Chapter 581 - 502: [Extreme Dao Clash]

"Slaughter Emperor!!"

The thunderbolts of Chaos Celestial Punishment blazed!

Across the All Heavens and Myriad Realms, in the Primordial Mountains and Seas!

At the instant the celestial light exploded, every being watching the battle at Nine Heavens Pass was stunned. They all saw that domineering Demon God Physique, its feet planted on Nine Heavens Pass, its body a living dam holding back the Sea of Chaos.

Compared to that unknown Body Ancestor...

...the Slaughter Emperor from the more recent era of the Five Tribulations...

...exerted a far greater pressure on the All Heavens and Myriad Realms!

There was no other reason.

It was simply because he was the Slaughter Emperor!

That name alone was enough to make all the old-timers who had survived that dark era gasp for breath and tremble uncontrollably!

The greatest figure of the Five Tribulations!

Two Steps into the Near Dao Realm!

A truly invincible being who swept across the All Heavens!

When he ran rampant through the All Heavens...

...even the Incarnations of Daoists from past tribulations...

...had to avoid a direct confrontation with him!

If not for that one existence that should never have appeared...

...once the Slaughter Emperor achieved his Attainment Dao, he would have undoubtedly shaken all of history and reigned supreme for eternity!

’The Slaughter Emperor has a feud with the Dragon Hunting Tower!’

’That’s right. Rumor has it that at the critical moment when the Slaughter Emperor was about to reach Primordial Perfection, the Dragon Hunting Tower launched a sneak attack that left his Dao Foundation flawed.’

’The karmic debt is immense. Now that he has returned, does he intend to settle it?’

’Returned? Hmph. It’s merely an incarnation of his Dao Essence, nowhere near his peak power.’

In less time than a single thought, the minds of the Primordial Giants from the All Heavens raced.

This taboo existence from the Dragon Hunting Tower, suspected to be the progenitor of the Body Dao, shook every living being in the All Heavens and Myriad Realms with the mere release of his aura.

The Celestial Punishment Divine Thunder!

It even rippled out across the Endless Chaos Sea!

His power was evident.

If anyone else had dared to provoke him...

...they would have been courting death.

But the Slaughter Emperor was different!

His achievements back then were so incredible and suffocating that even if the Dao Ancestors of the Second Tribulation were resurrected, they would have paled in comparison to him at his peak.

Even if this was only a fragment of his Dao Essence...

...no one thought he was unqualified to face the Ancestor of the Body Dao, nor did they think his scornful posture was mere arrogance.

Because he had the power to back up that arrogance!

RUMBLE—

Everything happened in the span of a single thought.

The echoes of the Celestial Punishment Divine Thunder that had cleaved through the churning Sea of Chaos still rumbled through the Primordial Mountains and Seas, shaking the very soul of every living creature!

’Unbelievable...’

’The Body Ancestor! He’s really that person!’

’The Life Ancestor of the Fifteenth Daoist Sect of Transverse Cultivation... a body like the Great Dao. Did he actually achieve it?’

’A Daoist cannot exist within the bounds of the Great Dao, but he’s not far from it...’

Within the frozen space-time of Nine Heavens Pass, the giants of Mountain and Sea and Hongyuan barely withstood the aftershocks of the first clash between the two ancient and modern taboo figures, thanks to the protection of their Ancestral Artifacts. The outcome, however, left their expressions extremely grim!

That Body Ancestor from the Dragon Hunting Tower!

He had simultaneously tanked the Celestial Punishment from the Sea of Chaos while trading a punch with the Slaughter Emperor.

But all it did was halt his advance!

The light from his flawless, crystalline hand only dimmed by a fraction. Without looking closely, it was impossible to see any effect from the Celestial Punishment’s bombardment!

A Celestial Punishment that could ripple through Chaos!

It couldn’t even threaten him!

It was hard to imagine.

Just how absurdly powerful had this taboo being’s physique become? He had likely reached the very source, the end of the line for the Body Dao!

No, that’s not right.

If he is *that* person...

...then he is the very source of the Transverse Cultivation Dao!

During the Second Tribulation, the Transverse Refining Dao Ancestor had already reached the Limit of the Chaos Body!

With All Tribulations having passed, even if he failed to take that final One Step, he must have shattered the shackles of the Chaos Body!

From the end of the Second Tribulation to the present day, the Dragon Hunting Tower has been hunting down extraordinary practitioners of Transverse Cultivation and the Body Dao to refine them into Great Medicine.

Now, it seemed...

...that this behavior...

...was most likely connected to the Fifteenth Daoist Sect!

In the next instant, before the second Celestial Punishment could descend!

"Die!!"

The Slaughter Emperor’s killing intent-laced roar shook the All Heavens like a colossal thunderclap. Cold lightning flashed in his eyes, tearing through Chaos. Without another word, he reached out and clenched his fist once more!

VMMMM!!

In that instant!

The All Heavens blurred into a sorrowful haze of dim yellow and blood-red!

The final moment of the Great Dao had arrived!

A vast and immeasurable tide of slaughter surged and converged upon Nine Heavens Pass, only to be instantly drawn in as the Slaughter Emperor’s fingers closed into a fist!

In a trance, all the Primordial Giants felt it.

This punch from the Slaughter Emperor!

It unified the Ten Directions of the All Heavens, gathering all killing intent and power from myriad phenomena. Immeasurable collections of spacetime collapsed within his fist, and all existence and non-existence reversed entropy, returning to a primordial point!

Extreme Dao Terminus Fist!!

Heaven Denial, Extreme Dao, and Terminus!

These were the three great Ultimate Skills of the Fist Dao created by the Slaughter Emperor, who had unified the Killing Dao, Fist Dao, and Transverse Cultivation!

Back in the day, the Luotian Sword Master, who had also reached the peak of One Step into the Near Dao Realm, couldn’t even withstand the first fist, Heaven Denial. His sword shattered, and he was forced to his knees!

But now, he had unleashed the Terminus Fist from the very beginning—the fist that unified the myriad powers of the Killing Dao and returned all to nothingness through entropy reversal!

Perhaps he was wary of the Ancestor of Transversal Refining.

Or perhaps it was because he was no longer at his peak.

"You are not strong enough!"

The instant the Slaughter Emperor threw his punch, the supreme, mercilessly majestic gaze from within the Dragon Hunting Tower showed a flicker of fluctuation.

But that was all.

The Slaughter Emperor at his peak... was indeed unparalleled, capable of sweeping across the All Heavens. Even he, the Ancestor of the Body Dao, would have had to avoid a direct confrontation.

But...

His peak was his peak.

’And now? Relying on mere Dao Essence?’

’There’s a limit to arrogance!’

VMMMM!!

In less than a hundred-millionth of a second, the flawless hand that reached from the Dragon Hunting Tower flicked its fingers. The purest veins of power from within the Great Dao coiled and danced at its fingertips!

He was no longer striking with an open palm!

Instead, he chose to meet fist with fist!

It was a perfectly ordinary punch!

It was not empowered by any Technique or Divine Technique.

Yet it exuded a majestic, vast, and utterly unstoppable aura, as if the fist grasped the very life-veins of the endless firmament and the solid earth, containing the mass of all existence!

Extreme Dao! This was the Extreme Dao!

Only the ancestor of a Dao could be called the master of an Extreme Dao!

A heavy sword has no edge; great skill appears unrefined!

For Heng Ancestor, who had reached the Extreme Dao of the Body, every move, every punch, and every palm was accompanied by the strongest torrent of pure power from across all Daos!

A flawless torrent of power.

It seemed to command all the forces in the world.

As it surged forth, it manifested the Ten Thousand Races and all spirits that had existed since the Heaven Opening. It was like watching pages of ancient history, immeasurable eons of time overturning, as it majestically surged forward to crush everything and collide head-on with the torrent of the Terminus Extreme Dao!

CLANG—BOOM!!!

A clash of the Extreme Daos, a collision of power!

An indescribable, thunderous roar of the Great Dao!

It detonated across the All Heavens and Myriad Realms!

It then transformed into endless, minute, pitch-black thunderbolts that erupted and spread through every inch of spacetime in the Primordial Nine Heavens Domain and even throughout Mountain and Sea!

Nine Heavens Pass!

With the point of impact between their fists as the epicenter!

CRACKLE!!

This was the origin point of all the thunderbolts!

At the instant the two forces clashed in a contest of strength, an indescribably brilliant two-colored light of red and white flickered at an ultra-high frequency, slicing through the vast, boundless Sea of Chaos!

Starting from the inside, it rapidly tore open terrifying, pitch-black rifts that pierced and annihilated endless layered aggregates of dimensional spacetime, reducing everything to a vacuum of pure nothingness!

VMMMM—BOOM!

In the instant the two Extreme Dao forces expanded!

Everything in their path was compressed, shattered, and annihilated!

Each and every Ancestral Artifact of Mountain and Sea and Hongyuan felt as if it had been struck by a runaway Great Dao, and all of them were sent flying, smashing against the Great Dao barriers of Nine Heavens Pass!

The subsequent shockwaves of power continued to crash down!

After being contained and circling back, they poured back into the Sea of Chaos in a torrential flood!

Even from the most distant regions, it was clearly visible.

The bulging and shaking Endless Chaos Sea!

A great, volcano-like chasm abruptly burst open, and a pulsating pillar of red and white light, like a lighthouse in the Chaos, shook all phenomena within the Great Dao!

The resulting Chaos Storm formed a ring that continuously thundered and roared like a billion stampeding thunderbolts outside the All Heavens Domains. Even the weakest of creatures could sense that world-ending tempest from beyond the firmament!

’Extreme Dao... Extreme Dao...’

Inside the violently trembling Qiankun Cauldron, Taihuang Heaven struggled to stabilize the tottering cauldron. He stared deeply at the two taboo beings still locked in a struggle at the heart of the thunderbolt storm and unconsciously clenched his fists.

The world said that Primordial Chaos was the limit within the Great Dao.

But only those who had reached the Primordial Chaos realm knew the truth.

Beneath the Extreme Dao, all others were merely ants!

Before these two taboo giants from ancient and modern times, even those at the Primordial Limit weren’t qualified to spectate. If not for the protection of their Ancestral Artifacts, they would have been instantly torn to ashes by the storm!

And!

This was with both of them holding back.

Wary of the Celestial Punishment, they didn’t dare to unleash their full power!

If they were to go all out...

...the consequences would be truly unimaginable!

"Why is he still alive?! Damn it all!"

The Primordial Ancestors of Mountain and Sea were also roaring in fury.

It wasn’t just because their efforts today would once again be for naught, but also because of the immense karmic feud between Mountain and Sea and the Ancestor of Transversal Refining, which dated back to the Second Tribulation!

The Martial Ancestor’s assessment had not been wrong.

During the Second Tribulation, the Great Dao manifested on Buzhou Mountain.

The Ancestor of Transversal Refining and the Martial Ancestor were among the first pilgrims to climb the mountain in search of the Dao. They created the Transverse Refining Dao and the three mainstream schools of the Martial Dao for later generations, respectively.

But the Transverse Cultivation Dao...

...was indeed an extreme path.

Its ultimate goal was to achieve a body like the Great Dao!

To usurp the primordial concept of the Life Ancestor!

To become the world’s foremost life form!

From the day of its creation, this path was destined to be one of gluttony, devouring and refining the essential Dao Sources of all beings in the world with powerful physiques.

Through this, one would continuously transform and achieve Ancestral Return.

The further one progressed along this path, the greater the quantity and quality of the ’food’ required.

Back then, the Ancestor of Transversal Refining, due to being one of the first to attain the Dao, had parted ways with the Martial Ancestor and completely unleashed his desires and philosophy, becoming a madman whose power was no less than that of the later Slaughter Emperor.

The Innate Divine Race, the Desolate Divine Seed, the Alien Species...

...all beings with powerful and noble life essences...

...were all on his menu!

However, at that time, the Innate Divine Race was still enthroned on high and had not yet been overthrown.

The Deceitful Demons were not yet potent enough.

As for the Human Race, which was the last to emerge, they were still living like savages in a wilderness civilization, with very few powerful individuals among them.

Therefore, the Mountain and Sea Desolate God Race—who possessed powerful physiques but knew nothing of the Great Dao, and whose Innate Bloodline was second only to the Divine Race’s—became the perfect nourishment for the Ancestor of Transversal Refining’s progress.

The eighteen volumes of the Classic of Mountains and Seas.

Overlord, Royal Race, Imperial Race, Di Race!

And even the Five Great Primordial Races!

The Ancestor of Transversal Refining had truly eaten his way through them all!

So why didn’t the Martial Ancestor intervene?

Because he owed him too much.

Back when they were climbing the mountain, the Martial Ancestor’s physique before he attained the Dao was not as strong as Heng Ancestor’s.

Therefore, during the journey from the foot of the mountain to its Dao-seeking peak, he had accrued many karmic debts and favors. He had escaped death on several occasions only thanks to Heng Ancestor’s help.

Thus, when it came to Heng Ancestor’s actions, as long as he didn’t go too far, the Martial Ancestor turned a blind eye.

Unrestrained, Heng Ancestor feasted to his heart’s content on the denizens of Mountain and Sea.

He was responsible for numerous genocides.

Every sentient race among the Desolate God Race hated him to the very marrow of their bones. An eternal, irreconcilable blood feud was sown between them!

It wasn’t until the Queen Mother of the West ascended Buzhou Mountain...

...that the Martial Ancestor, who was comprehending the Great Dao, finally realized what a world-devouring Demon God he had enabled out of a moment of nostalgia.

A deep sense of guilt washed over him.

This was also why, even though the Queen Mother of the West’s own philosophy was equally extreme, the Martial Ancestor did not expel her, instead teaching her without discrimination just as he did the other Seekers of the Dao.

After realizing the shift in the Martial Ancestor’s attitude, Heng Ancestor said nothing.

He left Mountain and Sea directly, but the seeds of disaster he had planted would lead to their subsequent downfall.