Chapter 1383: The Advent of the Dao Annihilation Calamity
Chapter 1383: The Advent of the Dao Annihilation Calamity
The Wordless Stele emerged, bringing order to the cosmos!
The Immortal Domain, which had been trembling ceaselessly, stabilized in an instant.
Time itself seemed to freeze at this moment.
In the profound silence, a majestic aura arose—a power so vast and brilliant it nearly froze the thoughts of Li Fan, the closest observer.
If the Wordless Stele hadn't simply been existing silently, devoid of any hostile intent and standing firm within the Immortal Domain, its aura alone would have torn Li Fan to shreds.
His power was enough to dominate the Darkest Star Sea, yet before the Wordless Stele in the Immortal Domain, Li Fan was like an ant in a tempest, his very survival beyond his control.
Li Fan's expression changed drastically. He tried to summon the phantom of the Wooden Sword to escape, but to his horror, he found that the laws that formed it were utterly suppressed by the Wordless Stele, rendering the sword powerless.
Even his True False Transformation met the same fate.
Everything, except for the slowly stabilizing Immortal Domain, surged toward the Wordless Stele, collapsing into it.
This was different from how the Immortal Ruins absorbed and devoured all things in the Star Sea. Matter drawn toward the Immortal Ruins would be shredded by immense True Immortal power and reduced to dust.
But falling toward the Wordless Stele...
Li Fan saw with perfect clarity that everything outside the Immortal Domain in the Darkest Star Sea—be it the residual power of True Immortals or the fragments of shattered worlds—was decomposed into absolute nothingness as it rushed toward the stele.
"No, that's not right!" As the protective charge of [Truth] plummeted, Li Fan's vision began to distort. Countless arcs of light swirled around the center, and he could now see that the Wordless Stele, which absorbed and devoured all things, was being covered in mottled shadows!
"It's not nothingness! All things are returning to their primordial state, back to the Wordless Stele! This is the evolution of the Dao, a reversion to its very origin!" Li Fan's mind reeled in shock, his thoughts turning to a blank slate.
The magnificent scene before him, comparable to the creation of the universe, left Li Fan profoundly shaken.
It felt as though he had been granted a glimpse of the Dao itself. In every passing moment, countless insights flooded his mind. He had experienced something similar when he once faced the true essence of the Star Sea's origin, but the enlightenment he was receiving now surpassed that by a thousand, even ten thousand times.
Even the [True False Transformation], a concept he could only grasp in fragments through his cycle of simulations, now felt tantalizingly within his reach.
"What is real? And what is false? They are merely evolutions of the Dao! A single thought gives birth to a world, the Dao branching into all of creation! A single thought extinguishes the Dao, and all things wither, returning to the void..." Li Fan seemed possessed, lost in his contemplation of the Wordless Stele, unable to break free.
He was just like the myriad things of the Star Sea drawn toward the stele, utterly unable to escape.
Even when he sensed several figures drawn by the stele's appearance, Li Fan's focus remained unbroken.
The figures kept a respectful distance from one another, a silent acknowledgment of each other's presence.
A few consciousnesses seemed to brush past him, but without exception, their attention quickly shifted to the heart of the storm.
In the face of the turmoil stirred by the Wordless Stele, all beings were equal. True Immortals and supreme entities alike were reduced to mere ants.
The oppressive aura the powerful usually held over the weak was completely nullified by the stele.
Gazing upon the Wordless Stele, they, like Li Fan, were shaken into silence.
The Wordless Stele was like a sudden pinprick in the center of the Star Sea, and everything within it began to collapse inward.
The descent of all creation formed a rushing cascade. Only the most powerful beings at the pinnacle of the Star Sea could barely hold their ground at the edge of the vortex.
From the fringes of the Star Sea, a distant roar echoed—the sound of the vast Sea of Relics and the Realm Fragment Great Wall beginning to disintegrate. Endless tides of ruins tumbled toward the Immortal Domain.
Even the unseen High Wall seemed affected.
Amidst the violent tremors, a strange transformation took place. Like storm clouds gathering, countless images descended upon the fringes of the Star Sea.
...
Terrifying phenomena arose one after another. Then, a clear female voice, laced with astonishment and dread, suddenly cut through the chaos, sounding utterly out of place.
Yet, it pierced the storm generated by the Wordless Stele, reaching the ears of all present and revealing the terrifying power of its owner.
"The Southern Immortal Pillar? How can it be here!"
Before the words had even faded, their speaker transformed into a streak of light, rocketing toward the heart of the storm, clearly intending to enter the Immortal Domain and investigate.
But the Immortal Domain pulsed with a faint light, repelling the figure and keeping her out.
"This is..."
"The Taili Star Domain... the Cangsheng Ancient Realm!"
The slender figure was finally revealed.
Her face was pale, as if she were recovering from a long illness. Her eyes were profound, holding infinite mysteries that captivated any who met her gaze. Her features were not strikingly beautiful; one might even call them plain.
Yet she possessed a unique charm that made her unforgettable.
"She is..."
The appearance of this figure snapped Li Fan partially out of his reverie.
Pondering her words and looking at the somewhat familiar silhouette, a thought struck him. *The Enlightened True Immortal from the Immortal Ruins? I've only ever seen her skeletal form and her phantom incarnation... I never realized she was a woman.*
As if sensing his thoughts, the True Immortal frowned slightly, her gaze sweeping the area around her.
A jolt of alarm went through Li Fan.
Perhaps due to the influence of the Wordless Stele, she couldn't pinpoint his location. After determining that those nearby were only mortals, her attention shifted back to the Immortal Domain.
Her form rippled like a heat haze as she attempted to merge with the Immortal Domain.
But the Immortal Domain seemed to possess a natural repulsion for True Immortals.
A fiercely brilliant light erupted, instantly forcing the True Immortal several yards back.
The True Immortal's expression immediately soured.
The aura around her changed in a flash.
Her figure vanished from view.
Li Fan could only vaguely perceive a transparent bulge, a distortion in spacetime, moving toward the Immortal Domain.
The radiant barrier at the edge of the Immortal Domain suddenly bulged outward.
A few moments later, the True Immortal successfully passed into the Immortal Domain.
Her objective was clear: she headed straight for the Wordless Stele at its heart.
From the outside, the Immortal Domain appeared to be merely a small region.
Yet the True Immortal flew for a long time and covered only a short distance. The closer she drew to the Wordless Stele, the slower she became, as if an infinite gulf separated her from her goal.
The events unfolding within the Immortal Domain did not alter the situation in the Darkest Star Sea.
The Realm Fragment Great Wall and the Sea of Relics continued their inexorable fall toward the Wordless Stele.
Before they could even approach the Immortal Domain, they dissolved into streaks of light.
Upon being absorbed by the stele, they added but a few more flecks to its mottled surface.
They failed to leave even the faintest scratch.
The torrential cascade grew more violent, and Li Fan found it increasingly difficult to hold his ground.
With every streak of light that shot past, transformed from some physical object, Li Fan felt the crushing impact of what it once was, as if the object itself were slamming into him.
It pushed him, step by inexorable step, toward the Immortal Domain.
Nothing in the Star Sea could escape this fate.
The Xuanhuang Realm was no exception.
Li Fan saw two figures, the Dharma Spreader and the Heavenly Doctor, who had somehow managed to break free from the stele's enlightening allure.
They were struggling with all their might to prevent the Xuanhuang Realm's descent into ruin.
But their efforts were a drop in the ocean, merely delaying the inevitable.
Beyond them, not far away, two figures—one large, one small—stood side by side, catching Li Fan's eye.
"Dao, ancient. Xin, annihilation. Cultivate the moving thought, connect the will, journey to the spirit. A thousand paths the soul shifts, a hundred turns the spirit revolves."
"...Without fault."
A faint, mystical voice chanted endlessly from the larger figure. The smaller figure, meanwhile, stared at the nearby Wordless Stele, its gaze a mixture of avarice and fear.
*The Tiandu Grandmaster!* A chill ran through Li Fan.
*That chant... I think I heard it in a past life, when I faced the calamitous winds of annihilation.*
*Is there some hidden meaning to it?*
This time, he was close enough to hear the phantom's chant clearly and in its entirety.
After committing the immortal incantation to memory, Li Fan began to chant it silently to himself.
Instantly, an invisible force seemed to envelop him.
It felt like a great hand pressing down on him, steadying him against the storm unleashed by the Wordless Stele.
*It seems this can be used to avert disaster,* Li Fan wondered, filled with uncertainty.
The young acolyte beside the chanting phantom shot Li Fan a mocking glance.
He said nothing, however, not deigning to give him another look, and quickly returned his attention to the Wordless Stele.
Li Fan checked the charge level of [Truth]—it could hold for a while longer. With a thought, he summoned Tianyang and Qiushui.
The two figures crossed the void to appear at his side, standing guard to his left and right.
Even the auras of two supreme beings failed to draw the phantom acolyte's attention.
Li Fan had no intention of provoking the Grandmaster, so he simply turned his gaze back to the Immortal Domain.
By some unknown means, the True Immortal had suddenly drawn much closer to the Wordless Stele, the change happening so fast the onlookers barely noticed.
The hazy scenery within the Immortal Domain began to sharpen.
Mountains and rivers started to materialize.
Li Fan keenly sensed a disturbance in the Grandmaster's aura. It seemed filled with resentment, stirring restlessly.
Just then...
The roiling black miasma from the heart of the Star Sea finally arrived, a monstrous, world-swallowing flood.
As if sentient, it swept past Li Fan and rushed straight for the Immortal Domain.
The Grandmaster's phantom snapped out of its trance as if waking from a nightmare. Its face twisted in absolute terror, and in the next instant, it vanished without a trace.
The radiant light of the Immortal Domain offered no resistance to the black miasma whatsoever.
On the contrary, drawn in by the Wordless Stele, the immense miasma grew even more concentrated.
What had been a boundless sea of black miasma began to pour into the Immortal Domain.
There, it coalesced into a great black ribbon, descending from the heavens!
Within the Immortal Domain, it was as if a black sky was about to crush the world below.
The True Immortal, still making her way toward the stele, snapped her head up.
Though her expression was unclear, her next move was something Li Fan had not expected.
Instead of fleeing like the Grandmaster's phantom, she accelerated, charging toward the Wordless Stele.
The space around the True Immortal distorted, and suddenly, the Wordless Stele was within arm's reach.
Under the influence of the ceaseless black clouds, a terrible calamity descended upon the newly manifested Immortal Domain.
The sky seemed to collapse in on itself.
Beneath it, the newly formed mountains, rivers, and lands disintegrated inch by inch, instantly turning to nothing.
A moment later, an endless black miasma erupted from the void.
A black avalanche swept inward from all directions, consuming everything in its path as it converged on the center of the Immortal Domain.
The heavens of the Immortal Domain collapsed relentlessly.
Its borders shrank, growing smaller and smaller.
At the critical moment, the True Immortal finally reached the Wordless Stele.
She unleashed a brilliant flash of light, striking the Wordless Stele.
For a fleeting moment, a few characters seemed to flicker into existence on its surface.
A moment later, a pillar of light erupted from the top of the stele, piercing the heavens.
It barely held back the surging tide of black miasma and the ceaseless collapse of the sky.
Like a celestial pillar, it propped up the falling sky.
"The Dao Annihilation Calamity..."
"The Southern Immortal Pillar..."
Having witnessed all this, Li Fan was beginning to understand the True Immortal's words.
But a single pillar could not hold up the heavens.
The power of the Wordless Stele, activated by the True Immortal alone, was not enough to stop the coming of the Dao Annihilation Calamity.
The tide of black miasma, though slow, continued its inexorable descent.
A wave of despair washed over the True Immortal's face.
After consuming the Immortal Domain, the black miasma itself had changed.
Hazy figures now flickered in and out of existence within its depths.
A powerful sense of crisis seized Li Fan.
He looked back and saw that in the remaining pockets of the Darkest Star Sea, countless streams of black miasma were now erupting from every corner at once.
In a single instant, it had flooded the entire Star Sea.
And this was not the original miasma of the Star Sea; it was a sublimated version, transformed after devouring the Immortal Domain.
Ghostly clusters appeared throughout the Star Sea, like a pandemonium of spirits parading through the night.
The bizarre figures within the miasma seemed to harbor some great and nameless terror, making Li Fan's heart pound and his scalp crawl.
Even [Truth], in a rare occurrence, sent him a warning.
It urged him to flee at once.
*It's time to go back.*
Watching the terrifying spectacle of the rampaging miasma, the thought rose unbidden in his mind.
But just as the curtain of light from [Truth] was about to envelop him, Li Fan was struck by a sudden inspiration.
A white ring shot from his hand, flying instantly toward the Wordless Stele within the Immortal Domain.
It was the white ring, Falling into the Mortal Dust!
Unlike the True Immortal, it was not blocked.
It flew straight through, piercing the surging tide of black miasma that surrounded the stele.
It collided with the Wordless Stele.
There was no earth-shattering explosion.
Instead, a dazzling light erupted from the white ring.
Then it vanished from sight.
At the same time, a complete character materialized on the surface of the Wordless Stele!
It was a True Immortal Seal Character, a symbol representing the very principles of the world's Great Dao!
The appearance of this True Immortal Seal Character seemed to inject immense power into the Southern Immortal Pillar.
The erupting pillar of light swelled dramatically.
It instantly repelled the encroaching black tide.
The True Immortal, who had been consumed by despair, snapped to her senses.
Without reservation, she poured all of her energy into the Wordless Stele.
Flesh, blood, and hair vanished from her body.
She reverted to the skeletal form Li Fan had once seen in the Immortal Ruins.
On the Wordless Stele, a second True Immortal Seal Character slowly materialized.
The pillar of light swelled once more, finally piercing through the black tide.
It formed a massive halo against the sky.
The True Immortal, taking the Wordless Stele with her, broke free from the black miasma's blockade.
Sensing that Li Fan had been the one to help her, she seemed intent on taking him with her, flying toward his position.
But to her utter astonishment, Li Fan shot backward in retreat.
At the same time, Tianyang and Qiushui moved to block her path.
"[Truth]!"
Li Fan silently invoked the command.
(End of Chapter)
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