450: Chapter 450 The loom spins out a thousand waves, searching for the source in the thread of fate.

The soles of his blue cloth shoes stepped onto the ancient road paved with the wreckage of dead worlds, producing a dry, harsh sound, as if stepping on bone fragments weathered for ten million years.

Zhou Wannian had his hands leisurely clasped behind his back, his posture upright, and his faded blue robe swayed slightly in the dead, silent stellar wind.

He walked step by step out of the dense, layered shadows, and the view before him finally opened up at the end of this long, ancient road.

This was not just an opening of the view, but a violent shock to both his vision and his sanity.

Looming in the center of the vast galaxy before Zhou Wannian was a terrifying dimensional organ, so massive that it made one's breath stall.

It was too big. So big that the dead, silent stars orbiting around it were like mere specks of insignificant dust.

If one had to use a mundane object to describe its shape, it was a loom.

A massive loom that was ancient, dilapidated, yet exuded endless eeriness and bloodthirstiness.

The frame of the loom was forcibly pieced together from two ancient galactic Dragon skeletons, each millions of miles long. The surface of those off-white bones was covered in dark red tumors, which contracted and expanded rhythmically like hearts.

Serving as the shuttles were two white dwarfs with their cores hollowed out. They spun crazily at both ends, rubbing against each other to create blinding, cold-colored sparks, stirring up dimensional hurricanes capable of tearing through the barriers of Major Thousand Worlds.

"Click... Clatter..."

A dull and mechanical grinding sound, following the nothingness of the absolute vacuum, crashed directly into Zhou Wannian's Sea of Consciousness.

It was a huge, ghastly white shuttle, shuttling back and forth within this galaxy-level loom. This shuttle was clearly polished from the skull of some unspeakable ancient god-devil, and in its hollow eye sockets, it spat out eerie gray light.

What this loom spun was neither cotton nor linen, nor silk.

It was thread.

Countless threads, presenting a grayish, dead, and silent color.

These threads were dense and numerous, so many that they could not be calculated by numbers. They poured continuously from that huge bone shuttle, like a three-dimensional spider web expanding endlessly outward, crazily spreading and taking root along the gaps in the Void Realm in all directions.

Every single thread was accurately connected to a Major Thousand World or a Middle Thousand Worlds hidden within the endless dimensions.

Zhou Wannian stopped in his tracks.

He stood on a fractured meteorite section at the end of the ancient road, slightly tilting his head, and in his eyes, deep as a Withered Well, the terrifying, roaring loom was reflected.

In the pupils of his eyes, one hundred and eight clusters of golden time dao patterns slowly rotated.

With the vision of Great Perfection, he saw clearly what was flowing within those gray threads.

It was not Spiritual Qi, nor was it pure energy.

It was "Karma".

It was the birth, old age, sickness, and death, the joys, anger, sorrows, and happiness, and the separations and reunions of the billions upon billions of living beings across All Heavens and Myriad Worlds. This massive loom was like a cold, ruthless weaver, using these gray threads to forcibly weave the Karma and fate of countless worlds together, and then cutting and stitching them according to some predetermined, icy logic of Death Qi.

Who should break through a Bottleneck at what time, who should encounter a death tribulation at what time, which world should see the recovery of Spiritual Qi, and which world should head toward heat death.

All of it was arranged clearly and plainly by the threads spun by this loom.

"Transforming an entire galaxy into internal organs to use as a spinning wheel."

Zhou Wannian stared at the bone shuttle moving back and forth, and in his nasal cavity, he smelled a dense, inextricable scent of sour, rotting Death Qi; he frowned with some disgust and spoke in a calm tone.

"The rat hiding at the bottom of the Withered Well has craftsmanship that gets more disgusting every time. Rolling the fate of the entire world into a ball of rotten hemp thread, he really thinks he is the tailor of this Universe."

The moment Zhou Wannian's voice fell.

In the open Void Realm directly in front of that massive loom, the originally smooth space suddenly rippled violently like water waves.

The temperature in the air plummeted precipitously at this moment.

That kind of cold was not the temperature of ice and snow, but an absolute chill capable of causing a cultivator's Primordial Spirit to wither instantly.

Five figures emerged without warning from the rippling spatial waves, standing side by side between Zhou Wannian and that dimensional loom.

Zhou Wannian's gaze fell upon these five people.

They were wearing wide, rough gray robes. The material of the robes looked like it was woven from some kind of dried grave grass, with ragged edges dragging in the Void Realm beneath their feet.

On their faces, there were no features.

Each person wore a ghastly white, smooth mask. There were no eye holes or mouth slits on the mask, just like a piece of white paper that had just been pasted and hadn't yet been drawn with features, exuding a hair-raising sense of eeriness.

What was most eye-catching was their spines.

The spines of these five people were deeply hunched, as if bent by some heavy object.

And above their hunched backs, a huge, semi-transparent phantom of a dark green copper coin floated.

The copper coin was round on the outside and square on the inside.

In that square hole, one could vaguely see a drop of viscous liquid resembling a tear, constantly dripping and then re-gathering.

This style of copper coin, this dark green aura, Zhou Wannian could not be more familiar with.

The mark on the brow of the youth Stone in Qingping Realm, the Death Domain copper coin left by the mirror-faced freak outside the wine shop in the Jiangnan town.

These five people, carrying this illusory copper coin, were like those carrying a heavy cross.

"Coin-Carriers."

Zhou Wannian looked at these five faceless monsters blocking his path, the corners of his mouth slowly curling into a cold arc.

His senses, sharp to the extreme, smelled an incomparably pure scent from these five people.

It was a Death Qi with a purity so high it was hair-raising.

It was a hundred, a thousand times purer than the gray mist permeating the periphery of the Taiwu Ancestral Court. These five gray-robed people did not need to rely on the mechanical shells of the Truth Realm to disguise themselves, nor did they need to stitch together Spiritual Qi and Devilish Qi like the Immortal-Demon Great World.

They were Death Qi itself.

They were the flesh and blood forcibly split from the very source at the bottom of that Withered Well, the entity that had devoured countless remnant souls.

"The master doesn't dare to show its head, so it sent a few genuine direct descendants to welcome guests."

Zhou Wannian had his hands crossed behind his back, his blue shirt not even rippling in the bone-chilling cold wind; his tone was casual, as if he were commenting on a few street performers on the side of the road.

"Carrying a copper coin, are you looking to beg for food in this starry sky, or do you intend to use this copper coin to buy my life?"

The five faceless people carrying the phantom copper coins stood silently in place.

They did not fly into a rage like ordinary old monsters of the cultivation world.

The gray-robed person in the middle slowly raised an arm as withered as firewood.

No sound vibrated in the air.

But a hollow, numb, and absolute sense of fatalism resonated directly past the obstacles of space, vibrating deep within Zhou Wannian's eardrums.

"Transgressor."

"Your thread of fate is not within the warp and weft of the loom."

"Your existence is a knot that disrupts order. Only by cutting it can it return to the right path."

There was no killing intent in this thought.

It was like a seasoned weaver seeing a tangled thread and preparing to pick up scissors to cut it; this was just their natural working procedure.

In the withered hand raised by the gray-robed person, there was no sword or blade held.

He just extended two fingers like withered tree branches and plucked extremely casually at the Void Realm beside him.

"Zheng——"

A faint sound of a plucked string rang out.

He plucked one of the gray threads extending from the loom that appeared pale yellow.

Following the direction in which that thread extended, Zhou Wannian's gaze was cast toward a distant lower Star Domain.

In his Great Perfection vision, he saw clearly that in that Star Domain, a cultivation planet that was originally full of vitality and rich in Spiritual Qi met its doom without warning the moment that thread was plucked.

The core fire within the planet extinguished instantly.

The Spiritual Vein dried up completely within half a breath.

The tens of billions of living beings on the surface of the planet turned into fly ash all at once before they could even let out a scream.

A brilliant star, just like a light bulb whose power was suddenly cut off, instantly turned into a dead, gray stone in the dark Universe.

And the massive Death Qi and despair generated when that star was destroyed flowed back into the massive loom along that pale yellow thread, like a turbid current, becoming the fuel driving that bone shuttle to continue shuttling.

Depriving a world of its fate.

No need for Divine Ability clashes, no need for armies to press on the border.

One only needs to sit before this loom and gently pluck a thread representing Karma.

This was the eerie method of these "Coin-Carriers," and this was the terrifying power of that monster at the bottom of the Withered Well to control All Heavens and Myriad Worlds.

After demonstrating this move.

The five faceless gray-robed people simultaneously turned their ghastly white, smooth mask faces and stared straight at Zhou Wannian.

"A thread that is not within the warp and weft, we shall personally spin one for you."

The huge phantom copper coins behind the five gray-robed people began to spin crazily.

Accompanied by the rotation of the copper coins, the massive loom spanning the center of the galaxy let out a deafening roar.

The bone shuttle shuttled crazily.

Hundreds and thousands of threads, presenting an ink-black color, spewed out from the core of the loom.

These black threads were different from other threads of fate; they exuded a strong stench of rot and death, like a swarm of highly venomous sea snakes swimming in the darkness.

They twisted and weaved flexibly in the Void Realm, ignoring all physical defenses, and headed straight for Zhou Wannian.

They intended to forcibly entangle this perfect Physical Body, which originally had no trajectory of fate, with the Karma of death and withering. As long as this black thread touched even a corner of his clothing, Zhou Wannian's fate would be forcibly taken over by this massive loom, and from then on, his life and death would no longer be his own; he would only be reduced to a ball of thread on this machine.

The fishy, foul, cold wind blew in his face.

The black threads filling the sky wove into a net, having approached within less than a zhang of Zhou Wannian.

Facing this kind of eerie attack, enough to make even a Creator's scalp tingle and flee in avoidance.

Zhou Wannian.

Remained standing securely on that fractured meteorite section.

He did not dodge.

Nor did he retreat.

He didn't even have any intention of withdrawing his hands clasped behind his back.

On that handsome and easygoing face, the lazy smile not only did not fade but revealed a bit of deep mockery.

He watched with his own eyes as a few of the thickest black threads, like vipers spitting their tongues, slithered over along the invisible stairs beneath his feet, coiling round and round toward his ankles clad in blue cloth shoes.

"Hiss hiss..."

The moment the thread touched Zhou Wannian's ankle, it made a faint sound like corrosion.

The five Coin-Carriers in the distance, though their masks had no expression, saw the phantom copper coins behind them spinning even more violently. They seemed prepared to exert force simultaneously, tightening the threads to drag this arrogant variable completely into the meat grinder of the loom.

Zhou Wannian lowered his head and glanced at the black threads of Karma that were entangled on his ankles, attempting to burrow into his flesh and blood.

He was not panicked.

The perfectly self-consistent inner universe rules of the Great Five Elements Illusory World Art circulated calmly within his body. One hundred and eight clusters of time dao patterns emitted a warm, gentle golden light, forging his own closed loop of Karma into something like a piece of naturally formed, ancient divine iron.

Those black threads attempting to burrow into his body were like a few soft cotton threads, desperately rubbing against a polished diamond.

Apart from futile consumption, they could not leave any trace at all.

Zhou Wannian lifted his eyelids, his gaze passing over the five gray-robed people, and looked at the roaring massive loom.

He sighed softly.

Zhou Wannian's tone was calm, carrying an absolute arrogance that saw through all illusions, and he spoke indifferently.

"Using a few broken threads, you want to fly me like a kite?"

His spotless blue cloth shoes, on the fractured meteorite section, stamped lightly, calmly and plainly.

"Hum!"

An invisible wave of Absolute Mass rippled out from the soles of his shoes.

Those black threads of fate entangled on his ankles, the moment they touched this mass, did not even have the chance to tighten, instantly turning into extremely fine black fly ash and dissipating in the cold wind.

Zhou Wannian slowly withdrew his right hand from behind his back.

Facing the five slightly stunned Coin-Carriers, he raised his hand and, extremely casually, flicked the non-existent dust from his blue cuff.