Waves battered the endless sky, as though countless stretches of time and space, past and present, were surging, flickering out, and collapsing.
This blood-colored ocean had formed from the convergence of countless universes utterly destroyed in the past.
Every crest of foam had once belonged to a dazzling great world, a paradise brimming with life where myriad spirits flourished.
Yet amid the passage of time and great calamities, they had become the smoke and clouds of history-damaged, shattered, their vitality exhausted-before finally sinking into this sea of blood and becoming part of the Sacrificial Sea.
This blood-colored ocean was boundless, so vast that even an Immortal Emperor who entered it might lose his way.
Within it, temporal and spatial fault lines that scrambled past and present intertwined with unnamed lands and places of deathly silence.
Without clear landmarks and coordinates to guide them, those who entered could easily become trapped in the cracks of time or labyrinths of space, never to escape for all eternity.
In the deepest reaches of the blood-colored ocean, a magnificent, towering altar stood in silence.
It was solemn, majestic, and soundless, as though it had existed there since time immemorial.
Even the surrounding waves seemed suppressed by an invisible power, falling still and subsiding, no longer able to touch its base, as though even this sea of destruction retained a measure of reverence for it.
Regarded by all worlds as supreme beings, the only four remaining Immortal Emperors below the End-of-the-Road level now approached the altar slowly, their expressions solemn and an undisguisable reverence in their eyes.
Before the altar, they prayed in low voices and performed the sacrificial rite, presenting the most precious things from their own possessions or those they had gathered, seeking the ineffable power and protection behind the altar.
Endless bloody