Chapter 53: The Giant Palm That Shattered the Future Universe

Compared to cultivators who slowly absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and comprehend the laws of the Great Dao to elevate their realms, the speed at which those living corpses devoured one another and grew stronger was utterly astonishing, practically advancing by a minor realm each day.

As long as they continuously devoured their own kind, they grew stronger seemingly without end. Their strength, speed, and defense—every single aspect surged frantically.

The cultivators residing in those star domains took note the very moment this strange mutation first occurred.

Initially, however, they did not take it seriously, dismissing it as some bizarre phenomenon akin to corpse transformation. They directly disposed of the afflicted mortals and animals in large batches, identifying a few uninfected individuals and planning to have those mortals repopulate so that the population could recover in several decades or a century.

Some demonic sects even paid attention to those entities growing at such an odd speed, believing it to be the awakening of some special physique, and kept them behind to try and refine them into corpse puppets akin to flying Yakshas.

Yet, after carrying out massive slaughters of those weak living corpses initially, the cultivators who had seemingly appeared uninfected also rapidly underwent mutations.

They began randomly attacking their fellow disciples, becoming increasingly irritable, short-tempered, greedy, and ravenous, as if the negative emotions within their hearts were being stirred up without limit.

Then, they all went mad...

Their former primordial spirits vanished without a trace, and within their infected shells, new primordial spirits were born.

Primordial spirits suffused with darkness...

Once the cultivators too were infected, they likewise engaged in a constant cycle of mutual devouring, growing stronger at an inhuman and absurdly extreme speed.

Within the span of just a few months, when Taiyin and the others discovered something was amiss and rushed over, the star domains situated in the barren edges of the universe—where spiritual energy was sparse and the strongest cultivators were only at the Dragon Transformation realm—had even their blazing suns completely devoured. Tens of thousands of Great Saint-grade dark evolutionaries had been born.

It seemed that as their power increased, they gradually transitioned from pure beasts to possessing a degree of rationality.

Nonetheless, despite retaining a shred of rationality, greed and murderous intent predominated.

Having consumed all the weaker dark-infected beings, they sailed across the starry sky at the universe's fringe toward the location where the drop of the Emperor's blood resided, attempting to swallow that drop of blood and achieve yet another new evolution!

"Ah... isn't this just the standard zombie-apocalypse trope commonly found in web novels?" Hearing this, Fangzheng wondered if he had transmigrated incorrectly.

He muttered doubtfully, "What kind of messy, third-rate web novel super-evolutionary zombie virus is this?"

"Where did the super-powered beings go?"

The Supremes, including Taiyin, upon discovering those so-called dark evolutionaries, completely slaughtered them and jointly erased the residual drop of blood left by the Emperor.

They all realized that a major problem had arisen.

By locating the surviving members of the Heavenly Court from the Mythological Era who had been sealed away to the present day, and after conducting research into the history of the Heavenly Court, Taiyin and the others uncovered a certain truth.

In the late Mythological Era, during the early period after the Emperor established the Heavenly Court upon attaining the Dao, he enjoyed immense support because he had brought almost the entire universe into an era of peace.

Then, in the twilight years of the Emperor's second lifetime, following a seclusion where he vanished for decades and finally returned, his temperament underwent a drastic transformation. He grew tyrannical, to the point where even his former subordinates found him unrecognizable.

The Emperor, whose original disposition was averse to wanton slaughter and who was revered across countless star domains as the Heavenly Emperor and the Heavenly God, suddenly attacked an ancient land named Kunlun. Disregarding the lives of mortals and cultivators alike, he began extracting the dragon veins of numerous ancient life planets.

He forcibly drained many ancient life planets dry, turning them into barren wastes, causing countless mortals to perish entirely and numerous cultivators to be trapped and die due to the exhaustion of spiritual energy.

And all of this was done merely to artificially engineer a heaven-defying formation known as the Ninety-Nine Dragon Mountain, aggregated from ninety-nine top-tier dragon veins.

From there, he continued to squeeze one life planet after another, extracting the Dao marks of the heavens, scouring the entire universe for rare physiques and special bloodlines, and slaying them to harvest Dao rule fragments—solely for the purpose of refining an immortal artifact.

In his twilight years, the Emperor acted as though he had lost his mind, committing numerous atrocities that could only be described as inhumane, implicating the entire universe and causing his support to crumble to the extent that many of his subordinates betrayed him.

Ultimately, in the late Heavenly Court era, he seemingly intended to sacrifice everyone in the entire Heavenly Court in order to ascend to the Immortal Domain, yet he was ambushed and suddenly died as a result.

However, the many entities who participated in the ambush almost universally doubted whether the Emperor had truly died, suspecting instead that he had faked his death to escape and gone who knows where.

Within that future, after conducting investigations, Taiyin and his companions concluded that the Emperor's so-called seclusion in his twilight years was likely no seclusion at all.

Instead, through some method—perhaps utilizing a passage left behind from ancient times, or perhaps by directly breaking into the Immortal Road—he had departed from the boundary walls of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths.

As a result, he had accidentally contracted a certain bizarre entity within the Boundary Sea.

Namely, that mysterious black mist.

Fangzheng asked skeptically, "Could these things really be a super zombie virus straight out of web novels? Even cultivators at your Great Emperor level can be infected?"

Several years after Taiyin and the others uncovered the truth, at the breach at the end of the Immortal Road—from the place where the Boundary Sea could be observed—the mutation finally arrived...

Perhaps, as early as when the Emperor was infected at the end of the Mythological Era, the unfathomable bizarreness within the Boundary Sea had already set its sights on the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths.

Yet, for reasons unknown, using whatever methods the Emperor possessed, he had not been completely eroded throughout the millions of years from the end of the Mythological Era down to the present.

He most likely realized as well that the entity which infected him had targeted the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths; hence, at the close of the Mythological Era, before the Heavenly Court collapsed amidst rebellions, he had engraved weapon-refining runes throughout the entire universe.

Although his primordial spirit, amidst the erosion, did not suffer the fate of the weaker dark evolutionaries—whose original primordial spirits vanished entirely while brand-new ones bred within their infected shells—

His primordial spirit still seemed to have been split in two as a result: one half frantic, the other half lucid.

The frantic side desired to exterminate the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Earths; therefore, the runes he carved were meant to obliterate all living beings.

The other half retained its lucidity.

His lucid self wished to refine the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Earths into a vessel capable of navigating the Boundary Sea.

Thus, carrying the living beings of the entire universe, they would evade the threat advancing toward the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths.

By that future era, when Taiyin and the others realized this, the Boundary Sea region observable from the breach of the Immortal Road had already begun to turn black.

From some unknown point onward, the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths situated within the Boundary Sea—the entire universe—was completely enveloped by darkness.

Gradually, wave after wave of dark storms arrived, bearing an increasing number of increasingly powerful dark evolutionaries.

As for Taiyin, within that future he had witnessed, the numerous Supremes on the side of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths quickly devised a countermeasure.

They began relying upon the weapon-refining runes left behind by the Emperor that permeated the entire universe, modifying them accordingly.

Using the numerous Law Cubes and primordial blood left behind by Fangzheng in the past as energy and materials, they transformed individual star domains of the entire universe into array bases, laying out various formations.

In doing so, they gradually forged the entire universe into a gigantic warship that, by all logical rights, should never have been able to exist—

A cosmic ark capable of ignoring the waves of the Boundary Sea and carrying all living beings to sail across it!

...

"Ah, this? Turning the entire universe into a spaceship to run away?"

Fangzheng felt a wave of amazement at their operations.

Curious once more, he asked, "Is that the end of it? Since they've driven the entire universe and fled, this can hardly be considered tragic."

Taiyin let out a deep sigh at the last, his eyes filled with lingering fear and perplexity.

"The construction of the Cosmic Ark was not yet complete when, out of the final wave of dark storms, the strongest dark evolutionaries stepped forth."

"An entity far more powerful by an unknown margin than the Immortal Kings recorded in the projections of the Immortal Road's phantom."

With that, the Cosmic Ark—forged from the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Earths universe coupled with tens of millions of portions of Taiyin's full-body blood—was shattered with a single palm strike.

Boundless living beings were reduced to ashes, and the entire Nine Heavens and Ten Earths shattered along with them, swallowed entirely by the pitch-black Boundary Sea.

And the past Taiyin, whose divine sense had been attached to the future Taiyin, was jolted awake right then and there...