The aftershocks of Annihilation had not yet dissipated, and grayish-white blood light still slowly fell from the void. Creatures of the Epoch Being rolled and struggled in the distance, while the nine cultivators at the Realm Breaking Realm nearby were almost exhausted. Cracks in their Fate Soul projected faint light marks on their bodies, as if they would collapse completely from the inside at any moment.
At that moment, Shangguan Lingxiao's expression remained calm as iron, but a cold glint flashed in his eyes. He transmitted his voice to Shangguan Xuanchen through extremely subtle fluctuations of his Fate Soul: "Junior brother, quickly give them the 'Severed Realm Imprisoned Soul Pill' and have them take it. Tell them it's a divine pill for restoring the Logic Origin of my Shangguan Lineage. Don't let them know its true purpose."
A cold glint flashed in Shangguan Xuanchen's eyes, and an almost imperceptible smile curved his lips as he replied telepathically, "Alright, Senior Brother."
In the next instant, he moved and appeared beside the nine cultivators, his face now displaying an extremely sincere expression, his tone gentle yet heavy. "Fellow Daoists, the Shangguan Lineage is by no means a petty villain. You just risked your lives to protect my senior brother and me from the power of the epoch. If we allow you to be wiped out by the backlash, how can we face our Dao Hearts?"
As he spoke, he slowly raised his hand. Nine pills appeared in his palm.
The pill was a dark purple and chaotic color, as if it had been forged from a broken interface. Its surface was covered with fine boundary cracks, and pale black soul threads were wrapped around it like miniature chains. The pill's fragrance was not sweet, but rather carried a faint sound of shattering boundaries, like the soft sound of countless dimensions Time Splitting. The smell of it made one's mind tremble and Soul Sea quiver slightly.
As soon as the cinnabar light appeared, the Fate Soul essence of the nine cultivators instinctively responded, and the aura indeed contained fluctuations of repair logic and reshaping the foundation of the realm.
Shangguan Xuanchen said in a deep voice, "These are the recovery pills bestowed upon my senior brother and me by the patriarch of my Shangguan Lineage. My senior brother and I fought for our Lineage for tens of thousands of years before finally receiving these nine pills as a reward from the Lineage, and we have always been reluctant to consume them. Now that the situation has come to this, I bestow them upon you all to extend your lives."
One of the Realm Breaking Realm cultivators had a grim expression. He had just witnessed Shangguan Xuanchen annihilate two Severed Thought Realm cultivators who were trying to escape. The stark contrast between Shangguan Xuanchen's coldness and his current concern was striking. He whispered, "Fellow Daoist Shangguan, is this pill... truly just a restorative substance?"
Shangguan Xuanchen remained expressionless and sighed, "If you don't believe me, I can swallow one directly, but that would mean one less."
Shangguan Lingxiao urged in a deep voice, "Fellow Daoists, do not hesitate any longer. Quickly consume the essence to restore your origin, otherwise, if the Epoch Being rise again, we will all perish here."
Shangguan Xuanchen feigned taking back the pills, his gaze lowered as if in disappointment.
In that instant, the weakest cultivator at the Realm Breaking Realm suddenly reached out and snatched a pill. His eyes were bloodshot, and he gritted his teeth, saying, "I'll risk it all."
The pill entered his mouth. The next moment, a sudden change occurred.
Dark purple chaotic light erupted from his body, the cracks that had covered his Fate Soul rapidly healed, his shattered Soul Foundation became as solid as if it had been reforged, the fire of the backlash from the rules suddenly extinguished, the primordial divine power flowed back like a tide, his aura rose steadily, he suddenly roared to the sky, the domain around him trembled, and the light of the laws reappeared.
"It's true!" he roared, "My Fate Soul's backlash has completely disappeared! And it's even more stable now!"
The gazes of the other eight instantly burned with fervor. They could clearly sense the recovery of the other's Fate Soul fluctuations; it was not an illusion.
Their doubts were completely overwhelmed by their will to survive. Almost simultaneously, the eight of them reached out and snatched the pills into their mouths.
One by one, dark purple pills were swallowed into the stomach, the sound of the shattering of the realm resounded within the body, the cracks in the broken Fate Soul were rapidly healed, the foundation of the realm was reforged, the originally disordered laws were rearranged, the power of origin was revived like a torrent, and the aura quickly returned to its peak, even more solid than before.
The nine cultivators at the Realm Breaking Realm stood up simultaneously, their bodies surging with light, and their domain power reopened, as if their near-death state had never existed.
Their faces showed excitement and ecstasy.
But no one noticed that deep within their Fate Soul, an extremely fine dark purple slave mark had been quietly imprinted, tightly bound to their origin, as if it Does Not Exist.
A dark satisfaction flashed deep in Shangguan Xuanchen's eyes, while Shangguan Lingxiao remained calm, as if everything was under control.
In the distance, the gray figures of Epoch Being are still reassembling.
These nine people, without realizing it, had entrusted their fate three months from now to Shangguan's hands.
In the distance, the remnants of that Epoch Being finally reformed into a complete outline amidst the swirling gray-white causality. The moment its limbs struck the ground, the air fell silent as if choked by an invisible hand. Layers of cold metallic luster surged between its dark blue scales, its horns curved like blades cleaving the void, and the cluster of orange-red flames at its tail no longer concealed itself.
Instead, it seemed to be ignited by Ultimate rage. The flames weren't bright, but they visibly slowed the flow of time around it. The suspended rubble and dust appeared nailed to the ground. Its crimson beastly eyes slowly rose, surveying the battlefield with a look devoid of pity.
Only a kind of violent humiliation, born from being repeatedly stung by ants, followed by a sudden, dark glow from the ancient circular emblem on its chest, as if the mark of a certain era of destruction had been reawakened. Then it let out a low roar, not loud, but like a rope twisted into a single strand, lashing fiercely at the Soul Sea of everyone present.
The Fate Soul caused all eleven people present to tremble simultaneously, and Shangguan Lingxiao and Shangguan Xuanchen also felt a metallic taste rise in their throats.
It raised a scaled claw, palm facing the crowd, and an indescribable "emptiness" was gathering between its fingers. It was neither the black of nothingness nor the gray of annihilation, but more like the initial blank space of "Tao" being forcibly torn open. The rage of the Epoch Being almost materialized, and it unleashed its supernatural power - Tao Cause: Nothingness is Nothingness.
The instant it closed and opened its eyes, a wisp of pure light, the very essence of all things, was reflected within them. That light was not dazzling, yet it caused everyone's consciousness to tremble instinctively. For it was not the oppression of power, but the "power of definition" surveying all living beings. Then its gaze fell upon the center of the battlefield. There was no roar, no pillar of light, no storm, not even a speck of dust was disturbed.
But suddenly, a strange phenomenon of "conceptual transparency" appeared in the space they were in, as if someone had removed a corner of the paper of reality. When you looked over, you didn't see emptiness, because emptiness can still be perceived as "emptiness," but that area was even stripped of the perception of "emptiness." Your gaze seemed to pierce through all things, yet you couldn't grasp anything that could be called "there."
Then, in the blink of an eye, this transparency vanished, and the world returned to normal. The colors returned, the wind returned, but the "concept that should have existed" had been forcibly removed, leaving a strange gap in the observer's mind—not forgetting, but rather, an insurmountable barrier blocking their thoughts from reaching that point.
Any attempt to describe, perceive, or recall will shatter instantly upon reaching the edge, as if that place never belonged to the scope of the "Tao," and even the language of "existence and non-existence" could not reach it.
Just as this silent exile was about to truly fall, Shangguan Lingxiao suddenly stepped forward, his spear "Silent Void" held horizontally before him. The thin, veil-like wall of Emptiness on the spear once more unfolded, the chaotic light flowing across its surface seeming to grind the very essence of all laws into powder. His voice was like iron. "Fellow Daoists, this is the final blow. Whether we can slay this fiend depends on this one strike."
The nine cultivators at the Realm Breaking Realm Severed Realm Imprisoned Soul Pill. Now, they had no more hesitation; instead, their eyes burned with almost fanatical fervor as they unleashed their most treasured artifacts and divine weapons from their storage treasures.
In an instant, the sky above the battlefield resembled a cracked treasure vault, with nine beams of light simultaneously erupting. Someone held up a broken Realm Mirror, reflecting not themselves but the distorted image of a thousand layers of Realm Splitting. As the mirror flipped, countless rift-like blades burst forth from it.
Someone unleashed a Star Bone Spiked Wheel, its rotation accompanied by a piercing shriek, a sound that seemed capable of snapping the very bones of space itself; each mesh of the wheel's teeth released white streaks of shattered dimensions. Another person plunged an ancient stele-sword into the ground, its inscriptions rising to the surface and transforming into thick chains of rules that coiled Epoch Being.
Every character on the chains was burning, as if trying to forge the "Realm Breaking" wind into a cage; the most ferocious one directly tore open the blood lines on his palm, using his Fate Soul as a catalyst to ignite the forbidden remaining power, and half of the Realm Breaking shadow appeared behind him. The monument shadow shook and caused a loud crack in the interface. The cracking sound drilled into the gaps in the scales of the Epoch Being, attempting to pry open a crack in its "True Annihilation" foundation.
The two stepped forward, their low growls filled with undisguised loyalty. "Lord Shangguan, rest assured, we will absolutely fight to the death to help you." Their most precious treasures simultaneously lit up; one was the "Shattered Realm Crow Crown," its feathers flashing like black blades, the shadows of which formed a curtain that blotted out the sky.
Beneath the curtain, even the light was cut into segments; the other was "Return to the Ruins Hooked Moon," which, when the crescent moon curved, pulled at the surrounding boundary lines, pinning all possible escape routes to their original positions, forcing the Epoch Being to withstand this round of combined attack.
At this moment Shangguan Xuanchen also completely abandoned his previous ease. His eyes were deep and dark, and with a flick of his wrist, an extremely thin "Mystic Void Seal" appeared in his palm. The seal was neither jade nor metal, but rather layers of invisible Space Silence, its edges as thin as paper yet pressing down on the void, causing it to wrinkle. He slowly raised the seal, and lines of discontinuous mysterious patterns emerged on its surface.
The mysterious patterns seemed to be writing their own fragments of the "unknowable." He uttered the words in a low voice, and as his voice fell, the surrounding colors seemed to be halved—he unleashed his most powerful divine ability, the Profound Xuanji: Boundless Name-Covering Seal, which was defined as covering "name" with the ultimate "nothingness" of the Epoch Being Mystic Void Realm · Supreme, pressing all the lockable and identifiable coordinates of existence of all beings in the era into the boundless Space Silence.
This causes it to lose the logical basis for being "identified as this fiend" in a short period of time, thus preventing all the pursuit and killing supernatural powers from being easily reversed and banished by Dao Yin Wu Wu Yi Wu, because when the "name" is covered up, the anchor point of banishment will be shaken, and the moment the hand seal is formed...
A massive, transparent image descended from the sky, like an invisible curtain pressing down on the Epoch Being. The image fell silently, yet it tore the time stagnation around it open with tiny cracks, and even the wisp of clear light seemed to be brushed against the surface of the image, momentarily losing focus.
Shangguan Lingxiao did not immediately unleash his final move. He stood before the nine people, spear in hand. His mind, at the True Annihilation Realm · Supreme, flowed across the battlefield like an Ultimate calm line. He stared at the rise and fall of the "conceptual transparency" of the Epoch Being's Dao Cause: Nothingness and Timelessness, watching how that ray of light landed, how it converged, how it opened and closed "outside the Dao."
He suddenly noticed a very subtle yet fatal flaw: this supernatural power was not without cost; each exile required the "Dao" to first confirm a "direction" that could be exiled. That direction came from the caster's own "definitive gaze." If the place where the gaze fell was forcibly covered as "boundless and unnamable," then the exile would experience a brief reversal.
In that instant of swinging, the caster's own emblem runes will light up slightly as the central part of the "definition circuit." The lighting up means that its "path circuit" is exposed to reality, and can be hit or cut off.
Shangguan Lingxiao's eyes suddenly narrowed into a cold glint. He flicked the tip of his spear slightly, as if silently targeting the circular emblem as the sole bullseye. He spoke coldly, seemingly addressing everyone but also himself. "I've found its logical flaw. The moment its circuit lights up, all your supernatural powers..."
There's no need to chase its body anymore. Instead, bombard the central rune on its chest emblem, shattering that circuit. Its Dao, "Nothingness, Nothingness," will then devour itself.
As the words fell, the light of the treasures of the nine cultivators at the Realm Breaking Realm shone even brighter, and Shangguan Xuanchen's Xuanji Imprint was pressed even lower. The entire ruins seemed to be pushed to the Limit of imminent explosion, while in the distance, the crimson beast eyes of the Epoch Being surged with rage, and the dark runes on the emblem on its chest began to flicker quietly again, as if the next exile was just around the corner.