The two confronted each other from afar. The universe was utterly silent, save only for the Dao-sounds given off by their innate numinous treasures.
The Ancestral God was on edge, and sent a voice transmission: "A-Ying... if it really comes to blows, I'm afraid you may not be able to take even a single one of his moves."
Xu Ying smiled faintly. "Don't worry. He treasures his life more than I treasure mine—he won't dare strike. And he fears that if I take one of his moves, I'll fight my way back into the past and cut him down."
For if he could take a single move from Dao Master Luo, it would mean he could withstand Dao Master Luo's Great Dao fluctuations. Should Xu Ying then return to the past and unleash the Immortal Slaying Sword Finger, the result would be far more than merely paralyzing Dao Master Luo—he could take the man's life. That was why Xu Ying was certain Dao Master Luo would not risk it.
By the same token, the strength Dao Master Luo had displayed was simply too great, and Xu Ying was unwilling to take that risk either. Under such circumstances, each side taking a step back was the best choice for both.
Dao Master Luo's eyes flickered, and he withdrew a step. Xu Ying was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when a chill of dread suddenly ran down his spine. Without a thought, he activated the Nirvanic Extinction Azure Void Cup. The Nirvanic Extinction Heavenly Fire within the cup surged upward, and the Great Dao of Nirvanic Extinction—which could incinerate the myriad Daos and annihilate all things—erupted.
At the same moment, the Chaos Lotus beneath his feet bloomed with a resonant hum, layer upon layer of chaos qi rippling outward. The Great Dao Sutra Banner encircling Xu Ying began to turn as well, and the Dao power of the Nine Heavens poured into his body, boosting his cultivation and Dao power and lifting the might of the Nirvanic Extinction Heavenly Fire ever higher.
The Xuanhui Treasure Pagoda held aloft in his other hand blazed with brilliant azure light, spinning as it flew forward, swelling rapidly larger, growing ever heavier and more massive, suppressing all things. Before him the Rebirth Flower spun and bloomed, and Reincarnation Dao power erupted.
The Xuanhui Treasure Pagoda, the Great Dao Sutra Banner, and the Rebirth Flower—one a Taiyi Treasure, one a Dao Attainment Magic Treasure, one a Reincarnation Treasure; each treasure held a different Great Dao within it.
Yet Xu Ying wielded all three treasures at once with Hongmeng Dao power, drawing out the full power and function of each to the utmost.
Driven by Hongmeng Dao power, the Xuanhui Treasure Pagoda was as good as driven by Taiyi Dao power, and within it seemed to lie the thirty-three layers of the Heavenly Dao Realm, boundlessly heavy.
Driving the Great Dao Sutra Banner awakened the treasure's Dao attainment, empowering its wielder.
Driving the Rebirth Flower was like Reincarnation Dao power, carrying the flower's reincarnation methods to their absolute peak.
This was what made the Hongmeng Dao Master so extraordinary: apart from the two Daos of Nirvanic Extinction and Chaos, Hongmeng could evolve into all the rest.
But in the very next moment, the Xuanhui Treasure Pagoda, which had been expanding madly, abruptly halted and then began to shrink with great speed. The Nirvanic Extinction Heavenly Fire surging from the Nirvanic Extinction Azure Void Cup began to gutter out, patch after patch. The Rebirth Flower was suppressed as well; its reincarnation was clamped shut by an immeasurably mighty magical force, no longer able to turn.
The Ancestral God let out a thunderous roar and strode forward, activating the Kaiyuan Divine Axe. Swinging it in a full circle, he unleashed the second form of the Seven Forms of Kaiyuan—Chaos Chiseled, Cleaving Hongmeng. In that instant he was a giant cleaving heaven and earth, his muscles and sinews bulging ferociously, his axe swift as the wind, the whole stroke carrying the momentum of chiseling chaos itself into shape.
Just then, two fingers abruptly clamped onto the axe blade, and the divine axe's power to cleave heaven and earth halted dead, unable to stir. The Ancestral God roared and hauled with all his might, yet could not pull the axe free. His heart sank—He actually sensed the killing intent in my heart. No wonder he's lived this long.
Dao Master Luo held the Kaiyuan Divine Axe pinched between two fingers, his gaze settling on Xu Ying's face. "You said just now," he drawled, "that if a single move could not kill you, then I would be the one to die. Well then... I think I'd like to try."
Before he could finish, Xu Ying raised a hand and struck the Kaiyuan Divine Axe. The divine axe's power instantly surged, tearing free of the grip of Dao Master Luo's two fingers, and Xu Ying's figure retreated as he shouted, "Ancestral God, fall back!"
But at that very moment, the many Great Daos of soul, po, spirit, the divine, sacrifice, offering, and the void within the Great Thousand Universes behind Dao Master Luo erupted, transforming into streak after streak of brilliant light that linked to Dao Master Luo. Had he not borrowed the heavenly and earthly Dao power of the Great Thousand Universes, Xu Ying might still have withstood two or three of his moves—but now that he had borrowed the Dao power of the Great Thousand Universes, Xu Ying feared he could hardly withstand a single one.
The three Dao Masters—Hua, Lin, and Luo—were many times stronger than the other Dao Masters. Their strength lay not only in the fact that their cultivation had reached the very peak of the Dao Master realm, but also in the fact that, over these hundreds of millions of years, they had taken mastery of the heavenly and earthly Great Daos of other Great Thousand Universes. The three Dao Masters appeared to disdain harvesting the qi refiners of the Great Thousand Universes, but in truth they harvested more ruthlessly and more utterly. They made the Great Thousand Universes their cave abyss, took the heavenly and earthly Great Daos as their Dao power, and plundered them whenever they had need, all to strengthen themselves.
Xu Ying was a Hongmeng Dao Master—but only the Hongmeng Dao Master of half the other shore, of half the New Lou Realm. Even though the Daos that Dao Master Luo cultivated were merely lower-tier innate Great Daos like the Soul Dao and the Spirit Dao, in sheer Dao power he could still be hundreds, even a thousand times greater than Xu Ying. Harvesting the Great Thousand Universes had made his Dao power unspeakably ferocious.
Xu Ying's scalp prickled as he and the Ancestral God swiftly retreated. He had once, at the completion of the Supreme realm, defeated the Grand Dao Lord of Life and Death at the completion of the Indestructible realm; he had also, in his weaker days, crossed one realm—even two realms—to defeat his foes. Yet even the cultivation gap in those cross-realm battles had never been as grotesque as this.
Wielding a lower-tier Great Dao, Dao Master Luo commanded a thousand times Xu Ying's Dao power. As that palm force pressed down, it set Xu Ying's primordial spirit quivering, on the verge of shattering. And for the Ancestral God—this cosmic primordial spirit—the palm formed of Dao Master Luo's concentrated Dao power was especially lethal; it seemed that the merest touch would make him crack apart and die.
"The Great Daos that Dao Master Luo cultivates all seem aimed at his own father, Luo Taizong!" Xu Ying's eyes flickered. The Soul Dao, Po Dao, Spirit Dao, Divine Dao, Sacrifice Dao, Offering Dao, and the Dao of Void—all shared a single, continuous thread.
He must have cultivated the Soul Dao first; only after attaining the Dao Master realm did he gradually cultivate the other, kindred Great Daos, step by step, so that his efforts would yield twice the result for half the work. And since these Daos all assailed the soul, po, spirit, and divine, their target was plainly the ancient gods and cosmic primordial spirits like Luo Taizong.
"Truly a filial Dao Master." Seeing the starry sky collapsing on every side with nowhere to flee, Xu Ying at once stowed away the Nirvanic Extinction Azure Void, the Rebirth Flower, the Xuanhui Treasure Pagoda, and the Chaos Lotus, then leaped onto the Ancestral God's shoulder and drove the Kaiyuan Divine Axe together with him.
The Kaiyuan Divine Axe had originally been refined by the two of them; the two of them had wielded it to cleave open the heavens. Now, as the two channeled the treasure in unison, they unleashed the first form—the Star-Moon Heaven-Opening Formation.
Xu Ying had attained the Hongmeng Dao Master realm and enjoyed the added empowerment of the Great Dao Sutra Banner, so his Dao power was the stronger. At once the two swapped primary and supporting roles, making Xu Ying the lead and the Ancestral God the support. The axe light blazed in dazzling splendor as the divine axe cleaved out, its power greater even than on the day the two of them had cleaved open the Hongyuan of the other shore.
Where that axe stroke passed, Hongmeng was sundered, the Limitless opened, Taiyi made manifest, all the myriad Daos issued forth, and the starry heavens were brought into being. The axe light collided with Dao Master Luo's great hand of Dao power; Xu Ying and the Ancestral God trembled, so heavily suppressed that they could not hold onto the divine axe, and it flew from their grasp.
"Sixth Form—Drifting Form!" Xu Ying shouted.
The Ancestral God at once joined him in driving the Kaiyuan Divine Axe and unleashing the Sixth Form, calling out, "A-Ying, I call this move: 'Lightly it whirls, delicate as returning snow; lovely it soars, a roaming dragon startled into flight.'"
Xu Ying paid him no mind. The two of them—one great, one small—their sleeves fluttering, their movements in perfect accord, joined forces to drive the Kaiyuan Divine Axe. The divine axe moved like a roaming dragon, darting up and down around Dao Master Luo's palm—chopping, sweeping, cleaving, slicing, snipping, hammering, slaying—like an invisible giant whose every motion was a cleaving of heaven and earth, an opening of chaos and Hongmeng, wearing down the might of Dao Master Luo's strike.
But Dao Master Luo's palm force was already pressing down. Though their strike had pared away no small portion of its might, it still bore down upon them from above. Every collision between the Kaiyuan Divine Axe and Dao Master Luo's palm force left their blood and qi churning, their Dao power unsteady and hard to sustain.
There was nowhere left to hide. Seeing this, Xu Ying sprang into the air, seized the Kaiyuan Divine Axe, and shouted, "Seventh Form!" He had wised up this time and simply did not cry out the name he had given it—so long as the Ancestral God understood, that was enough.
The two joined forces to drive the Seventh Form. Gripping the great axe, they thrust it upward with all their strength, as though holding up the heavens, and swung it out in fury. This was the divine power they had first grasped only when they cleaved open the Hongyuan of the other shore, and it was the mightiest of all. Cleaving open the heavens was not the hard part; the hard part was the backlash of the Chaos Sea that followed—and that backlash was stronger still than the force of the opening—so the sensation of holding up the heavens was stronger yet. The divine axe met Dao Master Luo's palm force, which blanketed all spacetime. Each of them let out a muffled grunt. The axe light, carrying the might of holding up the heavens, cut into the immeasurably heavy great hand of Dao power—they could only pray it would cleave the palm apart, yet the resistance they met grew ever fiercer.
Xu Ying and the Ancestral God's hearts pounded with dread. Dao Master Luo, who harvested the Great Thousand Universes, was no ordinary Dao Master to be matched; his Dao power was vast beyond imagining. Seeing that great hand pressing down, about to crush them to pieces, Xu Ying suddenly stamped down with his foot, and reincarnation opened at once, linking past and future, hurling the two of them toward the distant past.
Yet before them, that Luo Heaven Great Hand still crushed through the spacetime of the past and came on close behind; even fleeing into the past, they could not shake it loose.
Xu Ying and the Ancestral God were pressed so hard they could scarcely breathe. They raised the Kaiyuan Divine Axe and slashed again and again at that great hand, but Dao Master Luo's power seemed able to pierce through past and present alike, still assailing them.
In an instant, Xu Ying and the Ancestral God had fought their way back one hundred twenty million years into the past, yet were still forced to give ground without end.
Hundreds of millions of years flashed by. Suddenly reincarnation activated and spacetime reversed, turning hundreds of millions of years in the past directly into hundreds of millions of years in the future. "Dao Master Luo, you have no grasp of reincarnation—don't even think of catching me," Xu Ying said with a laugh.
His voice had scarcely faded when the void abruptly collapsed, and that Luo Heaven Great Hand came crashing down.
Dao Master Luo's voice reached them: "Xu Ying, even if you flee to the past of hundreds of millions of years ago, or to the unknowable future, even if you flee into the chaos and dissolve yourself into the Dao of Hongmeng—you still cannot escape my divine power."
Xu Ying suddenly understood: "His divine power has locked onto my soul, po, divine essence, and spirit." The two had no choice but to drive the Kaiyuan Divine Axe once more. But by now that Luo Heaven Great Hand had already ground its way to right before them. The two desperately drove the divine axe, their skin all but bursting, as the pressure hurled them crashing backward.
The two were smashed into the void, their bodies piercing through layer upon layer of it, and in an instant they reached the last layer of the void—the Thirty-Sixth Layer of the Void.
The Thirty-Sixth Layer of the Void was already the highest layer of the void within the Chaos Sea; there was nowhere higher to go. Even reaching this layer, Xu Ying—a past master of the Dao of Void—stood in danger of dissolving into nothingness. Yet the Luo Heaven Great Hand still pressed them to smash even deeper into the void, and the two were bathed in blood. Suddenly their bodies jolted violently, and they crashed into an immeasurably thick amber substance. On the verge of being crushed, Xu Ying hurriedly worked the Dao of Void, carrying the Ancestral God swiftly through the amber substance.
"Run? And where do you suppose you can run to?" Dao Master Luo's voice came through with perfect clarity. Xu Ying looked ahead and saw that behind the Luo Heaven Great Hand loomed Dao Master Luo's face, immeasurably vast, standing at the far end of another universe, wreathed in a hazy, dreamlike aura like some ancient god.
Suddenly the two felt their bodies lighten and sensed the amber substance vanish—they were falling endlessly out of the void, dropping into the physical world.
"A-Ying, this is not the other shore." The Ancestral God at once sensed the difference in the surrounding heavenly and earthly Great Daos and cried out in alarm. "We've fled from the void into another universe."
Before Xu Ying could answer, the void collapsed sheet upon sheet, from the Thirty-Sixth Layer all the way down to the First, and the Luo Heaven Great Hand, trailing boundless void-fire, bore down upon them once more.
Dao Master Luo's face appeared at the far end of the void, his voice still reaching their ears with perfect clarity: "Even if you could flee through all the Great Thousand Universes, you could not escape the palm of my hand—you could not escape a single move of mine."
His voice grew louder and louder, resounding through heaven and earth and the vault of the clouds, deafening: "Between my fingers and my palm, myriads of stars drain away like dust and sand; within my presence, the myriad Daos bow as vassals; around my person revolve the Great Thousand Universes—I am the sovereign of the countless universes of the Chaos Sea."
Xu Ying laughed uproariously. "You're Lame Luo—a name I bestowed on you!"
Dao Master Luo's face darkened, and the Luo Heaven Great Hand came crashing down. Xu Ying and the Ancestral God poured out the Dao power of their entire lives to hold him off, but in the next moment they were still struck so that the earth beneath their feet shattered and boiled away, and they were ground down into the layered void.
With a thunderous boom, they were blasted straight into the highest layer of the void, piercing the amber substance, passing through the thick cosmic barrier, and slamming into the void of the next universe. Then that great hand ground the two of them along, punching through this universe's starry sky and hurling them once more into the void.
Xu Ying grunted and frantically drove the Hongmeng Great Dao, doing all he could to link himself to the heavenly and earthly Great Daos of this universe as he fell into its starry sky. The heavenly and earthly Great Daos of every universe differed, more or less, and the very kinds of Great Dao were never quite the same. But within the Chaos Sea, all Hongmeng Great Daos were one and the same—they were the single, the only.
Blood streaming without cease from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, Xu Ying's gaze flickered. As he was ground into the next universe, he likewise roused the Hongmeng Great Dao and drew upon the Hongmeng Dao power of that universe.
"The reason he can empower himself with the Soul Dao, Spirit Dao, Po Dao, and all those other Great Daos of the Great Thousand Universes is that he has visited every universe and comprehended the matching Great Dao."
But Hongmeng is originally one. With my Spirit Dao platform already built, I need not comprehend them at all—I can draw upon the Hongmeng Dao power of these universes to empower myself.
Xu Ying and the Ancestral God's bodies crushed the void of one universe after another, and Xu Ying matched his own Hongmeng Great Dao against these universes, drawing upon their Hongmeng Dao power to the utmost of his ability. By now the Ancestral God was covered in blood and could hold out no longer.
Xu Ying suddenly drew upon all the Hongmeng Dao power and roused the Dao of Void. In that instant, behind him there appeared the apparitions of eight universes, and strand upon strand of Hongmeng purple qi, like long rainbows, linked to his body.
"Lame Luo—every Dao you understand, I understand as well."
Xu Ying alone drove the Seventh Form of the Kaiyuan Divine Axe, using the axe to hold up the heavens as he met Dao Master Luo's Luo Heaven Great Hand. The axe light surged, cutting into the Luo Heaven Great Hand, and in the next moment a burst of dazzling light erupted skyward from the back of that great hand.
Boom! The palm crushed the spacetime of the world where Xu Ying was—but it did not crush him. A great hole split open in the palm, and Xu Ying and the Ancestral God slipped right through it.
With one hand Xu Ying scooped up the Ancestral God's massive body; with the other he bore the Kaiyuan Divine Axe. As he swung the axe, heaven and earth split apart and the void sprang into being; his figure slipped into the void and vanished.
"A-Zong, you've crossed your uncle. Next time will be the day of your death."
Chapter 871