Chapter 434 Skeleton
"A pity. You all just came here to die."
The tall, handsome man’s voice carried no anger, no contempt—only a detached calm, as though he were announcing an unchangeable truth.
His expression remained serene as his fingers tightened around the hilt of the gigantic sword, its edge dull and unremarkable at first glance, yet exuding a pressure that caused the heavens themselves to tremble.
With a single, effortless wave, he swung.
The moment the blade moved, time itself lost meaning.
The river of past, present, and future congealed into stillness.
Space hardened like glass, every dimension locked in place.
The grand laws that governed existence—cause and effect, life and death, samsara and rebirth—fractured and collapsed, unable to withstand the authority carried by that sword.
Karma screamed as its threads were severed.
The eternal daos, principles that had existed since the birth of chaos, flickered and vanished one after another, erased as though they had never been acknowledged by reality.
The sword did not merely cut flesh or souls—it cut existence itself.
A pale arc of sword light swept outward.
Mountains were erased.
Worlds collapsed into dust.
Entire realms were split apart and swallowed by the void.
Cultivators—beings who had lived for tens of thousands, millions, even billions of years—were wiped out like insects before a storm.
Their defensive formations shattered instantly. Immortal treasures cracked and disintegrated.
Dao domains collapsed before they could even be fully manifested.
Panic erupted.
Some screamed and begged.
Others burned their blood essence, sacrificing cultivation and lifespan alike.
Void rifts were torn open, forbidden techniques activated, and reincarnation tokens crushed in desperate attempts to escape.
None of it mattered.
They were simply too slow.
The sword light advanced calmly, inexorably, harvesting lives with perfect precision.
Each time it passed, another existence was removed from the tapestry of reality—body, soul, and destiny erased completely, leaving not even a trace to be reincarnated.
One by one, they fell.
When the sword finally completed its arc, silence descended.
A silence so absolute that even chaos dared not stir.
"Nooooooo—!"
Valery jolted upright, her small body convulsing as she gasped for breath.
Her chest heaved violently, each inhale sharp and painful, as though she had been drowning moments before.
Her heart pounded erratically, threatening to burst from her fragile frame.
Cold sweat soaked her clothes. Her hands trembled.
The scene lingered vividly in her mind—the blade, the annihilation, the cold indifference in that man’s eyes.
Even after a dozen deep breaths, the oppressive terror refused to fade, clinging to her consciousness like a shadow.
Then—
Something broke inside her.
A searing pain exploded within her mind, followed by a tidal wave of memories.
They surged forward without warning, violent and unstoppable, crashing into her fragile consciousness.
Lives upon lives unfolded.
Not hundreds.
Not millions.
But trillions upon trillions of years compressed into a single instant.
She remembered standing atop ruined heavens, her feet stained with divine blood.
She remembered cultivating forbidden daos, defying destiny, slaughtering immortals, emperors, and ancestors alike.
She remembered love that spanned eras and hatred that endured beyond the death of universes.
She remembered being feared.
Worshipped.
Cursed.
Hunted.
Worlds rose and fell at her whim. Entire civilizations knelt or were erased depending on her mood.
She had transcended mortality, severed samsara, and stepped beyond the limits of eternity itself.
And yet—
She had still fallen.
The memories continued to pour in until her consciousness felt on the verge of shattering.
Just as suddenly as it began, the flood stopped.
Silence returned once more.
Valery lay still, her breathing slow and controlled.
The shock that had frozen her expression gradually melted away, replaced by a chilling composure.
Her once-innocent gaze sharpened, becoming deep, ancient, and unfathomable.
There was no trace of fear.
Only calculation.
Only cold clarity.
This calm—this presence—did not belong to a ten-year-old child.
It belonged to an existence that had once stood at the apex of all creation...
and was now gazing upon the world once more, waiting patiently for the day it would reclaim everything that had been taken.
"So... we lost."
The words slipped from Valery’s lips in a faint, hollow murmur, as though she were merely stating a distant fact rather than the final outcome of a war that had consumed entire eras.
For a long moment, she sat motionless, staring into empty space, her mind refusing to accept what her memories so cruelly affirmed.
Then, without warning, bloody tears welled up in her eyes.
They spilled over silently, tracing slow crimson paths down her cheeks.
Each tear carried with it a name, a face, a memory that refused to fade.
She saw her friends again—those who had once argued, laughed, and cultivated alongside her.
She saw her comrades who had followed her banner across countless battlefields, standing firm even when hope itself had been crushed beneath the enemy’s advance.
And she saw him.
Her Dao companion.
The one who had walked the path of immortality with her, step by step, through triumph and despair alike.
They had sworn vows beneath shattered heavens, promising to advance or fall together, to face samsara hand in hand.
He had died protecting her back.
The memory stabbed deeper than any blade.
Valery’s shoulders trembled faintly as the grief finally surfaced, pouring out in suffocating waves.
For a brief moment, she allowed herself to mourn—not as an immortal, not as a ruler of worlds, but as someone who had lost everything she loved.
How much time passed, she did not know.
Eventually, the tears slowed... then stopped.
Her eyes burned, dry and aching, but her expression grew still once more.
The sorrow did not vanish—it was simply sealed away, locked beneath layers of icy restraint forged over trillions of years of survival.
"I hope..." she whispered hoarsely, "...that they too are alive on this earth."
The words lingered in the air, fragile and uncertain.
Even as she spoke them, Valery knew how unlikely that hope truly was.
Her own existence was a miracle bordering on heresy against the heavens.
She had survived only because she possessed the Trinity Samsara Physique, a legendary immortal body that allowed its bearer to reincarnate three times, with each rebirth granting greater potential, deeper dao affinity, and a stronger fate than the last.
Such a physique was not a blessing.
It was a curse wrapped in divine law.
To awaken it, one had to die—again and again.
She had already exhausted all three cycles.
In her first life, she had been nothing more than a mortal.
Weak, fleeting, and ignorant of the vastness of existence, she had perished before ever glimpsing the true path of cultivation.
In her second life, she was reborn with spiritual roots and the ambition to challenge the heavens themselves.
She cultivated relentlessly, rising through realms until she dared to face tribulation lightning in pursuit of ascension.
The heavens had shown no mercy.
Her body had been shattered, her soul scattered, her ambitions reduced to ash.
In her third life, she had finally reached the summit.
She became a True Immortal, an existence beyond life and death, revered by sects and feared by enemies.
Her name alone could still entire worlds.
She mastered countless daos, rewrote laws, and stood among the strongest beings to ever exist.
And yet—
Even that had not been enough.
When the invaders from beyond the realm descended, tearing open the barriers of reality, her power had proven insufficient.
Those beings did not belong to this cosmos; their laws were alien, their existence an affront to everything she understood.
The war that followed annihilated heavens.
Stars fell like rain.
Worlds collapsed into void.
Dao after dao was extinguished.
In the end, she stood alone amid the ruins, bloodied and exhausted, surrounded by corpses both familiar and divine.
She had fought until her cultivation shattered, until her immortal body cracked, until even her soul began to unravel.
She still lost.
Valery slowly lowered her gaze to her small hands—hands that now belonged to a child.
This would be her final chance at life.
After this, there would be nothing more—no further rebirths, no return through samsara, no defiance of fate.
And yet, Valery felt no fear at all. On the contrary, a strange sense of liberation welled up within her.
She had already lived for countless trillions of years.
She had experienced rise and ruin, love and loss, creation and annihilation.
To someone like her, eternity had long since lost its mystery.
If this life truly was the last, then it was only fitting that she walk it on her own terms.
Calmly, she accepted it.
"I wonder how long it has been since the last war," Valery murmured softly, her gaze distant.
"If this world still stands... then the Primordial Heavenly Ancestor must still be alive."
That realization alone carried immense weight.
As long as that existence endured, the multiverse had not yet collapsed into final destruction.
It meant the invaders had been sealed, repelled, or forced into slumber—at least for now.
That was enough.
For the present, speculation was meaningless.
What mattered was power.
Only absolute strength could grant her the freedom to choose her own fate—and the authority to prevent history from repeating itself.
With that resolve, Valery cleared her mind of all distractions.
Regret, grief, and nostalgia were cast aside, sealed deep within her heart.
She sat down cross-legged, her posture steady and composed.
And so, without hesitation, Valery began her cultivation anew—
in a world that had already forgotten her name.