Chapter 511 |
The mages had come out into the open. The entire area once occupied by the Zhou Tian Star Array lay deathly silent. Apart from the last immortals sheltered by the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign and Wanxiang, only the mages remained alive.
Everyone tilted their heads and stared at that strange, shifting gateway. Could Daoyuan really have ascended? Previously the mages had scoffed at the idea, but now the scene made even them waver.
Because Daoyuan’s aura had truly vanished.
Yet the gate still hung in the sky. And the purer True Demon body had not dispersed.
The True Spirit Mages fixed their eyes on the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign, waiting for his explanation. The mages had kept their vow and not interfered with Daoyuan’s ascension; if afterwards the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign told them Daoyuan had truly ascended and thanked them, then immortal civilization would instantly learn what it meant to mock the mages.
The Primordial Heavenly Sovereign stood motionless, head raised. Wanxiang bowed slightly toward the mages and gestured for calm.
Laura said, “This isn’t so simple. If he really ascended successfully, the gate wouldn’t still be here — and the Primordial wouldn’t be acting like this. Be cautious.” Then she asked Randolph, “Is the traction array stable?”
Randolph replied, “Prometheus is ready to arrive at any time. But summoning Prometheus makes too much noise — best not to do it unless absolutely necessary.”
Laura nodded. “I hope there are no accidents. But if one happens, take the Primordial down with him.”
The mages showed no attempt to hide their preparations. Wanxiang’s expression grew increasingly anxious, but the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign remained as he had been — apparently unshakable.
On the fourth day the gate suddenly burst open.
The energies that had been drawn upward poured down like a breached dam. Power leapt to an unimaginable grade, and with that torrent Daoyuan was spat back out of the portal.
No one present — including the True Spirit Mages — dared to underestimate him now. The energy surrounding his Primordial Spirit was so great that any careless move could collapse the void; he had become a tenth-tier life.
Yet his state was strange.
Upon falling from the gate he looked dazed, muttering to himself: “Didn’t I ascend? Why am I still here?”
Each syllable came accompanied by the cracking of his pure, transparent Primordial Spirit. At those fractures black polluted energy poured out, but Daoyuan seemed oblivious.
“Tell me — why didn’t I ascend? Why!” he roared, pointing a finger at the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign. Tenth-tier force burst from his Primordial Spirit, but it failed to reach the Primordial and collapsed into nothing.
The Primordial sighed gently. “Because you are the wrong person. Your Dao, your ascension — it is self-deception.”
Daoyuan went mad. Endless years of cultivation, tens of thousands of years of scheming: he had willingly fallen to demonic paths, accepted Primordial Demons into himself, become a second mind in the True Demon — all for ascension. Now he had failed, and someone had the gall to tell him he had only been deceiving himself!
“I’m not wrong! You are wrong! It’s you! I can ascend! I can!” Daoyuan’s thoughts rose like a tide. Terrifying tenth-tier Immortal Arts unfurled and smashed toward the Primordial. “It’s only because I’m not yet strong enough. Merge with me! Let me swallow you! And thee!” he cried.
He swung his wrath to the mages. “You too! You want transcendence? Merge with me! I will bring you all to transcendence!”
At once stored mage spells detonated. Sanctum main cannons thundered. But tenth-tier power is tenth-tier — ninth-tier magics could not oppose it.
Laura cast her Rebirth incantation to encompass the fleet; she herself swelled to the brink of ninth-tier and stood at the fore. Other True Spirit Mages leapt across spacetime toward Daoyuan. Randolph and Nehem together pried open a huge portal; the Prometheus True Spirit body manifested. At the same time, Void Membrane Magic fell, sealing off the fleet’s immediate area while outside the void seemed to relive creation itself. Daoyuan’s tenth-tier Immortal Arts were rapidly eroded within that space.
Prometheus stepped forward and seized Daoyuan’s Primordial Spirit with both hands, tearing it in two. Between the separated hands vast torrents of Aether concentrated.
Daoyuan screamed. His Primordial Spirit reformed and fractured billions of times, canceling obliteration after obliteration. In that moment the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign dissolved the Immortal Arts he’d cast; a true Immortal Dao body nearly equal to Prometheus’s arrived and struck to halt Prometheus’s killing blow.
After a single exchange the two parted. The surrounding region of a hundred light-years was scoured by the annihilation of energy; Da Luo Heaven collapsed into void in an instant. Only a glowing orb of the “Heavenly Dao” source remained floating quietly, and Wanxiang’s orb carried the last surviving immortals, barely alive.
The mage host was blown much farther away; if not for True Spirit protection, Adam and the others would have been pulled back into the Demon Net.
“You are seeking your own death,” Prometheus said coldly. He had not been angered in a long age; the nine other True Spirit bodies stood beside him in array.
The Primordial bowed. “Please, True Spirit Mages, be calm. Primordial will explain.”
He then turned, leaving his back to the ten True Spirits. Prometheus hesitated, and did not press the kill.
Daoyuan felt his heart split in two. He believed himself trapped in a plot by the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign — that everything had been set up to trick him into being the pathfinder so that the Primordial could consume him and ascend alone. He could not allow that. Only by re-entering the True Demon body could he become a genuine tenth-tier life, the progenitor of the demonic path.
The Primordial allowed him to re-enter the True Demon body. As Daoyuan tried to escape, the Primordial merely waved his hand and restrained him: “The True Demon is me; I am the True Demon.”
Daoyuan raged hysterically, but the Primordial ignored the shouting and spoke, perhaps to the mages or to himself, calmly: “Everyone thinks I severed the evil thoughts from myself and produced benevolence, but they do not know I have never been separate from the True Demon. Immortal Dao resides in me; the Great Way you imagine is only my way.”