Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 1270: Primeval Motherworld

Dark green starlight flowed through a rift in space-time, becoming like moonlight glimmering on an endless black glacier. As the light went on, it spread out over the entire glacier until it was like the canopy of heaven over a world. Beneath that canopy was a temple that had existed for countless years, which was emanating a faint, mysterious light. Other than that, everything was dark.

It was impossible to see anything within the gloom. However, it was possible to hear hair-raising cries. There were also sounds like chewing and the snapping of bones, as well as disgusting swallowing sounds that would cause one’s hair to stand on end.

As for the mysterious light, it was only around the temple, which was illuminated hazily. From a distance, it looked like a candle burning in the night.

The temple was deep underneath the frozen glacier. Innumerable years had passed in which no one disturbed it. Deep within the temple were twelve badly damaged statues of gods. Thēy were circled around a red altar, atop which… was a bronze door, standing upright.

The bronze door opened silently, and a figure slowly emerged from the darkness beyond. He wore a black robe, had violet hair, was tall and slender, and had a mesmerizing face. As he looked around with a vigilant expression, his entire person pulsed with a terrifying aura. He was… Xu Qing, who had just experienced a teleportation via the star ring hemp!

Where am I…?

He immediately sent his divine will out to scan the area. He was ready for anything. Unfortunately, he had no idea where he was. All his divine will revealed to him was that this place was extremely ancient and full of intense pressure! His cultivation base, his divine will, and everything else about him was under immense pressure. He couldn’t even fly.

Xu Qing’s brow furrowed. Thankfully, though his divine will was severely limited, he could sense the twelve damaged statues surrounding the altar. Thēy were gruish in appearance, yet were also indescribably holy. Thēy were covered in deep slash marks, like growth rings left behind by the claws of some terrifying entity.

Considering how large thēy were, and how large everything else was in this place, Xu Qing felt like he had come to a kingdom of giants. He seemed insignificant.

Is this a temple?

His eyes narrowed as he studied his surroundings more closely. However, he didn’t identify anything unusual. Eventually, he stepped onto the altar. When his shoes touched the blood-red tiles, a red liquid oozed out from beneath his feet. It floated about gruishly, as if it were blood that was waking up.

Xu Qing’s eyes flashed, but he kept walking. He wanted to get out of this temple and have a look around to determine where he was.

Soon, the temple filled with a sound like footsteps on a watery surface. It sounded empty and bizarre. And then, the footsteps suddenly stopped.

Xu Qing stood in a crumbling corridor that led toward the outside. He looked up.

Perhaps it was his arrival, or perhaps it was the breeze that came with him. But either way, the dust on the wall shifted. It almost was as if time was passing as the dust revealed the red surface of the wall, and the ancient symbols on it. The designs depicted a god whose skin had been flayed off, reclining on the horizon, hīs bones having turned into mountains, and hīs blood flowing toward a bronze planet. Surrounding the god were hosts of greedy blue eyes.

After a while, Xu Qing looked away. The sense of unfamiliarity and suspicion regarding this place were getting stronger.

Just where exactly am I?

He turned and looked in the direction of the end of the corridor. Before long, the footsteps echoed out again within the silent temple. The sound went on for the time it takes an incense stick to burn….

Outside, it was dark, with only that mysterious light creating hazy illumination around the temple. Eventually, the main door opened.

Rumbling sounds echoed out into the dark surrounding world. The chewing sounds stopped. And then… pairs of blue eyes suddenly appeared out in the darkness, all of them looking toward the temple.

At the same time, mysterious light erupted from the temple, like the last flash of light before sunset, or the passage of a bolt of lightning. As a result, Xu Qing could see everything clearly as he stepped outside!

There were corpses everywhere! There were never-ending god corpses! Thēy included all types of Godfolk. Thēy came from a host of different time periods! The vast majority were little more than skeletons with some scrap of flesh on thēm. Thēy were piled up everywhere, as far as the eye could see.

Xu Qing’s pupils constricted at the sight of it. He had never seen the corpses of so many gods in one place, not even on the battlefield.

What struck him most deeply was that among the innumerable god corpses were… a host of living creatures. Thēy were everywhere, and thēy were extremely gruish![1]

Each one had a gray, skeletal body with a rib cage of twelve rib bones in total, divided asymmetrically on the left and right side of the body. The ribs on the left had a sticky violet membrane stretching between each bone, which would inflate when it breathed in. When the membrane stretched thin, it was possible to see the flesh of gods inside being digested.

On the right, the rib bones were crystallized, and would occasionally reveal the protruding faces of agonized gods. Those faces created an endless, tormented flow toward the tumorized head, a cycle that would repeat every few breaths.

Although each creature had different facial features, they all had blue eyes. As for the limbs, they were extremely skinny and covered with bone spurs, while the spine on the back seemed to be growing upside down. Bone spurs protruded from the skin at the neck, and they glowed with blue light. Astonishingly, at the end of each spur was a shriveled finger. As Xu Qing watched, the fingers would writhe and sway along with the movement of the spurs.

Xu Qing looked at all of this with glittering eyes. He felt a sense of danger, but at the same time, there was something familiar about all this.

I feel like I’ve seen these gruish things before….

Before Xu Qing could think much about it, the strange creatures suddenly let loose shrill cries. A piercing sound wave swept out in all directions, along with a surge of greed. It turned into a wind.

And then countless gruish creatures began to rush in Xu Qing’s direction. A sense of deadly crisis erupted within him.

Xu Qing didn’t hesitate for a moment. His immortal embryo glittered as it materialized behind him and then rushed forth to meet the incoming gruish creatures. Wherever it passed, the gruish creatures shivered and then howled as their bodies exploded. However, they would form anew only moments later. They seemed to be eternally indestructible.

There were some who looked mostly like the others, except that they had blue patches of ice on them, and they were far more deadly than the others. Seeing that, Xu Qing waved his hand, and his iron skewer flew out and joined the effort.

His canon of parallelism appeared, causing different versions of himself to emerge from overlapping space-time. Like his true form, they unleashed explosive immortal might, becoming shooting stars that shot in various directions.

The sound of slaughter drifted out across the glacier.

About an hour later, as the dark green moonlight shone out over the glacier, a loud cracking sound rang out, and the glacier began to split apart in one area.

Xu Qing shot out from within. Blood oozed out of the corners of his mouth, and he looked to be in bad shape. Behind him were a host of space-time reflections that were slowly fading away. He could now sense that he was able to fly, and so he shot up into the air and pushed down behind him with his hand.

The sheets of ice trembled, then collapsed, closing the opening. On the other side were a host of those gruish beasts. Leading thēm was a tall figure whose body was twenty percent blue. Hē had one arm that was almost entirely covered with blue, as if it was completely made of ice! Hē looked at Xu Qing with greed, but did not try to give chase.

Xu Qing looked down at that tall being, a scowl on his face.

The gruish beings in the glacier had ordinary battle prowess. It was their eternally indestructible characteristics and endless numbers, coupled with the fact that he couldn’t fly, which had made things so difficult. But even with all that, he normally wouldn’t have ended up in such bad shape.

What got him really broken-down were the creatures with the blue ice patches. The more ice they had, the more deadly they were. And that was especially true of the one with the ice hand covered with bone spurs.

That being filled Xu Qing with an intense sensation of danger! Only by relying on his space-time clones had he been able to fight his way through and eventually get out of the glacier.

Seeing that they weren’t chasing him, he breathed a sigh of relief. But at the same time, he still felt like all of this was familiar, especially that huge figure looking at him from the other side of the opening.

I’ve seen something like it before…. Eldest Brother!

Xu Qing’s pupils constricted as he realized where that sensation of familiarity came from! That blue hand of ice with the bone spurs was very similar to the one which would come out of Erniu’s chest when he went all out.[2]

Godfiend?

Xu Qing’s heart pounded as the opening leading into the glacier closed, becoming nothing but a crater. The sight of the tall, blue figure was cut off.

Xu Qing’s eyes narrowed as many thoughts ran through his head. Then he sent his divine will around him to check his surroundings. Astonishingly, he was on top of a massive black glacier that pulsed with intense mutagen. Within that mutagen was endless death.

Before he could thoroughly inspect his surroundings, a strange sensation of fear rose up within him. He looked off into the distance. The clouds in the sky rippled as a golden meteor shot forth, heading in his direction.

Is that…? He looked closely at the meteor. Soon, he could make out clearly what it was! It was not a meteor. It was… the massive corpse of a god! Though the god was dead, the aura indicated it was a True God! This….

His eyes narrowed as a voice spoke into his mind via divine will. It was a voice full of astonishment and disbelief! It was the voice of the goddess Starryeyes!

“This is the primeval motherworld!” [3]

***

Outside of the glacier world was the space-time rift. And in the vast expanse of this universe’s starry sky, the corpse of a god floated along. Responding to the direction given, the corpse flew into the rift.

Two people were seated inside the corpse. They were none other than Young Lord Aurora and Immortal Fairy Spirit Phoenix!

Opening her eyes, Spirit Phoenix quietly said, “The primeval motherworld of the Fourth Star Ring. We’re almost there. Husband… have you come to a decision?”

Next to her, Young Lord Aurora slowly opened his eyes. “The Immortal Paragon came up with this plan. Call it my predestined fate….”

1. The author goes back and forth between using the divine pronoun for these creatures and the non-gender-specific “it” pronoun usually used for animals or inanimate objects. This feels intentional to me, as if the author intends for these creatures to seem “similar” to gods, but not an actual Godfolk species. Therefore, I will do the same. Occasionally they will have the divine pronoun applied, but not always. ☜

2. The blue hand has come up quite a few times in the past, for instance in chapters 573.2 and 1022. There are other instances, those are just the first two I pulled up. ☜

3. The characters, and later context, imply that this motherworld is a planet. That said, description makes it unclear if it’s a ‘spherical’ planet or a ‘flat earth’ type of thing. ☜