In every single one of the countless memory worlds of Grand Emperor Netherflame, it was raining. And it fell on all the people who had entered those worlds. That included both Lin Kun and the western Devilbird cultivators. No one could evade it.
With the passage of time, the rain fell harder. All of the worlds became filled with a torrential downpour. Within the sheets of rain, it was possible to see a dim world of death and burial mounds. Eventually, that world overtook everything. It was like a devouring. All of the memory worlds... became burial mounds!
***
Xu Qing opened his eyes and wondered where he was. He was lying down, and everything was pitch black. It felt humid. He couldn’t use his cultivation base to cast his senses out. All he could do was grope around and use his sense of touch to try to identify his surroundings.
All he felt around him was cold wood. Around him. Beneath him. It was all the same. He was in a very narrow but somewhat long space, so confined that he couldn’t sit up.
“This is a coffin!” he murmured. It was obviously a serious situation.
It had just started raining on the barren planet where I found Eldest Brother. It was a gruish rain. I remember that sheets of rain formed, within which a world was vaguely visible. That world had a ton of burial mounds in it.... Does that mean I'm in one of those burial mounds? I suppose my cultivation base senses have been sealed. And presumably... so has my entire cultivation base. In that case, who am I supposed to be? Netherflame?
He put his hand up to his face to feel its features. His pupils constricted. He wasn’t Netherflame, nor was he Sir Blood Dust.
He had just felt his own real face!
This is a very gruish world. He clenched his right hand into a fist and then punched the coffin lid above him. The blow caused the coffin to shiver, and a crack appeared. However, only an instant later, a sealing power swept forth and sealed the crack.
When Xu Qing reached out and felt the lid, he decided not to waste energy on any more blows. Inside his sea of consciousness, his godly authority of fate stirred, and the carving knife appeared. He slashed it at the coffin lid. The result was a sound like a mirror shattering.
The sense of sealing dispersed by a great deal, which restored much of Xu Qing’s cultivation base and its senses. The carving knife of fate had paramount godly authority personhood, which meant that very few sealing powers in existence could stand up to it.
Xu Qing immediately launched a second blow. A muffled boom echoed out. The boom filled the coffin, then pierced out into the world beyond.
***
RUMBLE!
RUMBLE!
RUMBLE!
The sky was pitch black. Rain was falling. And a muffled boom brought a bit of life to the previously deathly still night. A second boom echoed out.
Lands and sky alike were all as dark as could be. However, it was just barely possible to see that the ground was covered with burial mounds. They were seemingly endless. It was a graveyard. A cold, sinister feeling filled the area.
One of the burial mounds was issuing loud booms. Then, all of a sudden, the grave mound began to crumble in on itself. A hand shot out from the dirt! If a timid mortal saw what was happening, they would be shocked to the core. In fact, even in the cultivation world, this wasn’t something commonly seen.
Before long, Xu Qing was crawling out of the dirt. Once out in the open, he looked around vigilantly at the rain-soaked graveyard.
All he saw was darkness and graves. There was something very gruish about the darkness. His divine sense couldn’t go very far, making only about 300 meters visible in each direction. The grave mounds looked vaguely like evil ghosts.
Xu Qing’s vigilance grew more intense. As he was surveying his surroundings, he heard booming sounds off in the distance. Eyes narrowing, he started moving, albeit cautiously, in the direction of the sound. Eventually, the source of the sound was within the range of his divine sense. He stopped moving.
The booming grew louder, until finally, a grave mound caved in and golden light shot out of it. Astonishingly, a little golden rat was visible within the golden light.
It wasn’t Xu Qing’s rat. And it looked like it had just been born and was trying to chew on space. Unfortunately, the space here was very difficult for a newborn golden rat to chew. After gnawing a few times, the little rat started to get anxious.
The sight of the rat caused Xu Qing to breathe a sigh of relief. He hurried over to the grave mound. As he neared, he saw Erniu climbing out into the open.
“Where the hell am I?” Erniu said, spitting out dirt. He was back to his normal appearance, although he was still bedraggled, and also looked quite depressed.
As far as Erniu was concerned, he had just worked very hard to conquer that planet, and had acquired a legacy of death. But in his moment of triumph, he had suddenly been devoured by that strange rain. Normally speaking, he devoured other people! Rare were the occasions when he was devoured. And that wasn’t to mention that the culprit was some rain....
Erniu was obviously not very pleased with the situation. Upon noticing Xu Qing approaching, he climbed out more quickly.
By the time Xu Qing arrived, Erniu was out in the open. After straightening out his hair, he stuck his chin up and prepared to speak. But then... his face fell. Xu Qing suddenly lurched to a halt, and his face also fell. Together, the two of them looked up.
A terrifying pressure had appeared out of nowhere, and it was weighing down on them. The pressure caused all of the grave mounds to tremble, and even the rain was forced to stop falling.
Xu Qing and Erniu were shaken to the core.
The intensity of the pressure surpassed that of a Smoldering God, and was definitely on the level of an Imperial Sovereign. And not an ordinary Imperial Sovereign. The pressure caused Xu Qing and Erniu to gasp for breath. They were rooted in place.
Something was now floating overhead. It was a shocking head, some tens of thousands of meters wide! Its features were vaguely human, but its skin was gray, and its eyes were extremely cold.
Hovering as it was above Xu Qing and Erniu, it blocked the rain. And it was looking down at them.
The two of them were minuscule compared to the head. Like bugs. Thus, it was no surprise that the gruish head quickly looked away from them to assess the surrounding graveyard. But then something happened that caused the scalps of Xu Qing and Erniu to go numb.
The head opened its mouth and inhaled deeply. That inhalation unleashed a terrifying gravitational force in the area. Unending soil rose up into the air. Innumerable rain drops flew toward the mouth.
It was as if it were eating.
The earth rose up, revealing coffins, and they also started flying into the mouth. Great crunching sounds rang out as the gruish head snapped them up. Strangely, no matter how much the head put into its mouth, it all vanished, as if the interior of the head was a bottomless pit.
The trembling Xu Qing and Erniu could do little more than fight back against the gravitational force. It took all their strength just to remain in one spot. Gradually, they lost the ability to hold firm.
As the crisis built, Xu Qing looked at Erniu. Erniu knew exactly what that look meant. Without any hesitation, he shouted, “Awaken, my warriors!”
A gray mist erupted from Erniu, causing the power of death to arrive. The grave mounds that had been thrown into chaos by the gravitational force suddenly trembled, and corpses started crawling out of the coffins. There were a lot of them. Because of the gravitational force, the corpses didn’t need any orders from Erniu. They immediately shot toward the huge mouth of that head.
In a very short period of time, the head devoured over 10,000 of them. Apparently, the head had gotten enough, as it started chewing. The gravitational force disappeared and the head blurred and vanished.
Xu Qing breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Erniu. Erniu’s eyes gleamed with lingering fear as he looked back. Both could see how the other was shaken.
It had truly been a moment of danger. They had only just arrived in this world and had already encountered an extremely gruish and terrifying entity. They could only imagine what other dangers lurked in the rain.
“On the one hand, the more dangerous a place is, the more good stuff will be there. However... Little Ah Qing, I feel like the best thing to do is find the empress as quickly as possible.”
As crazy as his Eldest Brother was, even he was thinking the same thing as Xu Qing. Xu Qing didn’t need any convincing. He nodded, and the two of them prepared to start moving. Unfortunately, that was when the terrifying pressure suddenly returned.
The head was back. It was floating right above the two of them. This time, it was closer than before. And it was staring at the two of them.
Before either of them could do a thing, the head inhaled. This time, the gravitational force didn’t spread out widely. Instead, it was focused directly on the two of them.
In the blink of an eye, and before Xu Qing and Erniu could fight back, they were sucked up. However, the head didn’t devour them. Instead, it just brought Xu Qing and Erniu up to it, bound them so they couldn’t move, and then flew off with them in tow. The land screamed past below. The rain did nothing to block the path of the head.
Xu Qing and Erniu couldn't move at all. They could only exchange terrified glances and try to think of ways to escape. Unfortunately, the head was just too powerful, so nothing they did could affect it.
As their anxiety mounted, the head reached another graveyard, where it suddenly stopped moving. Then it exhaled.
Xu Qing and Erniu were thrown down into the graveyard.
Next, the head opened its mouth. The widespread gravitational force appeared again, and the head looked down coldly at them.
Apparently, it was telling them it was ready to start eating.
Deathblade's Thoughts
"The chapters are getting shorter!" If you haven't seen it already, check out this post I made on X, in which I show 2 years' worth of data about the length of the chapters. Are the chapters actually getting shorter????