Chapter 468: Annihilation
"Penglai?!"
The Unchained Dao Lord felt a jolt climb from the base of his spine straight to the crown of his skull, as if his head might split open.
"How could she be this fast?!"
She had been far too fast!
Before making his move, while Yaoguang was still stepping out of the Heavenly Dao Sect, he had confirmed it through multiple sources: the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign, his own disciples, the agents he had planted long ago, and his followers. The Penglai Dao Lord was patrolling Yin Lunar Sect territory at that very moment, hunting the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign.
He had also gathered information on her repeatedly beforehand, and calculated that getting from her hunting ground to the Heavenly Dao Sect would take her at least half an hour. If word didn't reach her immediately, or if something delayed her on the way, taking a full hour wouldn't have been out of the question.
And yet how long had it been?! Not even several minutes!
In that sliver of time, the Penglai Dao Lord had already traveled from the Yin Lunar Sect's headquarters to this area of the starry sky, cooperating with Yaoguang once again and striking from inside and out in a pincer attack.
"How is that possible?!" The Unchained Dao Lord's mind raced, and a moment later he grasped the truth behind the reversal. "A trap! This whole thing is a trap!"
He had been about to bring out a reserve treasure capable of threatening a Dao Lord's life, intent on shattering the Ten Hells Dragon-Imprisoning Array in one blow and killing Yaoguang along with it. But now he immediately switched to a different trump card, one meant to keep him alive. Attack to defense. Battle to flight. He shifted attitude without any hesitation.
The next moment, as far as Yaoguang's senses went, the Dao Lord simply ceased to exist. The Ten Hells Dragon-Imprisoning Array, the Heaven-Sealing Stele, every one of them lost all trace of him.
Unchained! Unchained!
It was as though he had truly become a form of life that could not be bound, and he slipped straight out of a level 15 array, clearing the battlefield.
Void Origin?! The name of that supreme treasure surfaced in Yaoguang's mind at once.
This was the Void Origin, a single-use treasure that required the finest void-attribute immortal artifact materials to refine, and that took a void Dao Lord tens of thousands of years to produce.
A void Dao Lord who deployed it truly became one with the void, everywhere at once, impossible to imprison, able to use its power to teleport anywhere in the world.
"He's gone."
Realizing his opponent had refined something like that, Yaoguang knew instantly they couldn't trap this Dao Lord.
Every Void-Shattering cultivator carried an item or two for saving his own life, let alone a Dao Lord.
Beings who had lived tens of thousands of years, some of them a hundred thousand, had accumulated trump cards no one could guess at over all those centuries. Their true combat strength could not be measured by ordinary standards.
Kill one? It was never that easy. The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's death had been the exception. The Unchained Dao Lord, walking away whole thanks to a life-saving treasure even in the most lethal circumstances imaginable, was the norm!
The plan had failed. Regret welled up in Yaoguang's heart.
Before Yaoguang could even show that regret, though, a wave of psychic thought spread out, carrying a hint of temper. "Fighting void-type Dao Lords is my least favorite thing in the world. Slippery as fish."
As the psychic thought dispersed, a grand, blazing heat beyond words erupted.
"Dao-Destroying Fire!"
In that instant, Yaoguang felt like a frail, insignificant mortal watching a high-yield hydrogen bomb detonate right in front of him.
Endless radiance, hot enough to annihilate all matter, spread outward in a flash. It was like a sun close enough to touch, filling his entire field of vision and drowning every sense and every thought he had.
Dao-destroying! This was the power to destroy a Great Dao!
Erupting in a single instant with force far exceeding the ceiling the Great Dao of void could bear, it crushed the Great Dao of void and destroyed the very foundation of its existence, returning all things in the world, including the purest and most fundamental void power, to nothingness.
That return to nothingness was theoretical, of course. As one of the four supreme Great Dao, the void could not be truly erased by any power, however strong. But to Yaoguang, and to the Unchained Dao Lord as well, what the Penglai Dao Lord unleashed in that moment was true, complete destruction.
No matter how efficiently a Dao Integrator could harness the power of a Great Dao, that efficiency never exceeded one part in a thousand.
Even with the Void Origin deployed, the Unchained Dao Lord had at most doubled his ability to harness the Great Dao of void, and that still fell short of one thousandth.
Yet the Dao-Destroying Fire the Penglai Dao Lord had kindled eroded and annihilated the Great Dao of void at nearly that one-thousandth level.
This origin-type Dao Technique came infinitely close to an immortal technique.
With space unable to carry even psychic thought, the Unchained Dao Lord let out a cry of despair, "No!"
Every last bit of his body turned to ash and dissolved into nothingness before that roaring flame.
The Unchained Dao Lord had reserves. He had trump cards. But so did the Penglai Dao Lord.
Newly ascended though she was, she had overflowing talent, and she had clearly prepared thoroughly for the Dao contest.
And her trump card produced a Dao-Destroying Fire close in power to an immortal technique; under such a terrifying force, even someone as strong as the Unchained Dao Lord was reduced to drifting ash in a moment.
Yaoguang's Ten Hells Dragon-Imprisoning Array was also scattered and ground to powder in the same instant.
It was fortunate the Ten Hells Dragon-Imprisoning Array had been there, and even more fortunate that the Unchained Dao Lord had absorbed every bit of the Dao-Destroying Fire's damage on Yaoguang's behalf.
Otherwise, the aftershock of that blast, having destroyed the array, would certainly have kept spreading outward. Forget Zhen Xuanyuan, Gu Li, and the other Heavenly Dao Sect supreme elders who had come with him; Yaoguang himself would have risked having the Endless Tower break, and might've died on the spot.
Even so, the Penglai Dao Lord's fire annihilating the Great Dao of void sent ripples through the void in every direction. It alarmed every Dao Lord and Void-Shattering cultivator across the North Sea Star with any real sensitivity to the power of the Great Dao, along with every Void-Refining and Void-Piercing cultivator who practiced void Dao Techniques.
They all turned their eyes toward the sky above the Heavenly Dao Sect, toward the region right at the edge of the North Sea Star's atmosphere.
In their perception, blazing light and endless energy had turned that stretch of void into scorched ground. A place where the Great Dao no longer existed, a zone forbidden to all living things.
The energy released in that single instant, and the tremor it sent through the three thousand Great Dao, registered clearly in the depths of their senses and shook their souls, leaving them uneasy.
"What happened?!"
"A Dao Lord battle! That has to be another battle at the Dao Lord Realm!"
"That tremor in the Great Dao... Was that the Penglai Dao Lord?! And the other one is the Unchained Dao Lord?!"
"What is going on? First the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord, now the Unchained Dao Lord! The Dao contest hasn't even properly started, and the Penglai Dao Lord is already killing everyone?!"
Countless streams of psychic thought crossed in the void.
Feeling the Unchained Dao Lord's aura quickly fade within that blazing light and empty whiteness, not only the Void-Shattering and Void-Refining cultivators but even the Dao Lords who had returned to the North Sea Star early, or never left it, couldn't keep their hearts from pounding.
Terrifying! How long had it been? Two Dao Lords dead already? Did the Penglai Dao Lord really have to be this savage?
The North Sea Star was not the only place shaken.
The Central Heaven Dao Lord, already close enough to the North Sea Star to reach out and touch it, and the several Dao Lords traveling with him, all rose to their feet without thinking.
Sensing the tremor transmitted through the Great Dao of void, they quickly turned their gazes toward the North Sea Star, which had already come into view.
Their position was fortunate enough that they could even faintly see the blazing white light flaring above it, swelling like a bubble against the star's impossibly dense atmosphere, sending out an aftershock that was clearly going to sweep across nearly the entire world.
That terrible destructive might...
"A battle between Dao Lords? On the North Sea Star?!"
"An energy release on that scale is absolutely someone's strongest trump card, something that can be used to kill a Dao Lord. And if a card like that has been played... I'm afraid a Dao Lord has fallen."
"What exactly is the situation on the North Sea Star? We've only just arrived, and this is the first thing we're shown?"
One after another, the Dao Lords voiced their shock, worry and gravity clearly visible in their eyes.
The Dao contest had not even begun. The Gate of the Immortal Realm was still an estimated seven or eight hundred years from opening.
So why were Dao Lords already throwing their trump cards at each other and holding nothing back? Were they abandoning the contest entirely? What kind of grudge could matter more than standing out in the Dao contest and ascending to the Immortal Realm?
"That position... Isn't that directly above the Heavenly Dao Sect?" Perfected Lord Ni Chang said suddenly, having noticed something from below.
"The Heavenly Dao Sect?" The Central Heaven Dao Lord's expression changed at once. "Everyone, I'm going on ahead to see what has happened."
"I'll come along. I'd like to see which fellow Daoist has such a taste for killing!"
"Count me in too. Better to have someone watching your back."
"If we're all going, then let's drive the warship through a forced void transit. That will put us right outside the North Sea Star."
The Dao Lords spoke in turn, and once they had reached agreement, the Taiwei Dao Lord, skilled in the Dao of void, stepped up to operate the warship.[1]
"The Great Dao of void in the space outside the North Sea Star has been almost completely annihilated and shattered, and the surrounding void power is rushing in to fill the void it left. That will create a violent void storm, so we can't get through. The best we can do is reach the outer layer," the Taiwei Dao Lord said.
"That's fine. Once we're at the outer layer, at our speed it's a dozen breaths at most," another Dao Lord answered.
The rest gave slight nods.
As the Taiwei Dao Lord drew on the power of the void, ripple after ripple spread out in front of the warship, and within a few breaths it stood ready. Then it moved, and immediately appeared on the outskirts of the North Sea Star.
1. Taiwei is the name of a Chinese asterism, one of the Three Enclosures. ☜