Essence Devouring Art

Before the next storm brewed.

The Divine Wilderness World.

The second day after the great battle.

WHOOSH—

In the Abyss spanning tens of thousands of miles, the Gangfeng Qi Flow churned and swirled.

The dark void.

A portly figure scanned the Abyss with his perception over and over, muttering deliriously as if possessed:

"How is this possible... You’re a monster... How could you possibly die..."

King Bao Tong, who had survived the tribulation, swept his divine sense across the Abyss relentlessly. He clutched a handful of dim particles, old tears streaming down his face.

But no matter how hard he searched,

all he could find were the various lotuses forged by the Great Dao, which could not be erased.

These lotuses.

Each one represented a figure who had once stood tall and proud in the Divine Wilderness.

But now, they were all dead.

No matter how great their past achievements, they had all become fleeting travelers in the long river of history, leaving behind nothing but the Creation they had achieved in life.

Perhaps,

it was a great blessing that even a small proof of their existence remained.

Because,

the one figure who had truly shouldered the heavens had been utterly annihilated, leaving nothing behind.

SLAP!

Suddenly,

King Bao Tong, Qian Kuiyun, who was holding the lotuses, stopped abruptly. He slapped himself hard across the face, his own expression a mixture of laughter and tears.

"Haha, damn it, what a stupid ass I am! If even I could survive by the skin of my teeth, there’s no way he didn’t make it!!"

Worry had clouded his judgment.

The desolate and soul-shaking image of Wu Dao fighting All Heavens alone and being annihilated in the end had been too overwhelming.

It had filled Qian Kuiyun’s heart with nothing but grief.

So much so that he had forgotten how he himself had managed to survive.

The Immortal Black Tortoise Divine Skill!

He had only mastered a deformed and incomplete version, yet he was still able to use his backup plan, the Golden Cicada Shell Escape Technique, to be reborn.

He had achieved the rank of Sacred Spirit, a Half-step Yang God.

How could Wu Dao, who was countless times stronger than him, not have a contingency plan!

"Hahaha, I knew it! You can’t die! No one can kill you, you monster!!"

Qian Kuiyun flew out of the Abyss, the sorrow and depression that had filled his chest vanishing completely. He let out a long, hearty laugh. But as he laughed, his eyes fell upon the shattered Divine Desolate World, and he fell silent once more.

Silence.

A deathly silence!

The darkness was boundless.

The vast land was a scene of ruin and devastation, devoid of its usual vibrant life. The entire world was continuously falling into an abyss of destruction.

Even though they had killed all the Tribulation Descenders,

in the face of the irreversible punishment of the Great Dao,

the Divine Wilderness...

was gone after all.

Not only had countless races and living beings perished,

but even the world itself...

Qian Kuiyun gazed into the distance. At the edge of the darkness, he could see the walls of a white cage that devoured everything slowly closing in, reducing the Divine Desolate World to nothingness.

"According to ancient legend, if one proves the Great Dao, the Great Dao is like a book, Hongyuan..."

After withdrawing his gaze,

Qian Kuiyun suppressed the sorrowful and complex emotions in his heart. He glanced at the lotuses in his arms and smiled faintly.

"Don’t you worry. This king has been a merchant his entire life. I would never abandon rare treasures like you."

WHOOSH—

As soon as he finished speaking,

Qian Kuiyun shot into the golden light well that connected the two worlds in the sky, carrying the last treasures of the Divine Wilderness.

During All Tribulations,

the passage connecting Dragon Mud and the Divine Wilderness would open for two days, allowing the top experts of that tribulation to pass through.

The first day was for the tribulation’s descent.

The second day was for the return.

Miss the window,

and you would be trapped in the Divine Wilderness forever.

In the thirty thousand years of the Nine Tribulations,

no top expert from the Divine Wilderness had ever survived the first day of any tribulation.

But in this tribulation,

because of the anomaly that was Wu Dao,

the Divine Wilderness had won a bitter victory.

A single spark, King Bao Tong, was preserved.

Before the Great Tribulation,

the Demon Suppression Emperor had informed All Emperors.

If they were fortunate enough to win, they could enter the Dragon Mud Cave Heaven through the passage. By crossing the turbulent void beyond the Grotto Heaven, they could completely escape the prison of the Divine Wilderness.

This was very difficult.

Just from its name, one could tell the turbulent void was no safe place. If they couldn’t find the ancient path of the Hongyuan Cultivators, they could be lost in it forever.

"Divine Wilderness, goodbye. We will meet again."

Before the slowly closing passage of golden light,

Qian Kuiyun’s eyes were slightly red. He took one last look at the Divine Wilderness World before resolutely entering the passage, choosing to embark on a path of salvation, a path of seeking life from death.

’Since Wu Dao isn’t dead,’

’he must have entered the passage as well.’

’If I hurry,’

’I might be able to catch up to him. If we work together, we can definitely make it through that turbulent void.’

...

In reality, however,

Qian Kuiyun was only half right.

Wu Dao was indeed not completely dead.

But there wasn’t much difference between his state and death.

Let alone entering the passage to escape.

RUSTLE RUSTLE...

In the center of the Divine Desolate Heaven and Earth,

in a chasm at the bottom of the ruined and defiled inner sea that had lost its Spirituality,

there existed a strange space.

It was hidden within the void.

Without knowing its coordinates,

not even a peak Pseudo Dharma Aspect could detect the slightest trace of it.

Deep within the bizarre and colorful Spiral Space,

the escape passage that offered a sliver of hope had already vanished. All that remained was a bottomless well that spewed an aura of destruction and rumbled with destructive winds and thunder.

RUSTLE...

The sound of a collapsing pile of sand echoed.

At the entrance of the Spiral Space,

the dull, lightless outer shell of a fist-sized clump of ’Star Sand’ flaked away. Dim particles that had previously fallen off could be seen in the surrounding space.

This constantly decaying cluster of windblown sand...

was precisely the contingency plan Wu Dao had deployed into the world after achieving the Half-step Yang God realm.

This space,

which even a supremely powerful Pseudo Dharma Aspect could not detect,

was meant to ensure he would have a sliver of a chance to live, even if he lost.

Unfortunately,

the price of Divine Image Heaven was too terrifying.

A complete, all-encompassing self-destruction.

In that instant, the soul of the same origin within this contingency plan was destroyed along with his Main Body.

What existed now...

was merely a single, undying thought of his True Self.

But as time passed,

that sliver of immortal flame within the decaying Star Sand also began to sink into darkness.

Darkness.

Endless darkness.

The light that was never supposed to be extinguished,

the flame that guided wandering souls home,

vanished the moment he fell into the dark.

It was like a drowning man clutching a life-saving straw, only for it to disappear from his grasp just as he was about to reach the shore.

After his complete self-destruction,

Wu Dao encountered a true life-and-death calamity that surpassed even the Mud Prison Abyss and the Endless Sea of Suffering.

He was lost in the darkness.

He couldn’t find his way home.

Or perhaps,

this was a road with no end.

There was no torture of Hell.

Nor was there the suffering of countless cycles of Reincarnation.

He couldn’t feel pain.

Nor were there any sights.

In the darkness,

there was only eternal silence and solitude.

The road beneath his feet was endless.

No matter how he walked,

only deeper darkness awaited him.

Wu Dao was silent.

He did not scream.

Nor did he break down in fear.

Or rather, he could no longer make a sound.

Nor could he experience any emotional changes.

His only obsession,

was to take a step.

To keep stepping forward.

To walk tirelessly, tenaciously, toward the direction where the light had disappeared.

After an unknown amount of time,

a scene finally appeared in the darkness.

But it wasn’t the light Wu Dao was searching for.

On the contrary,

an indescribable attractive force emanated from that light, seeming to want to hold him there forever.

Within the scene,

all the past events of his life emerged.

It was his childhood from his past life, the true beginning of his existence.

Laughter, joy, warmth, and affection.

The light and shadows constantly shifted.

Scene after scene from the past radiated a light of ’existence’ that he desperately craved, tempting him to enter and be reborn.

CRASH!

A large hand reached out and shattered the light.

The silent obsession for survival continued to press forward tenaciously.

’What is past is past.’

’Even the most beautiful flower of yesterday has already withered.’

’Only by moving forward can one achieve eternal immortality.’

He advanced for another unknown length of time.

A new light appeared on the path ahead.

His youth, vigorous and full of sweat.

It was the brilliant moment when life blossomed with light, and the pulling force was much stronger.

CRASH!

But the obsession did not stop. It resisted the pull and continued to shatter the light.

Youth, prime, middle age...

Obscurity, rising fame, making a name for himself...

until he reached the pinnacle of the world.

On the path that followed,

the obsession encountered more and more lights, their attraction growing ever stronger.

But his steps never faltered.

Even when those lights became increasingly indestructible, as imposing as Divine Mountains,

he just silently kept punching.

With boundless persistence, he wore down the obstructing lights like water dripping on a stone, shattering them one by one.

Until...

"Wu Dao, you beast... you Demon... because of you alone, countless lives were devastated..."

The scene of his ’first death’.

It transformed into a boundless Divine Mountain with no visible peak, blocking all paths forward.

He punched!

The Divine Mountain was majestic, vast, and indestructible.

His fist only kicked up a few insignificant grains of shattered sand where it landed.

Wu Dao was not discouraged in the slightest.

He just silently kept punching, and punching, and punching.

After an unknown amount of time,

finally,

the Divine Mountain was pierced through.

But what awaited Wu Dao was not a wide, open road.

Behind a series of smaller Divine Mountains,

stood an even more magnificent Divine Mountain constructed from countless Purgatory Seas of Suffering.

And at the very end,

was an indescribable,

ultimate Divine Mountain, the tip of its iceberg surpassing the sum of all that came before. It blocked his path forward, and it blocked the light he pursued.

Wu Dao looked at his fist.

’The stone I can move with one punch...’

’...is, compared to even the smallest mountain ahead, like a grain of sand to all the stars in the universe.’

’How many punches would it take to cross it?’

’And how many more mountains lie ahead?’

’That doesn’t matter.’

’What matters is that I can still punch.’

’The mountains can be pierced.’

’That is enough.’

’Despair? Impossibility? Overestimation of my own strength?’

He had no such negative emotions.

The only thing he had,

was the obsession to never stop moving forward.

Life and death hang on a single thought.

And Wu Dao now existed within that single thought.

The scales were not balanced.

Death was indeed just a single thought of giving up.

But on the side of life...

...

Time in the outside world flowed by quickly.

Within the Spiral Space,

the light at the core of the clump of ’Star Sand’ flickered uncertainly, but it miraculously remained burning and glowing.

The Divine Wilderness World,

like a forgotten, otherworldly land,

was continuously shrinking and being annihilated in dead silence.

「A month later.」

The territories of the Divine Wilderness outside the Central Plains were completely annihilated. The limited, narrow space gradually formed a pure white, egg-like World.

Then, a few days later,

the Central Plains also vanished completely, leaving only the inner sea at the center of heaven and earth.

But the march of the world-ending calamity’s punishment,

showed no mercy.

The inner sea also began to be ground into nothingness.

Finally,

half a day later,

of the entire, vast Divine Desolate World,

only that Spiral Space remained.

Celestial Thunder rumbled and the Gang Wind howled.

It was like a single egg, a drop in the ocean, within the Primordial Sea of Chaos.

CREEEAAAK—

Under the crushing pressure of the Celestial Thunder Gang Wind,

cracks began to appear on the eggshell. It shook unceasingly, gradually showing signs of collapse.

VMMMM—

At that very moment,

inside the nearly shattered eggshell,

a powerful and tenacious life fluctuation began to surge forth, like a Heaven-Opening God Demon rousing its boundless strength to violently cleave open the darkness.

VMMMM!!

An intensely scorching divine light, carrying a vast, dreamlike electric current like a starry sky, filled the space, bursting out from the cracks in the eggshell.

Like a starving man returning home after countless years of hunger,

finally grabbing hold of his beautiful wife!

CRACKLE— POP—

The starry-sky-colored Primordial Magnetism current despotically subdued the world-destroying, hot-tempered streams of pure white Celestial Thunder Gang Wind outside the eggshell with brute force.

Then, it eagerly merged with them.

In that moment,

Heaven’s thunder struck earth’s fire.

A vacuum formed within a ten-thousand-mile radius.

Until...

the figure of the Daoist at the center of the eggshell’s divine light had finally taken full form. Only then did he slap away the streams of Celestial Thunder Gang Wind and open his eyes, which were as deep as black holes in a starry abyss.

Haaa—

He exhaled a breath of turbid air.

The endless vicissitudes in his eyes faded away.

Wu Dao’s expression was as placid as water.

There was no sense of relief from having survived a calamity.

Even though he had seen his life flash before his eyes,

and had truly walked the line between life and death in a single thought, enduring unimaginable hardships,

his state of mind remained completely undisturbed.

Just like when he had used Divine Image Heaven.

There was no hesitation or fear, only composure and confidence.

Through countless trials of life and death,

his obsession to survive and advance had long been forged into an Immortal Divine Fire.

As long as that one thought remained, his life would burn eternal.

That which did not kill him...

would only make him stronger!