Pangu created reincarnation for nothing more than the human race, for nothing more than to end war.

Yet even as a Great Venerable, He probably never imagined that future generations would gradually come to view reincarnation as ordinary, believing that the person who reincarnated with the same soul was still their original self. Unfinished wishes from this life could be completed in the next.

But when had there ever been a true “next life”?

Especially for mortals.

Living mediocrely their entire lives, yet consoling themselves with reincarnation, that everything would be in the next life. Their incompetence and inaction in this life were not their own fault, but karma left from the previous life. What they experienced now was all their destiny.

How ridiculous and tragic!

Yet when everyone in the world you see is like this, when the whole world is full of mediocre fools, you cannot realize this ridiculousness and tragedy itself.

What you know and see becomes the prison that confines your thoughts.

If one’s life is smooth sailing, without experiencing worldly affairs, without clashing with the world they live in, one can never realize the absurdity of certain existences and the lonely suffering of the awakened.

Jian Chou ultimately still disliked this reincarnation.

Long before she decided to go to the Upper Void Immortal Realm, she had already entrusted all the following matters to Zhang Tang.

Destroying reincarnation was the most important among them.

It was an intense tremor that reverberated throughout the entire universe. Any existence with life and consciousness could clearly feel it. As if countless threads were breaking in mid-air, a vast net wide enough to cover the entire universe had vanished in an instant!

Unlike Jian Chou’s almost cruel calmness, the various Saint Immortals from the Upper Void were extremely puzzled when they sensed it. Initially, they thought some accident had occurred in the Origin Realm, but when they noticed the calmness on Jian Chou’s face, their hearts turned cold!

It wasn’t an accident at all!

The last reincarnation in this universe was something she was determined to destroy!

Someone wanted to step forward and question her, but surprisingly didn’t dare.

Everyone had witnessed Jian Chou’s decisive killing just now. No one dared say they could safely question her and emerge unscathed.

Luye Laozu let out another sigh.

She didn’t need to make it so obvious.

Even if she put on a surprised expression at this moment, claiming that the six paths of reincarnation in the Origin Realm were the work of the deities, it wouldn’t be impossible. After all, these deities had already destroyed reincarnation in other parts of the lower realm over the past thousands of years, so “adding” one more wouldn’t matter.

But she did this, undoubtedly openly admitting it.

One must know that people in this world would more easily accept reincarnation being destroyed by deities, these foreign races, than tolerate reincarnation being destroyed by cultivators of their own race.

Yet Jian Chou truly didn’t care about any of this.

Or perhaps, this was the result she wanted.

At the moment reincarnation collapsed, she didn’t look at others’ expressions, nor did she care how they thought or what they thought. She simply raised her hand lightly and swept all other unrelated people out of the Desolate Domain, then turned to look at Xie Buchen.

In the void, the burned-out half-inch of ash was pale white, falling with a rustling sound!

At this instant, the last wisp of incense thread also respectively entered Xie Buchen’s tightly furrowed brow and Pangu’s deep purple divine soul!

Thus, that mass of deep purple actually flew out from the enormous head!

Like a purple rainbow streaking across the sky, with an overwhelmingly irresistible might, it shot toward Xie Buchen’s brow!

And Xie Buchen also opened his eyes at this very moment!

Earlier, when Jian Chou was confronting the nine-headed bird, he had already stopped struggling and attempting to escape, instead sitting cross-legged and closing his eyes.

His blood-stained robes were somewhat disheveled.

But when he sat down, his spine was straight as a rod, his slender fingers resting on both sides of his knees, his accustomed left hand lightly pressing that ink ruler, as if he were calming his mind and regulating his breathing.

However, the instant the ash fell and he opened his eyes, he felt like a fierce beast that had been lurking in darkness, finally striking!

In his eyes was cold madness!

As Pangu’s crushing divine soul attacked him, his figure also suddenly rose tall and straight, shooting toward Pangu’s divine soul like lightning!

The mental states and insights from the previous nine lives were all hidden in that nine-headed bird’s unique heart blood. When ignited, they surged into Xie Buchen’s divine soul like a rushing river.

When the incense burned out, his cultivation had already climbed to the peak of this lifetime.

And he absolutely refused to stretch out his neck for slaughter!

His previous calm and dormancy were only for this moment’s desperate gamble: he actually wanted to counterattack before Pangu devoured him, to fight against Him!

Losing would be no different from being devoured, just death; but if he won, he could gain a thread of life from it!

If one could live, who would want to die?

Especially the current Xie Buchen.

Though his actions and choices were unusually indifferent, in Jian Chou’s eyes, this was the most authentic him.

A person who could lurk in the Extreme Domain for nine lives, secretly comprehending heaven and earth – a heaven-defying rebel against the Way!

Dead City had no cold or heat, no day or night, only that constantly flowing time and gradually accumulating memories.

She truly couldn’t imagine Xie Buchen’s current state of mind.

Born to be unsubmissive, yet forced to be a chess piece?

She admired that he could maintain absolute calm in such a desperate situation just now, and also respected that when facing Pangu’s divine soul devouring, he still chose to face it directly rather than give up dejectedly and wait for the butcher’s knife to fall on his neck.

He wanted to fight a possibility out of this impossibility!

With a thunderous sound, the collision at excessive speed rippled through the void, the sound like muffled thunder rolling.

A flash of ruthlessness swept through Xie Buchen’s eyes!

The ink ruler in his left palm turned into a shadow striking at Pangu’s divine soul, but the instant it touched that mass of purple light, it shattered and dispersed, actually stretching into countless thin black threads that suddenly surged forward, wrapping and binding that enormous purple divine soul!

Each black thread was formed from the rules of this universe, large and small, containing life and death, tides rising and falling. Though they weren’t any actual existence, their restriction on all existence in the universe was the greatest.

Even Pangu’s divine soul at this moment couldn’t escape!

“Creak, creak…”

The black threads of rules tightened, instantly compressing the originally enormous mass into an extremely small purple light point!

Clearly as fine as a gnat, yet the aura it emanated seemed capable of encompassing the entire universe!

The threads of rules could bind it but couldn’t stop its momentum.

Moreover, Xie Buchen never intended to block its momentum.

Thus, one could only see this extremely tiny purple light draw a thin line through the void, like a drop of rain, dotting into his brow!

The ancestral aperture was where a cultivator’s divine soul resided.

The purple light, upon entering, was like an ink drop in water, madly spreading toward every corner of Xie Buchen’s spiritual platform, suppressing his own soul!

And that aura that penetrated heaven and earth also enveloped him at this moment.

At this moment, he was in the void, glancing at Jian Chou!

The instant their gazes met, the magnificent Desolate Domain split in half!

From this one look, Jian Chou actually saw two people, two kinds of gazes: one ancient and silent, having witnessed seas become mulberry fields, mountain peaks become deep abysses; the other forbearing and mad, like a cicada that had lurked underground for seventeen years, a falcon flying alone through wind and snow!

In another flash, he had already reached Jian Chou’s presence!

In his divine soul was a battle between heaven and man, but his actions didn’t fall behind by half a beat—

No matter what, kill Jian Chou first!

Xie Buchen was truly too clear-headed. In this desperate situation with no way out, all he could choose was to stake everything on one throw!

Strike first to gain advantage, confront Pangu’s divine soul, use all the rules he had comprehended to bind it, temporarily limiting Pangu’s divine soul’s power so that his own soul, having received nine lives’ worth of mental state insights, could at least maintain a state not inferior to Pangu’s.

And Jian Chou had earlier openly spoken the three words “kill Pangu”!

This proved she would become the common enemy of both him and Pangu!

So even if the divine souls hadn’t yet merged, hadn’t even determined victory or defeat, he could still, in this special moment of being about to perish but not yet perished, combine his own power with Pangu’s to strike at Jian Chou and take her life first!

Only by killing her first could he sever his final and only attachment in this life, letting his mental state thoroughly reach perfection, gaining the last straw to turn around and devour Pangu!

This was his only chance.

Also his final chance!

But at this moment, what he saw in Jian Chou’s eyes was complete clarity. There was no unexpected terror, no panic facing a life-and-death crisis, only that deep pity that could look into the bottom of one’s heart with a single glance…

And shallow sorrow!

The past nine lives had become ashes. He bore no karma, yet this life’s Jian Chou was an accident that arose because of him.

They understood each other.

No matter how deep the schemes, between them no words were needed, because they saw too clearly.

If one ignored their respective positions and hatred, they would be true confidants.

Even… fellow travelers on the Way!

Too much flashed through his mind in an instant, even including the puzzling confusion of how Jian Chou could set up this trap, but none of this was faster than the attack he condensed!

His body like a azure bird, his divine bearing lofty and clear!

Raising his hand, he seemed to grasp the galaxy in darkness, shaking down a sky of dark stars. Myriad stars all trembled at his curled fingertips, then new ink energy condensed into black threads and was forged into an ink ruler identical to the previous one!

The only difference was the annihilation this ink ruler brought!

If the previous ink ruler was something Xie Buchen had comprehended through chance and coincidence, then this current ink ruler was his and Pangu’s staff for measuring heaven and earth, dominating the universe!

When the ruler rose, cold wind arose.

This wind slashed out from the blunt edge of the ink ruler, yet like a sharp blade, it split the Desolate Domain beneath their feet, tearing it to pieces!

Fragments of the Desolate Domain, Pangu’s shell, overwhelming black threads of rules!

Surging like a tide, wild as a tornado!

Rising from all directions, at the moment Xie Buchen’s ink ruler in his hand slashed toward Jian Chou, they covered Jian Chou like a flood!

The current Xie Buchen was the strongest Xie Buchen; the current Pangu was still the immortal Pangu who had seized the universe’s origin!

How could one kill an immortal existence?

The answer was: Cast aside all impossibilities, and what remains must be possible!

Jian Chou stood in place, actually not moving a single step.

As the flood rolled toward her and the ink ruler slashed at her, she raised her gaze, projecting not one look but thousands upon thousands of looks!

Raising her sword also seemed to create thousands upon thousands of afterimages.

It looked like she was holding a sword, but to those who had been expelled from the battle circle and were watching from afar, it seemed like each afterimage held different weapons and took different defensive stances!

Completely indistinguishable – was this one Jian Chou or all Jian Chou at this moment?

The flood instantly surged toward her, and the ink ruler almost simultaneously slashed down!

Countless overlapping shadows within Jian Chou’s body were slashed away. Some directly dissipated into heaven and earth, returning to chaos; some became bloody masses, becoming part of the flood; a few intact ones all fell from Jian Chou’s body, fell from the void, dropping onto the dim, lightless stars in the boundless galaxy below!

Piling into mountains of corpses!

Flowing into seas of blood!

Everyone looked closely and saw that each corpse was Jian Chou’s, all Jian Chou who had died under Xie Buchen’s strike!

Only the final shadow remained!

Xie Buchen’s ruler cut through the void, about to reach her brow at this moment, completely annihilating her.

But only then did he notice that her hand no longer held Yixiantian!

In its place was an ordinary sword that made his heart shock!

How was this possible?

His mind exploded in chaos!

Xie Buchen clearly remembered that before ascending, he had placed this sword in the hidden realm of Qingfeng Nunnery. It was absolutely impossible for the ascended Jian Chou to obtain it!

“Actually, the last two lines of the River Chart originally had words…”

A whisper, wanting him to die understanding.

The instant Xie Buchen saw this sword, Jian Chou had already thrust it directly into his chest, so easily it required no effort, not even encountering half the resistance it should have!

Because certain things in the sword were originally part of him!

How the world toys with people!

Though the two of them could indeed be called fellow travelers and confidants, unfortunately they followed the same Way but different methods. Combined with how the world toys with people, ultimately only one could control their own destiny!

The other was destined to die for the Way.

Sanchi Qingfeng, bright as autumn water.

Jian Chou’s fingers were slender and pale, yet seemed touched with the coolness of old times’ misty rain. She gazed at him with near indifference. All past tender affection and confrontational opposition quietly dissipated at this moment.

Was she ultimately passionate or passionless?

So the sword point entering the chest was actually this cold, like a block of solid ice, freezing one to shivering.

Fresh blood, red mixed with purple, soaked through his clothing.

Some long-absent things quietly crawled back into his body along the blade, along the coldness.

Jian Chou suddenly withdrew the sword, blood instantly spraying!

Xie Buchen opened his mouth, but his voice was drowned by the great wind.

He desperately stretched out his hand, wanting to grasp something, but grasped only a piece of fluttering cloth that blinked past his palm in the next moment.

Just like when he had raised his sword against Jian Chou years ago, she had fallen in a pool of blood reaching out, unable to grasp his clothing…

Everything was empty and hollow.

He couldn’t control his downward fall!

At this moment, Jian Chou met his gaze. Inexplicable sorrow surged from her heart, and a tear finally fell from her eyes: “The path to Penglai Mountain is not far! Holy Lord, take care…”