400: Chapter 400 The Grandmaster's Fall at the Blood Altar Awakens the Sleeping Ancestor

Zhou Wannian's feet, clad in green cloth shoes, stepped steadily onto the smooth, mirror-like dark grey alloy floor.

The pungent stench of blood and the burnt smell of machine oil still permeated the air. The red blood mist left behind after the army of a million monsters was crushed by Absolute Mass drifted slowly through the cavernous underground hall like a thick veil.

By his feet, the pool of black pus that had once belonged to the Suturing Grandmaster was making a "chi-chi" sizzling sound.

Zhou Wannian was in no hurry to set off and chase the data signal that had been sent out. He lowered his head slightly, his deep eyes falling upon the pool of pus that was constantly emitting pungent black smoke.

Although this pile of rotten meat had lost all signs of life, the obsession and madness contained within it did not dissipate with the severing of its vitality. On the contrary, this obsession had transformed into a strange, corrosive power.

“Chila... Chila...”

The black pus acted like molten iron melting snow, crazily corroding downward through the dark grey alloy floor. The Truth Realm alloys, claimed to be indestructible and capable of withstanding a full-strength blow from a Half-step Deity Transformation expert, were as fragile as thin paper before this pool of pus, quickly dissolving into a pitch-black deep hole.

Following the dissolved hole, the pus dripped and seeped down into the deeper subterranean levels of the Great Furnace of Creation.

Zhou Wannian stood with his hands clasped behind his back, quietly watching this scene.

He did not move to stop it.

His handsome and easygoing face bore an air of casual amusement, as if watching a play. He wanted to see what kind of tricks this bricklayer—who was full of grand theories but possessed clumsy craftsmanship—could pull off, even after turning into a puddle of mud.

“Drip.”

The last bit of black pus seeped through the hole in the floor, leaving behind only a bottomless pit with charred edges.

An aura even more ancient, decayed, and filled with endless resentment than the blood and flesh filling the hall just now crawled up the deep hole slowly, like a cold, venomous snake.

Zhou Wannian walked to the edge of the deep hole and extended his Divine Sense to sweep downward.

Beneath this layer of alloy flooring in the Great Furnace of Creation, there was actually hidden an even more secret and massive subterranean space.

The scene here was completely different from the cultivation hall above, which was filled with a mechanical feel and assembly-line style.

There were no cold metal pipes, no flickering blue screens.

This place was a complete and utter bone-white purgatory.

In the very center of the space stood a massive altar, thousands of feet high.

This altar was constructed entirely from the white bones of countless living beings. The base consisted of the spinal columns of massive Starry Sky Behemoths, coiling upward layer by layer; the middle section was embedded with various jade-lustered skulls of Immortal Cultivators and the skeletal remains of the Demon Race still burning with embers.

The surface of the altar was not carved with any geometric Truth Realm codes, but rather with dense, blood-colored runes that twisted like earthworms, written in an ancient God-Demon Script that had long been lost.

At this moment, the black pus dripping from above landed unerringly on a colossal dark-gold skull at the very top of the altar.

“Sss...”

The moment the pus touched the dark-gold skull, it did not continue to corrode. Instead, like a hundred rivers returning to the sea, it followed the cracks in the bone surface and those blood-colored runes, rapidly spreading across the entire thousand-foot-high bone altar.

The originally deathly silent altar, after absorbing the pus containing the Suturing Grandmaster's lifelong cultivation and resentment, seemed like an ancient Vicious Beast that had slept for countless eons, slowly opening its eyes.

“I use my flesh as the catalyst... I use my Divine Soul as the fuel...”

A shrill, hoarse voice, sounding like two pieces of rough sandpaper rubbing together, boomed from the deepest depths of the bone altar.

This voice did not travel through the air but exploded directly at the edge of Zhou Wannian's Sea of Consciousness.

That was the last remaining Divine Soul imprint of the Suturing Grandmaster.

He knew he was doomed, and he knew that conventional means could not possibly deal with this man in green who possessed Absolute Mass. Therefore, in the moment before his life was extinguished, he chose the most desperate path without hesitation.

Sacrifice.

He took his half-god body, his brain fused with Truth Codes, and all the foundations he had accumulated over countless years of tyranny in the Immortal-Demon Great World, and used them all as fuel to ignite this bone altar.

“With the resentment of ten thousand worlds as firewood... ignite the Fire of Creation...”

The shrill roar grew louder and louder, shaking the entire underground space until it trembled.

“I respectfully invite... the Old Ancestor to emerge! Kill this scoundrel!”

Following this hysterical, desperate roar.

The blood-colored runes on the bone altar suddenly erupted with a blinding blood-light.

This blood-light was not an ordinary red, but a dark red so deep it seemed as if it were the sediment of hundreds of millions of years of dried blood.

“Hu—”

A cluster of dark red flames ignited out of thin air on the dark-gold skull at the top of the altar.

These flames had no temperature; instead, they emitted a frigid chill that could freeze the Divine Soul. The flames expanded with the wind, spreading down the altar's skeletal frame. In just a single breath, the entire thousand-foot-high bone altar transformed into a massive, blazing blood-colored torch.

The silent remnant Souls imprisoned within the altar for countless ages let out miserable wails under the calcination of these dark red flames. Their resentment, pain, and despair were ruthlessly refined and compressed by the fire, transforming into a massive energy beyond description that converged toward the center of the altar.

Zhou Wannian stood at the edge of the hole above, looking down at the burning blood-colored torch.

A wild wind poured up through the hole, making his green robes flap loudly. The temperature in the air dropped to the freezing point, and a thick layer of dark red frost condensed on the alloy plates of the floor.

In his eyes, deep as an ancient well, the flickering dark red firelight was reflected, and a faint chill appeared in his gaze.

“Beat the small one, and the old one comes out.”

Zhou Wannian's tone was calm, his voice sounding exceptionally clear amidst the ghostly wailing and howling.

“The routines of these fellows wallowing in the mire are surprisingly consistent. When they cause trouble they can't handle, they like to dig up their ancestral graves to find some old bones buried in the dirt to back them up.”

He did not move to extinguish the dark red flames.

Instead, he took half a step back, clasped his hands behind his back again, and assumed the posture of a spectator.

Since the opponent was going to reveal their final trump card, he was happy to be spared the trouble of searching for them everywhere. By dealing with them all at once, this stroll through the Immortal-Demon Great World could end in peace sooner.

The commotion underground grew larger and larger.

The cluster of dark red flames, which had gathered the resentment of the entire altar and all of the Suturing Grandmaster's flesh and Divine Soul, began to undergo a strange transformation after being compressed to its limit.

The dark red color gradually faded.

In its place was a blinding, overbearing dark gold that radiated supreme majesty!

“Rumble!”

A terrifying explosion sounded, as if it would completely tear this Major Thousand Worlds apart.

The cluster of dark gold flames suddenly exploded at the top of the altar.

A pillar of dark gold light, over a hundred feet in diameter, shot up from the center of the altar!

The speed of this light pillar surpassed all movement techniques in the world; it even ignored the constraints of space.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

The light pillar pierced straight upward.

The thick layer of dark grey alloy flooring beneath Zhou Wannian's feet was like fragile tofu before this light pillar, instantly dissolved into a massive hundred-foot-wide hole.

The light pillar broke through the surface of the Great Furnace of Creation, its momentum undiminished as it continued to soar upward.

It tore through the layer of dark purple haze that never dispersed over the Immortal-Demon Inner City, pierced through bone palaces and mechanical fortresses suspended in mid-air, and instantly vaporized the immortal and demon guards who tried to approach and investigate.

Finally, this dark gold light pillar forcefully pierced through the outermost spatial barrier of the Immortal-Demon Great World, plunging directly into the vast, boundless, and raging Void turbulence!

Piercing through dimensions.

This was a pure declaration, a coordinate guide to awaken a terrifying existence sleeping in the depths of the river of time.

Zhou Wannian stood at the edge of the massive hole dissolved by the light pillar.

The violent energy winds scraped against his cheeks. He squinted his eyes slightly, following the dark gold light pillar that soared into the sky with his gaze, looking all the way up.

When he carefully perceived the aura emitted by this light pillar,

On that handsome and easygoing face, which seemed not to care much about anything, the casual smile gradually faded.

In its place was a coldness as sharp as a blade's edge.

The color of this light pillar.

The scent mixed within this light pillar.

Half was the cold, rigid mechanical rust smell of the high-dimensional Truth Realm, and half was the stench of the decayed blood of some ancient deity.

Zhou Wannian was all too familiar with this scent.

Not long ago.

In the Qingping Realm, on those white jade ruins riddled with holes by the Dimensionality Reduction Storm.

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He extended two fingers and nonchalantly pinched the transparent thread hanging down from the depths of the firmament.

"Your fishing rod, I have confiscated it."

Accompanying that crisp snapping sound.

The high-dimensional thread was torn apart by his bare hands.

The backlash from the rupture surged back along the Void Realm, striking fiercely against that pale face beyond the heavens, which possessed no facial features, only a single, massive vertical pupil.

That vertical pupil, emitting the flowing light of high-dimensional Truth Code, cracked under the impact of the backlash.

Large swathes of viscous, magma-like blood gushed from the corner of the vertical pupil, turning into a foul-smelling rain of blood that scattered into the cracks of the dimensions.

The blood that flowed from that fleeing vertical pupil back then was exactly this kind of overbearing, blinding, yet endlessly decaying dark gold!

"So it was you, this One-Eyed Dragon covering your eye."

Zhou Wannian looked at the dark golden pillar of light piercing through the dimensions before him and sneered.

His voice carried a sense of sudden realization, as well as a hint of the amusement one feels when a game of cat and mouse reaches its final moments.

Following the trajectory of the radio waves earlier, he had known that the supreme ruler behind the scenes was hiding in some secret location within the Immortal-Demon Great World. But he had not expected that this so-called "Old Ancestor," this Dominator whom the Suturing Grandmaster had sacrificed himself to awaken.

It was none other than the Extraterrestrial Angler who had lowered a fishing line into the Qingping Realm, attempting to swallow that small world whole, skin and bones alike.

Karma, at this moment, formed a perfect closed loop.

Zhou Wannian dusted off his washed-out cyan sleeves.

Since the real mastermind had been forced out of seclusion by this pillar of light, it was truly time for this play to come to an end.

Accompanied by the dark golden pillar of light shooting into the sky, the entire Immortal-Demon Great World began to fall into an unprecedented, violent tremor.

"Rumble... rumble..."

The metallic crust beneath his feet groaned in pain, and countless massive fissures spread across the streets of the Inner City. The palaces and floating islands that had originally been suspended in mid-air lost their balance due to the distortion of space, falling one after another like dumplings into a pot, kicking up clouds of dust that filled the sky.

The sky was illuminated in a ghastly manner by that dark golden pillar of light.

In a certain independent Void Realm deep within the Immortal-Demon Great World.

That place was shrouded year-round by violent spatial turbulence, an absolute Forbidden Ground that even the high-level figures of the Immortal-Demon Great World could not set foot in.

At this moment, under the summons of this dark golden pillar of light, this Forbidden Ground began to collapse violently.

"Who is it..."

A low, deep humming sound, as if emitted from an ancient bronze bell, emanated from the depths of the collapsing Forbidden Ground.

There was none of the madness and hysteria of the Suturing Grandmaster in this voice.

It was calm and indifferent, yet carried an absolute arrogance that trampled all things in the Universe underfoot. It was as if a giant beast napping in its own backyard had been suddenly awakened by an ignorant, reckless flying insect.

"Who is it... that has awakened me..."

Accompanying this whisper that shook the Divine Soul, the dark golden pillar of light shooting into the sky began to shrink and converge violently.

Above the firmament, that layer of dark purple haze was brutally torn open by an invisible giant hand.

A terrifying pressure that made the Souls of all Immortal-Demon Cultivators tremble poured down like heavy water, covering the sky and earth.

Above the ruins of the Great Furnace of Creation, Zhou Wannian stood with his hands behind his back.

He looked up at the torn firmament.

The wild wind tousled his black hair, and his eyes, deep as ancient wells, reflected the massive shadow slowly taking shape in the sky.

At the end of the shrinking pillar of light.

A terrifying figure, standing tens of thousands of feet tall, stepped through the Void Realm and walked out step by step from the depths of the dimensions.

This figure was shrouded in an incomparably wide dark golden robe. On the surface of the robe, there were no auspicious clouds of the immortals, nor skulls of the Demon Race, but rather densely packed, grey-white Truth Realm codes slithering about like living creatures.

It had no breath and no heartbeat.

Only a "click" sound, similar to the slow meshing of giant mechanical gears, emanated from inside its wide robe.

Most eye-catching of all was its face.

It was a pale face hidden in the shadow of a hood. No nose, no mouth.

Only in the very center of the face grew a single, incomparably huge vertical pupil.

But at this moment, this vertical pupil, which should have been emitting the flowing light of high-dimensional Truth, was tightly closed.

At the corner of the vertical pupil, a hideous crack slashed diagonally downward. Dark golden blood flowed down along that crack, drop by drop. Each drop of blood that landed in the Void Realm would burn a pitch-black hole through the surrounding space.

The figure raised a huge, pale, withered palm with only four fingers, clutching tightly at the bleeding eye.

Extraterrestrial Angler.

The true mastermind behind the Immortal-Demon Great World.

A loyal lackey of the Absolute Truth Realm.

Finally, amidst the collapsing ruins filling the sky, it revealed its true form.

"Trash..."

The Extraterrestrial Angler clutched its bleeding eye; although that single eye was closed, its perception, vast as the sea, had already swept across the entire broken and dilapidated Immortal-Demon Great World.

It sensed the shattering of the Star Ring defense line, the drying up of the city-protecting blood river, and even more so, the tragic state of the million-strong monster army being ground into pulp within this Great Furnace of Creation.

On its mouthless face, there seemed to be an uncontrollable rage burning.

"A bunch of trash who only know how to waste Origin. You couldn't even handle a single variable from the Lower Realm, and now you've wasted the precious time I was using to repair my Divine Soul in seclusion."

The Extraterrestrial Angler's voice echoed thunderously across the sky, turning into a dark golden storm that blew the Immortal-Demon Cultivators still struggling in mid-air directly into blood mist.

It slowly lowered its head.

That perception, mixed with high-dimensional Truth logic and the pressure of ancient deities, was like sharp poisonous needles that pierced through layers of the Void Realm, locking firmly onto Zhou Wannian, who stood at the edge of the pit in the ground.

"It was you..."

The hand with which the Extraterrestrial Angler was covering its eye trembled slightly.

It felt it.

The aura emanating from this man in the cyan cloth robe before it, so plain and unremarkable, yet flawless and unassailable.

This aura was the culprit who, just a few days ago in that low-dimensional world, had torn its high-dimensional Karma thread with bare hands, causing it to suffer the backlash of the Great Dao and nearly blinding this Eye of Truth!

Enemies meeting, eyes burning red with hatred.

Even though it now had only one tightly closed, bleeding eye.

"You severed my Karma in the Lower Realm, and I haven't even had the chance to clear out that filthy mud pit yet."

The Extraterrestrial Angler's massive body descended slowly, carrying a world-destroying pressure, and stopped less than a thousand feet above the Inner City.

"And yet you, not only did you run up here to seek death, but you even dared to wreck my place."

It slowly lowered the withered palm that was covering its eye.

That tightly closed, massive vertical pupil—although blood was still dripping from the corner—opened a slit at this moment, extremely slowly, yet with incomparable firmness.

Blinding, grey-white Truth light, mixed with dark golden, tyrannical blood, shot out from that slit like a tangible sword, aiming directly at Zhou Wannian.

"Today, I will slice open this Physical Body of yours, which cannot be analyzed, inch by inch. I will grind you into the most basic particles and pave them beneath my throne!"

Facing this high-dimensional declaration that was enough to make the entire Major Thousand Worlds tremble.

Facing that terrifying pressure descending to cover the sky and earth.

Zhou Wannian stood quietly in place.

His washed-out cyan cloth robe did not even show a single wrinkle under this pressure.

He lifted his chin slightly, looking at that behemoth in the sky, which had just been covering its eye and was now spouting threats.

In his deep eyes, there was no panic, no gravity of facing a formidable enemy.

Only a trace of mockery, cold to the extreme.

"The wound hasn't even healed yet, and you're already in such a rush to take off the fig leaf and make a spectacle of yourself."

Zhou Wannian's tone was calm, but his voice was like a sharp blade piercing through space, clearly delivered into the ears of the Extraterrestrial Angler.

He pulled his hands from behind his back and casually dusted off his cuffs.

"Fishing through a tube from down below, you had your line torn off by me, and your face swollen from the lash."

Zhou Wannian raised those eyes, as calm as ancient wells, and stared straight at the massive, bleeding vertical pupil in the sky.

He took a small step forward.

His sole landed on the alloy floor, emitting a crisp "click."

"Now, I have walked to your doorstep myself."

The corners of Zhou Wannian's mouth slowly curled into an exceptionally brilliant smile.

"Let's see what you use to protect the rest of your head today."