Time flowed by bit by bit. The battle outside remained brutal, while the confrontation between Lu Xuan and the ancient hall had also reached its most critical moment.
His face was somewhat pale, his expenditure immense, yet his eyes grew brighter and brighter!
“Found it!”
He suddenly opened his eyes, chaotic light bursting from his pupils!
“Rise… for me!”
His hands formed an empty embrace, as though he were holding the entire ancient hall in his arms. He poured out all his strength, drawing upon the Chaos War Immortal Dao Fruit and the origin of the Three Corpses to unleash his strongest strike—Chaos Returns to the Source, Suppress the Hall!
“Buzz—!!!”
The entire Receiving Ancient Hall let out an unprecedented, violent tremor. The scarlet runes on its surface abruptly went dark.
The awakened dark will let out an unwilling roar, yet it seemed to be forcibly stripped away and sealed by a power even more fundamental and vast!
The ancient hall stopped operating!
That eerie power of reception vanished!
“We did it!”
Xi Huang and the others were both shocked and delighted.
Lu Xuan gasped heavily, looking at the ancient hall below that now hovered like a dead object, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
Although it was only temporarily suppressed and had not been fully refined, this was already an enormous victory!
“Quick! Take it away! We cannot stay here!”
The Sword Sect Immortal King shouted. He could sense that even more terrifying auras in the deeper reaches were being alarmed.
Working together, everyone swept up the temporarily suppressed Receiving Ancient Hall and transformed into several streaks of flowing light, fleeing madly toward the outside of the Realm Sea without looking back!
Behind them, from the depths of endless darkness, came furious roars that made one’s hair stand on end, as though an even more terrifying existence had been thoroughly enraged.
This surprise attack had succeeded, but they had also completely stirred up a hornet’s nest.
At the same time that Lu Xuan, the Golden Crow Ancestor, and the others were taking an enormous risk to forcibly suppress a Receiving Ancient Hall and rapidly flee from the depths of the Realm Sea, in the very core of the Realm Sea—a place filled with ultimate darkness and the aura of destruction, where even Immortal King giants could not remain for long—
The nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor had already arrived.
This place seemed to be the end of all light, the final destination of all things.
There were no stars, no matter; even the concept of space had become blurred and indistinct. There was only the eternally flowing source of darkness.
Here, time lost all meaning, and the laws fell into silence. Only a coldness and deathly stillness that could freeze the soul remained.
The nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s blue robe became the sole point of color in this absolute darkness—faint, yet incomparably resolute.
He stopped and calmly looked toward the deepest part of the darkness.
There was not empty nothingness there. Instead, a vague figure of indescribable immensity sat cross-legged.
That figure seemed to have been condensed from endless darkness and the skeletal remains of ruined universes. Around it coiled an emperor’s pressure so terrifying that even an Immortal King would have his Dao heart shatter with a single glance!
Merely existing there caused the surrounding source of darkness to circle and flow around it as though paying homage to a sovereign.
It was the incarnation of this darkness, one of the sources of annihilation!
It was none other than the dark Quasi-Immortal Emperor—Cang Emperor!
“Buzz—”
Under the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s gaze, the vague figure seated cross-legged slowly raised its head.
It had no distinct facial features, only two “eyes” as deep as cosmic black holes, devouring all light and hope, “looking” toward the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor.
Immediately afterward, an ancient Dao voice, grand as though originating from the root of all Daos, rang out in this deathly dark like the simultaneous whispers of countless worlds, directly shaking the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s Dao heart and the source of his existence:
“To meet an emperor and not bow is to have already lost your true mandate. Your name is on the Reincarnation Stele.”
“Kowtow with every step, and on the road to rebirth, half your sins shall be absolved. Your true spirit will be protected.”
The Dao voice rumbled, containing the unquestionable power of rules, as though it were stating a fate already decided.
Not bowing to an emperor meant losing one’s true mandate, being destined to fall, with even one’s name engraved upon the Reincarnation Stele.
And if one were willing to submit, kowtowing with every step, then on this road to rebirth leading toward death, half of one’s guilt could still be erased, preserving a single spark of true spirit from extinction.
This was judgment!
This was condescension!
This was the final verdict—and perhaps… mercy?—handed down by an emperor high above to an ant that dared trespass into its domain.
How arrogant! How cruel!
The terrifying imperial might surged over like a tide alongside the Dao voice, intending to forcibly make the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor lower his head and kowtow!
Yet in the face of this pressure and judgment, which would have caused any Immortal King to instantly lose their mind and even fall prostrate, the calm on the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s hazy face did not change in the slightest.
Not even the blue robe around him stirred.
He quietly looked at Cang Emperor, as though looking at a dead thing.
Then, he spoke.
His voice was still calm, yet it carried a decisiveness as firm as iron, one capable of shaking the starry sky of eternity… and a faint trace of mockery:
“Emperor? Nothing more than a pack of rotten things who have stolen a place at the source of darkness and cling to life with their last breaths.”
“My Dao is annihilation. It is Guixu. It is the final chapter that bears the blood feud of an entire realm! How could I bow to skulking ghosts and monsters like you, who feed upon all living things?!”
“Today, I have come not to bow to an emperor, but to…”
His voice suddenly rose. The annihilation Dao rhythm that had been suppressed around him for countless epochs erupted with a roar, and his blue robe instantly transformed into a battle robe burning with flames of finality!
A Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s might, likewise standing above the myriad Daos yet filled with the will of destruction and vengeance, violently broke through Cang Emperor’s pressure.
It formed a stance of equal opposition against the darkness in the deepest reaches of the Realm Sea!
“…bury an emperor!”
The moment the words “bury an emperor” emerged, it was like a destructive star had been dropped into a tranquil lake!
The source of darkness at the very core of the Realm Sea violently boiled and roared because of it!
“Impudent!” Cang Emperor’s vague figure abruptly rose, icy anger turning almost tangible as it froze spacetime!
It had clearly been completely enraged by the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor’s undisguised contempt and killing intent!
A battle between Quasi-Immortal Emperors, destined to shake all ages and affect the heavens, erupted with a boom in the deepest part of the Realm Sea, at the source of darkness!
Without the slightest hesitation, the nameless Quasi-Immortal Emperor directly unleashed the Extinction Heavenly Art he had created. He struck out with a palm, and within his palm seemed to be contained all the grief and hatred from the collapse of the Xuanhuang Great Realm, transforming into a torrent of annihilation that devoured light and extinguished laws as it attacked Cang Emperor head-on!
Cang Emperor also raised a hand, drawing upon the boundless source of darkness. It became a colossal dark hand that covered the starry cosmos, engraved with countless faces of suffering, and met the blow!
“Rumble—!!!”
A collision beyond words occurred!
There was no sound, because the law of sound had already failed at that moment!
There was no light, because light had been utterly devoured!
There were only two entirely different kinds of “nothingness” eroding and annihilating each other!
The structure of the Realm Sea’s deepest reaches trembled, as though unable to withstand this clash of power surpassing the king realm!
At this moment, Lu Xuan, who had already fled to a relatively “safe” distance, seemed to sense something. He suddenly turned back and looked toward the deepest part of the Realm Sea.
Though separated by an endlessly vast distance, he could still sense that terrifying fluctuation capable of freezing an Immortal King’s divine soul, as well as those two supreme auras that seemed to have been confronting each other since the beginning of the world’s creation!
He knew then that the imperial battle destined to be recorded in ancient history had already begun.
That lonely Quasi-Immortal Emperor was putting his Dao into practice, using annihilation to face darkness!