The Ruthless Great Emperor looked down upon all of past and present. She contended with heaven, with earth, and with herself. She possessed no extraordinary talent, yet through her own strength alone, she slew all the kings and stood alone above the Nine Heavens. Even a supreme divine dynasty could not block her path. With a physique inferior to even a mortal body, she ultimately reached the absolute pinnacle, becoming one of the most powerful figures in all of history.
Su Yu made no secret of his admiration and reverence for the Empress. He admired her strength, respected her circumstances, revered her achievements, and held her talent in awe. Born with a mortal body and no talent for cultivation, she had nevertheless soared into the heavens amid extreme adversity and become a supreme existence. She attained the body of a supreme Heavenly Emperor and reigned over the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths.
Here, only nine people in the entire Shrouding the Heavens era had reigned over all under heaven:
Tribulation Crossing Heavenly Venerable Cao Yusheng, Lingbao Heavenly Venerable, Emperor Zun, the Undying Heavenly Emperor, the Indestructible God Emperor, Great Emperor Wushi, the Ruthless Great Emperor, the Azure Emperor, and Ye Fan.
The other Extreme Dao Supremes could not be considered truly invincible throughout the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths because of the existence of the forbidden zones, while those who attained the Dao after Ye Fan could even less be called invincible, given his existence.
"It really was the Ruthless One!" Su Yu stopped breathing, his heart filled with reverence.
More precisely, he was endlessly terrified, because before that person, he was less than an ant. A single glance from her could kill him a hundred thousand times over.
This was a choice from the heart!
Su Yu quickly recalled the legends of this ancient ancestor:
Driven by an obsession in her heart, she unleashed boundless slaughter, destroyed the Feathered Divine Dynasty, shattered the immortal weapon known as the Source Cauldron of All Things, and attained the body of a supreme Heavenly Emperor!
She slaughtered her way across the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, silencing every Supreme in the forbidden zones. All living beings hailed her as Heavenly Emperor, shaking past and present alike. She swept across the six directions and eight desolations, stood alone in glory above the Nine Heavens, and stood openly at the absolute pinnacle of the human Dao, looking down upon the cycle of reincarnation through the ages...
In the illusion cast by the dark light, the goddess in white seemed not to belong to this world. She was a true existence of the Immortal Domain, otherworldly and beyond the mundane, as though she might ascend and become an immortal at any moment, transcending the world.
In Su Yu's eyes, the goddess's hair fluttered gently. Beneath her pure white dress, her body was slender and sacred, her skin lustrous and fair, as though formed from Light Immortal Gold. Her grace was unmatched beneath the heavens.
Just as Su Yu recalled the past of this supreme existence, his primordial spirit sensed an indescribable sigh, like ripples spreading as the wind passed. The entire scene froze. The existence clad in a snow-white dress and shrouded in chaotic mist let out a sigh. Her slender body remained still and silent, as though she had fallen into the River of Spacetime, growing ever more blurred and fragmented.
After an unknown amount of time, Su Yu returned from the illusion. He opened his eyes and felt the pressure of the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid gradually weakening.
The Ghost-Faced Demon Lid in midair began drawing back the dark light scattered around it, and its Extreme Dao presence gradually vanished. He felt somewhat dazed, as though he had yet to break free of the illusion.
Su Yu softly recited the summoning formula from the original owner's memories as he stood on the ground.
Soon, the dim light overhead vanished completely. With a faint clink, an ordinary pottery lid fell in front of him and settled naturally into his hand.
Su Yu examined this half of an Extreme Dao Emperor Weapon closely. Whether it was an illusion or something else, he seemed to see teardrops rolling down the ghost-face mark on the pottery lid. It looked so lifelike that sadness welled up in his own heart.
"This is the strongest trump card in the Shrouding the Heavens World. I never thought my luck would finally turn around this time."
He calmed his emotions, took out the remaining Source from his storage bag, and then used an ancient method to refine the lid with his blood. The process took a long time.
Perhaps because he was an inheritor of the Ruthless One Lineage, the Emperor Weapon did not resist him, and the process of merging his divine sense into it went smoothly. Under the stimulation of the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid, his body even began circulating the Indestructible Heavenly Art on its own. Streams of essence Qi rushed in from beyond the cultivation ground. Together with the chaotic currents of Qi seeping from Su Yu himself, they slowly fused his body and soul into one, and he grew increasingly familiar with the original owner's divine abilities and secret arts.
"Condense!"
Su Yu gave a soft shout, and the magical power in his limbs and bones condensed directly into a stream of chaotic Qi. He sent it straight into the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid, branding it onto the surface of the Emperor Weapon, where it became a strange rune.
In an instant, after being branded with the chaotic Qi, the once ordinary pottery lid became extraordinary. Its underside grew as bright as a mirror, revealing a young man in a long robe, his hair loose and disheveled, his features rather delicate and youthful...
The Wheel of Life in his Bitter Sea bore only thirteen marks. He was extremely young!
"To have died so young was truly a pity."
Su Yu stroked his face, thinking this body was truly excellent, more alluring than many women. In a sense, it was also full of heroic bearing, leaving him with a sentiment like Emperor Yang of Sui's: A fine head indeed-but who will strike it off?
After initially refining the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid, Su Yu stored this half of an Emperor Weapon in the life meridian below his navel. His Bitter Sea had originally been a stretch of black water, utterly calm!
Now his Bitter Sea rumbled and began to expand slowly. Waves surged, and wind and rain raged.
The originally pitch-black seawater began to turn transparent. Ten chaotic streams of Qi also appeared above the Bitter Sea, forming a circle around it, as though heaven and earth were being created anew.
In the end, his Bitter Sea became an ocean of chaos. The Devouring Heaven Demon Lid suppressed everything from above it, and a Divine Bridge stretched across it.
Su Yu drew in and released the spiritual Qi formed from Source Stones, his body slowly recovering. His originally pale and thin body also began to grow healthy, and color returned to his face.
This cultivation session lasted a full half month...
After committing the Indestructible Heavenly Art to memory and circulating it through hundreds of greater and lesser cycles, Su Yu gained complete control of this body. His Sea of Bitterness, Dao Palace, and Four Extremes were all under his control. He looked levelly into the darkness ahead and activated the jade pendant once more.
Hazy purple immortal light shone, and the figure representing him grew increasingly distinct, like a brilliant point of light.
A fallen noble who had entered the Four Extremes Secret Realm at such a young age, with all the accumulated wealth of an ancient inheritance and the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid besides-this time, the fortune of transmigrating and being reborn was enormous. It was like a mountain of gold crashing down on a poor boy, with wealth as vast as the heavens delivered to his door for the taking. It was simply overwhelming.
This start was definitely SSR!
Chapter 5: Clouds in the Blue Sky, Water in the Vase
From a mortal to a position of honor, with two complete ancient scriptures immediately in hand and a complete Extreme Dao inheritance to boot-it took Su Yu a long time to slowly recover from the shock.
In his previous life, he had greatly admired the Red-Haired Monster. He had not only read Shrouding the Heavens more than ten times, but had also read many Shrouding the Heavens fan works.
Transmigrating into the Shrouding the Heavens Realm!
For an ordinary person from Earth, the only chance to defy the heavens and change their fate was to board the coffin convoy.
The Secret Realm Method passed down by the Desolate Heaven Emperor placed great demands on talent. Ninety-nine percent of living beings could not open a Bitter Sea, while the Dao of time in the Desolate Ancient Forbidden Land could turn decay into wonder, granting mortals the qualifications to cultivate.
Su Yu's situation was different.
He had been reborn directly, and his Bitter Sea was already open. As long as he familiarized himself with and mastered this body, judging by the early circumstances in Shrouding the Heavens, he had great prospects on the Big Dipper. Four Extremes combat strength and the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid were enough for the early stages.
As long as he did not try to seize an Emperor Weapon like Ji Haoyue...
"According to these memories, the seventh great bandit of the Northern Region found the body of the Devouring Heaven Demon Jar in the Cloudbreak Mountains more than ten years ago. It looks like the protagonist's group hasn't boarded the coffin to come to the Big Dipper yet." Su Yu pondered the current situation on the Big Dipper.
A month or so ago, he had still been a newly hired government employee. While rereading Shrouding the Heavens, he had acted on a whim and spent a great sum on a fan-made jade pendant from a certain shopping app.
After receiving the package, Su Yu had been very pleased with the craft piece. That same day, he worked overtime at the office until late at night, then fell asleep and never woke up.
When he regained consciousness, he had transmigrated into Shrouding the Heavens.
The Devouring Heaven Demon Lid, a prodigy of the Ruthless One Lineage, the Devouring Heaven Demon Art, the Indestructible Heavenly Art, and the forbidden divine arts that accompanied an Emperor Scripture.
There was no need to say much about this start. One word was enough to describe it.
Perfect!
Of course, that perfection referred to the early stages.
Without the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid, even if this lineage had not come to the Cloudbreak Mountains, they could only have faded into the crowd. So what if they possessed a Saint Weapon? Possessing complete Extreme Dao scriptures would only bring a catastrophic disaster upon them. Once exposed, death would follow...
Su Yu silently recalled the plot of Shrouding the Heavens while exploring how to use this jade pendant of mysterious origin.
"It's called Dao Jue. With a name like that, and the ability to cross great worlds, is it a product of The Heavens? Or a divine object refined by a Great Power from another world? Or something else..."
Soon, Su Yu found the pitifully scant information left in the jade pendant. It was a divine object refined by a supreme existence trapped in Wuliang's Immortal Tribulation.
Unexpectedly, as it crossed spacetime, it was struck by an unknown golden light. The artifact spirit's consciousness was shattered outright, and the jade pendant fell into an endless rift in spacetime, eventually coming into Su Yu's possession.
"I really want to find that Pinduoduo shop owner. Maybe he knows something." Having learned about the purple jade pendant for the first time, Su Yu's mind was somewhat muddled.
"Dao as a pendant, Shrouding the Heavens, Perfect World... There aren't many great cultivators connected to chaos. Wang Bo and Ye Xian have Chaos Bodies, but the timing doesn't match... Wuliang's Immortal Tribulation...
"Could that Pinduoduo shop owner be a Great Power from another world, roaming among mortals for amusement?"
It was all truly bizarre!
But the information in the jade pendant ended there. No system, no missions, no benefits...
After Su Yu finished cultivating, he had gained an initial grasp of a few of the secret arts within it through repeated use. The rest remained utterly silent.
While investigating the jade pendant's origins, he also tried to manifest the phenomenon this body possessed.
That was right, this prodigy even possessed a phenomenon!
A starving camel was still bigger than a horse. A single hair plucked from a dilapidated Extreme Dao inheritance surpassed a thousand years of arduous cultivation by a rogue cultivator.
Soon, divine power stirred his Bitter Sea. Su Yu sat there cross-legged and still as a stone statue, circulating his Sea of Bitterness, Dao Palace, and Four Extremes under the nourishment of the Source Stones.
Suddenly, light blazed in the tomb chamber. The Great Dao rumbled into motion, thunder arose in the void, and golden waves surged and roared, their crashing resounding in bursts. Endless divine radiance erupted from Su Yu's Bitter Sea. The black ocean turned golden, accompanied by flashing lightning and rumbling thunder.
He felt the endless divine treasures within his body open, releasing his true nature.
The Sea of Bitterness Secret Realm that the original owner had cultivated through the Indestructible Heavenly Art was dissolved inch by inch by Su Yu's chaotic Qi, then reforged to cast his Dao foundation anew.
"Boom..."
The Divine Bridge was reforged, the Other Shore hazy. The Wheel of Life within his body was complete and clear. Dao rhythms flowed through the pitch-black Bitter Sea, flecked with golden light, containing traces of an immortal and indestructible Dao rhythm.
As time flowed by, his Immortal Platform shone brilliantly, and streams of divine power evolved into a small world. The vast Bitter Sea rose and fell amid the mist, while a cloud of chaos condensed true oneness at its center.
The splashing waves all gathered in a pitch-black Great Dao Treasure Vase, which shone with the light of countless Great Daos. A cloud above and a vase below: it was a wondrous sight, with clouds and mists billowing, auspicious colors cascading like waterfalls, and tens of thousands of strands of heaven and earth's essence Qi hanging down amid hazy divine radiance.
"Clouds in the blue sky, water in the vase!"
This was one of the ancient phenomena. The moment it appeared, it carried the force to shatter heaven and earth.
"Buzz."
The void trembled and shook, nearly torn apart. In the night sky beyond the tomb chamber, the power of the stars and moonlight like water were drawn in to refine his body.
The Source Stones around him turned into spiritual Qi at an astonishing rate and were refined by Su Yu. Source Qi poured through his body, making him shine like crystal. Even the fine hairs on his skin glowed, and his soul was baptized along with his flesh.
Refining his body anew brought a transformation visible to the naked eye. His flesh began to grow flawless, transparent as pure crystal. The blood in his body boiled, and its powerful fluctuations of life grew even more terrifying.
During this process, the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid in his Bitter Sea also emitted waves of dark light, merging with the chaotic Qi above the surface of the sea and becoming even more extraordinary.
Su Yu's flesh, too, grew increasingly radiant through the refinement. He truly looked like an Immortal Lord descending into the world.
Within his Dao Palace, the five great divine treasures shook together, blooming with auspicious, multicolored radiance. Golden light, waterlight, woodlight, earthlight, and firelight revolved without end. Brilliant golden characters burst forth one after another, and a profoundly mysterious resonance arose. These were the scriptural mysteries of the Indestructible Heavenly Art.
The five great deities all chanted Emperor Dao scriptures within the Dao Palace. A strange fluctuation appeared in this space, and it even seemed to stir the Devouring Heaven Demon Lid.
Whether it was the self of the past or the self that existed alongside the Dao, both stirred the world of the Great Dao, transforming the self.
The resonant voice of the Great Dao echoed through the cultivation ground, as though someone were chanting a supreme scripture and expounding the profound principles of the Great Dao.
During this process, the essence Qi of the Source Stones filled the cultivation ground, illuminating the entire expanse.
Three months later, all the Source Stones had been consumed, leaving only a few pieces of stone rind on the ground, with some black grime piled on top of them.
Su Yu had reentered the Four Extremes Secret Realm and completely mastered this King Physique.
In his view, even diluted Chaotic Blood would be no inferior to the various King Physiques of the Central Province...
Chapter 6: Two Cases of Scriptures Beneath the Thousand Gloom Tomb
In the dim cave abode, Su Yu slowly opened his eyes. His joints cracked as he stretched his body. It was practically as though he had shed his mortal body and exchanged his bones.
The Indestructible Heavenly Art was indeed worthy of its place among the Emperor Scriptures. It focused on the evolution of the physical body, and cultivating it was an incomparably wonderful experience. It also gave off strands of divine light and carried an immortal quality.