382: Chapter 382 A Flick of the Finger

The glazed petals fluttering across the sky, after shedding their hypocritical layer of glamorous clothing, transformed into clumps of nauseating, foul-smelling bloody rain.

On the Ascension Platform, those Cultivators who were lucky enough not to be at the very front were now like soft-bodied worms with their spines removed, slumped on the pitted white jade ground. That deformed giant mouth slowly writhing above their heads, dripping deep green stomach acid, had completely shattered the Dao Hearts they had cultivated for hundreds or thousands of years.

"Sizzle..."

A drop of viscous stomach acid fell from mid-air, landing right on the Flying Sword of a Golden Core Stage Sword Cultivator. That Life-bound Flying Sword, which had accompanied him for a hundred years and could cut through iron like butter, didn't even let out a single wail before it turned into a pool of white-smoke-emitting molten iron. The Sword Cultivator stared with wide eyes and a gaping mouth, making "cluck-cluck" sounds in his throat as he scrambled backward, completely unaware that his hands were being ground into bloody messes on the acid-soaked ground.

Sect Master Tianshuzi knelt on the ground, panting heavily. The purple-gold star crown atop his head had already crumbled into powder, and his gray hair was stuck to his cheeks by sweat and blood. He looked up, watching the severed limbs and broken arms rolling inside that abyssal giant mouth; his stomach churned, and he suddenly turned his head, vomiting out all the Spiritual Tea and dew he had consumed in the morning.

Fake.

It was all fake.

What immortal music, what auspicious colors, what daylight Ascension.

This was simply a slaughterhouse hanging a longevity facade. They, the Old Ancestors and Sect Masters who called the shots in the Qingping Realm, were nothing more than stupid pigs cleaned and stripped on someone else's chopping board, lining up to jump into the meat grinder!

Despair gripped everyone's heart. The pressure emitted by that giant mouth locked down the surrounding space, leaving them without even the strength to crush a transmission Talisman.

Just as the crowd of immortals closed their eyes to await death, believing that the Qingping Realm's cultivation Legacy would be completely severed today—

Zhou Wannian turned around.

He had just been looking up into the depths of the celestial rift at that vertical pupil, which had begun to descend a projection out of rage; now, he shifted his gaze back to the foul-smelling, devouring giant mouth in front of him.

At the edges of the giant mouth, those dark purple barbs were frantically contracting and extending. Seemingly sensing Zhou Wannian's turn, a dull roar erupted from deep within the mouth, and a hurricane mixed with the smell of rotting corpses gushed out, heading straight for Zhou Wannian's face.

Zhou Wannian frowned slightly.

He didn't cover his nose, but instead shook his head without concealment. His handsome face was filled with the kind of disgust one feels when seeing maggots from a latrine crawl onto a dinner table.

"Eating a belly full of rotten meat and not even brushing your teeth before running out to spray everywhere."

Zhou Wannian's calm voice pierced through the wind and bloody rain, echoing across the vast Ascension Platform.

He did not retreat; instead, in front of the giant mouth capable of devouring Nascent Soul Old Monsters, he composedly took half a step back.

His washed-out green cloth shoes stepped firmly on the white jade flagstones.

He slowly raised his right hand.

His slender, pale fingers naturally curled inward in mid-air, forming an unremarkable fist.

There was no brilliance of True Qi flow.

No phenomenon of drawing in Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi.

Not even a hint of wind was stirred.

Zhou Wannian just watched the abyssal giant mouth pouncing toward him, attempting to swallow him along with the Ascension Platform in one bite.

Then.

Plainly and simply, he punched his clenched right fist forward into that foul-smelling void.

The movement was simple, like an apprentice who had just entered a mortal martial arts hall practicing the most basic straight punch against a sandbag.

But, at the very moment his fist surface made contact with the air in front of him—

Time froze.

The fleeing Cultivators, the dripping stomach acid, and the roaring giant mouth were all frozen in place at that instant.

In Zhou Wannian's punch, the Great Perfection Space Law shed all its complex and changing appearances, retaining only its most primitive and unreasonable attribute—absolute mass.

If a speck of dust possessed infinite mass, it could crush eternal stars.

This punch of Zhou Wannian's didn't produce any wind, nor did it form any shockwaves.

It simply and forcefully crushed the physical structure of the space ahead completely.

"Crack."

A crisp sound, so faint it was like porcelain cracking.

With Zhou Wannian's fist as the center, a black crack appeared in the void ahead.

Immediately following that.

The incomparably massive, barb-covered abyssal giant mouth, the moment it touched this black crack, was like a castle built of sand encountering a gale.

There was no blood splatter.

No screams of pain.

The dark purple tumors at the mouth's edge, the sharp black gums, and the roiling deep green stomach acid inside all lost the material basis to maintain their existence under this pour of incomprehensible absolute mass.

Disintegration.

Total disintegration.

Starting from the very front of the giant mouth, the speed of disintegration surpassed the speed of light, instantly spreading to every corner of this so-called 'Ascension Gate.'

Even the independent high-dimensional space inside this gate, used to trap and kill Cultivators, shattered with a bang under the pressure of this punch, like a mirror hit by a hammer.

"BOOM—!"

Only after the entire white jade giant gate and that man-eating monstrous mouth had completely turned into gray dust fluttering in the sky did the delayed, deafening sonic boom finally explode across the horizon.

The terrifying physical shockwave turned into a visible transparent ripple, sweeping out in all directions.

There was no killing intent in this shockwave, only pure spatial vibration.

The tens of thousands of Cultivators on the Ascension Platform were struck by this ripple, and one by one, they were sent flying like fallen leaves swept up by a gale, completely powerless to resist.

They flailed in mid-air, their Magic Treasures scattering everywhere, as they tumbled off the edges of the white jade platform, crashing toward the ruins of Qingyun Valley below.

But this shockwave also happened to blow away the layer of pink hallucinogenic poisonous miasma that had shrouded the sky above the Ascension Platform.

Fresh air poured back into everyone's lungs.

Sect Master Tianshuzi stabilized himself in mid-air, barely managing to control his broken Flying Sword, hovering a hundred zhang above the ground.

His face was as pale as paper as he took large gulps of the air, which was now free of the cloying, sweet fragrance.

He looked up, gazing at the sky above.

The Ascension Gate that had spanned the horizon with its brilliant golden light was gone.

That hair-raising abyssal giant mouth was also gone.

There was only gray powder fluttering through the sky like a heavy snowfall, drifting down onto the land of the Qingping Realm.

They survived.

Sect Master Tianshuzi touched his neck, feeling the real pulse beating, as two lines of muddy tears slid down his cheeks.

The other old monsters around him also stabilized themselves one after another in mid-air. Looking at each other's wretched appearances and the empty sky, the residual madness and greed in their eyes were now entirely replaced by the relief of having survived a disaster.

The dream of longevity was shattered.

But their lives were saved.

Everyone instinctively turned their gaze toward the high sky, at the green-clad figure still standing on the ruins of the Ascension Platform, maintaining his punch-retracting posture.

One punch.

Just a single punch.

It had smashed the Ascension scam that had shrouded the Qingping Realm for a million years and crushed the predatory trap of that high-dimensional being.

It cut off their thoughts of Ascension, but it also forcefully dragged this group of fools, who had half a foot in the grave, back from the jaws of death.

Shitou hid behind Zhou Wannian. When that terrifying shockwave erupted just now, Zhou Wannian's figure had been as steady as Mount Tai, blocking all the aftershocks. The boy poked out half his head, looking at the empty sky, and let out a long breath of turbid air.

Zhou Wannian slowly withdrew his right fist.

He opened his palm and looked at it. Not even a speck of dust was on it.

"Not even a piece of bone, just rotten meat and acid water. The feel of hitting it is really terrible."

He casually shook his wrist, his tone carrying a hint of unsatisfied laziness.

However.

At the very moment that high-dimensional space disguised as an immortal gate was completely smashed and the dust was still falling—

In the deepest part of the void where the giant gate had once hovered.

A transparent, extremely fine thread suddenly became exposed under the sky of the Qingping Realm.

This thread was originally connected to the spatial core inside the Ascension Gate. The angler from beyond the heavens used this very thread to control the gate, devouring prey and absorbing energy.

Zhou Wannian's punch just now contained the absolute mass of the Great Perfection Space Law.

This mass not only smashed the gate but also followed the karmic chain of the spatial structure, acting directly upon this thread responsible for pulling.

It was like a person fishing on the shore, where the fish in the water not only bit and shattered the hook but also suddenly grabbed the fishing line and yanked it hard toward the deep water.

"Zheng—!"

An extremely piercing sound, like some indestructible material being stretched to its limit, suddenly rang out in the sky.

The sound had no substance, yet it directly pierced the eardrums of everyone who heard it, causing splitting headaches.

That transparent thread, which had been hidden in the void, was instantly pulled taut.

The space around the thread, unable to withstand this terrifying pulling force, showed large areas of black wrinkles and faults.

The high-dimensional thread emitted an overburdened creaking sound.

Following this taut thread, one's gaze could go all the way up to the deepest part of the celestial rift.

That massive, gray-white vertical pupil, which had been high and mighty and was preparing to descend its projection, now had its pupil contract violently, while the cold fire around its socket flickered wildly.

It had never expected that the punch from the green-robed man below could actually follow the karmic line and directly shake its true body!

The pulling force traveled along the thread with an unstoppable momentum, forcefully transmitting to the body of that angler beyond the heavens.

"Roar!"

A roar filled with shock, bewilderment, and endless rage boomed down from the other side of the rift.

This was no longer that cold mechanical voice, but instead carried the panic of a biological being losing its balance.

The rift in the sky, under this terrifying pulling force, was instantly torn open to more than ten times its size.

Endless starlight poured down from the rift, but within that starlight were large patches of viscous, dark-golden blood.

That was the blood of a high-dimensional being flowing out after being cut by Laws while forcibly crossing dimensional barriers.

"Presumptuous... Lower Realm ant... how dare you shake my true body..."

Amidst the intermittent roars, the angler beyond the heavens could finally no longer maintain his arrogant posture of sitting atop the clouds.

That transparent thread was like a tough noose, tightly fastened around its neck, dragging it down from that unattainable dimensional throne, forcefully and crudely.

"Rumble—"

The entire sky of the Qingping Realm felt as if it were about to collapse.

Through that massive rift, everyone could clearly see.

A terrifying giant shadow, so massive it blotted out the sun, covered in dark-golden scales and possessing countless tentacles, was tumbling and struggling along that taut transparent thread, being dragged down from the rift by an irresistible force.

It had originally only intended to descend a sliver of its projection to eliminate the variable.

But now.

By the fishing line grabbed by Zhou Wannian's punch, it was being dragged along with its true body into this low-dimensional world it viewed as a mud pit.

High-dimensional descent.

The entire land of the Qingping Realm began to vibrate violently; mountains collapsed, and rivers flowed backward.

The Spiritual Qi in the air was compressed almost to the point of solidification by this massive external mass.

Sect Master Tianshuzi and the others, looking at that behemoth descending from the sky, had completely lost the ability to think. This had surpassed all their knowledge of cultivation; this was a true world-ending catastrophe.

Zhou Wannian stood on the ruins of the Ascension Platform.

He slightly tilted his head up.

Watching the dark-golden giant monster struggling frantically in the sky, yet still unable to stop its downward descent.

The gale blew his black hair into disarray.

In his deep eyes, the shadow of the sun-blotting monster was reflected.

Zhou Wannian released his right fist, which he had been holding, and casually patted his hands together.

"Hiding up there for a hundred thousand years, and yet you still got dragged down."

He looked at the approaching behemoth, a trace of an interested smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Since you've come down."

"Don't be in a hurry to go back. This mortal mud pit is just missing a big turtle to fill it up."