A thick war horn released a deep, primordial divine sound as the expeditionary army set sail, shattering tens of thousands of years of tranquility. Surrounding each mothership were clusters of warships, dense and overwhelming, blanketing the sky.

Each of the twelve great royal clans dispatched at least four motherships, with some deploying as many as seven. The grand fleet surged forth, radiating sacred might as it cleaved through the heavens and vanished one after another into the massive star gates beyond the domain.

This was a war spanning star systems!

Amid the thunderous roar of ancient war horns, vast forests of steel gleamed with an icy luster, blotting out the sky and pressing down upon the heavens as they sailed toward the far shore of the starry expanse.

Many came to see them off. Various spacecraft shot into the sky, and many powerful cultivators ascended with their physical bodies alone. The descendants and womenfolk of the great royal clans scattered flowers through the void as though sending heroes off to glory.

“I’ll wait for you to return!” a beautiful young woman sent a voice transmission to a young man.

“Haha… go claim a vast territory and forge a brilliant kingdom! My children, I await your good news!” An ancestor-level saint came to see them off as well, his surging aura reverberating through the heavens, causing the entire star domain to resonate.

“Warriors who expand our borders, we await your triumphant return!” The friends and families of the twelve great royal clans offered their blessings.

The warships stood like a forest, gleaming with the cold, metallic luster unique to steel. The morale of the expeditionary warriors was high; all of them were waiting for glory to descend upon them as they carved out a brilliant future.

At last, the massive star gates slowly faded, all the warships swallowed within them and vanishing completely as they entered another resplendent sea of stars.

The war of conquest had begun!

The vast universe, the boundless starry sky — its grandeur was beyond comparison, without end or limit.

Above, below, and in all four directions is the cosmos; from ancient times to the present is eternity. Humanity could only define it this way, for its immensity and profundity, its depth and terror, could not be measured.

Darkness was the eternal theme. Even with countless stars scattered across the great black curtain, they seemed insignificant — mere decorations. The cold and Desolate stretched without end, far crueler and more terrifying than anyone could imagine.

The first spatial jump went smoothly. They emerged in a desolate void — a dead zone without even the faintest trace of life.

Nan Yao’s star coordinates, recorded in the most ancient and simple manner of the demon race, contained no errors. After complex restoration and decryption, they had compiled an accurate route map.

“Very good. Proceed to the next spatial jump. Barring any accidents, we will need to make over four hundred jumps in total before reaching that mysterious ancient life star!”

Ye Fan heard this and felt a tremendous surge of emotion. It seemed that when he had changed course midway, he hadn’t actually been moving laterally — reaching the Eternal Realm had actually been a great leap forward in a longitudinal direction.

He remembered clearly: stepping onto the five-colored altar and descending upon one unfamiliar dead star after another, the total count had been fewer than a hundred.

The second jump, the third… the eighty-eighth spatial jump. Everything remained smooth and steady, as the vast fleet of motherships led their endless iron warships forward, carrying with them the might to sweep across star domains.

When the eighty-ninth crossing of the heavens came and all the warships emerged from the great star gate, an eerie fluctuation appeared ahead — alarm sirens erupted inside every mothership.

“A spacecraft has been detected ahead — battered and broken, drifting motionless in the cold starry sky, indistinguishable from cosmic dust.”

An image appeared on the main screen. It showed a warship some fifteen hundred zhang in length — immense and imposing, nearly rivaling a mothership in scale.

“It belongs to our Eternal Star Domain. We do not know which family it belonged to, yet it was somehow destroyed out here. Send a warship to investigate what happened.”

A silver spacecraft launched, tracing a streak of light, and in the blink of an eye it arrived before the enormous vessel. It circled it to conduct observations, then entered through one of the massive breaches in the hull.

“Ahh…”

Suddenly, harrowing screams rang out. Every warship received their signals simultaneously — the faces of those who had entered the ship were twisting in agony, and then they exploded one by one, blood and flesh spattering across the screen.

Then came a strange cracking sound, cutting off all contact. Silence fell there, deathly quiet.

“Can someone tell me what happened?” Inside the mothership from the Primordial Demon Star Sea, the Wang-level lord of the Mo Family demanded coldly, his voice like ice. The lost spacecraft had belonged to their clan.

No one could answer. Many things in the universe defied explanation. The boundless void and the ancient heavens were vast beyond measure — a single lifetime was not enough to explore them all.

Those who had spent their lives sailing through the cosmos knew well that events a hundred times, even ten thousand times stranger than this had occurred before, beyond all comprehension.

“Open fire!”

A Wang-level lord in another mothership issued a decisive order. With this many people assembled here — and that was without counting the ancient saint mechas — just the motherships alone numbered fifty or sixty. Full firepower could obliterate even a saint in an instant.

Moreover, on this expedition, each great clan had ancient sages accompanying them as the rear guard, leaving them without fear of anything!

“Boom!”

A beam of light cleaved through the darkness, cutting the cold and ominous giant ship open to reveal everything within.

In the next instant, something eerie happened. People aboard many warships cried out in alarm as various signals were nearly cut off, and the spacecraft showed signs of losing control.

Within the wreckage of that broken vessel, a vast bank of mist appeared — gray and heavy as lead clouds. It actually caused the fabric of the cosmic void to crack and fracture. All at once it expanded outward, obscuring the sun, moon, and stars, and shrouding the void, completely engulfing an entire mothership along with the dozens upon hundreds of warships surrounding it.

“This is bad — it’s Devil Mist! Retreat quickly, avoid it!”

Someone cried out in alarm. This substance was the bane of any spacecraft. Wherever it passed, warships were corroded beyond recognition; even the Grand Dao inscriptions could not hold it back.

“This is one of the most dangerous substances in the universe — even ancient sages must avoid it, for it can devour and destroy all things. Fortunately, we only encountered such a small pocket of it. Otherwise, the trouble would be immense. Quickly, summon the sages to act!”

No one could fully explain what Devil Mist actually was. Sometimes it exhibited powerful electromagnetic properties; at other times it manifested as a destructive divine energy. Its nature was unpredictable and ever-changing.

It was extraordinarily rare in the universe, classified as a legendary and terrifying phenomenon. It was undeniably horrifying, yet it was difficult to determine whether it possessed autonomous will or was a living entity.

Four ancient sages acted in unison. Tens of millions of chains of Order and divine Dao markings flowed and interlocked, forming a vast cage that confined all the mist to its center, then began refining and erasing it continuously.

When only a final trace remained, one of the sages opened his mouth and expelled a divine crystal treasure furnace — brilliant and luminous — whose lid swung open and forcibly drew in the remaining mist.

Existences of this caliber naturally did not lack for holy artifacts. Some of these weapons were relics left behind by ancient ascetic cultivators, their might unparalleled and equally suited for their use.

“Take it back for thorough study. We need to determine what this substance truly is.”

In the distance lay a terrifying scene. Dozens upon hundreds of escort warships had all been ravaged, lifeless and still — clearly not a single person had survived. The mothership at the center also had its Dao markings dimmed, its hull torn open, with not one survivor. That entire mothership cluster had been utterly devoured and destroyed.

A setback before they had even properly begun. Not far into the journey, they had already lost a priceless mothership, and the mood grew heavy and oppressive.

“Anything can happen in the universe — this is nothing to dwell on. If you wish to wage war across star systems, you must be prepared for sacrifice. We continue onward.” An ancient sage said coldly.

The people of the twelve great royal clans were long accustomed to venturing through the cosmic sea. They naturally understood such cruelty and had encountered things far more terrible than this. Thus, they did not sink too deep into grief — they adjusted swiftly and pressed forward.

The road ahead was considerably longer now. Nan Yao’s ancient coordinates grew increasingly cryptic and difficult to interpret. The initial calculations and deductions were no longer reliable and required repeated verification. Many wrong paths were taken, demanding constant correction along the way.

This process consumed both time and effort. They deduced, calculated, scouted, and verified — and in the blink of an eye, five months had passed, yet they had only covered half the distance.

Suddenly, a piercing alarm shrieked to life. Every spacecraft shuddered as a terrifying wave of Grand Dao fluctuation swept through them, and many smaller ships were hit with violent impacts, rapidly disintegrating.

“Enemy attack! Combat power comparable to an ancient sage level — an unidentified creature charging from the depths of the universe!”

It was a colossal beast, like a small mountain, hundreds of zhang tall. Its body was covered in blood-red scaled armor, and even its eyes were blood-red. Powerful and robust as a wild bull, it bore a pair of dragon horns and extended a razor-sharp claw like that of a great black roc, tearing directly toward a mothership and destroying many warships in its path.

It released a mental shockwave that shook the universe — its roar alone was enough to shatter one’s soul. Ye Fan was deeply startled. The vastness of the universe was indeed wondrous: in this boundless dead star domain, a living being had appeared, one that rivaled an ancient sage.

“What kind of creature is this, where did it come from, and why is it attacking us?”

“It is a fierce beast that has reached the saint level. A year ago, one of our Zhao Family’s motherships passed through this region on an exploratory mission and encountered it — gravely wounding its cub. It pursued us across many star domains, and now we have encountered it here again.”

Without needing to think too deeply, one could understand: the Zhao Clan had nearly killed the offspring of an ancient sage-level beast, forging a great enmity. Now that they had met again, it naturally would not let them go.

All the warships surrounding that mothership were destroyed by a single mental roar from the beast — shattered and exploding one by one. The powerful mothership itself was torn at, cracks appearing across its hull.

“Boom!”

The mothership’s protective light barrier expanded outward and finally managed to shake the beast off. A mothership capable of withstanding a saint — that claim was no exaggeration. At this moment it demonstrated true combat power, emanating brilliant light.

The saints accompanying the expedition emerged, and this time a full eight of them appeared at once. Each radiated world-destroying fluctuations that caused the entire star-filled cosmos to tremble. Black holes formed in clusters, and the stars themselves seemed on the verge of falling.

This ancient and primordial aberrant beast of a lost age opened its maw and roared, its blood-red eyes flashing with ferocious light. Knowing that engaging them would mean death, it directly tore open the void and fled.

Yet before leaving, it swiped a claw downward — reducing over a hundred small spacecraft to cosmic dust in an instant, utterly unable to withstand even that passing blow.

Ye Fan marveled inwardly. Traveling through this dark universe, they had encountered such a solitary and terrifying saint-level being. The boundless star domains were indeed deeply fearsome and endlessly mysterious.

“There’s no need to concern ourselves with it. We continue onward.”

The vast mothership fleet performed another spatial jump, with two saints guarding the rear to prevent the saint-level beast from following them in.

Time passed quickly. In the blink of an eye, half a year had gone by. The expeditionary army, combining the route maps traveled by the pair of siblings from the Purple Cloud Royal Clan during their time being lost, carefully deduced and calculated the coordinates Nan Yao had left behind. The path ahead slowly became clearer — their destination might soon be within reach!

Half a month later, a warship that had been scouting and verifying the route ahead suddenly retreated at full speed as though frightened. The captain’s voice came through trembling as he reported something terrifying.

“We’ve found them. Ten thousand years have passed… and they are still here. Eternal, unchanging!”

Very quickly, everyone aboard the vast mothership fleet was struck with dread. They, too, saw the terrifying image — a spectacle so immense that every powerful being was left with their hair standing on end, and even the supremely exalted saints turned pale as snow.