Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 1315: All of Revered Ancient Battles an Ancient Immortal!

Things had built up to a crescendo! Heavenly gales battered everything left and right.

Meanwhile, Xu Qing hovered in midair, his expression cold, his gaze placid as he looked at the ancient immortal. Even as the words he had just spoken drifted out, he waved his right hand. That action sent ripples through Revered Ancient, causing the dome of heaven to tremble.

“Seal the space above earth!”

When Xu Qing spoke, his words were a command that could not be ignored, and contained his independent ontology! They became a sealing power that… separated heaven from earth! They made it impossible for things on the earth to fly up into the sky!

As a result, gods and cultivators alike, whether they were from Revered Ancient or the holy lands, instantly lost their ability to fly, and fell trembling to the ground. And that was because this power to separate heaven and earth came from a Summer Immortal! Therefore, anyone under the level of a Summer Immortal or a True God could not defy them!

In the shortest of moments, only three figures were left in the air above the imperial capital of humankind.

Xu Qing.

The ancient immortal.

And Master Seventh!

“Master, please hold the rear line for me!” he said respectfully.

Master Seventh smiled, and the gratitude in his eyes grew deeper. With a slight nod, he fell back and landed on the ground next to Empress Summer Departure.

The empress still looked somewhat dazed as shē stared up at Xu Qing. Incredulity grew stronger in hēr heart, until shē couldn’t hold back from turning to Master Seventh and asking, “His cultivation base…?”

Master Seventh didn’t respond immediately. He waved his hand and made a grasping gesture, and the air rippled as Erniu appeared. Master Seventh quickly grabbed him by the throat and dragged him forth.

“Hey, be gentle, ya old fogey! That hurts! Ouch!” Erniu was soon dangling in Master Seventh’s hand like a baby chicken. All he could do was wave his hands and legs, and yell a bit. Yet he didn’t forget to smile apologetically and plaster an ingratiating look onto his face.

“Master,” he wailed fawningly. “I missed you so much!”

Master Seventh looked at Erniu. “Talk. What’s Fourth Sib’s cultivation base now? And who are those people?”

Erniu’s eyebrows danced up and down. He knew exactly which ‘people’ his Master had just referred to, and he was already prepared to launch into some grandiose bragging.

Before he could, Master Seventh interrupted, “Talk normally.”

Scowling on the verge of tears, Erniu finally sighed. “They’re from the Fifth Star Ring, and they’re all the subordinates of little Junior Brother. You listen to me, Master. Little Junior Brother really rocked it in the Fifth Star Ring. If you went there, you wouldn’t even come close to being as important as him. As for his cultivation base… well, I actually just ran into him again recently. At that point he was a Grand Emperor, and also happened to be good friends with an Immortal Lord…. I get the feeling that guy wants to steal your apprentice!”

When Master Seventh heard the term Immortal Lord, he shivered inwardly, but managed to prevent it from showing on his face. Except that Erniu’s next words were even more shocking.

“That Immortal Lord friend of his gave little Junior Brother a few goddesses. Apparently, each one of those goddesses has a God Lord as a dad.”

Master Seventh struggled to control his breathing. Next to him, the empress’ eyes went wide.

“Well,” Erniu continued, “I couldn’t be outdone in that way, so I took little Ah Qing to the tomb of a God Paragon…. As it turned out, that God Paragon was still alive…” All of a sudden, Erniu realized that Master Seventh was gripping his throat a lot harder than before. “Aiyaaaa. That hurts! Agh! Gentler, please, Master!”

Master Seventh loosened his grip. He had taken the story about the Immortal Lord in stride, and even the mention of the God Lord. But then he heard ‘God Paragon.’ That was a level he had only speculated about, and he was aware that it was basically the most paramount level attainable in any given star ring! But apparently, his disaster of an apprentice had actually gone to the tomb of a God Paragon!

Taking a deep breath, Master Seventh growled, “Keep talking!”

Erniu blinked a few times. Inside, he was feeling very pleased with himself. The old fogey is definitely going to look at me in a new light now!

He cleared his throat. “I didn’t really do much in that tomb. I just accidentally devoured a God Lord. Supposedly he was a pretty ferocious God Lord, though. Anyway, Eminent Desolation showed up, and things got really dicey. So I quickly saved little Ah Qing and took him into a space-time vortex….

“Inside the vortex, we split up. Later on, I got worried about little Ah Qing, so I put everything on the line to find him. After I found him, little Ah Qing was crying and whatnot. I felt so bad. Being as soft-hearted as I am, I helped him reach immortal ascension. And that was when he stopped crying.”

Master Seventh frowned and was about to say something. However, that was when something really dramatic happened overhead!

Master Seventh, the empress, and Erniu alike all looked up. They weren’t the only ones. The powerful experts of countless species, regardless of where they were, used divine will to look at the imperial capital of humankind! Specifically, they focused on Xu Qing, and they focused on the battle that would determine what happened to Revered Ancient!

High in the canopy of heaven, surrounded by boundless radiant light… was the ancient immortal! The ancient immortal took a step forward, and ripples spread through the sky. Astonishing momentum caused Revered Ancient to tremble, ripping apart the dome of heaven to reveal the starry sky. The ancient immortal hovered underneath that starry sky, a sea of stars behind him, as if he were fused with that sky. And then his grim gaze landed on Xu Qing.

“A young Summer Immortal…” he said in a raspy voice. “Well, since you’ve been waiting for me, then… I’d like to see how strong you are, and whether or not your words live up to their implication!”

The ancient immortal, who looked like a corpse that had just climbed out of a grave, lifted his hand and pointed at Xu Qing!

That gesture caused his canon to build within him. Instantly, wild colors flashed and winds screamed. The sky shook, and the starry sky seemed to become more profound. Heaven-shaking, earth-shattering power surged from the ancient immortal, becoming an unstoppable momentum, stirring countless natural and magical laws, and ultimately turning into a blue drop of water!

That drop of water pulsed with a hair-raising mightiness, that caused anyone who sensed it to shake in body and soul. It felt like the mightiness might crush them out of existence, or rip them to shreds.

Even species who were a great distance away felt the same effects, and experienced a sense of impending catastrophe.

That drop of water came from a Summer Immortal, and contained immortal might! The moment it appeared, the ancient immortal flicked his finger, and the drop of water shot toward Xu Qing!

Even more terrifying to all of the living beings in Revered Ancient was that as the water drop neared Xu Qing, it multiplied! It started as one water drop, but became two. The two then became four. The four, eight. In the blink of an eye, one water drop turned into too many water drops to count. It was an astonishing blue sea! One drop had become a sea!

The sea swept forth, growing ever closer to Xu Qing. Where it passed, the air shattered, the sky was obfuscated, and the starry sky blessed it. As a result, the sea contained a will of space-time and the stipulations of parallelism! It was as if… it contained everything!

The outer layer was a tide of space-time. The sea seemed to come from an infinite number of worlds! This was the might of a Summer Immortal. Even though he did not cultivate the canon of space-time, after reaching a certain level, all daos become the same thing!

All living beings were stunned. And that was because, in their eyes, there was no sea!

The actions of Summer Immortals surpassed their perceptions. Not even the empress could see everything that was happening. It was all a blur. And thus, all onlookers, be they in the imperial capital or Revered Ancient as a whole, saw nothing but a host of abstract, complicated vortexes!

Only Master Seventh could clearly see the great sea, and his expression was incomparably serious.

And yet, despite all that, Xu Qing remained calm the entire time. He looked at the destructive sea of canon screaming toward him from the Summer Immortal, and he wasn’t surprised at all. Nor did he shrink back. Instead, he extended his right hand… and gently lowered it!

The tips of his fingers brushed the boundless sea waves! The moment they made contact, something completely unimaginable occurred in front of the eyes of the people of Revered Ancient! The numerous abstract vortexes began to crumble as if they were melting!

To Master Seventh’s astonishment, things changed in his view as well. When Xu Qing’s fingers touched the blue sea, Master Seventh clearly saw a huge rip appear in it. It was as if the elements making it up were being extracted! And that was exactly what was happening!

Xu Qing was doing the extracting! First he extracted space-time, then he extracted parallelism. And then the sea, having been stabilized, only existed in the surrounding world! It was cut off from the outside. And the so-called ‘countless’ wills were transformed. Having become countable instead of countless, they ceased multiplying!

Master Seventh gasped as he saw the previously magnificent blue sea affected by Xu Qing’s mere fingers. It lost all of its previous blessings! It transformed from a collective to individuals! The sea broke apart into different drops of water! The water drops that had been fused together were now split apart.

And then something happened that provoked a reaction from the ancient immortal. The changes to the sea continued. After becoming individual water drops, those water drops… also experience extraction!

No longer were they single water drops. They became… flat slips of water! And that was because Xu Qing had extracted their height! The water droplets completely lost any concept of height. They became just like the images he had seen in the second world in the Aurora Immortal Palace!

And yet, the transformations continued! The flat slips of water transformed again, becoming threads. Then they became singularities, after which they were completely and utterly wiped out.

None of them existed any longer.

All of this takes a bit of time to describe, but in the time it takes a spark to fly off a piece of flint, the entire sea became nothing.

No one other than Master Seventh understood what had just happened. Only he knew that, although it simply looked like a water drop had become a sea, the reality was that the presence of canon made the entire thing extremely deadly and dangerous. Not even he was confident that he could have dealt with that threat. And he knew that if Xu Qing hadn’t been able to deal with it, he would have become just one of the drops of water in that sea.

The more Master Seventh understood about what was happening, the more astonished he was. And that was because… he had no idea how Xu Qing had dealt with the canon in the sea!

The ancient immortal’s pupils constricted. He was now looking at Xu Qing as if he were an extremely dangerous enemy. “Your canon…?”

Xu Qing’s expression was the same as ever as he lifted his foot and took a step toward the ancient immortal. “If your canon has nothing but the concept of ‘countlessness,’ then… you might as well prepare to die!”