Volume 1, Chapter 8: To Hell with the Heavenly Dao

The destruction of the Ten Thousand Sword Holy Land was not a silent affair.

It had left too deep an imprint upon the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths. When, overnight, every sword cultivator across the world—regardless of their location or level of cultivation—felt their connection to the Sword Dao abruptly severed by a brutal force, panic began to spread.

At first, it was merely some swordsmen discovering they could no longer command their flying swords. Then, it was elders of sword sects finding their life-bound weapons suddenly wailing and falling to the ground, stripped of all spirituality during practice. Finally, as the news converged, everyone realized with horror that the Ten Thousand Sword Holy Land, which had stood at the pinnacle of the Sword Dao, no longer emitted a single hum of a blade.

It had become a dead land. Not a death of living beings, but a death of the "Dao" itself.

This scale of Law annihilation was as if someone had taken the most violent of methods to gouge a piece out of a perfect painting, leaving behind an ugly, hollow scar. The very operation of the world stuttered with an imperceptible hesitation.

...

Above the nine heavens, beyond the dimensions, a cold, vast, and emotionless will awakened.

It was not a living creature, but the collective embodiment of the world’s Laws, the supreme principle maintaining the operation of all things—the Heavenly Dao.

It "saw" the gap where the Sword Dao Law had been forcibly erased, and it "sensed" the violent tremors in the world’s origin caused by it.

This was a bug. A fatal bug capable of crashing the entire system.

The will of the Heavenly Dao instantly locked onto the source of the anomaly: that ordinary residence located in the center of the continent. However, when its "gaze," which could pierce through time and trace causality, projected toward the location, it collided with nothingness.

There was nothing there. No living beings, no causality, no Laws, not even the concept of "existence" itself. The newly unlocked "Causality Shielding Canopy" had taken effect, completely stripping the entire Gu family from the logical layer of this world.

Unparseable, incomprehensible, unlocatable.

To the Heavenly Dao, this unknown was the highest level of threat. When a program cannot process a virus, the only choice is to format the entire hard drive where it resides.

And so, the Heavenly Dao grew furious.

At that moment, every living soul across the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths felt the wrath of the world itself. Without warning, the sky darkened. It was not clouds blocking the sun, but light itself being stripped away.

The air grew viscous, the Laws fell into chaos, and the spiritual energy wailed. Ancient beings sleeping in forbidden zones of life were startled from their ten-thousand-year slumber, letting out uneasy roars. Countless old monsters in deep seclusion broke through their barriers, looking up at the pitch-black sky, their faces etched with terror.

"Heavenly Punishment..."
"It is an extinction-level Heavenly Punishment!"
"What kind of taboo has emerged to provoke the Heavenly Dao into purging the entire world?"

A sense of despair blanketed every inch of land.

At the center of the endless darkness, directly above the Gu residence, the anomaly grew even more terrifying. Black clouds gathered—not clouds of water vapor, but a tribulation cloud condensed from the purest Laws of destruction. Within the layers of cloud, purple lightning flickered. These were the Divine Thunders of the Heavenly Dao; each wisp of their aura was enough to easily obliterate a Great Emperor. At this moment, billions of divine thunders intertwined to form a purple ocean of lightning, the terrifying power of extinction causing the entire realm to tremble.

Inside the courtyard, Ye Qingxian and Ji Ruxue remained immersed in their respective enlightenment, oblivious to the changes outside. A faint halo enveloped the residence, perfectly insulating it from the terrifying pressure that threatened to crush eternity.

Uncle Fu stood in the courtyard, looking up at the destructive sea of thunder above, his brows furrowing almost imperceptibly. He was not worried; he was annoyed. If such a commotion woke the Young Master, what would he do?

Uncle Fu’s annoyance did not stop the commotion in the sky in the slightest. On the contrary, the Laws of destruction gathered above the Gu residence became increasingly violent after failing to lock onto their target for so long.

The "program" of the Heavenly Dao had entered an infinite loop. It detected a fatal system error but could not locate the source. In its logic, an unlocatable source meant the error had spread to the entire sector. The only solution was to completely purge this sector, formatting all data within it along with everything else.

*Boom—*

This was not a sound, but a violent tremor at the level of the Laws. The purple ocean of lightning began to shrink and condense. Billions of Divine Thunders were forcibly fused together by an invisible force, forming a massive purple spear that pierced the heavens.

The tip of the spear was aimed directly at the unassuming residence below. On the shaft of the spear, countless profound, destructive runes flickered in and out of existence; every flicker caused the spatial barriers of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths to groan under the unbearable strain.

In the minds of every living being in the mortal realm, a phantom image of this giant spear appeared clearly. It brought the purest end and death. Countless cultivators felt their courage shatter under this pressure, and those with weaker cultivation lost their Dao hearts and collapsed into unconsciousness.

"It's over... everything is over..."

In the depths of a forbidden life zone, a giant with red fur, who had slept for nine epochs, looked at the lightning spear gathering the world’s wrath in the firmament, his massive pupils filled with despair. He had seen Emperors bleed, Holy Lands fall, and had even personally experienced the dark turmoil of epochal shifts. But no disaster had ever been comparable to this sight. This was not an attack launched by a living being; this was the world itself deciding to kill itself.

No one could stop it; no one could escape.

Yet, at the center of this world-sweeping apocalyptic disaster, inside the Gu residence, there was only peace. The invisible halo in the courtyard kept all storms at bay. Ye Qingxian remained kneeling beside that pile of "junk," wisps of heaven-opening sword intent circling her body, making her seem like an unsheathed, peerless divine sword. Ji Ruxue held a broken fragment of an Imperial weapon, her face filled with obsession and fervor; the Dao wounds within her were being rapidly repaired by a pure source of Imperial Dao, her aura climbing steadily. Both were immersed in their great fortunes, entirely unaware of the world-ending scene outside.

Uncle Fu stood in the courtyard, hands behind his back. He looked up at the purple lightning spear, which had condensed to the limit and radiated a light so intense even he found it somewhat piercing. His brow furrowed deeper.

Although the residence's barrier blocked all pressure and sound, it could not block light. The radiance emitted by the spear had dyed the entire world an eerie purple, thousands of times brighter than the noon sun.

Uncle Fu’s fingers tapped against his sleeves. He was considering whether to go out now and crush this thing, or wait for it to fall on its own. The former was less trouble, but might disturb the house. The latter would cause a massive stir, but the mansion’s defensive array would handle it automatically, requiring no effort from him. It was just that the light... it was truly too dazzling.

In the moment Uncle Fu hesitated, the bedroom window was cast in a thorough, translucent glow by the purple light.