Severing Heaven and Earth

Gods Instance. With grayish-white scales and a purple mane, the Gu Dragon—though draconic in form, undeniably eerie and monstrous—plunged into the battlefield. It opened its long snout, baring jagged fangs, and spewed a stream of pitch-black flame extending for kilometers toward the fair, tender child. This flame seemed imbued with the power to decay all things, plunging the arena spanning several kilometers into ruin. The soil was stripped of its nutrients, bacteria and microorganisms died rapidly, and the already barren ground took on the texture of fine white sand. World-Extinguishing Flame! It was one of the Torch Dragon's strongest abilities and a core authority. The World-Extinguishing Flame could incinerate all life, spiritual power, and nutrients in the world, turning the mortal realm into a desolate wasteland. The Xie Family Ancestor did not resist or dodge, letting the black flames scorch his body. The World-Extinguishing Flame dealt area-of-effect damage; dodging was futile. His skin withered and wrinkled rapidly, his hair turned white, and his eyes grew cloudy. Aside from retaining the stature of a young boy, his appearance had aged into decrepitude. Yet in the very next second, powerful vitality erupted from within him, moisturizing his skin, turning his white hair raven-black, and restoring the clarity of his eyes. Enduring the incineration of the black flames, the Xie Family Ancestor aged and was reborn in an endless cycle. Suddenly, thick black fluid seeped from the void above his head, pouring in heavy streams over the child's head, dripping wet and sticky down his cheeks and chest. It tainted his entire person with an aura of foul, turbid stench. Instantly, the child's restorative capacity plummeted. He could no longer regenerate into the fair, adorable boy; each time he decayed into a white-haired elder, he could only push himself back to a middle-aged state no matter how hard he tried. He had been corroded by the power of a filthy evil spirit. A Witch Doctor specializing in curses, defilement, and decay happened to be the perfect counter to a Musician's vitality and recovery. Unhurriedly, the Xie Family Ancestor opened his inventory and pulled out an infant's head, followed by a torso and two legs, missing only the arms. This was the rule-based item held by the Xie family—the Holy Infant! Only a "mother" could soothe the Holy Infant, so it had to be kept dismembered in storage; if assembled into a complete Holy Infant, it would go out of control. The Holy Infant opened its eyes and burst out crying: "Waaah!" The cries were resonant and full of vigor. Amid the infant's loud wails, the Xie Family Ancestor hummed a cheerful ballad, gently rocking the baby in his arms. The crying shifted from resonant to ear-piercingly screeching. This was an ability Musicians mastered back in the Transcendent stage—Inspire! Inspire could drastically enhance the skill strength of oneself or allies, and he was currently using Inspire to amplify the infant's wails. As the infant's wails echoed again and again, the Gu Dragon's belly swelled, stretching apart its scales bit by bit, and the sound of an infant crying came from within its bulging abdomen. The rule power of the Holy Infant combined with a demigod's amplification successfully impregnated the Gu Dragon. The fetus in its womb siphoned away part of the Gu Dragon's power, visibly weakening the roaring World-Extinguishing Flame until it was no longer overwhelming. The Xie Family Ancestor took the opportunity to restore his boyish form. The black flames spewed by the Gu Dragon flowed backward, engulfing its tens-of-meters-long draconic body. He incinerated himself with the World-Extinguishing Flame to kill the fetus in his womb. The crying immediately weakened, and the distended belly began to shrink. Seeing this, the Xie Family Ancestor cradling the Holy Infant opened his little mouth and spat out a golden, broth-thick fluid. The fluid formed a torrential downpour in midair; while most of it was incinerated by the World-Extinguishing Flame, a small portion poured down and showered the Gu Dragon. The fetus on the verge of dying in the womb seemed to instantly receive a potent tonic, letting out loud wails. The deflating dragon belly bulged once again; no matter how the World-Extinguishing Flame burned, it could not halt the gestation. The Musician class's combination of "Conception" and "Nurturing" had undergone a qualitative transformation in the demigod domain, becoming an absolute rule of inevitable childbirth! Seeing that the World-Extinguishing Flame could not kill the fetus in its womb in the short term, the Gu Dragon ceased spewing the flame. From its fang-filled long snout, it chanted an obscure, guttural incantation. The two sharp horns atop its head lit up, diffusing ripples of gray energy. Instantly, the Xie Family Ancestor and the Holy Infant in his arms showed darkened complexions and foul sweat beneath their armpits, plunging into the state of the Five Declines of Heaven and Man. Next, thick fluid poured down from the void, falling atop the heads of the Holy Infant and the child. The combination of Fortune Diminishment and defilement delivered an effective counterstrike, stripping the Holy Infant of its spirituality and severely sapping the Xie Family Ancestor's vitality. The wailing stopped abruptly. Slender red threads extended from the Xie Family Ancestor's fingertips, wrapping around the filth-covered Holy Infant. Before long, the Holy Infant swaddled in the "red cloth" let out a resonant cry once more. It had revived. The core skill of a level-7 Musician: Resurgence. The Gu Dragon's abdomen swelled to its limit, and with a wet squelch, the flesh tore open, giving birth to a small dragon as thick as an arm. The little dragon had no eyes, no antlers, and no claws. It squirmed its body madly, emitting shrill whimpers like a newborn infant crying for its mother. The Gu Dragon snorted coldly, turning its head to devour the little dragon and reclaim its lost power and authority. Just then, the Xie Family Ancestor produced a petite, patina-encrusted Demon Refining Pot. He had requisitioned it from the Chu family girl in advance—partly out of concern that if she died in an instance, this demigod item would be lost, and partly because the situation had reached a critical juncture where a demigod battle could erupt at any moment. Having a demigod item of his own class on hand could save his life when it counted most, and even catch enemies off guard with lethal force, just as he was doing now. In exchange, of course, he had given the Chu family daughter a high-grade Dominator-level item. For the Palace Master of Halting Slaughter, this was a trade where she lost nothing and perhaps even made a slight profit. The status of a demigod item was too elevated; a Dominator could hardly tap into its true function: Refining Demons! Meanwhile, a high-grade Dominator item could be utilized to its fullest in an instance. And if she did perish in the instance, having the Demon Refining Pot in the Xie Family Ancestor's hands was far better than having it reclaimed by the instance. The Xie Family Ancestor uncapped the pot, muttering an incantation under his breath. "Whoosh!" A terrifying suction surged from the mouth of the pot, locking onto the Gu Dragon. The vertical pupils of this Spirit Society demigod contracted violently as he felt an instinctive terror. He had no time to devour the little dragon; twisting his body and channeling his spiritual power, he thrashed frantically, trying to break free from the enveloping vortex. Yet having lost a portion of his power, no matter how he struggled, he could not escape the Demon Refining Pot's pull. Amid waves of unwilling roars, the Gu Dragon vanished into the Demon Refining Pot. The Xie Family Ancestor hastily sealed the pot, opened his inventory, pulled out a Plantain Fan, and swung it fiercely at the Demon Refining Pot. A tempest erupted, and Samadhi True Fire flared beneath the base of the Demon Refining Pot. Inside the pot, the Gu Dragon slammed about frantically. The petite Demon Refining Pot wobbled and tilted precariously in the flames, yet remained upright. Half an hour later, the roars within the pot subsided, and the force of the collisions grew steadily weaker. After another half hour, not a sound came from within. "The greatest function of the Demon Refining Pot is to melt living beings back down and reforge them. Be you a demigod or an ant, none can escape being refined." The Xie Family Ancestor unfurled his sleeve and gathered the newborn little dragon inside. Amid the Spirit Realm notification ringing in his ears, he smiled broadly at the evil faction, whose expressions were ghastly to the extreme, and said, "Thank you for the match!" Turning toward the orthodox demigods, he smiled. "I have not failed my mission." ... In the world of chaos, Sovereign Haotian began answering the second question: "We nurtured life on this planet, enlightened human intellect, and taught them to build civilization and cultivate. But before we could foster any true deities, the evil gods found this place. "Thus, the second divine war broke out. Its consequence was that the Spirit Realm was pierced through, and the power of the evil gods polluted this planet, causing widespread mutation among living creatures. Cultivators fell into depravity one after another, order collapsed, and the world was brought to the brink of ruin. "To address this, we unleashed the Great Deluge. Composed of Ruoshui, the great flood swallowed the mutated beings. Afterward, we commanded the Ten Sun Crows, formed from the Sun origin, to scorch the earth and purify the evil gods' power." So that was the true origin behind the apocalyptic disasters of mythology! Zhang Yuanqing felt the shock of a fog parting, laying history bare before his eyes. No wonder Nüba had said that the Chaos of the Ten Sun Crows was both destruction and salvation. "Since we had Taiyin's protection, how could the deities of the evil faction locate this place?" he could not help but ask. Sovereign Haotian replied: "Taiyin's concealment mainly guards against divination, detection, and deduction; it does not erase physical reality. The cosmos is boundless, but as long as one adopts the crudest carpet search, this place would inevitably be found one day. Of course, the primary reason was that among the deities of the Third Major District, someone betrayed us and led the evil gods here. "The war of world annihilation broke out first in the Third Major District, resulting in the total extinction of its deities and living beings. That portion of the Spirit Realm suffered the heaviest pollution, which is why it has never been opened." *So that's how it was. No wonder no cultivators from the Third Major District ever appeared in history—they were wiped out long ago...* Zhang Yuanqing came to a sudden realization. This aligned with the information he had gathered about the Third Major District. Having explained this, Sovereign Haotian continued his account: "Afterward, as the primary creator of the Spirit Realm who held the authority of artifact crafting, Empress Wa sacrificed herself to mend the breaches in the Spirit Realm. Yet the invasion of the evil gods was already a reality; they could still pollute the life on this planet through the Spirit Realm. The Battle of Zhuolu that you know so well was merely another assault on this planet by the evil gods. "That battle jolted the human leaders commanding the Five Elements into sobriety. They halted their internal warfare, united against external foes, and brought an end to the Battle of Zhuolu. Two generations later, the grandson of the Youxiong clan, Zhuanxu, reignited conflict, slew the Water God, gathered all five authorities of the Five Elements, and became the first true deity. "At that time, the orthodox deities had almost entirely fallen, while I remained concealed behind the scenes, struggling to maintain the operation of the Spirit Realm and resist the evil gods. Knowing full well that the power of order alone could not defeat evil, Zhuanxu used his administrator authority to emulate Empress Wa, sacrificing himself to seal the Spirit Realm. Because of this, the world entered a period of peace." Severing heaven and earth! The four words flashed through Zhang Yuanqing's mind. In legend, Zhuanxu severed heaven and earth, cutting off the connection between mortals and the heavenly realm so that earthly affairs were settled on earth, without having to obey heaven's decrees ever again. Though myths deviated from reality, to a certain degree, they reflected history. Zhuanxu's severance of heaven and earth put an end to the evil gods' erosion of the world, but it also sealed the Spirit Realm. As a result, the world entered the Dharma Ending Age. The Spirit Realm no longer steadily produced spiritual power, and the entire world stagnated into a dead pool. As the remaining spiritual power was continuously depleted, dwindling day by day, the upper limit for cultivators grew lower and lower until they went extinct. Later generations desperately sought longevity, only to be swallowed mercilessly by time. They were destined never to become administrators, and thus could never restart the Spirit Realm. Zhang Yuanqing thought for a moment and asked in bewilderment: "The evil gods couldn't invade the Spirit Realm, but destroying the planet shouldn't have been difficult, right?" Earth was the incubator where the orthodox deities cultivated successors; if they couldn't destroy the Spirit Realm, surely they could destroy Earth instead. Sovereign Haotian gazed at him for several seconds before uttering words that completely shattered Zhang Yuanqing's worldview: "Because this planet is also part of the Spirit Realm—the largest instance within it. To destroy it, one must gain complete control over the Spirit Realm."