180: Lotus Ashes Afterglow

Under the infusion of the Power Of Will from billions of living beings, the Purifying Lotus Sea bloomed with unprecedented, brilliant radiance.

Every white jade lotus seemed to possess its own will. As their petals unfurled, the purifying halos condensed into a tangible substance, forcibly holding the ink-black death rain in mid-air and steaming up an endless expanse of grayish-white mist.

The vast world of water elements manifested by Mo Yu, due to the infusion of this endless vitality, suddenly ceased its constant contraction and even began to slowly and firmly expand in reverse.

The azure water light intertwined with the pure white lotus radiance, as if forcibly carving out a sacred land that could not be profaned within this desperate High-Dimensional Secret Realm.

"Foolish."

Above the firmament, that cold giant eye watched the struggle below without a ripple, like looking at insects busy beside an anthill.

In those indifferent pupils, the dark red, filthy light deepened once more, as if accumulating an even deeper malice.

In the next instant, the nature of the pouring black rain of returning ruins suddenly changed!

It was no longer an indiscriminate rain of annihilation, but began to condense and deform!

Drops of black rain fused together in the air, transforming into countless eerie spears, pitch-black as night, with runes of ending flowing along their edges!

These spears ignored the barriers of space, carrying a sharp will that could pierce through all Laws and extinguish all order, raining down like a torrential storm!

Their target was directed straight at the swaying, radiant Purifying Lotus Sea!

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

The efficiency of destruction suddenly increased!

It was no longer erosion and attrition, but precise and efficient "point-killing"!

A black spear precisely pierced a white jade lotus, and the annihilation Law condensed to the extreme erupted instantly. The lotus didn't even go through a withering process; it directly turned into the finest primordial particles and completely vanished!

Even the faint purifying halo it emitted was swallowed by the darkness that followed!

The efficiency was astonishing!

The balance of the lotus sea's birth and death was instantly broken!

The rate of new lotus growth could not keep up with the speed of destruction!

The white ocean became sparse and dim at a speed visible to the naked eye!

The warm torrent formed by the Power Of Will of countless living beings seemed to be constantly sliced by cold, sharp knives, becoming fragmented!

Mo Yu let out a muffled groan; the water element world she had manifested shook violently once again, and the aura she had just stabilized plummeted rapidly.

The black spears not only destroyed the lotuses but also pierced through the water elements, directly injuring her Origin!

"Oh no!" In the barrier below, Ink Snow's face turned deathly pale. The light of the Reincarnation Butterfly Seal flickered frantically, but she was powerless to intervene in the point-killing at the level of Law that transcended the boundaries of life and death.

Inside the magic bottle, the Dao Fruit Tree swayed violently, more of its branches and leaves withering and falling, attempting to stimulate more purifying power, but it was a drop in the bucket.

The artifact spirit's alarm shrieked within the silent Sea of Consciousness of Mo Yuan, yet it could not find any effective countermeasure.

Despair, once again like a cold tide, submerged every inch of space.

Just at the moment when the Purifying Lotus Sea was about to be completely torn apart and the spears of destruction were about to descend upon the main body of the water element world—

A mutation occurred at the most trivial of places.

A dim white jade lotus, about to be pierced by a black spear, suddenly saw a tiny, almost negligible spark of emerald green flicker within its stamen at the very instant before its final annihilation.

That was not the light of purification, but... the fire of vitality!

It was the most fundamental vitality from the earth and the Power Of Will of all living beings that had previously merged into the lotus sea, now triggered into its final stubbornness under the pressure of extreme destruction!

The appearance of this spark was as if it were a signal!

The next lotus to be annihilated also burst forth with the same faint emerald spark at the moment of its disappearance!

Following that, it was ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand!

Countless white jade lotuses, at the moment of being destroyed by the black spears, no longer turned into nothingness silently, but burst forth with that tiny yet resilient emerald spark!

Like scattered stars, like green stars flowing against the current, they stubbornly flickered for an instant in the boundless dark rain before finally extinguishing!

This scene was tragic yet magnificent.

The Dao of Heaven diminishes the surplus to replenish the insufficiency.

The Dao of man diminishes the insufficient to serve the surplus.

However, the Dao of all living beings, in the midst of a desperate situation, can often burst forth with... miracles that even the Heavenly Dao cannot calculate.

Those countless fleeting emerald sparks were too weak; they could not pose any obstacle to the black spears at all.

However, the will of "life" they represented, in the face of the pure Law of "death," appeared so glaring, so... discordant!

It was as if a discordant note had been mixed into a perfect movement of destruction.

This note itself was insignificant, yet it subtly interfered with the rhythm of absolute deathly silence.

More importantly, these emerald sparks did not completely disappear!

The extremely weak fluctuations of vitality emitted by their brief existence were actually... captured by the broken magic bottle below, which was absorbing the energy of the Secret Realm!

On the surface of the magic bottle, that white scar about to heal completely, as well as the Chaos Thunder patterns on the bottle body where dark gold and pitch black blended, seemed to resonate slightly with those countless emerald sparks at this instant!

Inside the bottle, in the deepest part of the nearly exhausted Chaos Thunder Pool, on the hilt of the suppressed, stubbornly struggling immortal slaughtering sword, an ancient, blurred rune lit up for a fleeting moment, as if it too had been touched by this scene of weak vitality confronting destruction.

The artifact spirit's computational core, within a ten-millionth of a second, captured this fleeting change and resonance!

"Detected unconventional energy reaction: overclocked vitality pulse bursting forth in an extreme destruction environment..."

"Weak resonance with Chaos Thunder patterns..."

"Brief interaction with the immortal slaughtering sword's 'Life in Destruction' rune..."

"Recalculating Purifying Lotus Sea annihilation data... Exception found: incomplete annihilation, unknown particles remaining..."

"Deducing new plan: guide the annihilation energy of the lotus sea, utilizing the characteristics of the immortal slaughtering sword rune and the Chaos Thunder patterns, to perform 'Nirvana Transformation'!"

A crazy plan was formed instantly!

The artifact spirit no longer attempted to maintain the lotus sea, but instead... went with the flow!

Through the Dao Fruit Tree, it issued a final command to the remaining Purifying Lotus Sea—not to resist, but to... self-destruct!

To burn and release all remaining power, along with the vitality sparks bursting forth during the annihilation process and the Power Of Will of all living beings, at a specific frequency the moment they were destroyed!

The remaining lotus sea, having received the command, made its final response.

All white jade lotuses no longer tried to block the black spears, but instead, their petals curled backward violently, compressing all the purifying power, vitality sparks, and Power Of Will they had condensed to the extreme, and then...

Actively collided with those spears of destruction!

Rumble—!!!

It was not the loud noise of an explosion, but a deeper, primal Chaos roar, as if from the beginning of the Universe!

The entire Purifying Lotus Sea, at this moment, turned into boundless, grayish-white... ash!

It was not the black void of annihilation, but grayish-white, as if burnt to the end, ash carrying residual warmth!

These ashes spread out, temporarily shrouding everything.

The countless pitch-black spears raining down shot into this vast sea of ash, and their terrifying power of annihilation was like a clay ox entering the sea, wrapped, delayed, and... transformed by the endless ash containing residual complex Laws (purification, vitality, Power Of Will, destruction)!

Within the ashes, it was as if an invisible millstone was slowly turning, forcibly grinding and mixing the power of the black spears, dominated by "destruction," with the lotus sea remains, dominated by "purification" and "vitality"!

A strange, balanced state, bordering on "Chaos," formed briefly within this sea of ash.

The Heavenly Dao's rain of destruction was actually, temporarily... neutralized by the ash that the lotus sea had finally transformed into!

Although the ash was also rapidly being consumed and becoming sparse.

It had truly and undoubtedly blocked this fatal wave of point-killing!

It won a precious, indescribable moment of respite for those below!

The pressure on the water element world manifested by Mo Yu decreased sharply.

Ink Snow's barrier stabilized temporarily.

Within the giant eye of the Heavenly Dao, that cold pupil seemed to constrict slightly, revealing for the first time an emotion similar to "surprise."

It could not understand why absolute power could be obstructed by such a seemingly futile, self-sacrificing, and even somewhat "low-level" method.

The sea of ash drifted down slowly, like a tragic snow, covering the broken Mo Capital, covering those dormant sequence units, and covering the magic bottle.

Where the ash fell, those wounds eroded by the black rain stopped worsening, and even faintly revealed a trace of extremely weak, balanced vitality.

The Purifying Lotus Sea had finally turned to ash.

It failed to completely purify the black rain, but through its own total sacrifice, it bought a brief, twisted balance.

The lotus sea has turned to ash, but the afterglow is still warm.

Hope is not extinguished.