The void crevices at the Deep Root Lower Layers still trembled, and the reddish-purple light, like a great sun tearing through the darkness, hung far away at the deepest end of the countless intricate patterns, as if the true heart of the Deep Root was awakening. As soon as this light appeared, the entire Deep Root seemed to be gently knocked open by some kind of "primordial life fire," and every inch of the chaotic stone wall trembled slightly, as if it were whispering its submission to some absolute ruler.
The Liu Yuan Practitioners lightly touched the void, his figure transforming into a slender, dark shadow, gliding silently through the Deep Root, layered patterns. The darkness in the cave slowly closed behind him, his cold gaze firmly fixed on that distant crimson-purple glow.
"Such a strong... murderous intent." He licked his chapped lips, as if savoring the Ultimate aroma of his prey.
The wind flowing through the void carried an "unnamed" sharpness, like an invisible knife slicing across his face, leaving faint traces of blood. He ignored it, instead revealing an excited yet twisted smile.
"Deep Root Lower Layers... finally starting to play big."
He took a step forward, his figure disappearing directly into the black light created by the spatial folding.
However, the deeper he went, the more he realized he was not alone.
The entire Deep Root were instantly ignited by that red and purple light, and people from different factions rushed toward that direction like a tidal wave.
Some were low-level disciples fleeing in groups; others were groups of three or five True King-level monsters charging around; and still others were remnants of forces chased by traps and strange beasts, drawn by the light and pushing forward madly.
Some powerful individuals even shattered the mountain walls and tore apart the array of patterns to reach the source of light at top speed.
"It's a treasure!"
"It was a stroke of luck!"
"The core Deep Root Lower Layers, has been activated!"
"Whoever gets there first gets to compete!"
Countless voices roared, intertwined, and tore apart, as if the entire Deep Root abyss had been pushed toward an out-of-control boiling point.
Liu Yuan Practitioners hovered in mid-air, his gaze sweeping across the room, his cold laughter growing increasingly uncontrollable.
"Hehe... It seems another good treasure has appeared this time."
He saw the chief disciples of the six major forces; he saw many experts of the Annihilation Dawn Realm and the Void Emanation Realm rushing by in teams; he even saw several strange beasts and pseudo-divine relics hidden in the dark being forced to crawl out of their nests and forcibly drawn by the red and purple source light.
The light grew increasingly intense, like a blood-purple coffin falling from the heavens. Wherever the light reached, all magic arrays spontaneously combusted, all mechanisms trembled, and all Fate Soul trembled in fear.
Liu Yuan Practitioners narrowed his eyes and let out a low laugh.
"This treasure is so powerful... it might be more than just a treasure."
He blurred into a streak of dark light, speeding away along the Deep Root layer of the cracked wall.
Behind them, countless cultivators, demonic beasts, Liu Yuan Practitioners, and alien creatures chased and fought each other, creating a chaotic scene like a surging tide on the path leading to the red and purple light source.
The road ahead grew brighter and brighter, yet increasingly dangerous. He knew it.
That reddish-purple light was not a mere coincidence; it was the true Deep Root Lower Layers.
The Deep Root Lower Layers regions seemed to have been rekindled.
The shattered black rocks beneath Qin Yu's feet cast long shadows in the red and purple light. With each step he took, the heavens and earth resounded, as if the entire Deep Root Lower Layers was slowly awakening to some ancient being.
The world ahead was no longer a "zone" in the normal sense, but rather the remains of a temple sunk in the deepest part of the universe—rising, upside down, broken, floating... all structures defied gravity and logic.
The sky was cleaved open by a giant purplish-red crack, the inside of which resembled a swirling nebula, with lightning flashing across it, like the embers of a torn timeline.
A towering "celestial pillar" too high to be seen by the naked eye slowly emerged from the sea of light.
The colossal wall that overwhelms heaven and earth is covered with ancient and indescribable engravings, the lines of which seem to echo the weeping of gods who were annihilated trillions of years ago.
The waterfall of light cascaded down from the top of the wall, transforming into a torrent of stardust as it fell into the Deep Root earth, causing the mountain to continuously crumble, reform, and crumble again.
A fierce wind whipped up countless red and purple fragments, each fragment like an ember from the moment the universe collapsed, blooming and then extinguishing in mid-air.
Qin Yu stood quietly at the end of the stairs, which led towards the giant wall ahead.
His figure was swallowed up by layers of purple mist, leaving only his back silhouetted against the waterfall of light.
The sound of space shattering echoed as more and more cultivators rushed in from all directions.
Teams from various forces, large and small Void Obliteration Domain landed on the distant suspended rocks, broken bridges, and upside-down palaces, their faces pale from the oppressive aura of these ancient structures.
Purple light pierced through the sea of clouds.
Those dilapidated towers looked as if they had been torn from the sky and nailed to the depths of the void, with fragments flashing red light constantly falling from them, trailing trails of light as they plummeted to the ground, like divine punishment.
Amidst these colossal structures, a group of figures quietly emerged.
Qin Yu's gaze swept over them lightly--
The people from the Chaos First Palace have also arrived.
Ling Liangyan stood atop a stable boulder, purple mist swirling around her robes. Her gaze was fixed on the waterfall of light at the center of the giant wall, her expression solemn. The Primordial Envoys, elders, and disciples around her, illuminated by the light and shadow, all wore solemn expressions, clearly sensing that this place was nurturing some kind of Ultimate opportunity that transcended even the Deep Root Lower Layers.
They did not spot Qin Yu, who was several hundred feet away.
But Qin Yu had already seen them—
He also saw Ling Liangyan standing in the afterglow of the waterfall of light, and that glance brought a rare touch of warmth to his cold, Deep Root Lower Layers.
More cultivators continued to arrive.
There were members from the Heavenly Emanation Limitless Hall, Rogue Cultivator from the Void Obliteration Domain, and certain teams from the Asura Immortal Hall, all of whom transformed into dazzling streaks of light and shadow as they swept past among the shattered towers.
The entire Deep Root Lower Layers- level region, like an ancient "divine realm" sealed for countless eons, is finally welcoming the footsteps of all cultivators.
It is also approaching the edge of its true awakening.
The crimson sea of light grew even brighter, and something seemed to be awakening within the giant walls.
The heavens and earth trembled. And Qin Yu was quietly taking his second step forward.
A crimson-purple light suddenly exploded like a ripped open sky, as if some invisible will had gripped the spine of the entire Deep Root Lower Layers. Light surged from the crack, illuminating the outlines of countless ruins, broken walls, floating shattered cities, and inverted giant palaces. Every speck of dust in the world was dyed a scorching crimson, like embers burning in space.
Qin Yu stood atop a collapsed altar, the wind whipping his robes. His gaze pierced through the layers of ruins, reaching the pillar of light that seemed to shatter the heavens and earth... which began to twist and twitch.
A shadow slowly emerged from the depths of the pillar of light. It wasn't a shadow; it was a scale.
A scale rose with the light, as if some enormous being was pressing down on the entire sky inch by inch, scale by scale. The scale's surface was deep red, like the crystalline layers of cooled magma, with purple lightning constantly moving within its patterns, as if each crack could devour a continent.
The next instant—the earth and sky shook violently.
A colossal body emerged from the flames, resembling a giant abyssal serpent spanning the galaxy, yet possessing a dragon-shaped head. Its length stretched infinitely within the light mist, seemingly without end. Every scale of the dragon flowed with hellish crimson light and the unique "Annihilation Pattern" Deep Root Lower Layers. As it moved, space seemed to be crushed and then reformed, emitting a dull, deafening sound of destruction.
All the cultivators looked up at the same time. Everyone held their breath.
"What... what is that..." someone's voice trembled, unable to even finish a sentence.
"It's a dragon... no... it's something even more ancient than a dragon... Oh my god..."
"There are actually beings of this caliber Deep Root Lower Layers!?"
The dragon coiled atop the shattered pillar of light, its gaze sweeping over all living beings, causing the crimson sea of light to surge like the tides with its breath. Its eyes opened in the shadows—two pupils like those of an ancient, starless realm, their inner walls flowing with crimson and purple nebulae, as if reflecting the destruction of several civilizations.
Qin Yu's fingertips trembled slightly, not from fear, but from an instinctive reaction of suppressing his fighting spirit. That was no ordinary demonic beast.
That wasn't even a normal life form of Source of Epochless.
It was a "Dragon of the Abyss of Oblivion" with Deep Root Lower Layers —a forbidden behemoth that had never appeared in the outside world, existing only in the fragments of ancient, Annihilation history.
It made no sound. But when it arrived, the Deep Root Lower Layers of the earth seemed to be forcibly torn in two.
Everyone saw the dragon lower its head, casting a massive shadow. A strange illusion even crossed their minds—as if this dragon had witnessed countless worlds rise and fall, and that it wasn't descending, but rather "remembering that it had once been here."
Crimson and purple light burst forth between the dragon scales. The sky... collapsed for a moment.
The disciples of the Chaos First Palace looked up from the ruined steps thousands of miles away. Ling Liangyan clenched her hands, her face more solemn than ever before.
"That... that's not the Void Emanation Realm... that's not the Annihilation Dawn Realm... that's..." Her throat trembled slightly, "... a level that doesn't belong to us."
Qin Yu's eyes darkened. Even across a thousand miles, he could clearly sense a kind of "conceptual tearing" between the dragon's scales—a power fluctuation that even the Annihilation Dawn Realm could not bear. The dragon continued to gaze down, its Deep Root Lower Layers, utterly silent.
Until its shadow completely covered everything, the cracks in the earth lit up with red and purple light patterns, as if a dragon vein were reviving.
A crimson and purple sea of light surged around the dragon, like a vortex breathing deep within the universe, or a broken galaxy flowing back. The dragon's shadow stretched across the sky for thousands of miles, its massive body coiling around the entire ruined region, as if it were using its Deep Root Lower Layers as its nest.
Suddenly—the enormous dragon head raised slightly.
Nobody knows what it's going to do.
The next moment—everyone knew. Thump—not a sound, but a resounding thud as the world was pressed down.
The moment the dragon opened its mouth, all the surrounding light seemed to be torn into threads and rolled back into the abyss of its throat. Immediately afterwards, an indescribable sound wave burst forth from its throat cavity.
It wasn't a roar. It was "the breath of the Abyss of Oblivion."
Like the dying cries of countless forgotten civilizations, compressed into a single voice, then shattering simultaneously.
Boom! The world suddenly changed.
The entire Deep Root Lower Layers, from the ground to the sky, seemed to be instantly flattened and reshaped. Visible "sound shockwaves" spread out in red and purple ripples. They were not air vibrations, but direct vibrations of "memory, thought, and existence" themselves.
Light was shattered into particles. Time was jolted into leaping to the next instant.
The edges of the space were rolled up like cloth.
The first wave of impact—100,000 people were simultaneously thrown into the air!
Regardless of whether Annihilation Dawn Realm, the Abyss Return Realm, or the Chaos Realm · Initial Stage... everyone was shaken off the ground like paper dolls with broken strings, crashing into ruins, stone pillars, and cracks.
The second wave of impact—countless unfamiliar voices simultaneously resounded in the minds of all cultivators; they were chaotic, noisy, and fragmented:
"... who I am...?"
What... is this place...?
"Why... why... is there... Sea... Fire... City...? Whose memories are these...?... Is it mine...?"
Some people screamed and clutched their heads, some fainted instantly, and many didn't even have a chance to scream; their eyes rolled back, as if their souls had been ripped out.
The third wave of impact --
The heavens and earth seemed to be torn in two, and thousands of fragmented pieces of information emerged from the red and purple pillars of light. They rushed into the minds of the crowd at a speed visible to the naked eye, and then tore them to shreds in the next instant.
Of the 100,000 cultivators on the entire battlefield, 98,000... fainted on the spot!
Like countless waves of grass that had been cut down, it crashed down.
Only a very few strong individuals could still kneel on the ground, their hands gripping the cracked earth, their jaws trembling, and blood gushing from their ears, mouths, and noses.
The Primordial Envoys around Ling Liangyan all knelt on the ground, bleeding from their seven orifices, yet they didn't even have the strength to groan.
Ling Liangyan slammed her knees into the ground, her hair flying wildly. She looked up at the colossal shadow in the sky, her face deathly pale, her voice broken like needles piercing her throat. "That... that wasn't a roar... that was... history... backlash..."
Liu Yuan Practitioners crashed into an inverted stone pillar, his sternum shattering into more than a dozen pieces. He spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of divine consciousness, "Damn it... what level is this...?"
In this sea of blood-red, unconsciousness, only two people remained standing.
One is Qin Yu. The other is Extinguished Light.
The ground beneath Qin Yu's feet cracked for miles, yet he remained unmoved, only his clothes fluttering like blades from the impact. He raised his head, meeting the gaze of the giant dragon surveying the heavens and earth, a fleeting, icy wave of Annihilation flashing deep within his eyes.
Extinguished Light stood beside Qin Yu, her long black hair moving without wind, her eyes unfathomable, as if scrutinizing some being that did not belong to this world.
She spoke softly, her voice like an invisible blade slicing through the air. "It's not roaring. It's... awakening those forgotten histories."
The crimson-purple sea of light continued to surge. The dragon raised its head and let out a second low growl—
Tiny specks of light, indicating "memory fading," began to appear around all those who had fainted. The true power of this dragon had only just begun to reveal itself.