164: Chapter 164 A fruitless search through the temple, only the Heaven-Slaying Sword remains in the desolate ruins.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

An incredibly shocking scene—one that was even worthy of being recorded in the annals of the Major Thousand Worlds—unfolded!

Those tens of thousands of crimson rays, which had been endowed with the rules of "Absolute Severance" and "Ultimate Destruction" by the ancient gods of the Heavenly Court...

...the moment they shot into the golden bitter sea in front of Ye Xiu's palm and collided with those nine ancient Dao characters that shone as bright as stars...

...they failed to kick up even a single decent spark!

There was no earth-shattering energy explosion, nor was there any deadlock between evenly matched Laws.

It was like fragile raw noodles slamming straight into an immortal wall cast from divine gold!

Those crimson rays of light representing the highest slaughter rules of the Major Thousand Worlds...

...under the dimensional-reducing crushing force of the Nine Secrets of Shrouding the Heavens, shattered inch by inch, instantly turning into the most primitive and harmless particles of light.

They dissipated silently into the Void Realm!

"How is this possible?!"

Qin Mu watched from behind, completely dumbfounded. That was an ancient god's ultimate strike, capable of instantly slicing even a Peak Divine Bridge Realm cultivator into mincemeat!

But Ye Xiu's retaliation had clearly only just begun.

"With just this little brightness, you dare to flash in front of me?"

Divine light burst from Ye Xiu's heterochromatic gold and silver eyes as he suddenly curled his outstretched right hand into a claw.

He made a violent, utterly unreasonable clawing motion from afar toward the massive Formation net in midair, which was composed of tens of thousands of "transparent energy spheres"!

"Great Handprint of Shrouding the Heavens—shatter for me!!!"

"Rumble!"

A colossal hand that shrouded the heavens, measuring tens of thousands of feet in size and condensed entirely from the golden True Saint Law, materialized out of thin air above the Hall of the Other Shore.

This giant hand carried a supreme, domineering intent capable of grasping the sun and moon, and shrouding the heavens with a single hand.

It firmly squeezed the overbearing "Divine Language Formation" net into its palm!

"Creak... Creak..."

In midair, those indestructible transparent energy shells, which not even God Realm experts could break...

...emitted a tooth-gritting sound of extreme compression under the terrifying grip of that golden giant hand.

"Explode for me!"

Ye Xiu's gaze turned cold, and he suddenly clenched his five fingers.

"Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!"

A series of extremely crisp, dense popping sounds, like firecrackers during the New Year, detonated in succession within the Void Realm!

Under Qin Mu's utterly stunned gaze, those transparent energy spheres, structured like incandescent light bulbs and wrapping ancient god mantras inside...

...exploded one after another under this absolute, violent crushing force!

The transparent energy shells turned into a shower of glass-like shards, rustling as they fell.

As for the so-called "ancient god languages" flickering like tungsten filaments inside the spheres, the moment they came into contact with the True Saint Law of Shrouding the Heavens...

...they were like insects encountering their natural predator, letting out extremely shrill, silent screams before being instantly burned to ashes by the golden fire of Law!

Ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand!

In just three short breaths of time! The supreme execution Formation that claimed to allow entry but no exit, one that even the Heavenly Court was proud of—the [Divine Language Cage]...

...was, by Ye Xiu's most brutal, domineering, and unreasonable methods, spheres, lines, Formation, and divine languages alike...

...completely squeezed into an unrecognizable clump of waste gas!

*Crash!*

As the last "divine language bulb" was crushed in Ye Xiu's giant hand of Law...

...the oppressive aura of destruction enveloping the perimeter of the Hall of the Other Shore instantly vanished into thin air.

The sky was filled with shimmering energy debris, like a brilliant rain of light.

Ye Xiu slowly withdrew his right hand and placed both hands behind his back once more.

Bathed in the falling energy debris, his bright red dragon-patterned wedding robe remained completely spotless.

He raised his chin slightly, his cold and proud gaze penetrating the open bronze doors of the hall to look inside.

"Formations? Divine languages?

In the face of absolute power, they are nothing more than glass marbles to be crushed at will."

Ye Xiu turned his head, looking at Qin Mu, who was still frozen in shock with his jaw nearly dropping to the ground, a wild smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"What are you still standing there for? The door is open.

Let's go in and see if your village chief has been roasted well-done by these broken light bulbs."

Snapping out of his daze, Qin Mu swallowed hard and quickly held his butcher knife in a reverse grip.

He followed Ye Xiu across the high bronze threshold, which was covered in sword and saber marks, and rushed into the interior of the hall.

"Village Chief! Grandpa Blind!"

The moment Qin Mu stepped into the hall, he impatiently shouted at the top of his lungs.

His voice, laced with the robust true essence of the Peak Divine Bridge Realm, echoed wildly inside the empty hall like rolling heavenly thunder.

"Rumble..."

The echoes spiraled above the dome, shaking down countless thick layers of tribulation ash accumulated over tens of millions of years.

However, the hall was dead silent.

Other than Qin Mu's own echo, no one responded to him.

There was no sigh from the Village Chief, which always carried a hint of loneliness, nor was there the "tap-tap" of Grandpa Blind's bamboo cane.

"How could this be..."

Qin Mu's face instantly turned pale, and he abruptly unleashed his Divine Sense to its limit.

It covered every corner of the Hall of the Other Shore like a massive net.

The interior of the hall was extremely vast; the space had even been folded by someone using the Divine Ability of "storing Mount Sumeru in a mustard seed," spanning hundreds of miles in circumference.

Colossal coiled-dragon pillars, tens of thousands of feet tall, stood inside, though most of them were already broken and collapsed.

The ground was littered with the remains of ancient divine weapons and the massive, withered bones of unknown Divine Beasts.

But there was one thing missing—living people!

Let alone living people, there was not even a fresh corpse or a single drop of undried blood!

"No! This is impossible!"

Qin Mu panicked completely, darting frantically through the ruins of the hall like a crazed young lion.

He overturned massive pieces of rubble and shattered the jade pillars blocking his way.

"Granny's Life Tablet clearly shattered here! The final distress Divine Thought was also sent from here!

Just now outside, I even sensed their auras! How could they have vanished into thin air?!"

Qin Mu's eyes were bloodshot; despair and fear gnawed at his heart like venomous serpents.

Could it be...

Could it be that the Village Chief and the others really couldn't withstand the Divine Language Formation outside, and were sliced into nothingness, leaving not even ashes behind by that absolute destructive light?!

Just as Qin Mu was on the verge of collapsing, and was even preparing to split open the hall's floor tiles with his knife to dig downward...

"Shut up. Stop howling here like an unweaned brat."

Ye Xiu's cold and flat voice was like a bucket of ice water poured over Qin Mu's head, forcing him to calm down.

Ye Xiu stood quietly in the exact center of the hall. His heterochromatic gold and silver eyes were no longer filled with their usual wildness.

Instead, they flowed with an extremely profound True Saint divine light that seemed capable of piercing through the river of time and space.

"I've said it before, your current horizon is too narrow."

Ye Xiu narrowed his eyes slightly.

His gaze locked onto the [Kaihuang Throne] ahead—cast from countless pieces of star meteoric iron, it remained broken yet still exuded a supreme imperial majesty.

"Although those old geezers aren't very bright and were tricked here by the Founding Emperor's lies..."

"...they are, after all, top-tier, exceptionally brilliant figures of the Major Thousand Worlds.

Even if they really died, it's absolutely impossible for them to die so silently, without leaving behind even a shred of resentment."

Ye Xiu slowly raised his right hand, pointing at the hundred-foot-tall Kaihuang Throne.

"Hold back your tears. Open your eyes wide and take a good look over there."

Qin Mu looked in the direction of Ye Xiu's finger. At first, he didn't notice anything unusual.

It was just an empty throne, covered with the mottling of time and a thick layer of tribulation ash.

However, when Qin Mu forced himself to calm down and focused his Peak Divine Bridge Realm vision to its absolute limit, he suddenly sucked in a breath of cold air!

Right in the center of that indestructible Kaihuang Throne cast from star meteoric iron...

...there was actually an extremely subtle sword mark that would be completely unnoticeable if one didn't look closely!

The sword mark was not deep, penetrating only a fraction of an inch.

Yet at the cut of that sword mark, there was not a single speck of tribulation ash covering it.

The cut surface was as smooth as a mirror, even faintly reflecting Qin Mu's shocked face!

"This is..."

Qin Mu swallowed hard. He quickly walked to the front of the throne and reached out with a trembling finger, wanting to touch the sword mark.

"Don't touch it," Ye Xiu warned calmly.

But Qin Mu was anxious to save his people, and his finger was already extremely close to the crack.

"Chii!"

Just as Qin Mu's fingertip was still half an inch away from the sword mark, an extremely terrifying and incomparably sharp...

...and even resolutely decisive Sword Intent that carried a sense of "rather be a shattered jade than an intact tile" suddenly erupted from that subtle sword mark!

"Ah!" Qin Mu let out a cry of pain, pulling his hand back as if he had received an electric shock.

He looked down in shock, only to see that his Divine Bridge Realm Physical Body, which had been reshaped by the Azure Emperor Scripture and was harder than refined steel...

...had actually been sliced open with a deep, bone-deep bloody gash by the escaping Sword Qi without even making contact!

"It's the Village Chief's sword! It's absolutely the Village Chief's sword!"

Ignoring the sharp pain in his hand, Qin Mu instead shouted with excitement.

He was all too familiar with this ultimate sword Dao of simplifying the complex and breaking ten thousand techniques with a single sword strike!

This was the supreme sword realm pursued throughout his entire life by the chief of Canlao Village, that old man who had no limbs and could only float in midair!

"It seems this Old Sword God's swordplay has improved once again."