seemed ready to fall apart at any time, a heart-palpitating Nascent Soul Great Perfection Aura erupted.

The old man raised his head, his cloudy gaze piercing through the heavy seawater to stare fixedly toward the South Region. On his skull-like face, muscles twitched violently, and his shriveled lips trembled as they collided.

"Immortal Qi... it's Immortal Qi..."

A shrill, unpleasant cackle, like that of an owl, issued from the old man's throat. This laughter grew louder and louder, eventually turning into a hysterical roar.

"This old man has waited! I have sat in the deep sea for nearly three thousand years, and finally, I have waited until the heavens opened a crack!"

"Boom!"

The old man's shriveled body suddenly crashed through the seawater. Ignoring the deep-sea behemoths he had startled, he directly burned the last bit of Nascent Soul essence blood remaining in his body. A blinding blood-red light tore through the surface of the sea, kicking up a colossal wave. Like a reverse meteor, he hurtled toward Qingyun Valley with a posture of absolute resolve and madness.

At the same time.

In the depths of the frozen Northern Frontier, a vast snowfield locked in ice for ten thousand miles.

A ten-thousand-foot ice peak that towered into the clouds suddenly underwent a violent tremor. Deep cracks split across the hard Ten-Thousand-Year Profound Ice, and ice shards poured down like an avalanche.

Accompanied by an ear-shattering sword hum, an incomparably sharp ice-blue sword light broke through the mountain walls and shot straight toward the stars.

As the sword light dissipated, it revealed a cold-faced man with a sword on his back, draped in a white cloak.

Thick white frost covered his eyebrows and hair, and the cold Aura radiating from him even caused the falling snowflakes to freeze mid-air.

He was known as the Northern Frontier Sword Venerable, the longest-living and most murderous Sword Cultivator on this snowfield.

The man drew the long sword from his back—a famous blade that had once drunk the blood of countless Cultivators. Now, it actually trembled slightly in his hand. This was not fear, but excitement.

He looked up at the faint golden auspicious colors on the horizon, a rare look of fanaticism appearing on his cold face.

"With no hope for Soul Transformation, I thought I could only rot away with this ice and snow. To think that the Dao would leave a glimmer of hope after all!"

The Northern Frontier Sword Venerable casually tore off his cloak and threw it onto the snow. He transformed into an ice-blue sword rainbow, slicing through the wind and snow, and headed straight for the South Region with an indomitable Aura.

The Central Region, Myriad Poison Swamp.

The West Desert, Bone Sand Sea.

With the descent of that white jade gate, the entire Qingping Realm was like a raging fire that had a ladle of boiling oil poured into it.

Those old monsters who had been lingering in dark corners to prolong their lives, and those Sect Old Ancestors who were stuck at the Nascent Soul Stage for hundreds of years due to limited Aptitude, all broke out of their seclusion like they were mad.

They abandoned the foundations they had painstakingly built and cast aside their disciples, their eyes fixed only on that Ascension Gate radiating endless temptation.

For Cultivators, eternal life and Ascension were the ultimate obsessions for which they had stepped onto this Heaven-Defying path. For this obsession, they could kill their wives to prove their Dao or slaughter all living beings.

Now that the gate representing their ultimate goal was right before their eyes, who could remain rational?

Above the main peak of Qingyun Valley.

The winds and clouds changed color.

The air was filled with the smell of char and the crackling sounds of different attributes of True Qi colliding and rubbing against each other.

The once empty sky was now completely filled with dense streaks of light.

Crimson fire, azure ice, purple lightning, ghastly green poison mist... hundreds and thousands of differently colored flows of light, trailing long tails of flame, were converging toward that white jade gate like a pack of rabid beasts that had smelled blood.

The gale howled, and the airflow became extremely violent due to the gathering of so many powerful beings.

These old monsters, who usually reigned supreme in their respective territories and were rarely seen, were now even fighting in mid-air to snatch a position closer to the Ascension Gate.

"Get lost! This Ascension spot is mine!"

"Bullshit! You old fossil, you're already half in the grave and you still dare to snatch this Opportunity from me? Die!"

The roar of colliding Magic Treasures was incessant.

A gaunt, black-robed old man had just crushed a competitor's skull with a staff one moment, only to have half his shoulder sliced off by a sharp Sword Qi flying from the side the next.

Blood fell like a red rain, scattering across the ruins of Qingyun Valley.

But no one retreated.

Those who were injured had bloodshot eyes; they stuffed handfuls of healing Medicinal Pills into their mouths while desperately pushing their True Qi to continue their mad charge forward.

The entire sky had become a massive meat grinder where no rules applied. All rationality, all cultivation, and all Sect rules turned into laughable bubbles in the face of the word "Ascension."

And below.

Directly beneath this Ascension craze sweeping the world.

At the end of the broken white jade steps of Qingyun Valley's main peak.

Zhou Wannian was sitting calmly on a relatively clean green rock.

His white-washed green robe seemed completely out of place in this environment of flying gods and bloody winds.

When the violent astral winds reached three feet in front of him, they would automatically turn into a gentle breeze, merely ruffling the hair by his ears. The severed limbs and fragments of Magic Treasures falling from the sky also vanished into nothingness outside the barrier of his Invulnerability to All Laws.

Shitou was kneeling on the ground behind Zhou Wannian, his hands tightly clutching the oilcloth bundle. The boy looked up at those god-like figures in the sky who seemed like demons, his eyes wide with deep shock and fear.

In his understanding, Cultivators were all high and mighty, with an immortal air.

But looking at those flying in the sky now, where was there any sign of a god? They were clearly a pack of wild dogs that would bite their companions to death to snatch food.

"Big Brother..."

Shitou swallowed hard, his voice sounding very weak amidst the booming sounds of Spells clashing around them.

"What are they doing? Are there really gods inside that glowing door?"

Zhou Wannian rested his hands casually on his knees.

He tilted his head slightly, his eyes deep as an ancient well, quietly watching the radiant white jade gate above, as well as those old monsters charging toward it one after another like moths to a flame.

On that handsome and easygoing face, there was no anger, nor was there any ridicule.

All there was was a kind of compassion and weariness after seeing through all the vanities of the world.

"Immortals?"

Zhou Wannian's tone was steady; though his voice wasn't loud, it reached Shitou's ears clearly.

"How can there be so many immortals in this world? Most things that seem like a free lunch from heaven are just traps buried underneath."

He extended a long, pale index finger and pointed toward that Giant White Jade Gate in the air.

In the eyes of those old monsters, it was a gate leading to the supreme Immortal Realm, with Auspicious Beasts carved on the doorframe and Immortal Qi overflowing from the door's cracks that could allow one to shed their mortal coil.

But in Zhou Wannian's eyes, which could see through dimensions,

this gate presented a different, sickening image.

It was not a giant gate carved from white jade at all.

It was a massive, peerless fishing net woven from countless strands of grayish-white geometric logic code!

The gate's frame was actually the thick boundary rope of this giant net. Those so-called Auspicious Beast carvings were all blood-sucking tentacles disguised as high-dimensional Laws. And the glazed petals and strange fragrances overflowing from the door's cracks, which left all Cultivators entranced,

were merely poisonous bait cast by an Extraterrestrial Angler, specifically designed to paralyze the nerves of the prey.

The more of this fragrance inhaled, the more sluggish the True Qi in the Cultivators' bodies would become, and their Divine Souls would gradually be eroded by the grayish-white code hidden within the petals.

By the time they were completely lost in hallucination, believing they had already achieved Ascension,

this giant net would tighten without mercy.

"They are not going to become immortals."

Zhou Wannian withdrew his finger, a bone-chilling coldness in his voice.

"They are lining up, rushing to become fodder for that Butcher in the sky who sticks tubes into things."

Shitou trembled all over, a dense layer of cold sweat breaking out on his back.

He looked up at the sky again; vaguely, he seemed to truly see the cold threads and hideous tentacles hidden behind those golden lights and petals.

"Then... then what do we do? Should we stop them?" The youth was kind-hearted; seeing those people going to their deaths, he couldn't help but ask.

Zhou Wannian turned his head, glanced at Shitou, and gave a light chuckle.

"Stop them?"

"If you rush up now and tell them that gate is fake, that it's a man-eating monster, what do you think they'll do?"

Zhou Wannian turned back, looking at those Cultivators with bloodshot eyes who were already in a killing frenzy.

"They will think you are blocking their path to immortality and will chop you into mincemeat without hesitation."

"Never try to wake a group of people pretending to be asleep, and even more so, don't try to stop a group of hungry ghosts blinded by greed."

Zhou Wannian sat on the bluestone, shifting into a more comfortable position.

"The path is their own choice. After thousands or tens of thousands of years of bitter cultivation, if they can't even see through truth and falsehood in the end, who can they blame?"

In the sky, the struggle had reached a fever pitch.

The first batch of Cultivators had already fought their way to within a hundred feet of the Giant White Jade Gate.

The one leading the charge was precisely that gaunt old man who had emerged from a coffin at the bottom of the East Sea.

His True Qi burned to the limit, his entire body shrouded in piercing blood-light. He wildly swung a bone whip in his hand, sending several Nascent Soul Old Monsters who tried to approach him flying.

"Hahaha! It's mine! The Immortal Gate is mine!"

The gaunt old man let out a shrill, maniacal laugh.

He was only ten feet away from that tightly shut white jade gate.

He could even clearly feel the Immortal Qi leaking from the door's cracks washing over his withered Physical Body. On his skin, which was originally like dead wood, a hint of rosy luster miraculously appeared.

This instantaneous "rejuvenation" caused him to completely lose his last shred of vigilance.

"This old man is coming!"

The gaunt old man kicked off the Void Realm with both feet, turning into a blood-red arrow, charging straight into the Giant White Jade Gate without hesitation.

The old monsters still fighting behind him roared in despair and frustration upon seeing this.

"Don't even think about it!"

"Quick, stop him!"

But it was already too late.

The gaunt old man's body slammed hard against the golden-glowing door panel.

However, the expected scene of the gate swinging open did not occur.

At the very ten-thousandth of a second the old man touched the door panel,

"Puchi!"

A muffled sound, like a sharp blade piercing a water-filled buffalo hide, rang out abruptly in mid-air.

The sound wasn't loud amidst the noisy fighting, but it made Zhou Wannian, sitting atop the peak of Qingyun Valley, look a fraction colder.

Under the gaze of all the frenzied Cultivators,

a pitch-black crack suddenly split open on the surface of that incredibly sacred Giant White Jade Gate.

Inside the crack, there were no pavilions or towers of a fairyland.

Only an abyssal maw filled with rows of hooked, razor-sharp fangs.

This maw opened with extreme speed.

One bite.

Just one bite.

It completely and utterly swallowed the gaunt old man leading the charge—whose cultivation was at the Nascent Soul Great Perfection—along with the blood-red protective True Qi on his body!

"Crunch... crunch..."

Hair-raising chewing sounds drifted out from the crack in the gate.

Bright red blood mixed with bone fragments squeezed out from between the teeth of that giant maw, flowing down the jade-like doorframe and dripping onto the faces of the fanatical Cultivators below.

The blood was warm.

But in that instant, the hearts of those Cultivators felt as if they had fallen into an ice cellar.

The noisy sounds of battle came to a screeching halt.

All the streaks of light frozen in mid-air became rigid.

They stared blankly at that blood-dripping "Immortal Gate," at that abyssal maw chewing on one of their own.

The intoxicating fragrance now clearly smelled like the most pungent stench of a corpse.

"This... what is this..."

A burly man holding a giant axe felt the warm blood dripping onto his face; his giant axe fell with a clatter. His eyes, once bloodshot with greed, were now filled with unmasked despair and terror.

"A scam... it's all a scam!"

Shrill screams erupted in the sky.

The old monsters who moments ago were fighting to the death for a spot to ascend now all turned their streaks of light around and fled frantically in all directions for their lives.

But.

Since the Extraterrestrial Angler had already pulled in the net, how could they possibly let the fish inside escape?

"Rumble—"

The golden light on the Giant White Jade Gate instantly retracted.

From the doorframe where Auspicious Beasts were once carved, thousands of thick, grayish-white tentacles suddenly shot out. These tentacles were entirely condensed from high-dimensional logic code, and their speed surpassed the limits of the Qingping Realm Cultivators' understanding.

"Swish! Swish! Swish!"

The sky-filling tentacles poured down like a torrential rain.

Accurately piercing the chests of one fleeing Nascent Soul Old Monster after another.

"Ah!"

Screams rose and fell.

Those mighty figures who were usually high and mighty, worshipped by others, were now like meat skewered on iron sticks. Their Physical Bodies and Nascent Souls were pierced through by those grayish-white tentacles; no matter how they cast Spells or detonated Magic Treasures, they couldn't break free in the slightest.

The tentacles quickly retracted.

Dragging the struggling, wailing Cultivators one by one toward that open abyssal maw.

"Crunch... crunch..."

The chewing sounds became more frequent, like a death warrant from the Grim Reaper.

The sky above Qingyun Valley turned into a one-sided Asura slaughterhouse. A rain of blood showered down upon the forests, staining the entire land a piercing bright red.

Shitou covered his ears, not daring to look at the tragic scene in the sky, his body shaking like a sieve.

Zhou Wannian remained steadily seated on the bluestone.

He watched the Cultivators being eaten like bugs, watched the giant fishing net feeding wantonly in the sky.

He stood up unhurriedly.

Brushing off nonexistent dust from his green robe.

He casually drew his hands from behind his back, letting them hang naturally at his sides.

Zhou Wannian raised his eyes, his gaze as cold as ten-thousand-year-old profound ice, piercing straight into the Vertical Pupil hidden behind the crack deep in the firmament.

"Your eating manners are too unsightly."

Zhou Wannian's voice rang out steadily in the gale, yet it eerily drowned out the sky-filling screams and chewing sounds.

"It's so noisy I've even lost my mood to enjoy the breeze."

He took a step forward.

His spotless green cloth shoes left the hard rock and stepped steadily into the Void Realm.

One step.

Two steps.

He was like he was walking up the stairs of his own home, heading toward the high sky unhurriedly amidst the rain of blood and the wildly dancing grayish-white tentacles.