Chapter 240 - 239: Domain of the Absolute Monarch

MERIT RANKINGS (CURRENT)

1. Xuan Mingzhe (Xuan Province) - 6100 Merits

2. Jiang Wan (Jiang Province) - 4830 Merits

3. Ye Ao (Ye Province) - 4800 Merits

4. Lin Yuan (Zhao Province) - 4610 Merits

5. Feng Yao (Feng Province) - 4700 Merits (Wait, array recalculating...)

A secondary chime rang out, shuffling the order to reflect the exact mathematical truth.

MERIT RANKINGS (CURRENT)

1. Xuan Mingzhe (Xuan Province) - 6100 Merits

2. Jiang Wan (Jiang Province) - 4830 Merits

3. Ye Ao (Ye Province) - 4800 Merits

4. Feng Yao (Feng Province) - 4700 Merits

5. Lin Yuan (Zhao Province) - 4610 Merits

6. Ling Chuan (Ling Province) - 3660 Merits

...

7. Chu Kuang (Chu Province) - 2000 Merits

The amphitheater exploded into a cacophony of debates and frantic calculations.

"Four thousand six hundred and ten!" a Xuan Province elder bellowed, pointing a trembling finger at the fifth slot. "He cleared the fourth floor! The Zhao rat actually cleared a Profound Stage Guardian!"

"This is madness!" a Chu lieutenant screamed, pulling at his own hair. "He is an Early-Stage cultivator! How is he bridging a two-step gap in Dao Resolve?! The Profound Stage manipulates the very elements of creation! He should have been burned to cinders!"

"He is keeping pace," Lord Zhao Shenming murmured from the Zhao pavilion, his eyes glued to the monolith. His heart hammered against his ribs like a war drum. He knew Lin Yuan was at the Unshaken Stage, but witnessing his General effortlessly dismantle a Profound Guardian was still a staggering validation of his faith. "He is only fifty points behind the anomaly of the Feng Province. He is holding his ground among the gods."

"But look at Xuan Mingzhe!" someone shouted from the upper terraces. "Six thousand one hundred! He has already cleared the fifth floor! The tri-Dao legend is an entire epoch ahead of them!" (A/N: Remember Xuan Mingzhe had 1100 Merits before the second round, so 1100 + 5000)

"Jiang Wan and Ye Ao are maintaining the pressure!" another voice yelled. "They are both in the fourth-floor completion bracket. The true hierarchy is stabilizing. The Zhao cultivator had a head start, but his momentum will break on the fifth floor!"

In the Chu pavilion, Patriarch Chu Wuhai glared at the monolith, his face a mask of purple, vein-popping fury. "Chu Kuang is at two thousand! He just cleared the second floor! Why is he so slow?! He is Half-Step Transcendent! He should be tearing the pagoda down with his bare hands!"

"The spatial compression of the pagoda is likely adjusting to his massive spiritual power output, Patriarch," a nervous elder reasoned. "The artifact probably scales the Guardians to the intruder. Chu Kuang is fighting phantoms optimized to counter his Half-Step Transcendent might. It is a grueling battle of attrition."

"I do not care about attrition!" Chu Wuhai roared. "I care about results! If that Zhao rat finishes above my son, I will personally burn the Zhao Province to the bedrock!"

Bai Chen, standing on the edge of the Zhao pavilion, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted across the arena, completely abandoning all decorum. "Keep crying, old man! The only thing burning today is the Chu Province’s pride!"

"Chen’er, behave," Bai Qingyue scolded softly, though her eyes danced with obvious amusement. She looked back up at the monolith. Her husband was in fifth place. He was not in the Top 3 yet, but he was exactly where he needed to be: breathing down the necks of the Central Continent’s greatest legends.

Lin Yuan stepped through the silver gateway, entering the fifth floor of the Nine-Tiered Sky.

The environment underwent a drastic, chilling transformation. The infinite marble platform and the golden spatial vortex were gone.

He stood upon a desolate, ash-covered plateau beneath a dying, eclipsing sun. The sky was the color of dried blood, and the air was thin, carrying the metallic, coppery scent of ancient slaughter. Stretching out in every direction, piercing the ashen earth like morbid tombstones, were tens of thousands of massive, rusted swords. It was a literal graveyard of blades.

The atmospheric pressure here was fundamentally different. It did not try to physically crush him like the fourth floor; instead, it exerted a profound, psychological dominance over his spiritual sea. It felt as though the realm itself was commanding him to kneel.

Sovereign Stage, Lin Yuan deduced, his Unshaken Dao Heart flaring to push back the invasive pressure. The Seventh Step of Dao Resolve.

To reach the Sovereign Stage meant a cultivator can established an absolute domain, a localized reality where their specific Dao was the only recognizable truth. Within a Sovereign’s domain, all opposing elements were suppressed, and all lesser wills were forced into submission.

At the center of the sword graveyard, a figure sat upon a throne forged entirely from broken, jagged blades.

It was a male Phantom Guardian, draped in tattered, blood-red battle cloaks. He held a massive greatsword across his lap. His eyes, though pitch-black and mindless, radiated an aura of absolute, tyrannical rule.

This was the Sovereign of Blades.

"An insult to the word Sovereign!" Ling Xi shrieked within Lin Yuan’s mind, her sword spirit essence vibrating with absolute outrage. "He sits on a pile of broken steel and demands that weapons bow to him! Slay him, Master! Show him what a true blade looks like!"

Lin Yuan slowly drew the Primordial Sovereign Sword.

The moment the runes of his blade caught the dim light of the eclipsing sun, the Phantom Guardian stood up.

The Guardian did not speak, but the ambient laws of the fifth floor violently shifted.

The Guardian raised his greatsword and drove the tip into the ashen earth.

"Domain of the Absolute Monarch," a booming voice resonated from the very bedrock of the plateau.

Instantly, the tens of thousands of rusted swords buried in the graveyard began to vibrate. They hummed with a terrifying frequency. With a deafening screech of grinding metal, the swords ripped themselves free from the earth and levitated into the air, forming a massive, swirling tornado of rusted iron and jagged steel that completely surrounded Lin Yuan.

The domain imposed a singular law: All weapons within this space must submit to the Monarch.