422: Chapter 422 The Old Seal Grows Moss, Waves Rise in the Desolate Forbidden Land

The blue soles crushed the prickly moss. Before the freshly squeezed grey juice could fall into the abyss below, it was silently crushed into nothingness within the absolute vacuum Domain three feet around Zhou Wannian by the immense gravity.

Zhou Wannian walked leisurely toward the core of the abyss, his hands clasped behind his back, along this thick Law chain that resembled a Dragon and gleamed with an ancient bronze luster.

The world here remained a monotonous, dull grey.

The surrounding grey mist, thick as glue, seemed to sense the intruder's presence and churned even more violently. The mist pulled long grey ribbons around the chain, and each time they brushed past Zhou Wannian, they let out a sharp, low howl. Although no sound reached his ears, his keen perception clearly captured the subtle vibrations produced as the space structure was scraped by the grey mist.

The air he inhaled became increasingly heavy. Within the sour, rotting smell of ancient wood decaying in a swamp, a bitter, scorched scent—resembling metal being forcibly melted—began to emerge.

“Thump... Thump... Thump...”

That dull, slow rhythm, like a heartbeat, traveled through the lead-grey moss beneath his feet, striking Zhou Wannian's soles harder and harder with every beat.

Every time the rhythm pulsed, the dense grey vines wrapped around the chain would expand. Prickles stood on end, greedily burrowing into the gaps of the Law chain's plating, sucking the Great Perfection spatial power hidden within.

Zhou Wannian walked with extreme steadiness.

The bronze chains beneath his feet crisscrossed, weaving a vast, boundless spiderweb over the abyss. He stepped along these iron highways suspended in the Void Realm, his figure not wavering in the slightest despite the torrential wash of Death Qi.

At the very moment he stepped into the core region of this massive web of mana.

The grey mist ahead churned violently without warning.

“Clatter—”

A sharp, ear-piercing sound of metal grinding, as if countless pieces of raw iron were being dragged frantically across the ground, abruptly broke the absolute silence.

Zhou Wannian stopped in his tracks.

Standing at the intersection of two thick chains, his eyes, deep as ancient wells, narrowed slightly as he calmly watched the thick grey fog receding to either side.

Heavy footsteps.

It wasn't the sound of a living person's flesh and blood treading on wood or soil, but a heavy, crisp clangor of massive stones striking the bronze chains with infinite power.

With every step, the entire hundred-foot-thick Law chain trembled violently, sending sprays of lead-grey moss juice flying everywhere.

Three tall, grotesquely shaped shadows broke through the thick mist, lining up to block Zhou Wannian's path with expressionless faces.

Violent spatial winds swept out from these three monsters, blowing the surrounding grey mist into massive whirlpools.

Zhou Wannian stood where he was, his gaze slowly sweeping across the three monsters.

When his gaze fell upon the ten-zhang-tall monster at the very front, the casual smile on his handsome and easygoing face flickered with a subtle ripple.

It was a behemoth composed entirely of death-grey granite.

It had no head.

The center of its shoulders, broad as a plaza, was empty. Only at its chest was a giant, several-zhang-long gap torn open by a sharp blade, serving as its mouth. Inside the gap, there was no tongue or teeth, only a faint glimmer of rolling grey Death Qi flickering in and out.

Its two arms were grotesquely long and thick, like stone pillars supporting a palace, hanging heavily at its sides. Its fingertips were five dark grey stone blades as sharp as knives.

To its left was a massive stone sculpture with an eagle's head but a humanoid body. The giant stone wings that should have soared were now both broken off at the base, revealing the rough, grainy white stone underneath.

To the right sat a giant stone lion the size of an elephant, but with a single eye. There was no eyeball in that massive socket, only a cold grey flame burning quietly.

These three monsters possessed none of the warm flesh and blood characteristic of living beings. Their skin was cracked and rough, covered in fine furrows left by the weathering of ages, and their entire bodies exuded the same sour decay and desolation as this land.

At this moment, the suspense of the overt plot was pulled to its peak by the appearance of these three monsters.

Zhou Wannian watched them quietly.

He was all too familiar with these three piles of rotten stone.

Countless eons ago, he had been strolling through these endless dimensions and passed by the outskirts of the Taiwu Ancestral Court, which at the time was still known as the Stinking Dried Well.

Back then, he found the musty smell emanating from the well too pungent, so he casually wove a few strands of Great Perfection Law into a net and sealed the well mouth tightly. After finishing, he was about to brush off his sleeves and leave when he noticed a few boulders, riddled with holes from Death Qi erosion, lying lonely by the edge of the dried well.

He had been in an extremely bored state at the time.

Finding these rotten stones an eyesore, he reached out his right hand and idly dug and molded the surfaces of those stones with his fingertips.

He molded the largest piece into a human shape, carved the long piece into a bird-like form with a few casual strokes, and shaped the remaining lump into a crouching lion.

After finishing the molding, he found them too stiff, so he leaned in and lightly blew a breath of Celestial Essence Qi into the three clay-and-wood-like stone figures.

“Turning stone to gold, granting spirit to the lifeless.”

That breath of Celestial Essence Qi fell into the stones' cores, instantly transforming into a trace of pure Creation Essence. The originally lifeless boulders came to life amidst a series of cracking sounds.

Back then, the humanoid stone still had a round head. It knelt on the ground, clutching the hem of Zhou Wannian's blue robe with its rough stone hands, making babbling, cheerful sounds like an infant.

Zhou Wannian had somewhat disdainfully pulled his hem from its grasp, casually patted its newly grown stone head, and gave a faint command.

“You three, keep watch here on the well's edge. If the musty smell from below escapes, just stomp on it. When I'm tired of my stroll one day, I'll come back to see you.”

With one sentence, he gave them names and assigned them the duty of gatekeeping.

They were the true first-generation Gatekeepers of the Taiwu Ancestral Court.

They were creations that Zhou Wannian had casually enlightened and given life to during his bored years.

But now, revisiting the old place.

Zhou Wannian looked at the three broken, deformed monsters before him, exuding endless Death Qi.

The humanoid Stone Spirit's head, which he had once patted, had been brutally smashed into powder by some force, leaving it to survive only through the crack in its chest; the bird-shaped one had broken wings and could barely stand; the beast-shaped one was blind, and the trace of Creation Essence at its core had long been completely stripped and devoured by a cold, rigid power.

They were no longer the Stone Spirits that would laugh and grab his hem.

The Divine Souls within them had been completely washed away, leaving only cold, numb husks that had become mindless Puppets in this misty land of death, knowing only how to follow orders.

“Roar—”

The giant crack in the humanoid Stone Spirit's chest suddenly split open to both sides.

An extremely dull, non-human low growl, like two giant millstones grinding at full speed, boomed from the depths of that gap. Whoosh. Grey Death Qi mixed with a strong smell of engine oil erupted from the rift, turning into a foul grey storm that scattered the surrounding thick mist.

Its deathly silent, hollow stone joints let out a series of creaking explosions.

There was no joy in welcoming their Creator.

There was no struggle of recognizing their master.

This Gatekeeper, given life by Zhou Wannian's own hand, took a sudden step forward after letting out a roar.

That right arm, as thick as a stone pillar supporting a palace, carried a terrifying force capable of smashing an entire realm to pieces. It tore through the surrounding thick grey mist, accompanied by a piercing sonic boom, and smashed down toward Zhou Wannian's head.

At the same time.

The eagle-headed stone sculpture nearby kicked off the bronze chain, its broken body turning into a streak of grey lightning as its talons, made of steel-like rock, lunged straight for Zhou Wannian's chest.

The blind stone lion exerted force with its four legs, crushing large patches of parasitic moss, and pounced from the side with its bloody maw wide open, carrying the sour stench of Death Qi.

Once-docile creations.

Now reduced to mindless Puppets.

At this moment, driven by some unknown will, they unhesitatingly raised their slaughtering blades against the Creator who had given them everything.

Large chunks of rock rubbed against the Void Realm due to their extreme speed, creating dazzling sparks. Before the violent wind pressure even reached him, the Law chain beneath Zhou Wannian's feet began to let out groans of being overburdened.

Zhou Wannian stood quietly at the intersection of the two chains.

His faded blue robe was pressed tightly against his thin frame by the fierce winds of the three giant monsters' coordinated assault.

He did not dodge.

He didn't even pull out his hands, which were clasped behind his back, at the first opportunity.

Those eyes, deep as ancient wells, locked onto a hidden corner of the three Stone Spirits' broken bodies with extreme precision at the very instant the stone pillar-like fist was less than three feet from the tip of his nose.

The suspense of the covert plot finally shed its cold outer layer at this moment.

Above the crack in the headless humanoid Stone Spirit's chest, on the rough rock surface where the neck had been severed.

At this very moment.

It was covered by an extremely thin metal network that flowed with a faint greyish-white cold light.

This network was not a formation pattern carved into the stone's surface, but was composed of countless microscopic square and triangular cables. At the junctions of those cables, strings of dense, rigid, and rigorous Truth Realm binary Truth Codes were flashing and washing through at a speed unimaginable to Mortals.

These code networks were like an inescapable iron mask, welded firmly into the very core of the stone.

It wasn't just this one.

At the base of the eagle-headed stone sculpture's broken wings and deep within the blind stone lion's eye socket, identical greyish-white code matrices were embedded.

These complex logic codes were currently doing something that caused the cold light in Zhou Wannian's eyes to freeze completely.

“Beep—Residual data packet from Mothership received—”

“Mass extraction process stable. Conversion rate: 14%.”

“Commencing Truth Armor sequence loading...”

A faint, mechanical electronic prompt, devoid of any biological warmth, echoed intermittently within the stone skulls of these Stone Spirits.

Following the flashing of the code.

Zhou Wannian clearly saw that the lead-grey parasitic moss clinging to the bronze chains, pulsing like a heart, now seemed to receive a command for forced extraction.

The prickles on the moss's surface wriggled violently, transforming the sucked-up Great Perfection Space Law power into visible energy lines shimmering with a greyish-white cold light.

These energy lines flowed continuously through the legs of the three Stone Spirits as they stood on the chains, converging into the Truth Code matrices in their foreheads and chests like a blood transfusion.

Those tin cans from the Truth Realm who only know how to crunch numbers.

Although they couldn't directly break the Great Perfection Seal Zhou Wannian had left behind, they had used these codes to forcibly corrode the Gatekeepers he had stationed here over the long years.

They had transformed these three Stone Spirits into the most precise “Dimensional Force Converters” in this land of death.

They used the moss to steal Law power from within the chains.

Then, using the Creation Essence at the Stone Spirits' cores as a furnace, they forcibly converted the Great Perfection Absolute Mass into greyish-white High-Dimensional Metal Armor that conformed to Truth Realm logic.

“Crack... Crack...”

Along with the influx of Great Perfection Law power, the originally cracked and rough grey skin of the headless Stone Spirit began to exhibit a widespread, cold, and chilling silver-grey metallic luster.

The stone shell was regressing as a layer of heavy armor made of geometric shapes slowly grew from deep within its bones.

The massive fist it swung at Zhou Wannian even grew rings of hydraulic transmission pipes in mid-air to increase pressure, its power surging several times over in an instant.

The Truth Realm.

This group of mechanical beings who styled themselves as the supreme Profound Truth of the Universe.

They were using the broken stones Zhou Wannian had casually discarded back then.

They were sucking the Law power Zhou Wannian had used to cover the well.

And finally.

They turned these powers around, fashioned them into a set of solid iron armor, welded it onto the pets he had casually raised, and sent them as pawns to smash the head of their Creator.

This kind of high-dimensional calculation, which calculated every last detail and even carried a sickening flavor.

At this moment, it was completely exposed to Zhou Wannian's sight.

The grey mist in the sky was torn to shreds by these three violent forces. The massive stone pillar fist had already penetrated the absolute vacuum Domain two feet above Zhou Wannian's head, and the terrifying gravitational pressure caused dense black cracks to appear in the space three feet away.

The sour Death Qi and strong smell of engine oil were already upon his face.

Zhou Wannian stood at the eye of the storm.

On that handsome and easygoing face, the laziness and indolence completely vanished without a trace at this moment.

“Using my strength to feed my dogs.”

Zhou Wannian looked up slightly, two extremely cold glints interweaving in his eyes, deep as ancient wells, as he stared fixedly at the giant metal fist coming at his face.

His steady, cold, and even somewhat raspy voice ignored the barriers of rules and boomed without warning in this absolutely silent world.

“And in the end, you want my dogs to bite my legs.”

Zhou Wannian let out a cold laugh.

In that laugh, there was no anger, only a coldness that had been suppressed for countless eons, finally thoroughly disgusted by the sickening behavior of these tin cans.

His right hand, which had been clasped behind his back, was pulled out in this ten-thousandth of a second.

He pulled it out quite plainly.

There was no riot of True Qi, no flow of Spells.

Zhou Wannian simply turned his body slightly, facing the three ancient creations that had been completely corroded by the Truth Code and turned unrecognizable.

Slowly, he raised his slender, fair left hand, with a trace of lead-grey moss juice still clinging to his fingertips.

He pressed his fingers together and lowered his wrist.

He didn't go to smash the Truth chips in their heads.

Instead, facing the giant fist smashing down on him, his joined fingers—like a rusty, mundane wood-chopping knife—followed the spatial rift torn open by the code and, quite plainly...

Forward.

Swung it out.