393: Chapter 384 The Sixth Incarnation: Heavenly Venerable (Seventy-Two)

The resolution having been passed, the ten terrifying wills representing the Peak authority and power of this world no longer lingered within the Court of Nothingness.

A fragile consensus had been reached; what followed was each using their own means to seize "resources," accumulating power for the final "convergence" and struggle.

Swoosh—

Buzz—

...

Amidst silent fluctuations of thought, the ten blurred Light and Shadows either dissipated directly or tore through the void. In their own ways, they instantly left this place of absolute emptiness, returning to their respective Dao fields scattered throughout Chaos, or descending directly upon the partitioned "hunting grounds" belonging to them.

Almost the very instant they left the Court of Nothingness and their true bodies or powerful Incarnations began to act—

An indescribable, bone-deep, great terror, like a plague or a cold tide, spread quietly to every corner of Chaos at a speed exceeding the perception of time and space, penetrating into the Origin of the heavens and myriad worlds.

The higher the Realm and the stronger the spirituality of an existence, the clearer and more desperate their perception of this terror became.

And in different regions of Chaos, the overture to the world's end resounded with a crash, each in its own unique and cruel fashion!

The Kingdom of Death, the Borderlands of the Dead.

The will of the Dao Lord of Death swept like invisible ripples across a region of Chaos piled high with decaying Dao Realms.

This place was already deathly still and devoid of life; only a few Cultivators or anomalies practicing paths related to death, the netherworld, or silent extinction struggled to survive here.

With the descent of the Dao Lord of Death's will, this vast domain of the dead suddenly "came alive"!

It was not the vitality of life, but the boiling of "death" itself!

Countless strands of Death Qi, resentment, and Soul fragments that had been dormant for eons surged and condensed frantically, as if stirred by an invisible hand!

"In my name of death, I command—all spirits return to silence!"

A cold and heartless Divine Thought echoed in every corner.

In an instant, within this region, every existence possessing intelligence and breathing Spiritual Qi—whether they were Nether-cultivators of the Great Dao of death, other Cultivators who had strayed here, or even Essence Spirits of death that had birthed a faint intelligence—all froze!

Their vitality, along with the cultivation they had painstakingly earned, the Law of Origin they had comprehended, and even that speck of true spirit within their Souls, were uncontrollably and forcibly extracted, like a hundred rivers returning to the sea!

Cries of agony, pleas, curses... no sooner had they begun than they abruptly ceased.

Because the "existence" itself making the sound was rapidly dissipating.

Their bodies shriveled, underwent Decay, and turned to ash. All their essence transformed into streams of grayish-black light filled with the meaning of dead silence and finality, flowing into the hands of a towering, blurred phantom of death manifested by the Dao Lord of Death, condensing into a spinning grayish-black crystal that absorbed even more streams of deathly light.

As for the Mortal tribes or primitive beings living on the fringes of this dead domain who had never practiced cultivation?

The Dao Lord of Death's will swept past without even a moment's pause.

To him, these ants whose "spirit" was so weak as to be almost negligible were no different in essence from the dust by the roadside or the turbulent currents of Chaos in the Void Realm.

A negligible ripple of death spread out, and those Mortal tribes and primitive beings vanished completely and silently, like a pencil drawing erased by a rubber, leaving not even a speck of dust behind.

In the eyes of the Dao Lord of Death, their lives and Souls barely qualified as "kindling," but even so, death would not deliberately avoid them. After all, destroying them was truly just "a matter of a single thought."

In another direction, the figure of the Dao Lord of Time did not fully manifest. Only a phantom of a river, illusory and hazy, seemingly composed of endless fragments of time, enveloped a region of temporal anomalies.

"Time... reverse."

The Dao Lord of Time's ancient voice seemed to come from the end of ages.

The phantom of the River of Time rippled slightly.

In an instant, everything within the enveloped region began a terrifying reversal!

It was not a simple playback of scenes, but a reversal of life, existence, and even "results of cultivation"!

A great demon whose cultivation had already reached the Fruit Position watched in horror as his smooth skin rapidly wrinkled, his strong body became stooped, and his vast magical power dissipated uncontrollably, regressing to past levels. Eventually, even his consciousness began to blur, his memories faded rapidly, and his Realm plummeted all the way...

In just a few breaths, he regressed from a great demon of time who commanded a region into an ignorant beast with only the most basic biological instincts. Subsequently, he could not even maintain this juvenile form and completely transformed into a mass of the most primitive time essence, which was absorbed by the phantom of the River of Time.

This scene occurred for every practitioner and even every mundane being in this place.

The "time" of all existences was stripped away, returning them to "nothingness."

There were no earth-shattering explosions, no tragic scenes of flying flesh and blood—only a hair-raising, silent "return" and "disappearance."

Time, here, became the most cruel harvester.

And the Mortal kingdoms within those regions?

As the aftershocks of the River of Time swept past, billions of Mortals, along with the traces of the civilizations they had created, instantly completed the entire process of birth, prosperity, decline, and turning to dust under a flow of time accelerated by billions of times, leaving not a single trace behind.

To the Dao Lord of Time, their existence could not even stir a single ripple in the River of Time.

The other several ancient Dao Lords were also, in their own ways, carrying out blood sacrifice harvests with terrifying efficiency and equal indifference toward all lives that were not "effective resources" within their respective vast partitioned areas.

Their methods were either overbearing, treacherous, grand, or sinister, but their core objective was exactly the same—to extract the "spirituality," cultivation, and Origin of all cultivating beings to accumulate power for the final "Mending of Heaven."

As for those mundane beings who, in their eyes, did not even count as "effective kindling"?

They were merely dust brushed away while clearing the grounds, negligible background noise in the tide of blood sacrifice that would not even be specifically noticed.

However, a blood sacrifice of such scale and cruelty involving the Origin could not be entirely concealed, even by these ancient Dao Lords, nor could they isolate the backlash from heaven and earth it triggered.

Silent wails first sounded from the depths of the Origin of the heavens and myriad worlds.

The Great Dao was trembling, and the Laws were mourning, as if countless fine cracks were spreading across the Foundation of the entire world.

Blood-colored clouds appeared silently in many regions of Chaos, regardless of what the original scenery had been.

Crimson light replaced the sun, moon, and stars, reflecting upon worlds that were dying or had already died.

A torrential rain of blood, carrying sorrow, despair, resentment, and curses too thick to dissolve...

...along with other negative emotions and shattered fragments of spirituality, fell upon the countless remaining worlds.

Wherever the rain reached, vegetation withered and rivers wept blood. Countless birds, beasts, insects, and fish that had not stepped onto the path of cultivation but possessed slightly higher spirituality than average, and even some sensitive Mortals, felt an inexplicable palpitation and grief.