Chapter 1743: The Mountain and Sea Captured in a Painting
Chapter 1743: The Mountain and Sea Captured in a Painting
"Exhilarating! How exhilarating!"
"In the past, we were the ones who sheltered the Mountain and Sea, but now, the Mountain and Sea has become our shield! Truly, the wheel of fate turns, and every debt is paid!"
Amidst the wild laughter of the Saints, the Mountain and Sea had already been carved into countless fragments by the tide of Dao Annihilation.
Ordinarily, a world subjected to such devastation should have ceased to exist long ago. Yet, some unseen force seemed to be at work in the shadows, resisting the corrosion of the Eternal Silent Void Realm while forcibly binding the innumerable fragments of the Mountain and Sea together. As a result, the Mountain and Sea still maintained a semblance of "wholeness."
Li Fan's divine sense swept across the Mountain and Sea, and in an instant, he locked onto the source of this binding power. As he had expected, it was the pair of divine thoughts left behind by Qiu Tianhui and his wife.
As the Way of All Living Beings in the Mountain and Sea, they were the nexus point between the Beginning of Mountain and Sea and the End of Time. This couple, formed from divine thoughts, were not truly living beings but the personification of a concept.
Ordinarily, they were unaware of their true nature, but now, as the Mountain and Sea faced annihilation, the couple instinctively looked up at the sky. Then, their expressions slowly grew vacant.
Their figures seemed to vibrate rapidly, and with each tremor, the shadow of a living being detached itself, transforming into a speck of light that drifted toward the sky.
"Qiu Tianhui and his wife did indeed leave something behind!"
"This is the power of living beings feeding back into the Mountain and Sea. It's like a powerful medicine for the dying—it might grant a final burst of life, but ultimately, it cannot save the Mountain and Sea!"
The Saints understood this clearly, yet they continued to watch with their hands clasped behind their backs.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of their attention remained fixed on the hidden veins and arteries within the Mountain and Sea.
As the tide of Dao Annihilation continued its corrosion, the Mountain and Sea's instinctive reaction finally came. And its intensity somewhat surpassed the Saints' imagination.
Across the Mountain and Sea, it was as if a great wind had suddenly risen.
The few remaining possibilities, which had been struggling to hold on against the onslaught of Dao Annihilation, were swept up by this internal gale and instantly plunged into a terrifying vortex.
Countless possibilities were utterly annihilated, transforming into the purest essence of the Mountain and Sea's power.
Living beings, civilizations, possibilities, paths of Dao—everything that existed within the Mountain and Sea was reduced to nothingness by this immense storm.
All that remained was the Mountain and Sea itself.
Utterly pure, and utterly formidable.
It was as if it had returned to the time just after its initial sundering, when the Mountain and Sea was simply the Mountain and Sea.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Thunderous collisions echoed from all corners of the Mountain and Sea as several violent currents shot toward the heavens. It was the torrents of Dao Annihilation, which had previously seeped into the Mountain and Sea's veins, being forcibly repelled by its immense power.
The enemy retreated, and it advanced.
An indescribably vast life force flowed out from the veins of the Mountain and Sea. The shattered Mountain and Sea began to slowly re-form under its influence.
Perhaps sensing the specific nature of the external crisis, the newborn Mountain and Sea no longer evolved into numerous possibilities.
Nor did it take on the appearance of the legendary Primitive Immortal Realm.
Instead, it became like a stone carving, with all the myriad phenomena of the Mountain and Sea etched upon it.
It had lost its so-called "change," but in its place, it exuded a unique and solemn majesty.
With the appearance of the Mountain and Sea stone slab, everything within it seemed to be enveloped by its power, losing all vitality and becoming part of the carving on its surface.
Even the Saints within the Armillary Ring were not spared.
The white light surrounding the Armillary Ring froze solid, as if encased in ice. The petrifying power continued its unstoppable encroachment inward.
"Go!"
Seeing the situation turn dire, Li Fan decisively chose to join the other Saints in maneuvering the Armillary Ring to escape into the Eternal Silent Void Realm.
What should have been an instantaneous leap was now an arduous crawl within the Mountain and Sea stone slab.
Instinct told the Saints that if they did not leave now, their only fate would be to share that of the Mountain and Sea—to be carved into stone.
At this moment of life and death, they all unleashed their full potential. The radiances of their various Great Daos flickered, bathing the Armillary Ring in a rainbow of colors.
They forcefully broke through the blockade of the petrified Mountain and Sea, successfully escaping into the Eternal Silent Void Realm.
All that was left behind was a long streak traced by the Armillary Ring's light, forever frozen in the solidified Mountain and Sea.
The Saints, having taken refuge in the Eternal Silent Void Realm, looked back, their souls still shaken.
It was ironic; in the past, they had all avoided the Dao-annihilating void realm like the plague. But now, compared to the raging void, the petrified Mountain and Sea was far more dangerous.
At the very least, with their power, the Saints could have struggled on for some time, no matter how furiously the Dao Annihilation raged.
But faced with this petrification of the Mountain and Sea...
Had the Saints not fled, their fate would have been the same as everything else within: the Mountain and Sea had completed its transformation, turning into a single, solid slab of stone.
Like an unyielding rock, it remained utterly unmoved, no matter how fiercely the waves of Dao Annihilation battered it.
Faintly, upon the slab's textured surface, one could still discern the final moments of the Mountain and Sea.
But now, its life force was gone, and its future was extinguished.
The Mountain and Sea was forever frozen in that moment.
"Tai... Fellow Daoist Tai Wei!"
As the Saints stared in stunned silence, a cry of alarm from Shou Qiu made their hearts leap into their throats once more.
Following Shou Qiu's gaze, they saw the towering figure of the Tai Wei Saint Emperor, etched into the firmament of the Mountain and Sea.
He stood like a brilliant sun, shielding the countless citizens of his Sacred Dynasty, attempting to resist the sudden, catastrophic transformation of the Mountain and Sea.
Though the Tai Wei Saint Emperor was petrified, his expression remained perfectly clear.
Gazing up at the sky, he stood with his hands behind his back, devoid of fear.
It was a pity that even a Saint's power was not enough to withstand the calamity of this petrification.
Not only had he failed to save his people, but he himself had been entombed along with them.
"Foolish! Why didn't Fellow Daoist Tai Wei flee!"
"It was not that he could not, but that he would not," Sundial Fate remarked grimly. "Tai Wei's entire foundation was rooted in his vast Sacred Dynasty. With the dynasty and its people gone, even if he had managed to escape, not even one percent of his power would have remained. Rather than become fodder for others, he chose to end it on his own terms."
"Fellow Daoist Sundial Fate, what do you mean by that?"
"Heh heh..."
The petrification of the Mountain and Sea, the death of Tai Wei—under the weight of these shocks, the Saints moved another step closer to recovering their true natures.
Li Fan, however, was not particularly concerned. He, Shou Qiu, and Moral True Immortal had already formed an alliance of one mind, and could easily suppress the other Saints.
At this moment, his gaze was fixed intently on the Mountain and Sea stone slab before him.
The feeling this slab gave him was identical to that of the Mountain Sea No-Boundary Stele.
The Mountain Sea No-Boundary Stele was inscribed with the traces of countless Great Daos. And the fine, raised lines on the Mountain and Sea stone slab seemed to correspond perfectly to the various Dao laws within!
"If I could absorb this slab, it would be like swallowing all the myriad Great Daos of the Mountain and Sea whole!" The thought suddenly flared in Li Fan's mind.
But after witnessing the aftermath of the collision between the Eternal Silent Void Realm and the stone slab, he instantly extinguished the idea.
He saw that the Dao Annihilation power that had infiltrated the Mountain and Sea's veins had not only been repelled, but even the parts of the Mountain and Sea that the Eternal Silent Void Realm had already devoured were returned to its control as the petrification progressed.
What the Mountain and Sea stone slab presented was not a pockmarked collection of fragments corroded by the void, but a complete, unbroken tableau.
By sacrificing its own vitality, it had undone countless years of the Eternal Silent Void Realm's accumulated aggression in a single stroke!
And faced with the stone slab, the colossal waves of Dao Annihilation, and even the avatars of the void itself, tried to invade once more.
But the slab was a single, seamless whole, and it stood as immovable as a mountain.
While it had reconnected the sundered Mountain and Sea in some bizarre fashion, it had also completely concealed the world's underlying veins.
Comments