The Decaying World

"A restriction..."

Lin Hui felt the stellar energy wildly surging from within him, but the moment it left his body, it rapidly dissipated and broke down, absorbed by the omnipresent tendrils of the Celestial Net.

He said no more.

Instead, his gaze fell upon Witch Hai Guang.

SWISH!

He instantly appeared before the witch and pointed a finger.

CHI!

His index finger plunged precisely between her eyebrows, deep into her brain. Amid her piercing screams, layers of semi-transparent, grayish-white crystal began to rapidly spread from the point of impact, enveloping her.

In less than two seconds, Hai Guang stopped moving completely, sealed inside a thick, white crystal pillar.

"Ancestor!!"

Seeing this, the other high-level witches who had been sent flying stared, their eyes wide with fury. Two of them immediately charged toward Lin Hui. Powerful green and blue Mana, at the level of Earth Immortals, surged from their bodies and radiated in waves beneath their feet.

But before they even made it halfway, their bodies froze. Glistening white crystals began to spread densely and rapidly upward from their feet.

It wasn’t just them. Nearby, the other high-ranking members of the Slender Cloud Pavilion who had just struggled to their feet also found themselves unable to move. Pure white crystals crept up from their feet, and in the blink of an eye, they were frozen into crystal pillars standing amidst the ruins.

CRACK.

The next moment, the Earth Immortals shattered the crystals and broke free, ready to attack. But a second later, new crystals formed over them, forcefully immobilizing them once again.

Soon, the Earth Immortals shattered the crystals again, but the crystals simply reappeared, spreading upward once more.

After several attempts, they no longer had the strength to break free. Like all the others, they were slowly sealed within the crystal.

In the end, only Apricot Blossom Fairy and Yao Ying were left unsealed.

"Now, can you begin preparing the link to the Celestial Court?" Lin Hui said, lowering his hand to look at the two of them.

"...!!!" Apricot Blossom Fairy’s expression twisted as she looked at Hai Guang and then at the others, all completely sealed in crystal. She knew that the Slender Cloud Pavilion had used every method at its disposal, pushing everything to the extreme, yet had still been utterly defeated. This meant the gap in power between them and their opponent was simply too vast.

So vast that it reached a height even she couldn’t begin to imagine...

"I... understand." Apricot Blossom Fairy took a deep breath, lowered her head, and knelt on the ground.

It was a gesture of submission, yielding to the pressure he exuded. It was also a sign of her complete and utter surrender.

Seeing that all was lost, Yao Ying also knelt, her expression one of utter despair. ’I’ve defied Lin Hui’s agreement twice; my fate is not going to be pleasant... But now even the Supreme has been beaten. What choice do I have?’

Fortunately for her, Lin Hui seemed to pay her no mind. Once he confirmed their submission, he took no further action. He simply said he would return in a day, then turned and left.

Just as Yao Ying breathed a sigh of relief and was about to stand up, her legs suddenly stiffened, and she found she couldn’t move them at all.

She looked down and saw a scarlet line slowly appear across her hips, where her legs joined her torso.

THUMP.

Her entire upper body slid off and fell to the ground, leaving her legs standing in place, motionless as a statue.

The next moment, with a soft POOF, her legs completely disintegrated into silver motes of light and vanished, leaving not even a single cell behind.

"No!!" Yao Ying’s shrill scream echoed across the hundreds of meters of ruins.

*

*

*

Only two members of the Slender Cloud Pavilion’s high command remained; the rest were all sealed in crystal. The attacker’s identity was unknown, but their power was terrifyingly immense.

Within a few hours, news of the event had spread throughout the entire cultivation world of the New Republic. Even the cultivation communities in neighboring countries began to buzz with discussion about it.

The Slender Cloud Pavilion was a major power; its scale and influence were significant in any country.

In smaller nations, such a force could easily sway or even destabilize the political landscape.

Yet in this attack, a single individual had single-handedly and openly smashed through the Slender Cloud Pavilion’s layered defenses, ultimately forcing the entire Sect into submission. Such a feat was exceedingly rare in the annals of cultivation history.

Only the strongest figures in the mortal world—the masters of the two great sects of old, the Great Golden Cloud Temple and the Qiankun Temple—had accomplished such a feat during their rise to power.

Now that another individual had appeared who could single-handedly suppress an entire Sect, nearly every Cultivator who heard the news was intensely curious about them.

Lin Hui, however, couldn’t care less what outsiders thought. He was busy supervising Apricot Blossom Fairy, ensuring she diligently began laying out the formation for the Celestial Court link.

What he didn’t realize, however, was that news traveled so fast in the cultivation world that people who had met him before were already beginning to suspect he was the one responsible.

Among them was the Benevolent and Righteous Court, which had been in contact with him for trade over many years.

「That night.」

The remnants of the nation’s two strongest powers had long since lost their influence and their numbers had dwindled, so no one paid these rumors any mind.

But on the Western Continent, the Holy Spirit Mage Association was still active. With the dissolution of the Witches’ Council, all of its former power and resources had been seized and divided up by the Association. As a result, their strength was now far greater than before.

This should have marked the beginning of a golden age for the Holy Spirit Mage Association, but... they had lost contact with the Holy Spirits, forcing them to repeatedly try to reach the Upper Realm.

The results...

The Association’s headquarters, the Thousand Tree Divine Hall, was an ancient temple deep within a snowy mountain range in northern Essin.

Every stone brick here was coated in a thick layer of hard, bluish-white ice.

President McKenzie Bolin was the Association’s sole powerhouse at the Heavenly Immortal level. He had sparred with the masters of the Qiankun Temple and the Great Golden Cloud Temple on numerous occasions, with none of them ever gaining a clear victory.

But now, this kindly-faced, white-bearded old man was staring with a haggard expression at the stacks of summary reports on his desk.

These reports cataloged the recent and ever-increasing cases of backlash from rituals meant to communicate with the celestial realm, occurring all across the Western Continent.

All were tragedies resulting from different sects attempting to communicate with their own patron deities.

The lucky ones merely suffered grievous injuries from the backlash. The typical result was falling into a coma and dying on the spot. The truly unlucky, however, died in an instant as all the blood vanished from their bodies—along with every one of their blood relatives.

If it were anyone else, they might not understand what was happening or why.

But as one of the Three Greats, he had actually gone to the celestial realm himself to secretly investigate.

When he arrived, he witnessed the God of War joining forces with dozens of other deities. They combined their power in a formation to activate the ultimate, world-ending Insect Scripture: the Codex of the Thousand-Feathered Giant.

It was an attempt to vanquish the incomparably evil, green-eyed man in a single blow.

But... that divine artifact, the Insect Scripture, supposedly powerful enough to destroy and reboot the world, was utterly insignificant before the man’s casual might.

The man simply pushed through layers of terrifying pressure, walked right up to the codex, seized it, and tore it to shreds.

As if he were just tearing apart an ordinary book.

This powerful world-ending divine artifact, a legacy that had existed for ten thousand years, was thus completely destroyed.

Next, it was the turn of the God of War and the other gods who resisted.

They fought back with all their might, but they were like fragile aphids before a lion—crushed with a single, casual swipe.

’Watching those gods, every single one of them stronger than me, being slaughtered like ants before that green-eyed man...’

Profound fear of that man welled up in McKenzie’s heart once again.

Before he left, he had heard the dying God of War’s furious curses. And from those curses, he learned the green-eyed man’s name: Xue Shi.

Although McKenzie was uncertain about the rumors of this new, supremely powerful individual, he still hoped that another pillar of strength would emerge in the cultivation world.

After all, with the Qiankun Temple and the Great Golden Cloud Temple no longer involved, he alone could not hold the line.

’But why is this person so fixated on contacting the celestial realm?’ McKenzie couldn’t understand.

Everyone knew that contacting the Celestial Court was fraught with immense danger, yet this person, knowing the risks, was actively heading straight for it.

He put the matter aside for now. The most pressing issue was how to deal with the ever-approaching crisis in the celestial realm.

’He knew very well that the gods of the celestial realm wouldn’t last much longer. Once the Upper Realm falls completely, it will be the mortal world’s turn...’

The sense of looming, ever-approaching danger had robbed him of a peaceful night’s sleep for years. Every night, he dreamed that the green-eyed man, Xue Shi, would suddenly descend upon the mortal world and begin his slaughter of all Cultivators ahead of schedule...

He picked up the reports again, carefully examining the details, trying to find which deities had caused a weaker backlash. A weaker reaction might mean the corresponding god still survived.

But he had been examining them for less than half an hour when Vice President Alfanya strode into the room, interrupting his thoughts.

"Bolin, I think you should see this assessment." Alfanya placed a freshly-printed evaluation file in front of his old friend. "It’s about the new supreme powerhouse who appeared at the Slender Cloud Pavilion."

"A power assessment?" McKenzie frowned. "Hasn’t that already been determined?"

"No... the previous one was just a vague estimate. This is a proper, detailed analysis. It’s more thorough, more accurate," Alfanya replied.

McKenzie picked up the file and quickly glanced over it.

At first glance, his expression changed.

"How is this... the highest possible rating? ’Infinite’!?"

"That was the unanimous conclusion of the Elder Council after they reviewed the details. Just a short while ago, people went to try and dismantle the crystal pillars this person left behind. But no matter what they tried—any method, any Magic—they couldn’t leave a single scratch on the surface. Or rather, any mark that did appear would vanish almost instantly, the crystal healing itself," Alfanya said gravely.

"Any method? Any Magic!?" Hearing those phrases, McKenzie reflexively straightened his back.

Because... back when those few Heavenly Immortal-ranked Holy Spirits showed signs of corruption after exploring the celestial realm, those exact same phrases had been used to describe the absolute nature of their afflictions.

And now, so many years later, he was hearing those same two phrases again, this time in connection with the chaos caused by someone else.

"I actually tried myself. It was useless. Even when I used my strongest holy relic and focused all its power on a single point, I couldn’t do a thing to those crystal pillars..." Alfanya sighed.

McKenzie fell silent for a moment. He slowly opened his mouth to speak.

BANG.

The next moment, a white-robed mage came flying in and landed hastily outside the hall doors.

He hit the ground hard, almost like a crashing plane, sending a spray of snow into the air.

"Urgent report! Just half an hour ago, the Great Golden Cloud Temple on the Eastern Continent was forcibly invaded! Some of their medicinal stores were stolen. Their Supreme powerhouse, Chan Master Golden Rainbow, was grievously wounded and knocked unconscious in a single exchange! Two Heavenly Immortals and six Earth Immortals who attempted to give chase were all turned into crystal pillars within a minute!"

"Master Jade Coin, the powerhouse of the Qiankun Temple, has already gone to investigate personally."

"..."

"..." For a moment, both McKenzie and Alfanya were utterly speechless.

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