Beyond the Azure Wood Divine Forest, the world had been torn into fragmented ruins. Remaining symbolic leaves swirled in the sky like an endless gray blizzard. Countless Dao Shadow Soldier stood silently in all directions, golden-blue Dao Flame burning silently on their heads, casting a chilling and eerie light over the entire battlefield. And within this deathly silence, almost suffocating, gap...
The two Primordial Chaos Origin Beast Huang, finally raised their heads at the same time. The multicolored fragments of light around Luanhuang suddenly surged, and the mysterious Ultimate fire intent outside the phoenix's body also frantically contracted at the same moment. Immediately afterwards, all the remaining sounds, light, rules, and even the Dao patterns that had not yet been completely extinguished on the remnant formations of the Lineage were forcibly pulled over by an irresistible gravitational force.
The sky seemed to have been ripped open by an Ultimate wound spanning multiple dimensions. The phoenix's silhouette, which was constantly shifting between clarity and disintegration, crashed into the ball of Mystic Void fire first. The five-colored feathers exploded at the moment of contact, and billions of scattered feathers spread out in the air. They were then swallowed, melted, and reforged inch by inch by the phoenix's black fire intent. The whole process was like a forging that took place on the origin of the universe.
The five colors and the black color devoured and intertwined with each other. From the depths of the void came heavy tremors that even the word "roar" could not fully contain. Cracks spread outward from the center of their fusion. Wherever they passed, broken symbolic rules, collapsed causal faults, and floating embers of Fate Soul were all forcibly drawn into them, turning into burning streams that flowed into the ever-growing outline.
Gradually, a brand new figure emerged from the center of destruction and reconstruction, its wings spreading across the sky like two Ultimate curtains burning with divine light. Between the feathers flowed a firelight that was a mixture of brilliant gold and blazing white. Each long feather seemed to be forged from the remnants of the boundary and the embers of the Mystic Void, its edges so sharp that they seemed to be able to cut through the heavens.
Its head retained the majestic outline of a divine bird, yet it resembled a lofty, divine humanoid form even more closely. A crimson-gold crystal core was embedded in its forehead, like an open eye of the end. Its chest and arm armor were covered with layers of feathers, so magnificent they bordered on solemn. Each feather shimmered with blazing golden flames. Its body was tall and imposing, its arms hanging limply at its sides.
Its claws were wreathed in still-burning, scattered particles, while its waist, abdomen, and legs were composed of fiery feathers, as if it were clad in holy armor sculpted from divine fire. As its enormous wings slowly unfurled behind it, waves of light pressed down upon the earth.
The entire outer perimeter of the Azure Wood Divine Forest was bathed in a burning golden twilight, as if a divine emperor, stepping into reality from the ends of the heavens, descended before everyone with an aura powerful enough to incinerate all life.
Hua Yanzhi stared at the terrifying figure after the fusion, his already pale face turning even more ashen. He gritted his teeth, his voice almost forced out from the depths of his throat, "Everyone be careful, this beast has mutated after fusion!"
As soon as he finished speaking, Hua Feiting, who was standing not far away from him, stepped forward. With a flick of her wrist, a defensive battle suit with dark gold and crimson divine patterns flowed out. As soon as the battle suit appeared, the surrounding void automatically retreated to both sides, clearly a life-protecting treasure of extremely high status.
Without the slightest hesitation, she pushed the battle armor towards Hua Jingmeng. The armor transformed into a supple yet heavy stream of light in mid-air, instantly covering Hua Jingmeng. Hua Jingmeng was startled, a fierce resistance and resentment surging in her eyes.
Almost instinctively, he reached out to tear off the battle suit, his voice trembling with excitement, "Sister, I don't want to!!" Hua Feiting suddenly turned her head, her eyes sharp enough to nail down his thoughts, and she shouted sternly, "Shut up!" The air around them seemed to tremble at that sound. She stared intently at Hua Jingmeng, her tone devoid of any of her usual calm and restraint.
All that remained was an unyielding resolve. "You must escape back to the Hua family, no matter what! Even if you're the only one who survives, you must bring this news back to the Hua Lineage!" Hua Jingmeng's Adam's apple bobbed violently, his chest heaved, and the bloodshot veins in his eyes seemed about to burst. But in the end, he simply clenched his fists tightly, letting the battle armor flow and stabilize on his body. It was as if this sudden and heavy responsibility weighed him down, making even breathing more difficult.
On the side of the Chi Lineage's remnant formation, Shen Qingchen also looked up at the merged divine Divine Phoenix, a heavy feeling, almost as if he had been pushed to his Limit, appearing deep in his eyes for the first time. Blood still clung to the corner of his mouth, and his Fate Soul's fluctuations were terribly chaotic, but just as the shadow of that Divine Phoenix pressed down on him...
He turned his head and silently sent a divine thought to Su Qingyuan. The thought was lower and softer than usual, yet it carried an earnestness akin to giving his last wishes. "Senior Sister Su, if I... please take care of my sister and my parents for me." Upon hearing this, Su Qingyuan felt as if her heart had been stabbed. She almost immediately turned her head to look at Shen Qingchen.
A fleeting, sharp glint of anger and uncompromising intent flashed in her eyes. She replied telepathically, her voice steady yet forcefully suppressed, "Don't say such things." She paused, her gaze piercing through the chaos and bloodshed to the direction of the Endless Abyss, where no news had yet emerged. For a moment, her gaze held an unwavering resolve. "Believe in us; we can escape. Qin Yu is still battling his way through the abyss. We promised him we'd wait for his return."
As she said this, she even forced a very faint smile, a smile tinged with weariness, yet also with a stubborn, almost obstinate tenderness. "When he comes back, the three of us... will have a proper celebration."
Shen Qingchen was stunned for a moment. The despair that had been pressing on his chest seemed to be forcibly torn open by these words. He slowly exhaled a breath of turbid blood, nodded, and did not continue to speak. He simply gripped the weapon in his hand even tighter.
In the brief exchange between them, the merged divine Divine Phoenix had completely raised its head. The crimson-gold crystal core on its forehead glowed slightly, and its wings slowly unfurled to the sides. The enormous shadow, like an entire world pressing down, completely enveloped the dozen or so remaining figures of the Lineage.
At the same time, the surrounding Dao Shadow Soldier also pressed forward en masse, their golden-blue Dao Flame converging into an endless wave of cold light. The remaining disciples and stewards of the Hua Lineage, Shangguan Lineage, Ju Lineage, and Chi Lineage stood before this scene of finality.
They appeared so small, yet not a single person retreated even half a step. Because everyone knew that their escape route had been completely burned away when the two Divine Phoenix merged.
The merged Divine Phoenix hovered high beneath the crumbling sky of the Azure Wood Divine Forest, its body writhing in golden flames and swirling mystical fire. Like an ancient celestial palace forged from the combined forces of calamity and divine punishment, it slowly pressed down upon all living beings. With just a slight raise of its head, the entire battlefield fell into an indescribable deathly silence. Then, its wings slowly folded to its chest, and the crimson-gold crystal core on its forehead suddenly shone with unparalleled Ultimate.
A ring of almost transparent fire patterns rapidly spread along the edge of the wings. A massive phoenix-shaped rift silently opened in the depths of the void, within which rolled endless golden-red flames. These were not ordinary flames, nor were they the true flames of the Great Dao; rather, they were the final lamentations of all "existence" before being incinerated. Immediately afterward, an aura powerful enough to trace the very origin of all living beings swept down from the rift.
At that moment, all the cultivators who were still alive felt their Fate Soul being grasped by an invisible giant hand. The merged Divine Phoenix spread its wings, and a golden-red sea of fire suddenly appeared in the world, covering the entire battlefield. The sea of fire did not erupt from its body, but rather ignited from the depths of each person's Fate Soul, the end of their bloodline, and the root of their memories. In that instant, everyone understood the name of this Ultimate divine power— All Spirits Return to Ashes.
The instant they were touched by the sea of fire, before their physical bodies were even burned, their memories burned first. Many cultivators didn't even have time to scream before fragments of their lives began to appear before their eyes—family, grudges, obsessions, years of cultivation—all curled up, charred, and turned to ashes in the fire.
They watched their past burn to ashes before their eyes, and their future, which could have continued, never came into being in the fire. The despair of walking towards Eternal Silence in a state of lucidity caused many to collapse on the spot. Patches of figures bent, collapsed, and turned to ash in the sea of fire, and even the right to reincarnation was taken away in the burning.
But at the very moment that the sea of fire, the Ultimate annihilation, completely subsided, Hua Feiting took a step forward. Her face, already stained with blood and ash, showed no hesitation. She clasped her hands together, and a pitch-black abyss, devoid of any luster, suddenly split open before her. The edges of the abyss continued to collapse, and the surrounding flames, light, spatial fragments, and the afterglow of Fate Soul were all slowly absorbed by the black waterfall-like power. That was the Return to the Ruins Tribulation.
Her long hair billowed wildly in the raging wind, and a cold calm appeared in her eyes, as if she were not a cultivator standing there, but an abyss itself ready to devour all meaning. Black lines spread from her body, like the traces of countless memories and causes being forcibly stripped away. All the returning flames that rushed towards the remnants of the Hua Lineage and Shangguan Lineage's formations began to collapse silently upon touching the edge of that abyss, as if being dragged into a deeper void.
Hua Yanzhi roared beside her, his already near -Limit Fate Soul forcibly ignited once more. A torrent of blood-gold pages surged behind him, transforming into tattered yet still desperately maintaining barriers of destruction. He pressed his hands down, and thousands of runes, like sharp blades, pierced the sea of fire before him, peeling away layers of the fading flames. On the other side, Shangguan Jinyan, dragging his heavily injured body, stepped forward, twisting his palm in the air.
He forcibly twisted the shattered space into a dimensional mirror that kept sinking inward. Shangguan Xingci even burned his essence blood, his figure flashing out as he took nine steps between the spatial rifts. Each step tore a narrow passage through the sea of fire, while Shangguan Shuheng pushed the Mystic Void Annihilation Wheel to an unprecedented Limit, causing the outer Wall of the Unknowable to spin wildly.
All the embers that rushed towards him were erased from the attackers' consciousness the instant they touched the edge of the wheel. The middle layer of the Domain of the Unspeakable completely shattered the meaning of those flames that had not yet completely dissipated, while the inner layer of the Core of the Unthinkable was like a silent, open eye of nothingness.
The flames that continued to press inward were gradually extinguished into nothingness. The three nested wheels rotated so fast that they were almost invisible, leaving only a ring of Annihilation vibrations spreading outward. Feng Qingyuan, who had only recently joined the Shangguan Lineage, also completely revealed his trump card. His aura was Ultimate cold. He raised two fingers together and drew a line in the air, creating a pale, hair-thin line that stretched across the sky in front of him.
Wherever the vanguard passed, the sea of embers seemed to be cut open with a neat fracture. Then, with a shake of his hands, hundreds and thousands of identical vanguards suddenly opened up, like a crisscrossing net of swords, forcefully shattering the oncoming storm of flames.
On the Chi Lineage and Ju Lineage' side, it had also reached the final moment where they were risking their lives for a breath of fresh air. Ju Anran's throat churned with blood, yet he still took a step forward. In that instant, he was Ultimate still, as if he had been half-absorbed from the battlefield. The Annihilation Return Path had been fully activated. He was undefended, unretaliation, simply standing there coldly.
All the killing intent, hostility, and destructive intent rushing towards him were simultaneously reversed the moment they touched him. Although those Dao Shadow Soldiers and the Flames of Return to Ashes themselves did not possess "killing intent" in the human sense, the direction and destructive intent of their attacks were still forcibly drawn into the causal loop.
As the first few Dao Shadow Soldier charged forward, their Fate Soul structures began to crumble from their cores, their bodies shattering inch by inch. Ju Junyao and Ju Muyao stood behind him, one on each side, both covered in wounds, yet each still ignited their last bit of origin energy, forcibly condensing the Sea of Sound once more in the void. This time, however, it was no longer a gentle, vast ripple.
Like a stormy eye riddled with cracks, the sonic wave shook even the Flames of Return to Ashes, creating layers of voids. Chi Chengyu clenched his hands together abruptly, forcibly pulling back half of the nearly shattered Wheel of Cause and Effect. Blood trickled from the corner of Chi Ruoyao's mouth as she poured her last vestiges of Fate Soul into the wheel's core.
Chi Yueyin sat cross-legged in the void, Thoughtless Tribulation Dao Perish was fully unleashed. She disappeared from the "targetable" category. All the Divine Phoenix Flames and Dao Shadow Soldier that chased after her and tried to lock onto her fell into paradoxical backlash the moment the thought was formed, and a large number of attacks collapsed Pre-Nonbeing of her.
What truly surprised everyone was Shen Qingchen's actions at that moment. He stood at the very edge of the Chi Lineage's remnant formation, covered in blood, but his eyes shone with an astonishing light. Suddenly, he put the Mystic Female Return to Stillness Pill Huanji Pill, which he had won as the first place winner of the competition, into his mouth. He did not swallow the pill directly, but instead let it dissolve silently on the tip of his tongue, transforming into a mysterious stream of energy that sank from his throat into his dantian.
In that instant, his physical body began to undergo an almost transparent transformation, as if slowly transitioning from "existence" to "unconfirmable existence." Those around him clearly saw that he was still standing there, yet they began to find it difficult to be sure that it was "him."
The next moment, the power of the pill surged straight into his sea of consciousness. All that he had learned, held onto, and thought throughout his life began to Annihilation one by one. This Annihilation was not an disappearance, but rather a process of being constantly proven "meaningless" by a higher-level power. Even the thought "I am breaking through" was burned away by the power of the pill. In that instant, Shen Qingchen felt as if he had fallen into complete emptiness, and his eyes slowly closed.
All the Mystic Void · Initial Stage aura surrounding him began to disintegrate, recombine, and disintegrate again, as if his entire being was being pushed from the inside out into a hidden gate of the Xuan Yin. At that critical moment, Chi Yueyin, barely maintaining her Realm of Thoughtlessness, separated a wisp of her essence to prevent his soul from completely plunging into the boundless Mystic Void. That extremely faint call was like a thread...
It forcefully pulled him back an inch from the edge of "complete annihilation". Immediately afterwards, a portal suddenly opened in Shen Qingchen's dantian, within which was endless void and countless shimmering primordial light points. He stepped into the Mystic Void Realm · Middle Stage with a "selfless" attitude. His aura suddenly surged. A moment later, a blank Blank Dao Scroll, pure white and without any patterns or Dao marks, slowly emerged from between his eyebrows.
As soon as that scroll appeared, all the Ember Flames and Dao Shadow Soldier that rushed towards him were briefly covered, like a blank sheet of paper covering old words, smoothing out the past, present, and future of the attacks. When he opened his eyes, his aura had already leaped into the Mystic Void Realm · Middle Stage, and his eyes held a deeper, calmer, and more untouchable Space Silence.
At the same time, Su Qingyuan's figure finally lit up completely. She no longer stubbornly stayed in place, but gently tapped her ten fingers on the void. There were no musical instruments, no melody, only a low, almost inaudible murmur flowing from her lips. It was not a song, nor a sage, but a lament for the burial of the rules.
The Dao Dissolution Heavenly Burial was pushed to its Ultimate at this moment. Countless visible Dao patterns and chains of laws emerged between heaven and earth. At first, they were smooth and intact, but then they began to rust, twist, and frantically entangle themselves, as if each chain had been stuffed into an inconsistent paradox.
Fragments of shattered laws fell from the sky one after another, transforming into a meteor shower of rules that covered the battlefield. Gravity shifted dramatically, time flowed backward and accelerated intermittently, and space folded up like origami. Vast numbers of Dao Shadow Soldier lost their balance amidst this drastic environmental change.
Even the raging fire wave that descended from the combined Divine Phoenix was momentarily displaced. Su Qingyuan's face was almost transparently pale, and blood kept trickling from the corner of her mouth, but the light in her eyes grew colder and colder, as if she wanted to send the entire battlefield into this dirge of heaven.
In this desperate, all-out effort, the battlefield was finally turned around. Large numbers of Dao Shadow Soldier shattered one after another under the combined bombardment of the Return to Return to the Ruins Tribulation, the Profound Mystic Void Annihilation Wheel, the Annihilation Return Path, the Thoughtless Tribulation Dao Perish, the Dao Dissolution Heavenly Burial, and the Blank Dao Scroll. The once boundless military formation seemed to have been completely stripped away, and countless golden-blue source streams exploded and extinguished in the sky.
Even the combined Divine Phoenix was forced back by those rounds of Limit collisions, cracks appeared on its chest and wings, the light of the crystal core in its forehead dimmed, and finally it crashed heavily to the ground. Its huge divine body smashed the entire battlefield, causing the ground to crack layer by layer, and it kept spewing out blood flames that were a mixture of gold and red and black, and it could no longer maintain the complete and superior pressure it had before.