Desolate Devouring Art

Only after everyone had departed did Liu Wuxie's figure flicker back into view. He slipped down from the tree and landed soundlessly in the courtyard.

A soft creak came from the side entrance. The gardener who had secretly passed him the note earlier that day appeared beyond it.

"Young Master Liu, hurry. Follow me," he urged.

Liu Wuxie could now confirm that the gardener was a spy planted by the Heavenly Divination Gate. He had hidden inside the Shadow Divination Gate for years, burying his true allegiance while patiently awaiting the right moment to act.

Had Liu Wuxie never appeared, the gardener might have continued living in disguise indefinitely.

Enchantress might have left, but numerous experts still surrounded the palace. Worse still, the sect master was already heading toward them. They had no time to waste.

Liu Wuxie followed the gardener through the side entrance in a flicker. They returned to the neglected grounds where he had fought Number 56. Once there, the gardener shoved aside a massive boulder and exposed a narrow opening barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through.

"Young Master, forgive me, but you'll have to hide here for now. Get inside quickly," he urged as several terrifying auras rapidly approached their position.

Liu Wuxie slipped into the passage without hesitation. A faint stench immediately washed over him. Not far from the hidden entrance lay the dumping grounds where the gardeners routinely discarded the palace's waste.

The gardener had most likely excavated the secret passage bit by bit over many years, working on it whenever his duties brought him to this deserted area.

After traveling roughly a hundred meters through the tunnel, Liu Wuxie reached a cramped stone chamber barely high enough for him to stand upright. Despite the narrow space, the gardener had prepared a generous stockpile of food in advance.

Once Liu Wuxie disappeared into the passage, the gardener restored the entrance, concealed it behind the boulder, and vanished without leaving a trace.

The moment Liu Wuxie entered the stone chamber, he retrieved several array flags and planted them throughout the confined space. A Divine Immortal's divine sense could pierce deep underground with ease, so Liu Wuxie immediately constructed a spiritual array to hide his presence and prevent anyone from discovering him.

Only after completing the spiritual array did Liu Wuxie release the breath he had been holding. Infiltrating the Shadow Divination Gate had been an exceedingly dangerous gamble, no different from walking barefoot along the edge of a sharpened blade. One misplaced step could lead him to death.

A terrifying aura suddenly engulfed the palace as the sect master arrived. The instant he appeared, his divine sense flowed through the entire palace like liquid mercury, seeping into every crevice and probing every inch.

The pressure pouring from his body became so violent that several palace buildings collapsed. Many gardeners failed to escape the falling rubble and were crushed to death beneath it.

Liu Wuxie sensed the sect master's formidable divine sense boring deep underground. Fortunately, he had established the spiritual array in advance and reinforced it with his mental energy. The divine sense swept across the formation without detecting anything concealed within.

Only then did Liu Wuxie's tension ease. He slowly exhaled, allowing a measure of relief to settle over him.

The sword ray that had split the mountain range had created an escape route, but he was running against time. He needed to finish the fusion between the Heavenly Dao Book and the Heavenly Derivation Codex as quickly as possible.

Without the Heavenly Derivation Codex to shield him, the sect master would soon suffer another backlash from the Heavenly Dao.

Liu Wuxie sat cross-legged and linked his consciousness to the Heavenly Dao Book. He then accelerated its consumption of the natural patterns of heaven and earth covering the Heavenly Derivation Codex.

As those patterns faded, the Heavenly Derivation Codex began crumbling like paper caught in a flame. It slowly disintegrated, vanishing fragment by fragment.

"Who is doing this?!" the sect master roared upon realizing the truth. Someone was refining the Heavenly Derivation Codex from inside his interspatial ring, finally explaining why the Heavenly Dao's backlash had erupted with such overwhelming force.

"Heavenly Dao Book, return," Liu Wuxie commanded.

Before the sect master could lock onto it, the Heavenly Dao Book erupted with dazzling golden radiance and completely enveloped the Heavenly Derivation Codex.

That sudden burst of power exposed the Heavenly Dao Book. The sect master reached for it immediately, but his hand closed on empty space. The book transformed into a streak of golden light, tore out of the interspatial ring, and shot toward the rear garden of Enchantress' palace.

"You're not escaping," the sect master roared. Madness consumed him as he formed a rapid sequence of seals, locking down the surrounding space to trap the Heavenly Dao Book.

At that precise moment, a second heaven-rending sword ray descended from above, striking even closer than the first.

"Old Meng, you've gone too far," the sect master bellowed, his fury shaking the heavens.

The perfectly timed assault from within and without caught the entire Shadow Divination Gate unprepared.

The sword ray ripped a fissure through the sealed space, creating just enough room for the Heavenly Dao Book to escape. It plunged deep underground and returned to Liu Wuxie's soul sea in less than one-thousandth of an instant.

The moment the Heavenly Dao Book entered his soul sea, an immense torrent of Heavenly Dao's power descended into Liu Wuxie's body, driving his aura rapidly upward.

"I need to prepare for my breakthrough," Liu Wuxie murmured.

The breakthrough had arrived without warning. Liu Wuxie hadn't anticipated that the fusion between the Heavenly Dao Book and the Heavenly Derivation Codex would release such a tremendous quantity of Heavenly Dao's power, which now poured back into his body and nourished him.

......

At that same moment, an army of experts charged into the Shadow Divination Gate, setting off fierce battles throughout the sect. Meng Nong and Meng Yu drew their swords and joined the assault.

The war outside no longer concerned Liu Wuxie. He had completed his mission, and the Heavenly Divination Gate could handle everything that remained.

Liu Wuxie circulated the Desolate Devouring Art inside the stone chamber, causing the immortal vein buried beneath the Shadow Divination Gate to stir violently. At the same time, the immortal energy he had previously absorbed and stored within the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron surged into the Desolate World.

"Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, descend and seize the immortal vein!"

With the Shadow Divination Gate overwhelmed by invading enemies, Liu Wuxie immediately seized the opportunity to act.

After losing the Heavenly Derivation Codex, the sect master of the Shadow Divination Gate released a succession of inhuman shrieks. His newly restored body collapsed at terrifying speed and degenerated once more into a colossal mound of flesh. Throughout the years, he had used the Heavenly Derivation Codex to calculate and divulge countless heavenly secrets, allowing the Heavenly Dao's backlash to accumulate to a horrifying degree.

As long as the Heavenly Derivation Codex remained in his possession, he could suppress that backlash. The moment he lost it, every accumulated retribution descended upon him simultaneously, and no power could stop it.

Liu Wuxie could not fully summon the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, but its power manifested as an enormous black hole that plunged into the depths of the earth.

His divine sense followed the cauldron downward until an immense immortal vein entered his perception. The vein stretched nearly three thousand meters and lay encased within a thick shell of immortal stones. Even by Liu Wuxie's roughest estimate, it was worth around twenty million immortal stones.

Ordinary deposits of immortal stones were finite, while an immortal vein could continuously replenish itself and grow. Even so, every stone extracted diminished its reserves and required time to replace.

"Come!" Liu Wuxie roared, tearing the entire immortal vein free from the earth.

Even after obtaining the immortal vein, Liu Wuxie had no intention of refining it and directly absorbing its energy. Instead, he planned to transplant it into Desolate World, which remained far too barren and required immense resources to sustain its continued expansion.

The stronger Desolate World became, the more power it would return to Liu Wuxie.

The entire Shadow Divination Gate convulsed. The sword ray descending from the heavens had already reduced half its buildings to ruins, and the earth continued splitting into widening chasms that swallowed even more structures.

The violent upheaval resembled a devastating earthquake. With the immortal vein removed, the geomantic fortune that had sustained this place would disappear forever.

"Hei Shan, surrender. The Heavenly Dao has abandoned you," Elder Meng declared from the sky. The aura of a Divine Immortal surged from his body and enveloped the entire Shadow Divination Gate.

Hei Shan was the true name of the Shadow Divination Gate's sect master. In his youth, he had infiltrated the Heavenly Divination Gate, stolen the Heavenly Derivation Codex, and used its power to establish the Shadow Divination Gate.

Now the Heavenly Dao itself had rejected him. Even heaven and earth could no longer tolerate Hei Shan's existence.

"Old Meng, tell me... how did you steal the Heavenly Derivation Codex?" Hei Shan demanded.

Rejection by the Heavenly Dao subjected Hei Shan to an even more terrifying backlash than before. His body had collapsed into a grotesque mound of flesh suspended in midair. Every limb had disappeared, leaving only a bald, rotting head protruding from the writhing mass.

The disciples of the Shadow Divination Gate fell to their knees in terror, scarcely daring to breathe. Their sect master's ghastly appearance was almost too horrifying to look upon.

Elder Meng stepped through the air and stopped roughly a hundred meters from Hei Shan.

"I didn't steal the Heavenly Derivation Codex. It merely returned to where it had always belonged," Elder Meng replied.

Some truths could never be conveyed through words alone. Even if Elder Meng could explain everything, he had no intention of doing so. The Heavenly Dao followed its own immutable order.

"After fighting you for so many years, I still lost in the end," Hei Shan said with a weary sigh.

The Shadow Divination Gate and the Heavenly Divination Gate had remained bitter enemies for centuries. They had clashed countless times, but neither faction had ever secured a decisive advantage.

Elder Meng released a quiet sigh of his own. A few months earlier, he had led Meng Nong and Meng Yu into the Dragon Burial Mountain Range. Looking back, that journey no longer seemed coincidental. It felt carefully arranged from the beginning, guiding them toward Liu Wuxie and forging a connection between them.

Deep underground, Liu Wuxie remained completely immersed in cultivation. The power returned by the Heavenly Dao Book continued to intensify, surging relentlessly through his limbs.

With a thunderous explosion, the barrier to the seventh level of the True Immortal Realm shattered. At the same moment, dazzling golden radiance erupted from the Heavenly Dao Book and enveloped Liu Wuxie.

"Heavenly Dao Book, conceal my Heavenly Dao," Liu Wuxie commanded.

Once the Heavenly Dao Book concealed his Heavenly Dao, no one would be able to divine anything about him, even without the protection of Heaven-Earth Lockdown and Worldly Reversal. He would no longer need to live under the constant threat of enemies tracing his origins.

Even if Liu Wuxie didn't use immortal arts of his previous life, an Immortal Emperor still possessed unfathomable methods to track him down. From the smallest clue, such an existence could reconstruct an entire chain of events.

By obtaining the Heavenly Derivation Codex, Liu Wuxie had effectively severed his own Heavenly Dao. He had stepped beyond the five elements and escaped the calculations of the Heavenly Dao itself.

The immortal vein entered Desolate World with a deafening roar. A vast fissure tore across the earth, opening a path for the vein to descend deep beneath the ground.

Nourished by the immortal vein, Desolate World expanded at an astonishing pace. Its boundaries spread outward while the surrounding space grew increasingly dense, releasing an ancient power that permeated every corner of the realm.

As the Desolate World continued evolving, newly formed stars appeared one after another across its heavens. Each star resembled a human eye suspended in the sky, and every newborn star embodied an elemental force, signaling that the Desolate World was steadily approaching perfection.

The energies belonging to the various races Liu Wuxie had slain over the years also began flourishing. They diffused through the desolate world and made heaven and earth increasingly turbid. This turbidity did not represent impurity, however, because those energies had only just entered their nurturing phase.

While the battle outside raged with increasing ferocity, Enchantress, Venomous Viper, and Black Tiger watched with bloodshot eyes.

"Enchantress, this is all your fault," Black Tiger roared furiously.

If enemies had not been attacking the Shadow Divination Gate, he would already have struck Enchantress. Number 179's disappearance had confirmed their suspicions that he was responsible for stealing the Heavenly Derivation Codex.

Meanwhile, the Desolate Devouring Art circulated faster than ever, drawing vast torrents of liquid immortal energy into the Desolate World. Liu Wuxie's cultivation climbed at monstrous speed until it reached the pinnacle of the seventh-level True Immortal Realm.

Only a few days earlier, he had refined the Agarwood Essence and broken through to the sixth-level True Immortal Realm. Yet almost no time had passed before another breakthrough descended upon him.

Any ordinary cultivator advancing at such a terrifying pace would have been torn apart by the strain long ago.

Golden brilliance surged from the Heavenly Dao Book and wrapped around Liu Wuxie's entire body. The Heavenly Derivation Codex had now disappeared completely, while the Heavenly Dao Book had undergone another transformation and acquired an even more ancient presence. Countless patterns of heaven and earth covered every page, each radiating boundless profundity.

Just as Liu Wuxie had anticipated, absorbing the Heavenly Derivation Codex had allowed the Heavenly Dao Book to evolve, granting him insight into the Heavenly Path. Among the Six Paths, he now wielded both the Heavenly Path and the Human Path.

"The sequences within the Heavenly Dao Book are much clearer now. Every immortal art I possess feels as though it has been carved into the deepest part of my memory," Liu Wuxie murmured, his eyes shining with newfound brilliance.

The Heavenly Dao Book's evolution had greatly expanded its abilities. It no longer existed solely to deduce mysteries and strengthen Liu Wuxie's memory.

As the saying goes, a doctor can heal others but not himself. Hei Shan embodied that truth perfectly. He had revealed far too many heavenly secrets and ultimately suffered the Heavenly Dao's backlash until it reduced him to this wretched state. Even after mastering the Heavenly Path, Liu Wuxie would never dare abuse such power recklessly.