Order after order was passed down. The entire Primordial Ancient Realm, like a slumbering war beast, began to slowly awaken, its nerves drawn taut.
Upon the Imperial Pass, mottled runes lit up once more.
On the ancient stars of life, long-sealed defensive formations were activated.
All those capable of battle tightened their grip on the weapons in their hands.
Above the Ancient Realm, an oppressive atmosphere spread, like the wind filling a tower before the storm.
Everyone understood that this enemy was even more terrifying than the Foreign Realm.
This was the prelude to a battle that concerned the very survival of the Ancient Realm!
As for Wuzhong Immortal King and the others, they constantly sensed the direction of the Realm Sea, both hoping for the figures of reinforcements and guarding against the dark tide that might tear through the void at any moment.
At the same time, in the depths of the Realm Sea, those Immortal Kings who had received the spacetime Dao talismans—
Some were battling dark creatures, some were exploring dangerous lands, and some were in seclusion upon solitary islands...
When the Dao talismans, carrying the Ancient Realm’s blood-weeping plea for aid, pierced through the mist and arrived,
their expressions all stirred, and their gazes turned toward the direction of the Primordial Ancient Realm.
A rescue spanning the Realm Sea was about to begin.
The spacetime Dao talismans sent out by Wuzhong Immortal King were like stones cast into the Realm Sea. Before any echo could return, that suffocating pressure of darkness had already surged over like a tangible tide!
At the desolate borderlands where the Primordial Ancient Realm met the Realm Sea, the void twisted violently like shattered colored glass, then was forcibly torn open into several enormous rifts!
“Roar—!”
“Hiss—gaah—!”
Amid savage howls, darkness officially descended!
This time, it was no longer the probing harassment of small detachments as before.
The dark creatures had clearly roughly locked onto the Ancient Realm’s coordinates and devised a strategy of advancing separately and striking together.
Their forces split into several routes, infiltrating and corroding the interior of the Ancient Realm from several directions at once!
The Northern Starfall Sea.
This place had once been a vast cosmic ruin within the Ancient Realm, and now it was even more deathly still.
Yet at this moment, that silence was shattered!
The main dark army personally led by that World-Eroding Dark Immortal King poured in from here like locusts sweeping across the land.
The World-Eroding Dark Immortal King’s massive body radiated terrifying waves of corrosion. Wherever it passed, the remaining fragments of the cosmos swiftly dimmed and became part of its body!
The dark warships under its command spewed breaths that disintegrated light. Countless dark creatures surged like a tide into the depths of the Starfall Sea, where there was an important star road leading to the heartland of the Ancient Realm!
Those guarding this place were the True Dragon King and some remnants of the borderland kings!
Dragon roars shook the heavens. Golden dragon breath collided violently with dark breath, burning huge cavities into the void itself.
The True Dragon King manifested an endless dragon body and slammed fiercely into the supreme form of the World-Eroding Dark Immortal King.
Dragon claws tore, dark tentacles coiled, and earth-shaking booms erupted!
This was the ultimate confrontation between power and corrosion!
The second battlefield: the Western Desert Immortal Land.
This was a desert that had been beaten into absolute deathly silence by the ancient great war; even its laws had nearly solidified.
However, among the dark creatures, there was a force skilled in manipulating death energy and curses, and they turned the deathly power of this place to their own use.
At their head was a Dark Immortal King known as Hunji. It had no fixed form, resembling a shadow condensed from billions upon billions of resentful souls. Wherever it passed, even grains of sand lost their final trace of spirituality and became absolutely dead things.
The one presiding over this place was the Immortal Monk King!
He sat cross-legged at the core of the Immortal Land. His shattered golden body erupted with its final resplendent Buddhist light, and the Sanskrit chants from his mouth turned into tangible 卍-character Buddhist seals.
Like golden waves, they continuously scoured and purified the death energy and curses spreading toward him.
Buddhist light and the shadow of deathly silence clashed fiercely, giving off sizzling sounds of burning, as if it were the most essential contest between light and darkness.
The Immortal Monk King’s expression was compassionate yet resolute. With his own Buddhist dharma, he forcibly opened up a pure land of Buddha’s kingdom in this deathly silent place, resisting the erosion of darkness.
The Eastern Wasteland Ancient Forest.
This ancient forest of life had once been one of the regions most deeply influenced by the power of the Ancestral Sacrificial Spirit, brimming with vitality.
But now, it welcomed an enemy specialized in countering life force.
An Immortal King shaped like a gigantic ancient tree of darkness led strange dark creatures capable of drawing out the source of life into this place.
The roots of the dark ancient tree plunged into the earth, madly extracting the vitality of the ancient forest, causing it to wither at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The true body of the Ancestral Sacrificial Spirit—that heaven-reaching willow tree—manifested above the ancient forest. Emerald divine radiance formed the most tenacious barrier, resisting the loss of life’s source.
Tens of thousands of willow branches transformed into divine whips of order, lashing the dark creatures that drew upon vitality. Vast Dao laws of life and purification clashed violently with the deathly corrosive power of the dark ancient tree. Green light and black energy intertwined, staging a tug-of-war between life and death.
Void rifts.
Apart from these three main invasion points, there were also many smaller, even more mysterious dark forces using spatial cracks in the Ancient Realm that had yet to be fully repaired, constantly infiltrating inside, wreaking destruction everywhere, creating chaos, and attacking rear strongholds where the defenses were weak.
The remaining cultivators of the various races of the Ancient Realm, as well as some reserve reinforcements left behind from the Immortal Domain, were engaged in bloody and chaotic encounters with the dark creatures in these areas.
Every moment, stars dimmed; every moment, living beings fell.
The flames of war ignited simultaneously in multiple directions throughout the Primordial Ancient Realm!
The power of darkness spread like a plague. Their objective was clear—to find the precise location of the Primordial Gate, or, more directly, to destroy the Ancient Realm’s power of resistance and drag this world completely into darkness!
Wuzhong Immortal King sat in command within the spacetime divine hall at the very core of the Ancient Realm, coordinating the overall situation. His divine sense covered all the major battlefields, continuously deploying forces and repairing the torn realm walls. The power of spacetime at times froze localized battlefields, and at times exiled entire squads of dark creatures into turbulent spacetime currents.
But his expression was grave. The number of dark creatures and their powerful beings had exceeded expectations; in particular, those Dark Immortal Kings were extremely difficult to deal with.
The Six Paths of Reincarnation Immortal King was in the Land of Reincarnation, forcibly driving the Reincarnation Cave in an attempt to interfere with the karma of the dark creatures and drag some powerful dark existences into the millstone of reincarnation.
But each time he cast his art, his already heavily injured body trembled violently, and the cracks upon the Reincarnation Cave seemed to widen by another fraction.
The Primordial Ancient Realm had fallen into an unprecedented crisis!
Enemies were everywhere, and the shadow of darkness shrouded every inch of mountains and rivers.
Every living being of the Ancient Realm was fighting in blood, all to protect this broken yet only homeland.
The message that the Primordial Ancient Realm was engulfed in war and weeping blood as it begged for aid was like a heavy war drum, sounding through the Ten Thousand Daos Starry Sky Pavilion of the Immortal Domain.
The divine senses of the Immortal Kings gathered once again. Yet this time, the atmosphere was completely different from the last time they had confronted the Foreign Realm. It was filled with hesitation, disputes, and calculation.
Within the Starry Sky Pavilion, light and shadow intersected. The figures manifested by the wills of the Immortal Kings each wore different expressions.
The faction led by Pan Wang and Qingwei Immortal King had solemn expressions and advocated sending troops to rescue them at once.
“Everyone!”
Pan Wang’s voice was heavy with grief and urgency.
“The Ancient Realm’s plea for aid has already made it clear: the enemy invading this time is the true source of darkness from the depths of the Realm Sea! Its terror far surpasses the Foreign Realm! If the Ancient Realm is devoured by darkness, the next to face it will be our Immortal Domain! Must the principle that when the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold still be explained at length?!”