Su Qingyuan and Shen Qingchen attacked simultaneously. She remained standing calmly to the side and behind, facing the combined attack of five True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivators. Her beautiful face was clear and calm, without the slightest panic or fear. Only when a masked cultivator rushed in from the right, trying to cut off all her escape routes, did she slowly raise her right hand.
Without the power of a divine weapon's cleaving strike, without the magnificence of the heavens' radiance, it merely used a slender jade finger to gently press down on the approaching True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivator.
Her movements were slow and silent, and the surrounding space was flat and unbroken. Yet, within the small space locked on by her fingertips, the ancient trees, fallen leaves, and the light and shadow in the forest, which were originally clear and concrete, suddenly revealed a strange void that was difficult for even cognition to grasp.
Su Qingyuan's eyes suddenly turned cold, and she uttered four words, chilling to the bone. "Pre-Origin Tribulation Finger." With a single finger, the source of calamity collapsed.
The cultivator who was targeted suddenly experienced a violent tremor due to the countless hidden causal connections around him. His life traces in this world, the trajectory of his past cultivation, the evidence of his Fate Soul's connection with this world, and everything else were simultaneously plundered by a calamity force that surged upwards from the source.
This strange force transcends the dimensions of the present world, tracing directly back to the very beginning of existence, to the origin before the physical form Unborn, attempting to completely eradicate this person from the very root from which they were "born".
Once that initial thread of origin is severed, all his subsequent years of cultivation, experiences of cause and effect, and Fate Soul imprints will lose their foundation and become nothing more than a rootless and baseless illusion.
Even more bizarrely, the strange gap in perception in front of her fingertips continuously interfered with the senses of everyone around her. The remaining masked cultivators clearly saw her raise her hand to form a spell, but the next moment they were bewildered, their memories were fragmented, and they couldn't even recall what kind of technique she had just used.
The five hunters were all top-tier experts who had fought countless battles and bled profusely, and were accustomed to all kinds of supernatural powers and techniques. However, when Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan unleashed their two reverse-path supernatural powers, the remaining contempt in their eyes vanished completely.
The cultivator, deeply entangled in the erosion of Ten Thousand Years in an Instant of time, suddenly shrank his pupils and was greatly shaken. The True Annihilation source within his body no longer attacked outwards, but instead frantically retreated, returning entirely to the foundation of his Fate Soul.
His hands moved swiftly, forming hand seals. In an instant, a heavy, ancient, gray-black phantom of a bell enveloped his body. The bell's walls closed layer by layer, with countless True Annihilation Dao patterns intertwined and locked in place, firmly imprisoning and isolating the traces of time within him, barely resisting the endless erosion of the years.
The cultivators targeted by the Pre-Origin Tribulation Finger simultaneously launched a full-scale defense, pressing their palms tightly against their brows. A dark white life wheel, composed of dozens of interlocking and overlapping Fate Soul imprints, rose from behind them, fiercely protecting their original anchor point of birth and resisting the source of the tribulation.
The remaining three dared not slacken their efforts in the slightest. They immediately coordinated and formed a defensive formation. One of them pushed his palms horizontally, and two layers of True Annihilation Barriers, each dozens of feet wide, stretched across the sky, blocking the formation. Another person summoned a long, black banner. As the banner fluttered, countless dark Dao patterns fell and intertwined, layer upon layer covering the formation around him.
The last person crossed his arms in a hand seal, and the radiance of his Fate Soul condensed into a ring-shaped barrier. The five top-tier defenses were interconnected and mutually supportive, temporarily blocking the relentless erosion of time and the primordial calamity that surged back to its source.
Buzz!!!
Transparent temporal ripples and multiple True Annihilation defensive barriers continued to rub against and erode each other, and the cognitive gap in front of Su Qingyuan's fingertips constantly swallowed the outer Dao traces. At this point, the five True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivators completely abandoned all their contempt, and none of them regarded the two people in front of them as ordinary True Annihilation Realm · Advanced Stage cultivators who could be captured at will.
On the other side, facing a single masked man at the True Annihilation Realm · Peak, Chi Qingyue's anger had completely ignited.
The opponent's previous words, "Kill that female cultivator," were aimed directly at her. From the very beginning of the ambush, they had left her no chance of survival. Her once quiet and Wenwan eyes were now covered with a bone-chilling coldness. The divine weapon in her palm was tightly gripped by her slender fingers, and a clear and sharp metallic clang suddenly resounded through the forest.
Instead of retreating to Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan for help, she took a step forward, and the powerful Fate Soul essence of the True Annihilation Realm · Advanced Stage spread out all over her body. The earth shook beneath her feet, and the roots of the ancient trees buried deep in the ground all responded and resonated, and thousands of vibrant life traces broke through the soil and lingered around her.
As soon as the masked cultivator approached within a hundred feet, Chi Qingyue launched her attack. Her blade drew a sharp arc in the air, and her unique divine power rapidly condensed and surged forth.
The masked man opposite him was equally ruthless, unleashing his True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivation. A mass of dark origin rapidly condensed between his palms. Their gazes clashed in mid-air, their fighting spirits clashing, their killing intent palpable, and the battle in the forest instantly reached its Ultimate.
Aside from this fierce melee, the mastermind behind the entire ambush, the masked man in golden robes, remained standing still, without moving an inch.
He remained aloof, his unfathomable eyes fixed on Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan, who were surrounded by five people, silently watching as the two revealed their hidden supernatural powers for the first time.
The masked man in the golden robe had been standing outside the battle, his hands behind his back, coldly observing Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan's moves with only his gloomy eyes. But when "Ten Thousand Years in an Instant" and "Pre-Origin Tribulation Finger" were truly unleashed, a faint tremor inevitably flashed across his eyes.
One technique can forcibly sever the connection between the target and the main timeline, stretching a brief moment into a long period of time; the other directly traces back along the initial causal connection of existence, aiming to erase the opponent's right to exist from the very roots that have not yet truly entered the present world. The fact that such domineering divine abilities appeared simultaneously in the hands of two True Annihilation Realm · Advanced Stage cultivators far exceeded his previous expectations.
However, that surprise only lingered in his eyes for a moment before he completely suppressed it. What truly made him wary was the passage of time. Today, a hundred Chi Lineage True Annihilation Realm disciples were scattered throughout the Azure Wood Divine Forest for patrols. Although they had temporarily isolated this northern area, if any patrol team noticed anything amiss and arrived, things would quickly spiral out of control.
Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan had already proven themselves to be far from ordinary True Annihilation Realm · Advanced Stage who could be easily captured. Continuing to let five people fight them would only increase the unpredictability. The golden-robed, masked man's eyes suddenly darkened, and he shouted angrily, "Get out of the way! Leave these two to me; you all quickly kill that female cultivator!"
As the voice faded, he finally took a slow step forward, and the aura of his Fate Soul at the True Annihilation Realm · Peak spread out heavily. The ancient trees around him, whose growth patterns had been disturbed by the "Dao Dissolution Heavenly Burial," began to slow down slightly under this pressure.
Those eyes, hidden beneath the mask, locked onto Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan. The cold, sharp voice rang out again. "Stop delaying! The rest of the Chi Lineage's patrol could arrive at any moment. We cannot afford any mistakes today!"
Upon hearing the order, the five True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivators who had been surrounding Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan immediately abandoned their engagement and rushed to either side. Their target instantly shifted to Chi Qingyue, along with the masked man who had already been fighting Chi Qingyue.
Six True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivators quickly surrounded her location. Chi Qingyue's eyes suddenly turned cold, and she held her divine weapon horizontally in front of her chest, instantly raising her Fate Soul essence to its Ultimate.
But in the instant the five people turned around, Shen Qingchen and Su Qingyuan simultaneously caught sight of the backs that were exposed for a moment. Without any discussion, the two exchanged a glance from several feet apart, and their eyes conveyed the same meaning—if these five people were to surround Chi Qingyue at this moment, with her True Annihilation Realm · Advanced Stage cultivation, she would have no chance of holding out for long on her own.
Shen Qingchen abruptly sheathed his divine weapon, took a half-step back, and then sat cross-legged in mid-air, his hands quickly forming an extremely profound hand seal in front of his chest.
A long, thin golden river slowly appeared deep within his pupils. This river did not actually appear in the reality of the Azure Wood Divine Forest, but it quietly manifested above the heads of the five masked cultivators. Each person's past, present, and the key traces of their destiny extending into the future were left as faint nodes in that golden river.
Shen Qingchen's five fingers suddenly plunged into the void, slowly drawing out a nearly transparent thread. This thread wasn't connected to his physical body, yet it linked together all the crucial causes of his birth, cultivation, breakthrough, survival, and his appearance in the Azure Wood Divine Forest today. His eyes flashed with a sharp light, and he slashed down along the transparent thread with his palm. "Causality Severance!"
Buzz!!! The bodies of the five True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivators who had just turned around trembled simultaneously.
There were no external injuries, yet the three of them suddenly lost their original steadiness. The countless factors that had kept them alive until this moment were being forcibly stripped away by Shen Qingchen from the final result of "still surviving".
The calamities they once avoided, the restorative items they consumed, the protection left by their masters, and the narrow escape they won in a life-or-death situation—these life-altering marks that once sustained them to this day are beginning to detach themselves from the present world, one by one.
The three of them turned deathly pale at the same time. Although there were no injuries to their chests, their heartbeats briefly stopped, and an extremely strong sense of instability arose deep within their Fate Soul —at this moment, they could not fully confirm why they were still standing here.