Chapter 455: The Killing Blow
Careless! He had been far too careless!
If he hadn't been so certain that his power as a Dao Lord made a top faction without its own Dao Lord an easy catch, would he ever have charged so recklessly into their sect-protecting grand array?
Had he stayed out of it, then even outmatched as he was now, he could have withdrawn at his leisure.
Although it would have meant thoroughly offending both the Penglai Dao Lord and the Central Heaven Dao Lord, with the Dao contest so close, he would've only had to lie low for a while, and neither of them would necessarily have hounded him.
Instead, his own arrogance had put him in real danger.
Yaoguang, in control of a level 15 array, had joined hands with the Golden Book Venerable, a semi-immortal artifact, and trapped him inside; he wouldn't be able to break free anytime soon.
The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord analyzed the situation, searching for a flaw in the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array. He found no flaw, but he did notice the Void End Perfected Lord's caution.
The Dao Lord's temper flared. "Void End, what do you think you're doing?! I told you to deal with Yaoguang. Can't you hear me?"
The Void End Perfected Lord glanced at Yaoguang, merged into the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array, incarnated as a fiend god and awe-inspiring to behold, and felt the pressure coming off the newly appointed sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect.
Still, with the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord pressing him, he rose into the air and condensed a Void Sword, cutting it straight at Yaoguang.
A second later, Yaoguang brought out the Torrent of Time. Even as he held off the dark mass the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord used to tear the void apart, he released another Void Sword and sent it crashing into the Void End Perfected Lord's.
The instant they met, the gap between the two Void Swords became obvious. The Void End Perfected Lord's shattered on the spot, bursting into ripples of void that rolled outward and were absorbed and sealed away by the power of the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array.
Yaoguang's Void Sword, having broken through, carried on without slowing down.
Barely a tenth of its force remained, but at a stir of Yaoguang's psychic mind, a fiend god projection surged out ahead of the rest, and as the Void End Perfected Lord unleashed another Dao Technique to break the Void Sword apart, the projection clenched its fist and hammered down at that powerhouse from the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings.
Swept away by the violent torrent of energy, the perfected lord smashed through the void like a cannon shell and fell straight toward the ground.
The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord seized the opening and threw everything he had into it, drawing on his cultivation to call up the power of the Great Dao of void again and again, battering at the truth that held him.
Even if the Golden Book Venerable was backed by the sect-protecting grand array, the truth power began to show signs of giving way.
Yaoguang released several Void Swords in quick succession, forcing the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord to defend. Once he did, he could no longer focus all his strength on subjugating the truth power, allowing it to quickly repair itself.
For a time, Yaoguang, presiding over the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array, and the Golden Book Venerable together fought the Dao Lord to a standstill.
That standstill lasted only a moment. Less than it took a stick of incense to burn!
Yaoguang suddenly sensed the Penglai Dao Lord's psychic thought. "Open the array!"
"Already here?" Yaoguang was shocked.
"Heh. Jade Scale thinks it knows my strength inside and out, but in truth it only got away because it ran fast enough and never stayed long enough to experience my strength. This time they dared to face me head-on. How bold!" The Penglai Dao Lord's voice rang with confidence. "If I weren't in such a hurry to break through and reinforce the Heavenly Dao Sect, one of them, Jade Scale or Black Lunar, would have fallen today!"
"Impressive! But Abyssal Ruins is still here!"
"Leave him to me!" the Penglai Dao Lord said.
"He's an old monster who's lived a hundred and some thousand years. Who knows what life-saving treasures he might have on him, or what means he has to drag us down with him. To be safe, I'll leave him a sliver of hope and let him break out of the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array. The moment he's through and spent, you finish him in one strike," Yaoguang said.
The Penglai Dao Lord thought of how even Void-Shattering cultivators always kept life-saving measures on hand. The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord had lived for countless years, and given his cultivation, a few special treasures were only to be expected.
Even with absolute confidence, facing a Dao Lord called for her full attention.
"Alright. We'll strike from inside and out," she answered.
With her reply, Yaoguang immediately drove the array's power harder, tightening the grinding pressure on the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord.
Bigger movements naturally left more openings.
Three fiend gods pressed forward too aggressively, and the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord saw a chance. Using a burst technique much like the Torrent of Time, he unleashed three Void Mass Points in a row and shattered all three projections.
His figure immediately stepped across the void and split into two as he did so.
An incarnation stayed behind to hold off the nine remaining fiend gods under Yaoguang's control, while his true body went straight to the edge of the array, using the high-grade Dao Artifact in his hand to cut with enough force to split the sky.
"Crap!" Yaoguang, playing along perfectly, brought the entire weight of the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array pressing down. Six of the nine fiend gods hurled themselves at the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord.
But at that very moment, the Dao Lord unleashed Void Flicker and slipped past the encirclement of all six with unbelievable speed.
Not only that. When Yaoguang followed with a Void Flicker of his own to give chase, the Dao Lord seemed to have been waiting for it and struck again at once, sending Void Mass Points stabbing toward Yaoguang.
Two fiend god projections rushed in and blocked the Void Mass Points, shielding Yaoguang, but both were shattered in the same instant.
For a moment, Yaoguang stood alone.
If the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord had followed up with another Void Mass Point or two, he could well have posed a lethal threat.
Then again, Yaoguang might have relied on the Void Flicker's agility to avoid the killing blow, restore the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array's power, and continue fighting.
The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord no longer felt like gambling.
He had needed certain secret techniques to deal with five fiend god projections in one breath, and it had put an enormous load on him. Additionally, his real purpose in coming here had been to carry off that mysterious artifact paragon.
He hadn't found the artifact paragon, so what point was there in fighting a Void-Shattering cultivator like Yaoguang to the death? He was a Dao Lord. His life was worth far more than that of the Heavenly Dao Sect's sect master.
So, having broken through nearly half of the sect-protecting grand array with his burst techniques, he spun around, tore another hole in the void with the Dao Artifact in his hand, and charged outside without hesitation.
He was certain that once he was out of the array, no one in the Heavenly Dao Sect could stop him from coming and going as he pleased.
Besides, he had been careless this time, and rushing headlong into the Heavenly Dao Sect was what had put him in danger. But while a thief could work a thousand days, no one could be on guard for that long.
He didn't believe Yaoguang would never leave the Heavenly Dao Sect. And once he did, with his strength as a Dao Lord, capturing and killing a single Void-Shattering cultivator would be a walk in the park.
"This isn't over." The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord pushed the Great Dao of void to its limit, tearing through space to leave. "Below the Dao Lord Realm, there is no one I, Abyssal Ruins, cannot kill."
The ancient Dao Lord never finished the sentence, because a clear phoenix cry rang out from the heavens above.
Immediately after, a vast being—so enormous it could rival a star—burst from endless blazing flame and came crashing down, claws outstretched, aiming at the patch of void where the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord stood.
Feeling the space beneath that claw contract violently, then shatter and collapse in on itself, the Dao Lord, who had been so confident a moment earlier, let out a cry of shock and fury: "The Penglai Dao Lord!"
His powerful psychic thought, raging like a storm, rooted itself in the Great Dao of void, desperately trying to raise wave after wave of void tides to crush this blazing, terrifying mythical creature.
But against the boundless vastness of the Great Dao of origin, the void tides he raised with all his strength were no different than small waves trying to break a cliff. They struck the rock face, burst apart, sprayed some water, and had no other effect.
The mythical creature formed of the Great Dao of origin closed its grip around the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord, and the Great Dao of origin within it rushed to blanket his Great Dao of void.
"No!" the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord roared, and something inside him seemed to shatter, some life-saving treasure, letting him turn his body into void itself and tear free of the creature's claw.
But before he could take another step, it became apparent that the Penglai Dao Lord had prepared for a similar scenario.
The mythical creature formed by the Great Dao of origin fell apart and became a sea. A sea that could fill endless void and endless galaxies, a sea of origin!
Origin power, vast beyond anything an ordinary Dao Lord could hope to possess, filled the void, binding the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord, then turned into five-colored divine light and washed over his Great Dao of void again and again.
With every pass, the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's Great Dao of void grew weaker.
In less than a breath, it looked ready to be completely submerged by the sheer depth of the Penglai Dao Lord's origin power.
"Penglai!" The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's cry was one of terror, and yet, in that same moment, he displayed a resolve like never before, the ruthless will of a warrior willing to sever his own arm to survive.
What remained of his Great Dao of void turned into a blade sharp enough to cut through all things, instantly tearing open the power of the Great Dao of origin that filled that stretch of void. A strand of his true spirit, which he had managed to preserve, shot straight through the tear, and then...
The Heaven-Sealing Stele froze the space around him!
A moment earlier, he looked like a man who had just survived. A moment later, the trace of relief on the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's face faded away.
It felt like time had frozen for an instant; then, the ocean of origin that was the Penglai Dao Lord came rolling in. Having learned from the previous exchange, this time the origin power was utterly solid, like Mystic Origin Heavy Water, hammering down on what was left of the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's Dao and crushing every last piece of it.
"Spare me!" The desperate will to survive drove the Dao Lord to beg without a shred of dignity.
The pleas did not move the Penglai Dao Lord. Her killing intent didn't diminish at all, and the ocean of the Great Dao of origin came smashing down.
Then Yaoguang's psychic thought rushed in. "Dao Lord, hold your hand."
"Hmm?"
The falling ocean of origin hung for the briefest moment.
The next instant, two streams of Great Annihilation Sword Qi, carrying the purest destructive force, beat the Penglai Dao Lord to it and struck the last strand of void origin the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord had left!
With a humming sound, destructive force erupted, and the Dao Lord's final strand of origin faded away into nothingness.