“This is the coldest joke I have heard. A grain of dust that dreams of filling the sea. A single blade of grass that presumes to split the sky. Pitiable.” The Master of the Divine Ruins shook his head.
He stepped forward, striking toward Ye Fan. Though his entire body was soaked in blood and he had been battered by Emperor weapons with ever greater ferocity, he was resolved to eliminate Ye Fan.
The Eternal Universe was about to fall. There was no longer anyone who could sway this battlefield. Now was the time to bring it to an end — what followed would be the feast of darkness, the hours of their leisurely hunting of the universe.
Ye Fan felt no more anger. He had also forgotten pain. Within his heart there was only one surge of battle intent — a final blossoming. The Wushi Scripture in his hand turned its pages, sending Imperial Dao laws surging forward.
And from his immortal platform, light radiated outward — preparing to borrow the final Dao-pattern Immortal Robe and, before life ended, to detonate the Great Completion Holy Body, spending his life in pulverizing combat against a supreme being.
Boom!
Beside him, the firelight blazed brilliantly — the Great Dao flames of the Eternal Universe Great Emperor burning. That place seethed. The Light-Dark Supreme cried out in misery, unable to struggle free. His immortal platform detonated.
“No — I am unwilling! I have not yet seen the Immortal Realm! I still want eternal life without end!” He roared, as though seized by madness.
Regrettably, the outcome had already been decided — nothing could change it now. Within the firelight, the supreme being’s body shattered, becoming tribulation-dust, and his immortal platform too was pulverized — dissolving into light, dissolving into rain.
The Stone Emperor and the Heaven-Forsaking Supreme witnessed all of this without a single ripple. A Samsara Sovereign had already died. To this point, whoever else died would not move them.
To kill one’s way to the Emperor’s throne, unrivaled above heaven and earth — and then to pass through ten thousand ages and several upheavals of turmoil — the heart had long since grown cold. Let alone an unrelated supreme being: not even the flesh and blood of their own children would make them so much as furrow a brow.
In the treasure vial in Ye Fan’s hand, the remaining Wushi blood could only be measured in drops now. Even the vial itself had developed hairline cracks. The Master of the Divine Ruins struck with one palm, shaking him violently.
At this point, the Wushi Scripture’s power had diminished greatly. What could be done? What was left to fight with? At last the final moment had come. What Ye Fan could stake now was nothing but the flesh and blood of the Great Completion Holy Body — said to be capable of matching a Great Emperor. Were it to truly detonate, it would certainly bloody the heavens, inflicting devastating damage upon the enemy.
In the instant before the desperate gambit, heaven and earth suddenly shattered apart — a colossal stele came crashing in. The Master of the Divine Ruins laughed coldly, not even sparing it a glance, sending a palm strike forward to let it explode in a thunderous blast!
Yet in this very moment, a presence that even supreme beings found chilling spread outward. A hundred million strands of immortal light steamed upward, submerging this entire place.
“Immortal Ascension Stele!”
They all recognized what it was — and knew that a supreme being-level power was sealed within the stele, something extremely powerful. When the stele detonated, naturally it could wound them.
The Samsara Sovereign was goaded to the point of shame-turning-to-rage: a single stone stele had left him soaked head to toe in blood. Though unable to kill him, it had left him somewhat disheveled.
Boom!
Another colossal stele came flying in — equally massive and imposing.
“Let me see how many steles you have left!” This time, he flicked his fingers from a great distance, and the stele detonated before it could even draw near.
The Six Paths Samsara Stele was destroyed!
But then a vast and surging fist-will suddenly filled the sky and shook the earth, shaking the starry sky — this was the origin fist-will of the Six Paths Samsara Fist, a peerless secret technique.
Rumble!
The fist-will was invincible, piercing through heaven and earth above and below. Somehow it resonated with Ye Fan — causing the blood and flesh throughout his entire body to seethe and boil. For a moment he cast aside the Wushi Scripture and charged straight forward, the blood vessels throughout his body surging and pulsing, battle intent soaring to the heavens.
The Great Completion Holy Body shared a unique connection with this origin fist-will!
Thud!
Ye Fan’s fists split apart the boundless starry sky, striking with savage abandon, each punch resonating with that origin fist-will, drawing forth the absolute limit of what this body’s flesh could achieve — as though the true Great Completion Holy Body had been revived.
Each punch drew blood — piercing directly through the Master of the Divine Ruins’ physical form, even scattering his Imperial Dao laws!
What was this?
Everyone was astonished. The Six Paths Samsara Fist was a law inscribed upon the Path to Immortality — and it resonated so profoundly with the Great Completion Holy Body, igniting every inch of blood and flesh throughout Ye Fan’s body.
In this moment, it made Ye Fan seem like a world-dominating divine sovereign — not the experience gained from battle, but the release of a primal instinct, existing purely to kill!
Kill!
Ye Fan roared aloud, his eyes turning blood-red. The Wushi Scripture turned its pages, hovering above his head, helping him block the chains of order-laws sent forth by the Imperial Dao.
The Master of the Divine Ruins was somewhat confounded. In this moment, he had actually been sent flying by an “ant” — a single punch that nearly pierced through his body, causing blood to spray and surge.
“There is a saying that the Six Paths Samsara Fist may have been created by the progenitor of the Holy Body lineage — unconfirmed. But seeing it now, there is a certain logic to it,” the Stone Emperor remarked.
Boom!
The fist-will finally detonated. Ye Fan lost that resonance. The blood throughout his body calmed, and the Great Completion Holy Body returned to its former state.
Yet that brief experience was to him extraordinarily precious. It was not only the resonance of the Six Paths Samsara Fist’s origin, but also the response between two Great Completion Holy Bodies — the revival of their primal battle instinct — and it showed him a stretch of heaven and earth he had never seen before.
“And it had to be now…” Ye Fan murmured to himself, without grief, without laughter. For him now, it held little meaning — because there was no longer hope, no tomorrow.
Otherwise, were he able to live on, his Heavenly Emperor Fist might have undergone another transformation through this, and his battle consciousness would have grown all the more extraordinary. Hand-to-hand combat would have gradually become unrivaled under heaven.
“Feeble grain of dust — before supreme beings vast as an ocean, your absurd and pitiable fortune has run its course!” The Master of the Divine Ruins darkened his expression, turning into a bolt of light and rushing forward. A flicker-chain resounded as the chains clinked together — a hundred million strands of divine radiance erupting forth.
Bang!
Ye Fan struck back. The Wushi Scripture turned its pages. At the same time, his own body resisted. Yet he was still sent crashing horizontally away, his body pierced through in one place by a beam of light, blood pouring like a flood.
This was the power of Imperial Dao law — the most terrifying of all. It caused a blood-hole to appear at the center of his brow!
Had it not been for the Dao-pattern Immortal Robe protecting his immortal platform, that single strike would certainly have killed him!
Far away in a distant star domain, the Old Madman was drenched in blood. He had hurled two steles forward — yet carrying the great cocoon, he moved with tremendous difficulty. When he first carried it out things had been manageable, but as he walked, the cocoon grew more and more terrifying, threatening to crush everything nearby.
“Hurl it out — damn it, can’t throw it, cursed thing — woof!” The Black Emperor was right beside him, nearly driven mad, desperately carving formation platforms — yet when the immortal cocoon fell upon them, those markings were erased directly.
That cocoon was terrifying and strange — capricious and unpredictable, impossible to control!
On the cosmic battlefield, everything was approaching its end. Ye Fan crashed sideways and was struck yet again. Without the last dozen or so drops of Wushi blood and the scripture’s protection, without the Dao-pattern Immortal Robe shining with light, he would long since have been more dead than alive.
Rumble!
The Eternal Universe Great Emperor’s body blazed like a sun, carrying overwhelming Dao-fire as he surged forward — surpassing all speed — cutting off the path ahead, clashing with the Master of the Divine Ruins several times head-on.
This time the Stone Emperor and the Heaven-Forsaking Supreme were both moving to intercept — yet the Emperor weapons had also gone berserk, assaulting them ferociously.
In the end, this place boiled over. The Eternal Universe fell — and it too came to its end at last, collapsing backward. His body torn into four pieces. The divine furnace cast from phoenix blood and scarlet-gold fought with everything it had — and in this place, detonated directly. Like a rain of scarlet blood, it sent out the cry of a phoenix in its death throes.
Boom!
The shattered pieces of the Eternal Universe Furnace, wrapped around the four-part body of the Eternal Universe, surged toward the depths of the universe, departing this battlefield.
Three supreme beings endured the exchange suffering devastating wounds — yet in the end, they held on. They… were still alive!
At this point, there was only one Ye Fan left on the battlefield. To them, nothing remained to stop their advance. They would stride across the universe, sweep every star domain — none could resist.
Ye Fan charged forward like a moth into flame!
“Roaaar…” From the depths of the universe came a long howl. The Old Demon Ancestor stood upon a barren star system, staring at a colossal source of light. He said: “At last it has been obtained — the rarest delicacy since ancient times. And yet I must throw it away again!”
Had the Black Emperor been there, it would certainly have gone mad — for this was the Emperor-origin it had relentlessly pursued in past days, cut off by the Old Serpent and lost from sight. Now it had been found and truly tracked down by the Human Demon, Dongfang Tai Yi.
“Something left behind when a Great Emperor returned to the Dao — then let it… continue back to the Dao!”
The Human Demon let out a great cry, drawing upon the Emperor-origin left behind, channeling it further in the direction of returning to the Dao — and finally hurled it out. It transformed into a terrifying expanse of light surging straight toward the battlefield.
The Stone Emperor, the Heaven-Forsaking Supreme, and the Master of the Divine Ruins all felt their hairs stand on end. The cosmic void annihilated — as that source of light drew near, they all felt a deep chill run through them.
An ordinary person returning to the Dao would have no effect on them. But the origin of one of the same rank, burning at this moment into light, charging forth in this manner — this undeniably carried enormous destructive power.
They chose to evade. Yet within this rain of light there was an imprinted fluctuation — one that had not dissipated, moving autonomously to hunt them down. Clearly, this turn of events had caught everyone off guard.
Boom!
In the end, they poured the blood from their bodies to extinguish the rain of light — putting out the power of the returned Dao, injuring a portion of their vitality.
To this point, the last glimmer of light in the Dark Age was about to be extinguished. The end was near.
Three supreme beings closed in. Ye Fan laughed bitterly. What did he have left to fight with? His immortal platform blazed with light. Blood and flesh within his body surged — he wanted to self-detonate in the midst of fierce combat, to make supreme beings bleed.
Suddenly, a faint and ethereal immortal melody began to ring out — as though singing, as though weeping — shaking the starry sky. At the far edge of that star domain appeared an old man — a wasted and deteriorating body, dimmed eyes — carrying a kind of grief, walking forward step by step.
Gai Jiuyou!
In his face, what Ye Fan saw was a kind of resolution. The Tribulation Transcendence Immortal Melody was sounding. The grief in his expression was not for himself — it was for the Great Emperor, for all living beings.
“Senior!” he called out softly, a soft sigh escaping him.
In terms of innate gifts, Gai Jiuyou was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary since ancient times — universally acknowledged. Had it not been for the Green Emperor achieving the Dao before him, the two of them separated by too short a span of time, he would without question have become another supreme Great Emperor!
This kind of person — who had broken through to the quasi-Emperor realm in the shortest possible time and then fully exhausted his transcendence, already touching that supreme realm without boundary — who in the end could not complete that final transformation.
The greatest regret of a life!
In the post-ancient era, with heaven and earth utterly changed and everything so incomparably difficult — especially with the Green Emperor’s Dao not yet faded — he had still managed to reach that point. He had nearly broken the constraints of ten thousand ages, rewriting history, composing a divine miracle — truly achieving the Dao.
This could no longer be described merely as extraordinary!
What a pity — a peerless person of unrivaled talent, born in the wrong era. The story of his life drew sighs and left regret.
“Interesting — an elderly and frail quasi-Emperor, and he actually dares to launch an attack against the likes of us?”
“Wait — something is wrong. How powerful he is — truly powerful. He very nearly broke through to our level, but in the end something unexpected occurred.”
Such was the assessment from the ancient supreme beings.
The Tribulation Transcendence Immortal Melody rang out. Gai Jiuyou walked forward step by step, his entire body blazing with light. The grief in his expression faded, replaced by a gradual serenity.
With each step he took, the Great Dao of this heaven and earth rang out. And the light radiating from his body grew ever more brilliant. Throughout this process, his wasted and deteriorating body let out cracking sounds.
At last, the sound of blood moving through his body could be clearly heard — like a rolling great river surging and billowing, like a furious sea and boundless ocean splitting the sky!
Gai Jiuyou was undergoing a stunning transformation. With each step he landed, it was as though he walked backward through the river of time a hundred years — his body growing younger, renewed with vitality.
Ye Fan’s eyes grew blurred, filled with a mist of moisture. The urge to weep surged within him. This dark turmoil had been too brutal. Gai Jiuyou was spending his last remaining light of life.
This old man was forcibly refining his vital essence — allowing his body to return to its most absolute pinnacle of former days — to battle the ancient sovereigns!
To do this — perhaps within one hour, perhaps half an hour, perhaps a quarter of an hour — he would simply transform into dust. Body and spirit alike would be annihilated, ceasing to exist forever.
Already aged, for the sake of this battle, refining blood-essence, condensing time — purely for that brief moment of supremacy, returning to the pinnacle of former days, to the peak state he had once nearly broken through to the Great Emperor realm.
“Who dares battle me?” Gai Jiuyou asked. His voice was calm — without fury, without grief. Only a kind of self-confidence. His face carried a brilliance that was astonishing to behold.
Those words rang out deafeningly, making the three supreme beings pause. Gai Jiuyou’s voice reverberated throughout this heaven and earth.
What manner of resolve and spirit was this — to challenge ancient supreme beings in battle!
“You wish to battle us?” the Stone Emperor asked, cold and chilling.
“Do you dare?” Gai Jiuyou asked, his voice not loud — yet it shook all the stars and constellations in the sky, every single one of them trembling.
Coming from anyone else, it would certainly be taken as madness — the entire world would mock them. Supreme beings would naturally look down on such a challenge with utter contempt, not even bothering to pay attention.
But coming from Gai Jiuyou, heaven and earth themselves trembled. People sensed in it a kind of tremendous spirit — they felt it was entirely natural, felt he had the qualification to battle a supreme being.
And the three ancient supreme beings themselves were each struck momentarily dumb — forgetting for a moment to shout back at him. Strangely, they had a feeling that this person was truly one of the peerless powerhouses of the ages.
Faintly, almost imperceptibly — they had placed him in the same category as themselves!
The Tribulation Transcendence Immortal Melody drifted gently through the air, resounding across the starry sky. Gai Jiuyou’s body grew ever younger with each step — radiance covering his form as he walked forward, his once-dimmed eyes now filled with an astonishing brilliance.
At last, in that place, blood-energy surged to the heavens. The wasted figure was gone. In its place stood a body brimming with vitality — majestic in bearing, transcending the mortal world.
Was this what Gai Jiuyou had looked like in his youth?
He possessed a peerless heroic bearing — brilliant eyes, thick black hair flowing loose over his shoulders and back. Like an immortal sovereign reborn, his entire person was transcendent and powerful. Standing there, a unique and incomparable aura pressed down upon the heavens — one person alone able to hold down the entire universe across all eight directions, surpassing the divine.
Such was Gai Jiuyou in the days of his youth — supreme throughout the cosmos, without equal in all the world!
His eyes were clear and bright, his grace unrivaled above all. His voice was calm as he said: “Who dares battle me?”
Words like these were not arrogance. People felt them to be perfectly natural — convinced that he had the ability to challenge a supreme being.
Ye Fan’s heart was bitter and sorrowful. He could not help but sigh. Gai Jiuyou truly yearned for this battle — to contend with a Great Emperor, to fight an ancient sovereign, to fulfill a wish of his heart.
He could have become an Emperor — but he was born in the wrong era. Had the Green Emperor still been of this world, Ye Fan believed he would certainly have gone to challenge him in those years!
And now, he wished to bid farewell to this life in that most glorious of battles — to prove to himself that he was not weaker than others, to fill in the regret of a lifetime.
The dream of Gai Jiuyou, the grief of Gai Jiuyou, the wish of Gai Jiuyou… A person of unrivaled talent who should have blazed with the most brilliant light in all of history — who had missed an era — now sought in his final ultimate battle to forge his own Emperor path. Even in death, in that final instant, to step upon the absolute pinnacle!
This was a supreme person of unrivaled talent who carried regret — and also an old man who had never let his dream die — about to burn and fall in the most brilliant of flames!
Boom!
The Master of the Divine Ruins blazed with light throughout his body, having healed his own wounds and recovered. He said: “You? A quasi-Emperor, and you want to issue a challenge? Very well then — let me fulfill your death wish!”
This battle erupted — and its outcome was staggering. Gai Jiuyou swept the mountains and rivers into submission, pressing a supreme being of an age until even that supreme being was shocked. From the very first exchange, blood sprayed the sky.
This was an Emperor’s battle!
They fought their way into the starry sky, crossing many star domains, leaving behind endless traces of battle, gifting those who came after with boundless legend — shaking through ten thousand ages of the universe!
From this day forward, Gai Jiuyou never appeared again. He transcended in that glorious battle and came to his end!
And the Master of the Divine Ruins also never appeared again. He too came to his end, departing from this world!