Chapter 369 - 368: The Sacred Ground is Being Taken!

The beast lowered its body and plunged through the threshold.

For an instant, the world around them became a chaotic blur of silver light and distorted space. Lin Yuan felt the pressure of the collapsing dimension pass over his body, and his Dao Fruit rotated rapidly as he adjusted the circulation of his spiritual Qi to withstand the turbulence.

Bai Qingyue tightened her grip on the Fortune Banner, allowing its golden aura to spread around their group, while Ku Ming maintained his Buddhist protection against the fragments of spatial energy that threatened to tear through their defenses.

Then the pressure vanished.

They had escaped the Sacred Grounds.

However, none of them could have imagined that the outside world would be waiting to greet them with a catastrophe far greater than the one they had just survived.

The transition back to the outside world was violent, and the Golden Immortal Beast emerged from the spatial fissure high above the northern mountain ranges of the Central Continent. Its enormous body burst through the boundary in a flash of silver light, carrying Lin Yuan, Bai Qingyue, and Ku Ming into the familiar sky of the Nine Provinces.

For a fraction of a second, they expected to see the blue heavens stretching across the horizon and the distant mountains standing beneath the protective influence of the Nine Heavens Ward.

Instead, they emerged into a nightmare of cosmic proportions.

The sky was completely gone.

Where the golden runes of the Nine Heavens Ward should have formed an enormous protective canopy around the world, there was only a vast, bruised-purple abyss filled with corrosive clouds and twisting shadows.

The ancient barrier had not merely developed a few cracks or lost its ability to repel intruders. Its entire structure had been shattered, leaving the Nine Provinces exposed to the terrifying expanse of the Hollow Beyond.

The air was thick with the stench of acidic blood and ancient malice. Even at their considerable altitude, Lin Yuan could feel the foreign aura pressing against his skin, interfering with the natural circulation of spiritual Qi within his body. The laws that had once governed the world were becoming unstable, and the remaining protective formations scattered across the continent flickered like dying candles beneath the pressure of the Hollow Beyond.

Bai Qingyue’s expression changed as she surveyed the destruction. She had experienced the collapse of the Sacred Grounds only moments earlier, but the scene before her made that catastrophe seem almost insignificant by comparison. The Sacred Grounds had been an ancient spatial pocket whose collapse threatened those trapped within it.

The Nine Provinces, however, were an entire world, and the destruction of its protective barrier meant that every living being beneath the broken sky had been exposed to an enemy whose strength surpassed anything they had encountered inside the Dongtian.

Ku Ming’s lips parted, but no words emerged. His golden Buddhist aura flickered around his body, reacting instinctively to the oppressive atmosphere.

He had spent his life studying ancient scriptures and cultivating the Buddhist path, and he had always believed that the Nine Heavens Ward represented one of the greatest defensive achievements of the ancient cultivators. Seeing it shattered before his eyes left him struggling to reconcile the sight with everything he had learned.

Yet it was not the ruined sky that caused Lin Yuan’s breath to catch in his throat.

It was what occupied it.

Hovering in the absolute zenith of the cosmos, partially obscured by the corrosive clouds of the Hollow Beyond, was an entity of such unfathomable majesty that the very laws of reality seemed to recoil from its presence.

Its true form remained concealed behind layers of distorted space and dark miasma, but the fragment of its existence visible to the cultivators was enough to create an overwhelming sense of insignificance. Even from a distance that ordinary cultivators could not have crossed in their lifetimes, its presence exerted a pressure that made the surrounding heavens appear fragile.

The entity did not need to release an attack to demonstrate its strength.

Its existence alone was enough to make the world tremble.

And reaching down from that terrifying presence was a colossal, pitch-black demonic handprint.

The fingers of the hand spanned hundreds of miles, their enormous shadows passing across the ruined sky as though the sun itself had been extinguished. Dark runes crawled along the surface of its palm, and each movement generated ripples that distorted the surrounding space.

The hand seemed less like a physical limb and more like a manifestation of absolute authority, an extension of a being whose power had long since surpassed the limitations of ordinary cultivation.

Lin Yuan, Bai Qingyue, and Ku Ming watched in stunned silence as the gigantic hand physically breached the boundary of the world. Its fingers descended through the shattered Nine Heavens Ward and wrapped around the spatial pocket of the Sacred Grounds they had just escaped from.

The ancient Dongtian, which had once existed as an isolated realm preserved by powerful formations and ancient Dao laws, suddenly became little more than an object caught between the fingers of an immeasurably powerful being.

Lin Yuan’s pupils contracted.

He had sensed something unusual while inside the Sacred Grounds. The increasing instability had not been the result of ordinary deterioration, and the spatial boundaries had not been collapsing solely because the ancient formations were damaged. Something outside the realm had been exerting a force upon its entire structure, gradually tearing it away from the fabric of reality.

Now he understood the source of that force.

The Sacred Grounds were being taken.

With a slow, agonizing groan that reverberated through the mountains and shattered the tectonic plates of the continent below, the enormous hand tightened its grip.

The ancient Dongtian resisted for a brief moment, and countless golden formations appeared around its boundary as its remaining defensive mechanisms activated. However, the difference in power was so immense that the formations were extinguished almost as soon as they appeared.

The entire preserved realm was ripped out of the fabric of reality!