This was a provocation—and a display of contempt. A challenger from the present age, separated by countless generations, had issued his defiance. The smile on the face of the Underworld’s overlord did not fade as he approached from the distance, yet the killing intent radiating from him grew several shades heavier.
Black yin-mist spread in all directions. This entire cosmos trembled. A massive cyan claw tore through the haze, gradually revealing the true form beneath—a sight so grotesque and terrifying it sent chills down the spine.
The Lord of the Yanluo Palace stood ten zhang tall, his entire body a deep cyan, covered in a dense layer of fine scales that gleamed with a cold, forbidding light. He bore a human torso, yet his head was enormous, his face blanketed in the same fine cyan scales. Crimson hair grew from his skull, and between those blood-colored strands rose eight massive horns—running from his temples across the crown of his skull down to the back of his head, filling every inch with jagged, fearsome protrusions.
Behind him dragged a colossal tail, itself ten zhang in length, cyan-scaled and cold, shaped like the tail of a crocodile. His feet were like an elephant’s—thick, heavy, and powerful—each step causing the void beneath him to rumble and groan. His two hands were a pair of cyan dragon claws.
What manner of creature was this? Everyone was dumbstruck. They had never seen anything like it—something so strange and terrifying that it made the so-called primordial beasts and savage tribes seem tame by comparison.
“This is a true Underworld bloodline!” The Woodcutter Elder’s expression shifted with emotion, and he could not stop himself from sighing.
Many at the scene were bewildered. Only a small fraction grasped the meaning of those words—and those who did paled on the spot, stumbling involuntarily backward, unable to suppress the fear rising within them.
“A being born from the Sea of Extreme Yin Corpses—not a corpse itself, not a spiritually aware ancient skeleton, but a true living creature!” someone said.
With that said, all the powerful cultivators present understood. Every one of them went cold. They had heard legends of this—and now, without exception, their expressions changed.
This was a Congenital Yin Spirit—not one formed through posthumous corpse transformation, but one born naturally from the world itself. That made it all the more terrifying.
It feared neither thunder nor fire. It was immune to heavenly tribulations. Conventional methods of slaying corpse-beings were utterly useless against this kind of creature. Most critically, it possessed a frightening capacity for growth—it was, by nature, a sovereign of the underworld.
Throughout history, the number of naturally born Yin Spirits that had ever appeared could be counted on one hand. Every single one had risen to become a peerless, unrivaled existence—monstrous in nature, defiant of heaven—virtually impossible for any holy power in the world to destroy.
This kind of evil spirit was born amidst endless mountains of corpses. Only the Underworld could accumulate such vast seas of bones and cadavers—tens or even hundreds of billions piled high—and only from such depths could a Congenital Yin Spirit emerge.
The Yanluo of the present age!
With that realization fully understood, the crowd broke into cold sweats from head to toe. Such a being, by its very existence, represented the cycle of reincarnation itself—capable of sending a person directly on to their next life, driving their existence toward its final end.
“Heh heh…” He laughed—cold, mirthless—and strode forward. Two beams of eerie light shot from his eyes. Wherever those yin beams passed, swaths of celestial soldiers and generals crumbled into dry bones, their flesh and life essence evaporating without a trace.
Boom!
Ye Fan launched a punch forward with devastating force. Simultaneously, two divine radiances surged from within his Celestial Origin Eyes, bursting forth with a brilliance that dimmed even the sun, moon, and stars—suppressing everything before him.
There was no denying it—his ocular power was nothing short of heaven-defying. He had developed it entirely on his own in this age, forging a path no one before him had ever walked. Against the yin soldiers of the Underworld, it was devastatingly effective.
The Lord of the Yanluo Palace could withstand it. But behind him, the vast ocean of yin soldiers and yin generals could not—they fell in swaths, one ancient skeleton after another detonating under the power of that sacred force.
“Let me handle this!”
The Woodcutter Elder stepped forward and blocked Ye Fan’s path. This Yanluo was far too terrifying—a Congenital Yin Spirit who had reached the very peak of the Quasi-Emperor Ninth Heavenly Layer. Who in all the present age could suppress him? Even the Elder would be gambling with his life in such a fight. Without a trump card, he, too, might fall.
Clang!
The aura of his woodcutter’s blade surged skyward like a reversed river of stars. The entire area turned blindingly white. A biting killing intent rocked the vast starfield. The Woodcutter Elder had made his move against the Yanluo of the present age.
“All that exists is illusion. Only death is the true revelation.” The Lord of the Yanluo Palace spoke softly—calm, composed—as his two hands moved in slow arcs. In that instant, the fabric of heaven and earth was rent apart. Mountains of corpses and seas of bones surfaced, encircling the cosmos.
The Woodcutter Elder’s blade aura was formidable, yet it was absorbed entirely into this world of death—dissolved and scattered. The murky yin energy drifted like bone dust in the air, bone-chilling and sharp as a blade against flesh.
One by one, white skeletons rose to their feet, devouring the blade aura and life essence, feeding their own strength, then advancing forward. This was a realm of death.
In the cosmos, every great star had been transformed into a skull. The atmosphere was saturated with the reek of mortality—a desolate, forsaken killing ground, cold and sinister. This eerie world ensnared a peerless master.
The Woodcutter Elder’s expression grew grave. His eyes shifted and flowed, as though a thousand years had passed in an instant. He slowly pushed his woodcutter’s blade forward. A world began to open along the blade’s edge—primordial divine beings and ancient gods burst forth from the newly cleaved primal expanse, rampaging through the death realm.
“Roar!” The battle cry shook this sea of dry bones.
The blade reached its apex—splitting the heavens and opening the earth, conjuring the sun, moon, and stars, manifesting an entirely new great cosmos. The Woodcutter Elder wielded this heaven-opening vitality to oppose the Yanluo Lord’s death realm.
Boom!
This was a clash of supreme laws at their very limit. Both worlds collapsed. Stars exploded. A great cataclysm erupted. Both men were sent flying.
Hanging rivers of stars crumbled into dust. Endless skulls and stars shattered. When it was over, only two figures stood facing each other.
“Return to the cycle of reincarnation.”
The Lord of the Yanluo Palace’s voice was quiet, but utterly cold. His eyes were hollow voids—and then two dull gray beams suddenly erupted from them, radiating deathly energy of incomparable density, relentlessly stripping away the vitality of everything in the surrounding starfield.
In the distance, those with comparatively weaker cultivation directly dissolved into dried bones. Flesh shriveled. They became husks.
The gray beams of death coalesced into a doorway—a gateway to reincarnation—aimed at the Woodcutter Elder, seeking to draw him in, reduce him to ashes of history, and end his life.
Dong. Dong.
The Woodcutter Elder swung his blade. Each time it fell, it rang out like a thunderclap. Waves of dense yang energy radiated outward, branding one symbol after another into the void, guarding and suppressing this stretch of sky.
Boom!
The Reincarnation Gate exploded—it had failed to swallow the Woodcutter Elder. Yet both combatants had sustained severe damage. They staggered backward, their bodies drenched in blood.
Two supreme masters clashing—their battle shook the cosmos!
On the other side, Ye Fan had not been idle. He unleashed a relentless wave of killing blows, sweeping in all directions, holding nothing back—his attack power earthshaking.
Wherever his Celestial Origin Eyes swept, the yin spirits detonated, reduced to powder. His pupils blazed like two torches burning, strikingly conspicuous in this frigid cosmos.
Meanwhile, a division of the Heavenly Court’s soldiers began chanting the Scripture of Crossing Over. The effects were now becoming apparent—runes blanketed the sky, suppressing that tide of black yin soldiers like a wave of dark water. They cried out in anguish, unable to unleash their full savage ferocity.
Ye Fan killed a powerful combat slave—one who was a forerunner on the path to Quasi-Emperor—crushing him to death with the Cauldron of All Things’ Maternal Qi, the corpse reduced to a pale bone imprint that sank into the cauldron’s wall.
This battle had shown him just how terrifying the Underworld truly was. He had nearly sustained an injury from that encounter—and there was more than one such combat slave.
After tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years of accumulation, the Underworld was never short of Quasi-Emperor skeletal remains. Buried in yin graves, nourished for hundreds of thousands of years, once they became spiritually aware and were reforged, they could once again manifest the divine might that had once shaken all the world.
“Over there…”
The old man with yellow teeth shouted and gestured for Ye Fan to reinforce another part of the battlefield. The bearded Quasi-Emperor was covered in blood—during his great duel with the Sun and Moon Divine General, he had been ambushed by an Underworld combat slave, sustaining heavy wounds. He was clearly on the verge of being overwhelmed.
The Sun and Moon Divine General spotted Ye Fan closing in. His eyes went wide at once. The energy radiating from his body surged explosively—his blood roared like an ocean. A blazing great sun materialized above his head while a heavenly moon rotated behind his back. He was like a god, like a demon.
“I’ll take him.”
Ye Fan stepped in to relieve the bearded man. Right from the start, he deployed one of the secret arts within the Solar Immortal Scripture to counter the Sun and Moon Divine General’s Great Solar Divine Fist—it was a true case of diamond cutting diamond.
Crack!
Golden lightning cracked and danced, spreading outward from this point toward all four corners of the cosmos. Those below this level had already retreated long ago—they had no way to withstand forces like these.
Pop. Pop.
One star after another was struck by golden lightning and detonated, blooming like flowers of the underworld—dazzling for a heartbeat, then plunging immediately back into darkness, extinguished forever.
“You killed Kun Tian. How utterly merciless.” The Sun and Moon Divine General spoke with grief.
“Merciless? You use that word in the middle of a fight to the death—doesn’t that strike you as foolish?” Ye Fan looked at him calmly.
“I’m not calling you merciless—I mean it was merciless for him. He did not die at the hands of the unbeatable divine general of the Ancient Heavenly Court who stood at the peak of the Ninth Heavenly Layer—instead, he was struck down by a descendant from a later age at only the Sixth Heavenly Layer. That outcome is unbearable.” The Sun and Moon Divine General laughed with desolation.
“He did not die in vain. You will see for yourself whether dying at my hands is worth something.” Ye Fan’s entire body began to radiate light. He pushed every last ounce of his potential to its limit and walked toward him. His vast blood energy stirred the countless realms across all directions—wondrous phenomena manifested in abundance, encircling him at their center. Ten thousand streams of immortal light surrounded him. He was like the Celestial Emperor descending to the mortal realm.
“If we were at our peak—if we were back in the Primordial Age—what would you have used to fight us?!” The Sun and Moon Divine General roared. His body swelled. Too much of his former power could not be expressed in this state, and he felt helpless before that reality.
“If I had been born in the Primordial Age, you would not have existed. If we shared the same realm and the same generation, there would be no need to fight at all.” Ye Fan’s reply was ruthless—utterly without mercy—and it shattered every last shred of the Sun and Moon Divine General’s pride.
In truth, the Sun and Moon Divine General already knew it himself. The young man standing before him was too powerful. If they had genuinely fought as equals, in the same era, they were destined to be nothing more than bones along this man’s path to becoming a great emperor.
He had seen two people like this. To be born in the same age as such a person was a kind of tragedy—no one could oppose them.
Yet he truly could not accept this reality. Once they had been the Primordial Divinities, the Eight Division Generals, lords who commanded the world—beings who had overawed the entire Primordial Age and left a blazing legacy across history. Was it to end like this?
He had once been invincible under heaven. He had once been crowned in glory. The entire world had prostrated at their feet. They had been the greatest heroes of their era.
And yet now the curtain was falling.
Their pride and dignity were written into the ancient histories—radiant across ten thousand ages. Never had they imagined a day like this: that a young master from a later age would extinguish all their glory, cause them to depart from the world in obscurity, and bring an end to every last one of them.
“Kill!”
The Sun and Moon Divine General erupted. His blood burned. His divine soul surged. The bones of his forehead cracked. He would hold nothing back—even if death came the moment this battle ended, he would fight with honor. He refused to be snuffed out in humiliation.
The outcome was already decided. There was no suspense.
In those wondrous phenomena, an Immortal King sat cross-legged. The golden forbidden sea boiled. A powerful silhouette stood unshakeable—and tore the Sun and Moon Divine General in two. Blood sprayed. That silhouette walked forward bathed in blood, like a supreme demon lord.
“Everything I am belongs to the Primordial Age. I should never have come into this world…”
The Sun and Moon Divine General had wished to die in glorious battle in the Primordial Age—to be cut down by the divine generals of the Ancient Heavenly Court. He had not wished to be slain by a young man who had risen from a later era.