The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor nodded slightly. He did not press Lu Xuan about his origins; instead, as though he had encountered a rare equal with whom he could converse, he spoke in a calm tone.
“Your dao is very peculiar. Chaos as its foundation, battle intent as its bones, and within it, there is also a kind of… charm that severs illusion and illuminates the true self. In this age of decline, to witness such a newborn dao, one filled with infinite possibilities, is also a fortunate thing.”
He had actually become interested in Lu Xuan’s Chaos Battle Immortal Dao and his method of severing the Three Corpses.
And so, beyond the dam of the World Sea, the two of them stood some distance apart and began a discourse on the dao that transcended time and space.
The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor expounded on his understanding of annihilation, and of that dao of destruction which bore the endless blood feud of the Mysterious Yellow Great Realm. As his dao resonance unfurled, it was as if Lu Xuan personally witnessed the collapse of a brilliant great realm, the wails of countless trillions of living beings, and the hatred and killing intent that had settled over innumerable epochs.
It was a terrifying great dao that had been pushed to the extreme, one that took destruction as its final destination.
Lu Xuan, in turn, displayed his own Chaos Battle Immortal Dao, evolving the profound meanings of chaos embracing all, conquest opening the way, and the Three Corpses returning to one.
His dao likewise contained destruction, but after destruction came new life, the reshaping of order, and the eternal illumination of the true suchness of the self.
Two utterly different great dao resonances, yet faintly connected on certain levels, intertwined and collided at the deathly silent edge of the World Sea.
There was no question of victory or defeat—only mutual verification and enlightenment in their understanding of the great dao.
The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor seemed especially concerned with the conception within Lu Xuan’s dao of “opening new life amid destruction,” and fell silent for a moment.
The discourse gradually came to an end, and the atmosphere once again returned to stillness.
Lu Xuan gazed at the boundless darkness behind the dam, a darkness that seemed capable of burying all things, then looked at the lonely yet resolute Quasi-Immortal Emperor before him.
A powerful thought surged into his mind—he knew what this unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor would face once he stepped into the darkness beyond the dam!
Four Dark Quasi-Immortal Emperors of the same level!
A doomed situation in which he was fated to fall!
He could not simply watch this existence, who had once acted to save the Emperor’s Fall battlefront and who bore a blood feud as deep as the sea yet commanded admiration, walk toward a tragic end that was already known!
Lu Xuan drew in a deep breath, his gaze burning as he looked at the unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor and attempted to warn him. “Emperor! Beyond the dam lies…”
However, at the very instant he was about to utter the words “the four great Dark Quasi-Immortal Emperors”—
“BOOOM-CRAAACK!!!”
A supreme divine thunderbolt, whose color, form, and might could not be described, struck down without warning from the most illusory source of the World Sea!
It was not aimed at Lu Xuan’s physical body, but acted directly upon his karma and the very concept of his existence!
This divine thunder contained the power of supreme great dao laws, as though it were the self-preservation mechanism of the entire universe and spacetime, strictly forbidding any transgressor from revealing heavenly secrets capable of overturning the course of ancient history!
“Pfft—!”
Lu Xuan was struck as if by a heavy blow. Even with his Immortal King body and the dao fruit of his Chaos Battle Immortal Dao, he was utterly unable to withstand this power!
He violently spat out a mouthful of blood suffused with chaotic light, his divine soul shaking violently. The warning he had meant to speak was forcibly blocked, and even the related thoughts became blurred and indistinct, as though an invisible hand had forcibly erased them!
His face pale, his eyes filled with shock and unwillingness, he looked toward the void where the supreme divine thunder had descended, then back at the unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor on the dam.
The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor quietly watched it all. On his indistinct face, there seemed to be no trace of surprise.
He saw Lu Xuan’s urgency, saw the supreme divine thunder that had stopped Lu Xuan from speaking, and saw in Lu Xuan’s eyes that indescribable yet incomparably sincere… dissuasion and pity.
He understood.
He raised his hand toward Lu Xuan and gently waved.
It was a simple gesture, yet it contained far too much that could not be put into words.
There was gratitude for Lu Xuan’s attempt to warn him, understanding of his own fate, a resolute “no need to say more, I already know,” and even a trace of…
The lonely pride of “This is my dao; even in death, I will have no regrets.”
He stopped Lu Xuan from continuing an attempt that could never succeed.
Lu Xuan watched that waving hand, watched him turn back around and once again face the endless darkness behind the dam.
That solitary figure seemed to merge with this eternal World Sea, and with that fated tragedy.
All words lost their meaning.
Lu Xuan stood where he was, allowing the deathly silent wind of the World Sea to brush across his body, his heart filled with endless complexity and heaviness.
He knew the ending, yet was powerless to change it.
Perhaps this was the greatest sorrow of one who traveled through spacetime, and also the helplessness of all beings as chess pieces beneath the laws of the great dao.
“Since you know my past, do you know what happened after I became a giant?”
The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s voice remained calm, yet it was as though he were recounting an epic that had nothing to do with him, and yet was carved into his very bones.
Lu Xuan was silent. He truly only knew of this Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s fearsome reputation after his return to settle accounts; he knew very little of the long years after he had become a giant.
The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor cast his gaze toward the boundless darkness behind the dam, as though retracing those ancient epochs sealed away beneath dust.
“After becoming a giant, I swept across the World Sea and slew all my enemies… At that time, I once believed that with my own strength, I could look down upon all the heavens. Vast though the World Sea was, there was nowhere I could not go.”
His voice carried an almost imperceptible trace of reminiscence. Perhaps that was the only emotion resembling “confidence” that belonged to him amid his endless dark career of vengeance.
“And so, I walked deeper into the World Sea, seeking the legendary… secret to breaking through from king to emperor.”
His tone gradually grew solemn.
“Yet the deeper I went, the more alarmed I became.”
The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s voice seemed to become tinged with a chill from the depths of the World Sea.
“The darkness there could not be compared to the scattered filth at the edge of the World Sea. It was… alive, possessed of will, an ultimate abyss that devoured all things!”
“I once saw with my own eyes an ancient world no smaller than the Immortal Domain seized alive by a gigantic hand that reached out from the deepest part of the darkness, wrapped in inauspicious runes! The barriers of that ancient world were as fragile as eggshells. Before the wails of the trillions upon trillions of beings within could even spread, that giant hand refined them together with the entire world… in an instant! They were turned into the purest dark matter and twisted living beings, merging into that eternal darkness!”
Even with Lu Xuan’s current Immortal King state of mind, hearing this description made a chill rise up his spine.
Refining an entire great realm with bare hands?
What kind of terrifying power was that?
“At that moment, I knew.”
The unnamed Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s voice carried the heaviness of one who had seen through to the truth.
“‘Emperors’… exist. And they are far beyond what I imagined… powerful and… cruel.”
From then on, he abandoned simple vengeance and conquest, and instead began an even longer and more dangerous journey—seeking the source and essence of the darkness.
Like a solitary hunter, and like a persistent scholar, he roamed the most dangerous regions of the World Sea, fighting all manner of terrifying dark beings, analyzing their composition, tracing the source of their power, attempting to find the weakness of the darkness, as well as… the method to surpass the Immortal King realm.