September 7, Year 3115 of the Shengxing Calendar, was destined to be a day recorded in the annals forever. On that day, the churches of the five evil gods stormed cities and seized land across the world. They conquered six nations, the Feiqiu Federation among them. The dead were beyond counting, and the flames of war filled the sky.
Human civilization was driven to the brink.
And on that very day, Huang Tian, humanity's first Supreme martial artist, from the Yangbai Federation, stepped forth. One against two, he easily slew the high priests of the Flesh Society and the Scarlet Society.
He also manifested his divine might over the cities where evil god cultists ran rampant. Across a thousand li, across ten thousand li, he killed the throngs of cultists who had been rampaging unchecked. For a time, no further word was heard upon Shengxing of evil god cultists causing chaos. The world grew peaceful and still.
Over the year that followed, some people still sold their souls to the evil gods in exchange for power, but none of them could gain a foothold.
Not only did the authorities of every nation hunt and suppress them with full force; countless ordinary people also hated the cruelty of their methods and cooperated all the more readily with official efforts. Even the slightest suspicion was reported at once. Not one was let slip.
Thus the evil god cultists were like rats crossing the street, with everyone crying out to beat them. They no longer had any room to survive, to grow, or to grow strong.
"A year has passed, and the world has grown much more peaceful. It's just that, without these evil god cultists and dependents, the potential points I gain are fewer and fewer—"
At Dawnlight Headquarters, on a broad and level stretch of open ground, Huang Tian stood quietly. "Still, after a year of bitter cultivation—especially here at Dawnlight Headquarters, where I could take every sort of pill and medicinal elixir without restriction—I am not far from the perfection of the Supreme realm. Add the potential points I have been accumulating and have not yet used, and the moment to break through has come!"
Before his eyes, a line of small illusory text appeared: [Potential Points: 57039].
"Add points! All of them!!"
With a single thought, a nearly inexhaustible current of heat surged through his body and spread into his limbs and every bone.
Crack! Snap!
His sinews and bones rang like a dragon's roar and a tiger's howl as they transformed, becoming like the substance of glazed gold. His muscles bulged and knotted, coiling like dragons and like snakes.
Whoosh—
When the transformation of muscle, sinew, and bone was complete, his skin showed a still broader expanse of lustrous white. Gentle moonlight seemed to flow across it. Not a pore remained, and the crimson-gold qi and blood surging beneath the skin faintly showed through!
He stood upon the earth like a jade statue of a god. The brilliant sunlight that fell upon him was refracted by his white-jade skin into a faint rainbow halo, extraordinarily magnificent.
At the same time, within him, inside his Huangting, his true soul evolved as well. The platinum giant, already vast as a mountain, rose taller again—higher still. Every movement stirred wind and cloud within the Huangting.
Hah—
He slowly breathed out a mouthful of white vapor and opened his eyes. As his gaze swept out, ring upon ring of ripples actually rose across the void.
"The breakthrough is complete! My strength is far, far greater than before. The Supreme realm lies roughly between Great Ascension in the Earth Immortal Realm and the True Immortal realm. After breaking through again by adding potential points, I seem to have leapt past the True Immortal realm in a single bound and gone straight to Heavenly Immortal—"
He silently sensed the incomparably vast power within him. "Those five evil gods beyond the heavens are all at the Golden Immortal realm. This incarnation of mine, though only an eighth-rank Heavenly Immortal, has a strong chance of winning one against one. Against two, I will not say I can win, but at the least I will not lose. Add the support from afar of my Dao-integration incarnation in the Earth Immortal Realm—that is enough!"
His decision set, his lips moved faintly as he sent his voice. Soon several people came hurrying over. Conspicuous among them were Sun Yuanxu, vice chairman of Dawnlight, who had previously gone to Baidi City to visit him, and He Ji, sect master of the Divine Elephant Sect.
"Mr. Huang!" the group said with great deference.
Huang Tian nodded. "I called you here because the time has come."
Everyone's expressions froze. Then their faces changed. He Ji stole a glance at Huang Tian and at once felt that the latter's bearing was even more removed from the mundane. The oppressive pressure of before was gone. Facing him was like facing a stretch of heaven and earth—all-embracing, boundless, remote—
"You... you've broken through?!" Sun Yuanxu asked, stirred.
Upon Shengxing, the highest realm known to people from ancient times to the present had been Supreme. Now Huang Tian had climbed yet another level!
"That's right," Huang Tian replied. "The so-called Supreme realm is not truly supreme in the end. If the human body cannot stand equal to the cosmos, how can one dare claim to have climbed to the pinnacle of the martial way?"
The human body, equal to the cosmos?
Sun Yuanxu and the others were at once astonished and filled with yearning.
"The Supreme realm could be given a new name. It might be called Martial Saint, and my present realm called Martial God?" Huang Tian said. "Of course, they are only names. It hardly matters. Only power is real."
Everyone nodded. He Ji pressed his lips together and asked, worry on his face, "We do not know just how strong the evil gods beyond the heavens truly are. You have broken through, and your strength has grown greatly, but to fight them rashly is too great a risk. Would it not be better to cultivate a while longer?"
"I know my own measure. There is no need to worry," Huang Tian replied. "However, if I clash with the evil gods beyond the heavens, it may disturb the celestial phenomena. Calm the people. Do not let disorder arise."
With that said, they could only nod, though the worry in their hearts could not be entirely dispelled. After all, Huang Tian could be called the whole world's only hope. If he were defeated, humanity's fate of annihilation could be entirely foreseen—
Facing their concerned gazes, Huang Tian gave a slight nod and said nothing more. He stamped his foot once. In an instant his whole body shot up into the clouds and vanished before everyone's eyes.
"You must win—you must—" Sun Yuanxu and the others gazed up at the vast sky and prayed in silence.
By then Huang Tian had already flown beyond the planet. He glanced back once. The planet was azure, clouds drifting over it, and points of light glittered—the lights of cities where it was still night.
He drew his gaze back and swept it across the endless void of space. There, in the emptiness not so very far away, was the faint outline of a ring of pale, rippling film.
"That must be the means laid down by the Heavenly Dao of this cosmos to block the invasion of the evil gods?"
He conjectured inwardly, took one step, and passed straight through that layer of film. At once, boundless malice surged at him from the depths of the void.
Suddenly, a slowly rotating, magnificent nebula exploded!
From the shattered nebula emerged a spider-like existence the size of a star. Its body was covered in carapace, its jointed limbs a cold white. Upon a pale human face, eight eyes flickered with ghostly light.
"[Weaver Lord]—"
An existence that took stars as warp and weft and civilizations as silk threads, weaving the web of fate.
But—"Its condition is not quite right. Its mind does not seem entirely clear. Mad, or half-mad?"
Watching the madness in the Weaver Lord's eyes, Huang Tian pondered. "A Golden Immortal existence does not easily go mad, unless it has fallen into the Dao and been beguiled by it."
Seeking the Dao had never been smooth sailing. The Dao was too vast, too profound. Ninth-rank Golden Immortals in particular all sought the path of Daluo. Should the Dao heart falter for even a moment and deviation set in, one might be lost to the Dao and fall into a half-mad, half-demonic state.
"If the Weaver Lord is like this, the other four evil gods ought to be the same."
He cast his gaze wide and could faintly sense, in the depths of the void, four colossal beings turning malicious, greedy eyes upon him.
Roar—
Sound could not travel through the void, and yet the Weaver Lord's howl still spread, shaking the dust of the starry sky into flight. A beam of frost-white cold light sprayed from its mouth and shot across the void toward him!
Hum—
Huang Tian raised his right hand and pinched his fingers into a seal. In an instant, endless platinum light burst from his entire body!
His body swelled sharply. In the blink of an eye, a towering figure more than ten thousand kilometers tall stood in the boundless void of space. His eyes opened like blazing suns. With every breath, phantoms of galaxies being born and dying flowed between his mouth and nose.
Toward the frost-white beam shooting at him, he threw a punch.
Boom!!
The void heaved into a raging tide!
Ring after ring of ripples visible to the naked eye swept outward in every direction at extreme speed. Meteors exploded into powder. The dust of the starry sky was churned into a single mass. Countless streams of particles burst with brilliant light and rushed up, down, and toward all sides. In the end, even upon Shengxing, people could see all manner of magnificent auroras flashing in the sky!
Besides that, they could also see two existences the size of planets standing majestic in space, about to decide life and death.
"Divine Huang!"
Some cried out in excitement, some shut their eyes in fear, and some knelt and prayed. After seeing the announcement the authorities had just released, everyone knew that the moment deciding humanity's fate had arrived.
"You must win!"
"Divine Huang, take with you the hope of all humanity and the light of its faith, and defeat every evil existence!"
In space, the first exchange from afar had not decided who held the advantage. Both figures blurred at once.
In the next instant, Huang Tian and the Weaver Lord slammed fiercely into each other!
Close-quarters combat!
A contest of pure force and Dao!
Huang Tian threw a punch. The space before his fist compressed layer upon layer. The Weaver Lord raised two forelimbs and crossed them to block. Ghostly light flickered madly across its carapace, dispersing the tremendous force bearing down.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
They tumbled and grappled, fighting from a shattered nebula all the way to another silent, secluded star system.
Along the way, an ancient meteor was grazed unintentionally by Huang Tian's elbow and exploded into a storm of rubble sweeping across several million li. The frost-white breath the Weaver Lord spat swept across an asteroid belt. In an instant, everything there was sealed in pale, hard ice and fell into stillness.
"Exhilarating!"
At the height of the fierce battle, Huang Tian let out a long roar. The sound waves became golden patterns that rippled the void open. He twisted at the waist, gathered the boundless divine power of his whole body into a single fist, and, with the momentum of the splitting of heaven and earth, smashed it fiercely down upon the Weaver Lord's vast body!
Thoom!!
A boom so deep and dull that even distant stars trembled erupted.
The Weaver Lord let out a howl of pain and was sent flying backward through the void like a meteor, slamming toward a huge planet floating quietly at the edge of the battlefield!
Rumble!!
In the instant of impact, dazzling light burst forth. Then the entire planet exploded at once. Continents were flung away, oceans churned, and under the raging impact of energy all of it became motes of starry dust.
At the center of the hazy dust, a crack split the Weaver Lord's carapace, and dark-blue blood flowed out.
Huang Tian was about to give chase when a sudden change erupted.
Shhk!
A streak of bloody light appeared from the nothingness at Huang Tian's flank and rear, stabbing straight for the center of his back!
The one who struck was the Feast Lord, the one he had dealt with most.
The Feast Lord's form was grotesque. Though humanoid, it had no skin, only hideous flesh, as if a layer of hide had been flayed away.
It held a dark-red spear. Bloody light swirled thickly at the spearhead, as though countless worlds were sinking within it—a sea of blood!
At the same time, amid the stellar dust, the wounded Weaver Lord counterattacked in a fury. From its abdomen it spat cold-white spider silk. Myriad upon myriad strands wove into an immensely broad web and spread toward Huang Tian!
Facing the pincer attack, Huang Tian's expression remained composed. His left arm whipped backward and precisely seized the tip of the blood spear the Feast Lord had thrust at him!
Palm met spear tip. Bloody light collided with platinum radiance, and neither gained the upper hand.
At the same time, his right palm turned and pushed toward the spreading web. An incomparably blazing silver-white palm pressed down like a sky-covering canopy. The moment the palm touched the web, platinum flames flared. The fire swept outward and swelled in an instant, burning the web to ash.
Rumble—
In the void, streams of particles raged and surged. The platinum light grew ever more intense, illuminating the deep darkness of space.
Huang Tian's gaze swept across the maddened faces of the Feast Lord and the Weaver Lord, and joy surged within him.
"Is this all?"
His majestic voice rolled out like a tide, vast and mighty, spreading above, below, and to every side. In the depths of the void, three colossal beings could finally restrain themselves no longer and appeared together.
[Scarlet Sun] had the most enormous body of all. It was a blood-red star. Wherever its radiance shone, the reek of rot and withering arose at once.
[Night Mother] was a peerlessly beautiful maiden holding a scepter. Her form seemed empty and illusory. She wore a magnificent gauze of stars, her bearing elegant, yet her eyes mad with obsession.
[Mother of Myriad Waters] was a jellyfish-like existence, without features and without hands or feet. It floated in the void, stirring layer upon layer of energy ripples like ocean tides.
The moment the three evil gods appeared, they crossed countless light-years without the slightest hesitation and arrived near where Huang Tian was fighting the Feast Lord and the Weaver Lord.
They were just about to strike when suddenly—
Boom!!
The starry rivers of the cosmos abruptly boiled!
Seven beams of light—Seven-Colored Divine Light!
From beyond the cosmic membrane, it stretched across!
Crimson! Yellow! Cyan! White! Black! Yin! Yang!
The Seven-Colored Divine Light surged and roared. In one hundred-millionth of a finger-snap, it had already filled the vast universe.
Divine light rose. Starry rivers boiled. The void shook. Even the people upon Shengxing needed only to lift their heads to see an extraordinarily magnificent seven-colored rainbow bridge unfurling from the infinite distance, illuminating every direction!
And at the source of that Seven-Colored Divine Light, upon the unknowable farther shore beyond the cosmos, a figure appeared.
It was an existence clad in a Dao robe of the stars of heaven.
Upon the Dao robe, myriads upon myriads of brilliant stars slowly revolved according to profound ultimate principles, endlessly arising and perishing. His face was veiled in a hazy, clear radiance. Only a pair of eyes could be clearly seen.
What those eyes reflected was the endless sight of the cosmos arising and perishing, of the Great Dao turning in its cycles.
At this moment, those eyes calmly cast their gaze toward this cosmos, toward the three evil gods that had appeared.
Merely the act of casting that gaze made the void around him ripple with endless immortal light, clear as glazed crystal, scouring away all filth.
Golden lotuses bloomed of themselves without roots, flowering and swaying within the immortal light. Every petal released a strange fragrance that drew one into intoxication. With it sounded immortal music, remote and yet clear, like jade chimes, like the cry of a phoenix.
And deep within that immortal music, there seemed to be countless devout voices chanting as one, the sound shaking the great thousand worlds: "Praise be—High Firmament Zhonghuang Utmost Saint, Xuanshu Creation Great Heavenly Venerable!!"
Chapter 221