Chapter 355: Capturing the Great Sea Realm (3) [Bonus]

Chapter 355: Chapter 354: Capturing the Great Sea Realm (3) [Bonus]

“I, Gu Cangming, am the beginning and the end,” the Quasi Demon Emperor murmured, savoring the absolute supremacy of his existence. “I shall strip this world of its crutches one by one, until nothing remains.”

Yet the Nine Provinces had not been left entirely without defenders.

As the Great Sea Realm continued rising toward the upper atmosphere, a tremendous spatial distortion tore open above the collapsing eastern coastline.

Dozens of figures emerged from the spatial fold, each radiating the brilliant aura of orthodox Qi.

They were the Cultivation Council, the highest authority governing and unifying the Nine Provinces. Among them stood ancient hermits, grand elders, and supreme sect masters whose influence surpassed even that of the Five Emperors.

At the forefront stood Grand Elder Canghe.

He was an ancient man with a white beard trailing to his waist, dressed in immaculate white and gold robes. Yet the usual serenity had vanished from his eyes. As a Peak Void Refinement expert who had lived for eight thousand years, Canghe had studied primordial texts and uncovered the true history of the world.

But when he emerged from the spatial fold and looked toward the heavens, his heart, which had remained unmoved for five millennia, suddenly stopped.

Before him floated the entire Great Sea Realm. Its waters, coral reefs, aquatic beasts, and liquid Dao essence hung miles above the earth, held within the grasp of a pitch-black demonic hand that blotted out the sun.

More terrifying still was the aura emanating from that hand.

It was neither Soul Transformation nor Void Refinement.

Its existence embodied a fundamental superiority over the very laws of the Nine Provinces, its overwhelming density of power distorting the realm’s gravitational fields merely by existing.

“Body Integration…” Grand Elder Canghe whispered, the words leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. His hands, hardened by centuries of sword cultivation, began to tremble uncontrollably. “A Demon Emperor perhaps…..”

Behind him, thirty Soul Transformation experts from the Cultivation Council, stared at the catastrophe in utter horror. These were powerful cultivators capable of shattering mountains with a casual gesture, sovereigns who commanded vast regions. Yet before the demonic hand in the sky, they felt no different from insects beneath a falling boulder.

“Grand Elder,” a middle-aged swordmaster at the Peak of Soul Transformation stammered, his sword intent trembling erratically. “The Great Sea Realm… If it is taken, the continental plates will dry up. Within a decade, the ambient Qi will become completely toxic. The Nine Provinces will perish!”

“I know,” Canghe replied hoarsely, his gaze fixed upon the bleeding crack in the Nine Heavens Ward from which the demonic arm emerged. “The Ward is failing, and the foundation of our world is being stolen.”

He drew his sword, a supreme-grade artifact forged from the spine of a True Dragon. Its blade hummed with a sorrowful light.

“We are ants beneath a falling sky,” Grand Elder Canghe declared. His voice trembled, yet beneath it lay the tragic resolve of a man who had already accepted his death. “But we are Cultivators! For ten thousand years, we have gathered the resources of this world, consumed its spiritual herbs, and drawn upon its Dao essence. If we refuse to fight for it now, we are no better than the demons seeking to devour it!”

The thirty Soul Transformation experts drew their weapons as one. The despair in their eyes gradually gave way to a terrifying resolve, one that left no room for retreat.

“Form the Heaven and Earth Subjugation Array!” Canghe roared.

His Peak Void Refinement aura erupted, forming a brilliant pillar of golden light that momentarily pushed back the darkening heavens.

The thirty experts immediately dispersed into a complex formation around their Grand Elder. They poured their Qi into the array, abandoning their defensive barriers and sacrificing every ounce of their Soul Transformation power to strengthen its might.

The sky above the coastline blazed with golden light.

A colossal array compass, miles in diameter, materialized beneath the Cultivation Council experts. Ancient runes representing subjugation, binding, and elemental annihilation spun rapidly within its concentric rings. The combined strength of thirty Soul Transformation experts and a Peak Void Refinement master was sufficient to erase an entire region from the map.

“Nine Palaces Heavenly Annihilation Sword!” Canghe bellowed.

Blood streamed from his eyes as he forced his physical vessel beyond its limits, channeling the combined power of the array into his sword.

He thrust the dragon-bone blade toward the heavens.

The array compass unleashed its power. A beam of concentrated golden sword intent, thick as a mountain peak and blazing with the heat of a supernova, shot into the sky. It tore through the atmosphere, illuminating the darkened world and carrying the might of the Nine Provinces.

The golden beam struck the back of the colossal demonic hand holding the ocean.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

A blinding flash engulfed the heavens, temporarily rendering everyone within a thousand miles unable to see. A shockwave of Qi and demonic miasma exploded outward, tearing apart the clouds and sending violent ripples across the suspended Great Sea Realm.

Grand Elder Canghe and the thirty experts poured their souls into the attack, screaming as they struggled to maintain the beam. Their robes whipped violently in the backlash, and cracks spread across their spiritual defenses.

Yet high above, within the Hollow Beyond, Gu Cangming did not even blink.

He felt nothing more than a faint warmth against the back of his demonic projection.

“A breeze among ruins,” he scoffed, his golden eyes utterly indifferent.

When the blinding radiance of the Cultivation Council’s ultimate technique finally faded, the horrifying truth was laid bare.

The pitch-black demonic hand remained completely unharmed. The golden sword beam, carrying their combined might, had shattered against its condensed demonic energy like a fragile icicle striking an anvil of star-iron. Not a single scale of the projection had been damaged, and not a drop of water had escaped its grasp.

“Impossible…” the middle-aged swordmaster whispered.

He dropped to his knees upon the invisible spatial platform, his Dao Heart shattering as he stared at the untouched hand. “It did not even leave a scratch…”

Grand Elder Canghe stared at the demonic projection, his dragon-bone sword trembling in his grip. Before him lay the brutal truth of the gap between Void Refinement and Body Integration, a gulf that no ordinary technique could bridge.

The enormous hand continued its ascent, ignoring the cultivators as it dragged the ocean closer to the spatial rift.

“It is taking the sea realm,” Canghe whispered. Tears of blood traced the wrinkles of his face. “The world ends today.”

He turned toward the thirty Soul Transformation experts behind him. Their spirits were broken, their hands trembling after witnessing their strongest technique swept aside like dust.

But Canghe belonged to an older era. He understood that when every technique failed, only sacrifice remained.

“Do not weep!” he suddenly roared, his voice cracking with terrifying conviction. “If our cultivation cannot cut down this demon, then our lives shall become the blade!”

He turned his dragon-bone sword inward and drove it into his chest.

Rather than piercing his heart, the blade penetrated his Void Refinement core.

“Grand Elder!” the experts cried in horror.

“Burn your lives!” Canghe commanded as his body erupted in an intensely pure white flame. It was the forbidden art known as Dao Ignition. He was burning eight thousand years of accumulated lifespan, his Primordial Spirit, and his very karmic existence to unleash a single, catastrophic burst of power. “Burn your souls! Buy this world one more breath! For the Nine Provinces!”

The thirty Soul Transformation experts stared at their burning leader, then at the ocean rising into the heavens. In that instant, they understood his intention.

With synchronized roars of suicidal defiance, they drove their weapons into their own cores.

Thirty pillars of blinding white flame erupted across the sky. They burned their Primordial Spirits, blood, and bones, sacrificing everything they had accumulated throughout their long lives. The tragic splendor of thirty-one supreme cultivators immolating themselves for a broken world became a sight destined to haunt the history of heaven and earth.

The white flames rapidly converged, flowing into Grand Elder Canghe.

His physical body was already turning to ash, yet the man raised his burning hands toward the heavens.

“WE ARE THE PILLARS OF THE HEAVENS!” Canghe roared.

His voice had lost every trace of humanity, becoming the thunderous declaration of absolute sacrifice.

He unleashed the ignited life essence of thirty-one experts in a single, silent wave of orthodox purity.

The wave bypassed physical space and struck the pitch-black demonic hand directly.

It was not an ordinary physical attack. It was a conceptual disruption, a desperate appeal to the Great Dao, empowered by the willing erasure of thirty-one apex souls.

The impact reached the demonic hand.

And, astonishingly, the hand stopped.

The enormous fingers that stretched across the continent ceased their ascent. The Great Sea Realm hung motionless in the heavens, and the crushing gravitational pressure momentarily subsided.

Within the Hollow Beyond, Gu Cangming’s golden eyes widened by the slightest fraction.

A sudden resistance pressed against his projection, as though countless invisible threads had wrapped around his wrist and halted its movement.

“They burn their souls to restrain a god,” Gu Cangming murmured, a faint trace of amusement touching his lips.

Below, Grand Elder Canghe’s body had already crumbled into ash. Yet as he looked toward the motionless hand, a bloody smile appeared upon his disintegrating lips.

“We stopped it…” he whispered into the wind. “We bought them time…”

But his triumph was nothing more than a cruel, fleeting illusion.

The amusement vanished from Gu Cangming’s face, replaced by the cold tyranny of a Quasi Demon Emperor.

“I, Gu Cangming, do not halt for the ashes of ants,” the Demon Lord declared.

He simply flexed his arm.

The overwhelming might of Middle Stage Body Integration surged through his projection.

SNAP!

The invisible conceptual threads forged from the souls of thirty-one cultivators shattered instantly. The backlash followed in the same breath.

Grand Elder Canghe’s triumphant smile froze upon his crumbling face. His remaining body, together with the ashes of his thirty companions, was violently dispersed by the rebounding force. Every trace of their existence vanished from the universe.

Their ultimate sacrifice had purchased the Nine Provinces a single fleeting second.

The pitch-black hand resumed its ascent, completely unhindered.

At last, it reached the bleeding fracture in the Nine Heavens Ward.

The ancient seal, forged by the Grand Ascendants, was intrinsically connected to the Nine Wonders, which served as anchors sustaining the laws of the lower world.

As Gu Cangming dragged the Great Sea Realm through the spatial rift, removing billions of tons of water and the foundational Water Origin from the mortal plane, the ancient formation finally reached its breaking point.

One of its anchors was gone.

CRACK-K-K-K-K-K-K-K!

The sound of the Nine Heavens Ward breaking was like the dreadful, agonizing feel of a continent-sized pane of glass slowly shattering beyond repair.

Across the Nine Provinces, from the frozen wastes of the North to the burning deserts of the South, from the towering peaks of the Central Continent to the sprawling forests of the West, every living creature raised its head toward the heavens.

The golden runes that had woven across the firmament for ten thousand years suddenly blazed with dazzling intensity. Then, in a catastrophic chain reaction, they shattered one after another.

The Ward had broken completely.

The artificial blue sky of the lower world collapsed like a discarded curtain, dissolving into countless fragments of golden dust that quickly faded into nothingness.

In its place appeared the unfiltered horror of the universe. The endless, putrid purple sky of the Hollow Beyond now stretched directly above the Nine Provinces. The barrier was gone, the seal destroyed, and the two dimensions lay exposed to one another. The corrosive winds of the Demon Realm immediately poured into the orthodox atmosphere, poisoning the clouds with their rotting aura.

Within the Hollow Beyond, Gu Cangming withdrew his arm.

The colossal pitch-black hand emerged from the spatial rift, carrying the entire Great Sea Realm into the corrosive void of the Demon Realm.

Gu Cangming examined the enormous sphere of raging water suspended within his grasp.

“A heavy trinket,” he remarked casually.

He activated his supreme spatial laws, and the dark markings along his arms blazed with power. A web of high-dimensional compression spread across the floating ocean.

The Great Sea Realm, containing the waters of an entire world, began to shrink violently. Billions of tons of water, countless leviathans, ancient coral reefs, and the raw essence of the Water Dao were mercilessly compressed beneath the authority of the Quasi Demon Emperor.

Within seconds, the continent-sized ocean had shrunk to the size of a mountain. Then it became the size of a fortress, before shrinking further into a sphere no larger than a boulder.

Gu Cangming released his grip.

The compressed Great Sea Realm, now a hyper-dense sphere of swirling blue origin, floated obediently beside him like an ornamental bauble.

Stepping forward, he gazed through the shattered remnants of the Nine Heavens Ward. Beneath him lay the exposed Nine Provinces, a fractured and terrified world stripped of its sky and sea.

He could see panicked mortals, weeping cultivators, collapsing coastlines, and rivers running dry.

Yet his golden eyes showed no interest in the suffering of the weak. Instead, his gaze swept across the Nine Province, piercing through spatial folds and natural illusions until it settled upon a heavily protected pocket of space hidden among the northern mountain ranges.

“The Sacred Grounds,” Gu Cangming whispered, a cold, predatory smile curving his lips. He then raised his right arm once more, as the pitch-black demonic energy gathered around his palm, swirling with the catastrophic intent to destroy yet another foundational pillar of the lower world.

“I, Gu Cangming, shall drag you out by the roots.”