Cult Master of the Heavenly Court Cult

"A dreamscape?" Void Venerable raised an eyebrow. The newcomer possessed a Dao fruit remarkably similar to his own. "Are you Nightmare Supreme?" As the last half-immortal of the Great Yu dynasty, he knew far more about Nightmare Supreme than most. This man had been an overlord of dreams. His enemies died in agony within their sleep. Once, during a clash between two armies, he had plunged the enemy's million-strong army into a sleepwalking state, seizing control of the soldiers and turning them against each other in mutual slaughter. The enemy generals had perished in the sleepwalking madness of those million troops. Had the founding Emperor Yu not received aid from the Imperial Preceptor, he might not have prevailed against him. Nightmare Supreme gave no reply; his icy gaze said everything. After awakening from ancient times, he had scattered pendants throughout the region to harvest mortal dreams, using them to temper and strengthen his rudimentary Dream Dao Fruit. For the rudimentary Dream Dao Fruit to achieve completeness, it required dreams of every variety. Ever since losing to the founding Emperor Yu in the late Great Qian era, he had lain dormant in deep slumber, waking periodically in different ages. Each era possessed its own distinct characteristics, which in turn gave rise to different kinds of dreams. The dreams of the present era had enriched his rudimentary Dream Dao Fruit immensely. With the immortal creation—the Twin River—added to the equation, no one among the half-immortals would be his match! For now, he had to deal with Void Supreme first. Shi Chan and Meng Jingzhou woke one after the other from their dreamlike daze. Because Shi Chan knew dream-entering spells, he awakened slightly earlier than Meng Jingzhou. Though they had ostensibly woken up, they had not truly left the bounds of dreaming. With the Void Realm and the dreamscape fused into one, they were currently in a state of lucid dreaming. "Two ancient half-immortals?" Meng Jingzhou was utterly astounded when Lu Yang explained the situation. This mess was spiraling entirely out of hand. Taking advantage of the clash between the two ancient half-immortals, Venerable Yiqi rescued City Lord Liu and the others from their cage and explained the circumstances. When City Lord Liu heard this, he nearly choked on his own breath. What virtue or merit did a tiny place like Chunjiang City possess to attract a duel between two half-immortals? "Venerable, who do you think will win?" Venerable Yiqi shook his head; it was a meaningless question. "Regardless of who wins, we have witnessed their methods, and neither will allow us to live. Our only option now is to wait until both sides are severely wounded. Only then, if I strike with thunderous force and catch them off guard, might we have a chance at victory." "Then we place all our hopes in you, Venerable!" City Lord Liu hastily offered his thanks. The lives of a million citizens in Chunjiang City hung in the balance. Venerable Yiqi gave no reply. He was in no mood for pleasantries. Only he truly understood how difficult this was and how slim the odds of success were. Both were half-immortals who had clawed their way out of mountains of blades and seas of fire. Although they had lost the struggle for the realm, look at whom they had lost to. The combat experience of these two was terrifyingly vast. The chances of them fighting to mutual exhaustion and exposing an opening were minuscule. Be that as it may, he had no choice but to try. "Solidify." With a single word from Nightmare Venerable, the spatial vortex dragging at Nightmare Supreme froze still. Space hardened as if time itself had stopped, and the tearing force of space vanished. He was the master of the dreamscape. Here, his words became law. As for the nearly one hundred magic treasures Void Supreme had manifested, he could conjure them just as easily. "Manifest!" Behind Nightmare Supreme, nearly one hundred magic treasures materialized as well. A dazzling array of magic treasures collided in midair, their clashes booming with enough violence to tear space apart. "Law Phenomenon of Heaven and Earth." "Law Phenomenon of Heaven and Earth." Both Supremes unleashed the Law Phenomenon of Heaven and Earth simultaneously. With heads touching the azure skies and feet treading the earth, divine weapons held in hand, they repelled all manner of spell attacks, invulnerable to myriad arts. Nightmare Supreme had a fearsome reputation, but Void Supreme was no pushover either. Had the Jiang and Meng families not joined forces a hundred thousand years ago, it was still uncertain whose hands the realm would have fallen into! "Infection of a Hundred Ailments, Five Decays of Heaven and Man." Nightmare Venerable unleashed a vicious curse technique. This was a spell he could cast only within a dream. As long as one had not achieved immortality, no cultivator could escape the fate of the Five Decays of Heaven and Man. Even with longevity rivaling heaven, one would ultimately suffer the torment of the Five Decays, powerless against the ravages of time. In an instant, Void Supreme turned into a frail, white-haired elder whose waist could no longer straighten. His body exuded a foul stench, surrounded by a sky-blotting swarm of countless wronged souls—too many to number—the innocent lives he had slaughtered in his lifetime. "Let the substitute pouch bear the calamity; let all misfortune depart to distant lands." A palm-sized straw puppet appeared in Void Supreme's hand. Winding a single strand of hair around it, the puppet ignited automatically and burned to ashes. Void Supreme returned to his original form, while the countless wronged souls dissolved into dark raindrops that fell upon the ground. The Straw Puppet Substitution Technique. As long as one did not encounter a tribulation on the level of the Immortal Ascension Tribulation, the straw puppet could preserve one's life. "Locust-Clearing Immortal Lightning, purge the mortal realm!" Blue-violet immortal lightning descended upon the world, a mere step away from true immortal lightning. Before it, all living beings seemed like locusts—a rabble of no consequence. Venerable Yiqi's scalp prickled as he watched. He knew he could never protect himself before immortal lightning of this caliber; even if he survived, he would be gravely wounded! "Nothing to write home about. A withered tree meets spring; spring returns to the great earth!" Nightmare Supreme took a step forward. Beneath his feet, a rootless giant tree abruptly sprang forth, its branches and leaves swaying as they radiated ripples of time. The Locust-Clearing Immortal Lightning actually began to shrink, vanishing as though it had never existed at all. Immortal Fairy was amused by the sight. "Before Ying Tian and Suiyue became immortals, they used to fight like this all the time. Ying Tian would strike with lightning, and Suiyue would reverse time, so the lightning could never strike down. It frustrated Ying Tian half to death." The battle Immortal Fairy spoke of was recorded in historical records. Although those records had been lost by now, they had still existed during the Great Qian era. Nightmare Supreme had devised this countermeasure only after reading the accounts of that fight. Within the Void Realm and the dreamscape, both combatants wielded virtually limitless means. Any technique below the immortal level was at their disposal. They could conjure all one hundred and eight True Fires, burning space until it collapsed, along with innumerable divine abilities. Precisely because their means were so evenly matched, the battle was locked in an unbreakable stalemate. Meng Jingzhou grew anxious. "Old Lu, who do you think will win between those two?" Lu Yang shook his head. "It won't be up to them to decide a victor." "What do you mean?" Lu Yang didn't speak. He merely pointed upward. There was nothing up there, but when Nightmare Supreme had forced his way into the Void Realm earlier, a rift had opened, briefly reconnecting them with the outside world. Lu Yang had seized that opportunity. Suddenly, both combatants halted their clash at the same time. Though the Void Realm and dreamscape were cut off from the outside world, an ominous foreboding welled up in their hearts, as if a colossal threat were rapidly approaching. *Crack—* In the black expanse above, directly over the heads of the two ancient half-immortals, a rift tore open without warning—just wide enough to admit a single person. Void Supreme's pupils contracted. When Nightmare Supreme had forced his way into the Void Realm, Void Supreme had at least felt the brute force assaulting the boundary. This time, however, he had felt nothing before a gap was ripped open. It was as though the barrier between the Void Realm and the dreamscape was completely nonexistent, parted with absolute ease, as simple as tearing a sheet of paper in two. A graceful figure stepped out from the spatial rift in an unhurried manner, leaving the rift unable to heal for a long time. Her gaze was indifferent, devoid of any emotional ripple. She treated the two ancient half-immortals as if they did not exist. Only upon spotting Lu Yang below did her expression soften slightly, though it swiftly resumed its icy aloofness. "Who are you?!" Nightmare Supreme demanded vigilantly. Her appearance matched none of the supreme powerhouses he knew. The graceful figure swept her gaze over the two Supremes, her voice carrying a timeless calm that neither the collapse of heaven nor earth could shake: "Cult Master of the Heavenly Court Cult, Yun Mengmeng."