Chapter 958: Raise the Sword
Fiddling with time. Severing the past. Cultivators could do such things, but not with such finesse as this. That was because this was the authority of a god. That was because this was true omniscience. In the eyes of gods, it was easy to see a person’s life, including all of their past.
The River of Time seethed as it filled the world of mortals. Countless past versions of Zhao Youde were all racing in his direction.
However, in the cultivation system, Imperial Sovereigns were second only to Quasi-Immortals. And this was Zhao Youde, who had spent years among humankind, and was now at the peak of being a half-Imperial Sovereign. His cultivation base made him almost as strong as a god.
Upon facing this inexplicable godly authority, his expression turned dark, and then he stretched out his right hand toward the canopy of heaven and made a grasping motion. The movement of his hand caused the dome of heaven to shift, as if a new heaven were being brought in.
A vast starry sky began to take over. The starry sky was so massive it covered everything. It was almost as if it planned to take this section of Revered Ancient away, as if... it was becoming a universe for Zhao Youde alone. Within that universe, there were countless past versions of himself, and yet, there were far more stars and heavenly bodies than that.
The countless heavenly bodies all twinkled brightly, and in response to Zhao Youde’s thoughts, they lit up and were extinguished.
The extinguishing of countless heavenly bodies caused the unique universe to quickly teeter on the verge of collapse. As it collapsed, it sank in on itself, giving rise to a massive gravitational force. It was like an actual universe transforming into a majestic black hole.
All of a sudden, all of Zhao Youde’s past lives were sucked up by the gravitation hole, and devoured by the collapsing universe.
Not one was left over!
Severing time. Causing past lives to try to devour the true self. It was something difficult to comprehend. If none could be allowed to perish, there was only one way to resolve the situation. Crush. Seal. And return everything to the beginning.
All of this takes a bit of time to describe, but actually happened in the time it takes a spark to fly off a piece of flint. After all of the past lives were sucked into the collapsing universe, Zhao Youde closed his hand into a fist.
Heaven and earth went back to normal. His universe shrank down, turning into a black pearl that dropped down in front of him. Without any hesitation, he looked up at the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan. At the same time, he flicked the pearl out.
It flew up into the sky. At the same time, he vanished, to reappear high in the air atop the pearl.
“Be crushed!” he said grimly.
The black pearl exploded, spreading out to again overtake heaven.
However, this time it turned into a river of stars. It shot down, heading toward the crown prince’s River of Time, to crush it. It was a river of stars versus the River of Time.
The Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan smiled. “How amusing. You can crush your own time. But what about my time?”
The crown prince reached up and touched his forehead. The moment he did, the air around him distorted as his own past appeared. The biggest difference was that it was blurry and impossible to see clearly. It was only possible to sense endless rancor and madness, accompanied by extreme defiance. All of that turned into the most extreme howl imaginable.
However, the crown prince looked as warm and gentle as always. Lifting a finger, he casually made a beckoning gesture at the surrounding blurry images. Astonishingly, he was severing a section of his own time from a past life, then depositing it into the River of Time. The majestic river surged violently. Immense waves rolled across its surface.
Within the water there appeared an enormous finger of white jade. It seemed capable of destroying anything as the water parted around it. Sweeping up past-life power, it shook the daos of heaven and earth as it emerged from the river. From a distance, it seemed capable of propping up heaven and earth.
The finger then accelerated toward the river of stars.
The river of stars trembled and shone with dazzling light before ultimately collapsing, revealing the grim-faced Zhao Youde. The shocking finger of white jade continued onward without stopping.
Just before it was about to hit, Zhao Youde took a deep breath and went into a double-handed incantation gesture. His fingers blurred as he went through a whole host of hand signs. Then he stopped with both hands in front of his chest with thumbs and index fingers touching to form a diamond shape. He pushed his hands in the direction of the incoming finger of jade.
Instantly, his universe erupted. The power of a great dao within the river flowed out to meet the finger. That great dao contained spatial power.
This was Zhao Youde’s dao, and it was also the reason why he had been able to remain undetected among humankind for so long. The destructive power of the great dao caused the white jade finger of the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan to tremble.
In an instant, the sky transformed into a painting. The painting was blurry, as though it might collapse at any moment.
Breathing heavily, Zhao Youde shoved out again with his double-handed hand sign. The picture that depicted the white finger superimposed with the power of the great dao. It turned into a white thread.
Eyes bloodshot, Zhao Youde shoved his hands out a third time. The white thread then shrank down into a white dot!
Zhao Youde was about to shove his hands out for a fourth time when, all of a sudden, heaven-shaking, earth-shattering fluctuations rolled out of the white dot, accompanied by deafening rumbling sounds. Then it detonated.
The white jade finger shredded the space around it as it emerged from inside. It was now right in front of Zhao Youde. Blood sprayed out of Zhao Youde’s mouth as he stumbled backward. A very serious look could be seen on his face as bloody wounds opened up all over him.
“Jade Capital Immortal Finger! You... you’re the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan from back in the day! But now... you’re not human or cultivator or god! You’re not alive or dead. You don’t exist!”
Zhao Youde’s pupils constricted.
Similarly shaken were all of the cultivators looking on. Everyone knew that the imperial preceptor was incredibly mysterious. But his battle prowess already surpassed anything they could imagine. And now his true identity had been stated outright....
The words “Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan” struck everyone like lightning. Not everyone was aware of who the imperial preceptor was. As a result, the vast majority of the government officials were astounded.
Xu Qing stood there with a cold look on his face. He had seen what he wanted to see, and it confirmed his suspicions.
The empress, in contrast, wasn’t paying attention to the crown prince. Her godfire had reached a critical point, and majestic godly authority was now erupting.
Grand Emperor Swordsage remained silent.
Seeing that, Zhao Youde spun to leave. He now realized that there was no way he would be able to extinguish the godfire.
But the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan didn’t seem willing to let this half-Imperial Sovereign simply leave.
“First a universe, then a great dao,” the crown prince said softly. “You see, the reason I spoke at such length with you is that my ultimate goal was to get a glimpse at your destiny. Now I’ve seen it.”
He reached up toward the dome of heaven and made a grasping gesture. Blood erupted out of Zhao Youde, then floated over to the crown prince’s palm. Squeezing his hand closed, he forced the blood into the shape of a red thread.
Next, as everyone watched, and as Zhao Youde’s face fell, the crown prince put the thread into his hair. It became one with him. He absorbed it.
Then a gruish and unbelievable scene played out in front of all present.
Zhao Youde shivered from head to toe and let out a scream of anguish. He became incomparably weak, as though something very precious to him was suddenly gone.
The destiny the crown prince had seen had been taken away.
In that moment of crisis, Zhao Youde reached up and touched his forehead. His body turned into a painting, then a thread, then a dot. And then... he disappeared.
“Some of his providence was taken away!” Sunfire said. It was something profoundly mysterious that only a Flawless God could see the truth of. “Using destiny to absorb the enemy’s providence.... That’s a god magic with a different approach but the same outcome as the technique the Father God is using to devour Revered Ancient.” Sunfire looked at the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan with a very serious expression. “That must be how you plan to recover your cultivation base from your past life.”
The crown prince smiled but didn’t say anything in response. Then he lifted his foot to step up into the canopy of heaven.
There was no way he was going to let a specimen like Zhao Youde get away. With that, he disappeared to pursue Zhao Youde.
Everything went calm above human lands. The gods who had come to interfere, whether Blazeflame, the night god, or the gods from the Northfate Kings, all backed away quietly. There was no way to stop the process now. Fighting was pointless.
The godfire on Planet Ancient Emperor was now ninety percent golden. The past emperors in the five vortexes were experiencing a constant rise in godly authority. The empress was also in a similar position. There was now only one incense stick’s worth of time left in the ceremony.
That was when a piercing sound filled the sky. It was the sound of a great wind blowing over Revered Ancient. It came from the humans’ imperial capital.
Someone outside of Revered Ancient and within the Dark Serenity holy land, looked in the direction of Revered Ancient and slashed down with a saber.
That saber spanned the starry sky, severed the ancient from the modern, and contained boundless momentum. It had the power to crush everything in its path, as if it wished to exterminate heaven and earth. And it appeared in the sky right above the humans’ imperial palace in Revered Ancient.
It created a massive rift some 500,000 kilometers in length. The projection of the blade was like a true heavenly saber. The sky shifted colors and winds blew as a stifling will appeared.
There was one force that wanted more than anyone to stop the empress from reaching godly ascension. They wanted it more than the gods of Revered Ancient and more than the top species of Revered Ancient. That place was a holy land among many holy lands. It was... the Dark Serenity holy land!
Thus arrived the might of a Grand Emperor! Thus came the saber of a Grand Emperor!
From within the wind came a sigh.
Inside the Swordsage Division, a withered figure opened his eyes. His final sword move could be used on a god. Or it could be used... on a holy land!
“You finally made your move,” he murmured in a voice hoarse with ancient age and filled with complicated emotions.
Then....
The Emperor’s Sword in Xu Qing thrummed with unprecedented vibrations. And boundless sword light erupted from him and up into the sky.