Chapter 958: Raise the Sword

Chapter 958: Raise the Sword

Fiddling with time. Severing the past. Cultivators could do such things, but not with such finesse as this. That was because this was the authority of a god. That was because this was true omniscience. In the eyes of gods, it was easy to see a person’s life, including all of their past.

The River of Time seethed as it filled the world of mortals. Countless past versions of Zhao Youde were all racing in his direction.

However, in the cultivation system, Imperial Sovereigns were second only to Quasi-Immortals. And this was Zhao Youde, who had spent years among humankind, and was now at the peak of being a half-Imperial Sovereign. His cultivation base made him almost as strong as a god.

Upon facing this inexplicable godly authority, his expression turned dark, and then he stretched out his right hand toward the canopy of heaven and made a grasping motion. The movement of his hand caused the dome of heaven to shift, as if a new heaven were being brought in.

A vast starry sky began to take over. The starry sky was so massive it covered everything. It was almost as if it planned to take this section of Revered Ancient away, as if... it was becoming a universe for Zhao Youde alone. Within that universe, there were countless past versions of himself, and yet, there were far more stars and heavenly bodies than that.

The countless heavenly bodies all twinkled brightly, and in response to Zhao Youde’s thoughts, they lit up and were extinguished.

The extinguishing of countless heavenly bodies caused the unique universe to quickly teeter on the verge of collapse. As it collapsed, it sank in on itself, giving rise to a massive gravitational force. It was like an actual universe transforming into a majestic black hole.

All of a sudden, all of Zhao Youde’s past lives were sucked up by the gravitation hole, and devoured by the collapsing universe.

Not one was left over!

Severing time. Causing past lives to try to devour the true self. It was something difficult to comprehend. If none could be allowed to perish, there was only one way to resolve the situation. Crush. Seal. And return everything to the beginning.

All of this takes a bit of time to describe, but actually happened in the time it takes a spark to fly off a piece of flint. After all of the past lives were sucked into the collapsing universe, Zhao Youde closed his hand into a fist.

Heaven and earth went back to normal. His universe shrank down, turning into a black pearl that dropped down in front of him. Without any hesitation, he looked up at the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan. At the same time, he flicked the pearl out.

It flew up into the sky. At the same time, he vanished, to reappear high in the air atop the pearl.

“Be crushed!” he said grimly.

The black pearl exploded, spreading out to again overtake heaven.

However, this time it turned into a river of stars. It shot down, heading toward the crown prince’s River of Time, to crush it. It was a river of stars versus the River of Time.

The Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan smiled. “How amusing. You can crush your own time. But what about my time?”

The crown prince reached up and touched his forehead. The moment he did, the air around him distorted as his own past appeared. The biggest difference was that it was blurry and impossible to see clearly. It was only possible to sense endless rancor and madness, accompanied by extreme defiance. All of that turned into the most extreme howl imaginable.

However, the crown prince looked as warm and gentle as always. Lifting a finger, he casually made a beckoning gesture at the surrounding blurry images. Astonishingly, he was severing a section of his own time from a past life, then depositing it into the River of Time. The majestic river surged violently. Immense waves rolled across its surface.

Within the water there appeared an enormous finger of white jade. It seemed capable of destroying anything as the water parted around it. Sweeping up past-life power, it shook the daos of heaven and earth as it emerged from the river. From a distance, it seemed capable of propping up heaven and earth.

Next, as everyone watched, and as Zhao Youde’s face fell, the crown prince put the thread into his hair. It became one with him. He absorbed it.

Then a gruish and unbelievable scene played out in front of all present.

Zhao Youde shivered from head to toe and let out a scream of anguish. He became incomparably weak, as though something very precious to him was suddenly gone.

The destiny the crown prince had seen had been taken away.

In that moment of crisis, Zhao Youde reached up and touched his forehead. His body turned into a painting, then a thread, then a dot. And then... he disappeared.

“Some of his providence was taken away!” Sunfire said. It was something profoundly mysterious that only a Flawless God could see the truth of. “Using destiny to absorb the enemy’s providence.... That’s a god magic with a different approach but the same outcome as the technique the Father God is using to devour Revered Ancient.” Sunfire looked at the Crown Prince of Violet and Cyan with a very serious expression. “That must be how you plan to recover your cultivation base from your past life.”

The crown prince smiled but didn’t say anything in response. Then he lifted his foot to step up into the canopy of heaven.

There was no way he was going to let a specimen like Zhao Youde get away. With that, he disappeared to pursue Zhao Youde.

Everything went calm above human lands. The gods who had come to interfere, whether Blazeflame, the night god, or the gods from the Northfate Kings, all backed away quietly. There was no way to stop the process now. Fighting was pointless.

The godfire on Planet Ancient Emperor was now ninety percent golden. The past emperors in the five vortexes were experiencing a constant rise in godly authority. The empress was also in a similar position. There was now only one incense stick’s worth of time left in the ceremony.

That was when a piercing sound filled the sky. It was the sound of a great wind blowing over Revered Ancient. It came from the humans’ imperial capital.

Someone outside of Revered Ancient and within the Dark Serenity holy land, looked in the direction of Revered Ancient and slashed down with a saber.

That saber spanned the starry sky, severed the ancient from the modern, and contained boundless momentum. It had the power to crush everything in its path, as if it wished to exterminate heaven and earth. And it appeared in the sky right above the humans’ imperial palace in Revered Ancient.

It created a massive rift some 500,000 kilometers in length. The projection of the blade was like a true heavenly saber. The sky shifted colors and winds blew as a stifling will appeared.

There was one force that wanted more than anyone to stop the empress from reaching godly ascension. They wanted it more than the gods of Revered Ancient and more than the top species of Revered Ancient. That place was a holy land among many holy lands. It was... the Dark Serenity holy land!

Thus arrived the might of a Grand Emperor! Thus came the saber of a Grand Emperor!

From within the wind came a sigh.

Inside the Swordsage Division, a withered figure opened his eyes. His final sword move could be used on a god. Or it could be used... on a holy land!

“You finally made your move,” he murmured in a voice hoarse with ancient age and filled with complicated emotions.

Then....

The Emperor’s Sword in Xu Qing thrummed with unprecedented vibrations. And boundless sword light erupted from him and up into the sky.