When the ancient ancestral masters—long believed to have passed away—reappeared, some having become gods and others having transformed their life forms into immortals, people were initially overwhelmed with shock, exhilaration, and excitement.
Yet when they heard the masters lament how time cuts down heroes, their lifespans nearly spent, and that they were marching generously to their deaths in one final battle of their lives, everyone felt a heaviness in their chests, as if weighed down by a leaden stone.
Beauty fades with the passing years, and heroes reach the end of their road; what the mortal world can least detain is the rosy cheek leaving the mirror and the blossom leaving the bough.
Moreover, blood-soaked figures were crawling out of the piles of corpses on the battlefield, supporting one another as they staggered back. Such a sight tugged at everyone's heartstrings, suffocating many with a crushing sense of oppression.
At this moment, neither camp launched an attack. Instead, both swiftly dispatched personnel to meet and receive those survivors who had clawed their way back from the Yellow Springs.
Under the cover of night, upon the Plain of Divine Demise, vast swathes of forest lay obliterated. Blood mist lingered, corpses were countless, and sabers, spears, and all manner of weapons stood thrust into the earth.
Qin Ming's heart clenched. Among the sparse, scattered figures, he saw Meng Xinghai and Jin Xiang. Both were gravely wounded, spears thrust through chests and abdomens, swords piercing them as they wobbled forward.
Both had fought their way out from the corpse heaps of the fourth tier. No part of their bodies was left intact; there were bloody punctures through which light shone, and tears that nearly split their torsos in half.
Fortunately, grandmaster-tier figures on Yezhou's side stepped forward, sweeping them away with gentle light to rush them off for emergency treatment.
*Uncle Meng was on the battlefield too...* Qin Ming had no idea when he had arrived. Thinking about it, while he had followed the main host to the immortal grave battlefield in the desert to intercept the nomadic civilization, Meng Xinghai and the others had likely come to garrison the western borders.
Qin Ming was filled with profound worry. Had elderly seniors like Yu Gensheng, Jin Yuan, and Zhao Ziyuan returned alive from the battlefield?
He gazed into the distance, but the battle line stretched too far. Under the night mist, even his Eye of the Newborn could hardly pierce through it all. Every person returning was battered and blood-stained; many had lost arms, eyes, and more.
In this war, vital figures from every path had fallen, and casualties were catastrophic.
Qin Ming spotted several familiar faces, such as Pei Shuyan, whose back was impaled with the sharp talon of a wondrous beast that had yet to be pulled out.
Leng Feiyue, descendant of the immortal path trailblazer Leng Mingkong, had a terrifying, bone-deep wound across her face, having nearly had her head cleaved open by a greater demon.
Cui Chonghe was in a wretched state as well, a short spear thrust into his body and a broken axe embedded in his shoulder blade.
Upon the door-wide physique of the Tathagata renegade, even more broken weapons remained lodged in his flesh and blood. Golden patterns contorted across his entire body, forcing the fragmented weapons out of his flesh.
Those around him could not help but marvel—the legend of a breakthrough in the heat of battle was truly real.
Xiang Yiwu had survived a hundred battles without dying. Pushed to a desperate brink between life and death, his golden body achieved nirvana, and he stepped into the third tier.
In truth, anyone who knew the reality found this unsurprising, for he was "undergoing reincarnation while alive," rotating once every few years to blaze a trail for the Newborn system—an extraordinarily singular individual.
Li Qingyue staggered, faint flames wreathing her body. In the distance, several greater demons glared in her direction with eyes full of hatred, refusing to look away.
Cheng Sheng and Zhao Qingcheng, the esoteric sect's foremost divine seeds, had been ambushed by elder demons and nearly fallen together in battle, showing just how extraordinary they were to survive.
Relatively speaking, Jiang Ran remained in decent condition, bearing no obvious wounds on her body; only her green robes were torn, revealing the crack-strewn inner armor beneath.
These were renowned, formidable seeds, and yet they were reduced to this—some wounded, some dead, and some whose corpses could not even be recovered.
One could only imagine how horrific it was for ordinary geniuses and common cultivators.
In fact, looking across the battlefield, the corpses strewn everywhere and the people collapsing on the ground gasping for air the moment they returned reflected their true reality.
High in the night sky, within the white immortal mist, that colossal, inhuman figure looked down at the gruesome sights upon the earth with sorrow, sighing, "All of them fine children. It is all our fault for being powerless, making you suffer so. Let us now bring an end to this battle."
"Martial Granduncle Ye!"
"Master!"
Among the ranks of the ancestral masters, several stepped forward, wanting to stop those deeply venerated senior ancestral masters from engaging in their final fight, unwilling to watch them march to their deaths.
Leng Mingkong's martial granduncle waved his hand, saying, "Do not stop us. Your potential surpasses ours, and you possess greater boldness. Preserve your bodies for the future. As for altering life forms—such a state of gods and immortals is not worth achieving anyway. Lifespans increase but little, the ceiling was long since locked shut, and the path ahead is a murky haze with no hope to speak of."
With a clang, he raised the nine-colored sword in his hand, striding through the void toward the depths of the corpse-strewn battlefield, declaring, "Come, elder demon! A fight to the death!"
Opposite him, a demon god walked forward through the vast mist holding a silver spear. Beneath his feet, dense demon script formed a dazzling path before him.
At this moment, a portion of the demon god's colossal frame was revealed, its true form grotesque. Away from its body, two additional heads floated in the void, connected to the torso only by blood-red demon patterns.
"All tribes of the demon race, watch how I slay this upright ape demon god!" the demon god spoke with overwhelming arrogance. The silver spear in his hand warped the void and pierced across the entire battlefield, arriving right before his opponent's forehead.
The colossal figure in the immortal mist said in a deep voice, "You wouldn't want your demon sons and grandsons to be caught in our crossfire and suffer devastating losses either, would you?"
Even as he spoke, he evaded the spear thrust, riding the nine-colored immortal sword as he surged into the firmament, piercing through the dense dark clouds and vanishing from everyone's sight.
"Fine!" The demon god gave chase.
Carrying billowing demonic qi and boundless talismans, he tore open the night sky and vanished from the Plain of Divine Demise as well. The entire realm plunged once more into darkness.
The spectators felt a touch of regret at being unable to witness a clash of gods.
Everyone stared into the night sky, wishing they could peer through the clouds to see what was happening.
Figures of the ancestral master tier naturally possessed such ability, yet none of them did so; they seemed to already know the final outcome.
Above the curtain of night, terrifying energy fluctuations rippled out. Though they did not reach the ground, everyone knew that a battle of gods had erupted.
Moreover, the sheer brutality of it far exceeded anyone's imagination.
For at this moment in the night sky, an enormous shower of crimson "meteors" appeared, carrying blinding prismatic light as it pierced the clouds and cascaded down across a vast expanse.
"That is rain of blood!"
Blood fell like meteors, every drop rumbling with thunderous force and detonating the night mist. As it poured down in sheets, heaven and earth were illuminated in brilliant blood-red.
Yet no meteoric rain of blood reached the ground; all of it burned away to nothingness midair.
*Boom!*
The dark clouds blasted apart. People saw that out beyond the world, where astral winds could scatter the conscious spiritual light, two figures radiant as blazing suns shattered.
The two deities, along with their weapons, perished together, taking each other down in mutual destruction.
Their clash was so fierce that lethal strikes were traded from the very start. Each had disintegrated who knew how many times, determining victory and defeat, life and death, in the briefest span of moments!
"Martial Granduncle Ye!" Leng Mingkong cried out, leaping into the high sky to reach out and catch the final red "meteor," his face trembling slightly.
Before he had grown into his own, he had received immense grace from this ancestral master.
The red "meteor" dimmed, nearing its end, and gave off Martial Granduncle Ye's final whisper: "I still remember in my youth, seeking immortals and inquiring of the Dao... My parents gazed after me with tearful reluctance, white cranes guided the way into the mountain gates, a gray-haired benevolent master stroked my head, and Senior Sister wove a silver silkworm robe with her own hands... What is most cherished can least be detained; better to simply return."
The remaining "meteor" burst and vanished entirely.
Across the western borders, both camps fell dead silent. No one spoke, and not a single clamor arose. Two supreme experts had died in battle just like that, disappearing forever.
Only when immortal mist billowed did an ancient ancestral master of the esoteric sect, long thought to have passed away, appear. His divine frame was decrepit. He pointed silently toward the demon camp, then took the lead in charging above the dark clouds.
Within the demon camp, there was indeed no shortage of demon gods. A towering figure soared into the sky, vanishing into the pitch-black firmament.
In an instant, the night sky was torn asunder, terrifying streaks of bloody light surfacing one after another. The two towering figures exhausted every art they possessed, each blasting apart who knew how many times, dissipating alongside the rain of light.
That demon god spoke calmly: "When we wither away, the supreme treasures of the demon race will naturally return on their own. Nine destined heavenly demons shall behold the supreme true scriptures within their seas of consciousness."
He seemed to be prophesying, utterly certain this would come to pass.
The night sky dimmed once more, and both figures dissolved completely.
Yet that ancient ancestral master of the esoteric sect had not uttered a single word from beginning to end, leaving no final words in the mortal realm.
Both camps remained utterly silent, watching all of this quietly.
Everyone came to realize that the ancestral master's words regarding a locked ceiling and meager lifespan increases were not false. Such human gods and demon gods differed little from one another; having fought with all their might to the bitter end, neither could remain in this world.
Immediately after, heavenly light so dense it blinded the eyes surfaced. A blazing sun traversed the sky, as if the sun of the old era had reappeared in the human realm.
"Master!" the Present Rulai cried out. Usually a man of few words, he now pursued him, wishing to fight in his master's stead. He told his venerable master that he possessed such capability.
Everyone understood at once: that was the Past Rulai.
The withered figure within the blazing sun shook his head, saying, "The purpose of my existence was to await this day. This body retains only enough power for a single battle."
"Master, you..."
The Present Rulai saw that the aged body was covered in dense cracks, appearing ready to disintegrate at any moment, with heavenly light force constantly seeping from the fissures.
The Past Rulai murmured, "In my generation, three senior martial brothers possessed higher aptitudes than mine, yet they all followed your martial ancestor in cultivating that kind of heavenly light force..."
In the distance, Qin Ming knew that what he spoke of had to be the silk book method!
The Past Rulai sighed softly. "They told me to look after our home well, yet I failed their trust. Several hundred years ago, several junior martial brothers died in battle on the Plain of Divine Demise right before my eyes. Alas!"
He shared, "In my later years, I could not hold back and ultimately studied that heavenly light force method as well. Before I could even cultivate it completely according to the text, I disintegrated."
The Present Rulai instantly understood why his master's body was covered in cracks. This was an aged frame forcefully pieced together, lying dormant for years without showing itself, solely awaiting one chance to strike.
The Past Rulai said, "As for the future direction of the Newborn path, according to my shallow understanding, one ought perhaps to dig deep into the flesh itself. Your natural talent exceeds mine; you may chart your own course. You need not put absolute faith in my words."
Then, this broken old man suddenly became like an unsheathed heavenly saber, his razor edge laid bare as boundless heavenly light shone across all directions. He declared, "Old demons of Thunder Cloud Cave and Longevity Temple, come at me together!"
In both camps, everyone was astounded. Was this old man going to take on two at once?
"If you won't come, I will charge over myself!" the Past Rulai said.
Silently, two demon gods appeared, both sneering continuously. If it were two against one, they might well survive without needing to perish together.
"Master!" The Present Rulai wanted to assist him.
The Past Rulai waved his hand, his wide sleeves billowing as he shot into the heavens. "Go back. This is my resting place—to settle a karmic debt from four hundred and fifty years ago."
With a booming crash, the pitch-black night above the firmament blasted apart completely. Blood rain fell like rainbows, interweaving across the long night before swiftly fading away clean.
All three figures that had ascended dispersed, never to appear again.
Such an outcome left both humans and demons across the two camps feeling a tight oppression in their chests, so suffocated they could hardly breathe.
A moment later, in the depths of the Plain of Divine Demise, a dragon-shaped demon god with three heads emerged. Terrifying azure clouds and mist surged tempestuously, dragon roars resounding through heaven and earth as he slashed open the night sky and leapt beyond the nine heavens.
In the demon camp, the beings of the Green Flood Dragon Palace were shaken to their cores. They instantly understood that this had to be an ancient green flood dragon, though they had no idea in what era he had become a god, completely unaware of his existence.
Moreover, for it to be a three-headed flood dragon, it had to be far stronger than ordinary flood dragon gods!
On Yezhou's side, an old woman appeared, leaning on a cane as she hobbled forward.
The ancestral masters pondered, for none of them had ever seen her in the past. They did not know which path she belonged to, remaining entirely unknown for all these years.
As she ascended into the heavens step by step, her withered body began to glow. Her figure gradually filled out, and her full head of white hair turned to black tresses.
In the blink of an eye, she transitioned from her twilight years back to youth. With her youthful prime restored, she was peerlessly magnificent, her grace and elegance surpassing even the likes of Jiang Ran, Li Qingyue, and Zhao Qingcheng among the immortal and divine seeds.
Her walking stick disintegrated, and from within it, a bright, snow-white sword appeared in her pale, slender hand.
The woman, her youth restored, smiled radiantly, then soared into the heavens.
The curtain of night shattered, and endless sword light erupted. People saw that peerless woman raise the long sword in her hand, cleanly severing three massive flood dragon heads in succession.
Yet the flood dragon's sharp claws also tore her body to shreds.
The two reconstituted time and again, only to shatter time and again, until finally their lights gradually extinguished.
In the final moments, the peerless woman looked back, her voice tinged with a mellow warmth as she said calmly, "Farewell, mortal world!"
Chapter 334