Essence Devouring Art

Southern Border.

Wanshan Prefecture, the Ten Thousand Peaks Forest Sea.

BOOM—

Ruins collapsed, sending dust and smoke billowing into the air.

”Hahh... Lord of the Records, this is the last of the ruins.”

Several Primordial Demons finished clearing the last ruin in the underground world, their faces pale as they reported to Zhao Jianji, who stood to the side.

”Keep searching!”

Zhao Jianji’s face was also haggard. He gritted his teeth as he spoke.

”Dig! Keep digging deeper!”

All across the Abyss.

On the vast battlefield ruins.

Nearly every Primordial Demon from the Overlord Whale Alliance had gathered, their eyes bloodshot as they frantically excavated the abyssal ruins, desperate to find any trace of Wu Dao.

「Two months ago.」

Wu Dao had gone to the Sunset Cave to vanquish a demon.

But after he left,

it was as if he had evaporated into thin air.

The Bai Ze Bureau had no trace of him, and he hadn’t contacted the Overlord Whale Alliance headquarters.

This was highly unusual.

In the past, whether Wu Dao was entering seclusion or attending to other matters, he would always inform Zhao Jianji in advance.

But this time...

He had left without a single word.

Everyone he was in contact with couldn’t find him. He was nowhere to be found, alive or dead.

For the first half-month,

Zhao Jianji was merely worried and didn’t think it was a major problem. As a Primordial Demon, he had almost blind faith in Wu Dao.

But after another five or six days,

his worry transformed completely into a sense of foreboding.

However, he didn’t lose his composure.

Instead, he immediately contacted the people at the Bai Ze Bureau.

Prince Nanyang stood behind the Bai Ze Bureau.

With Prince Nanyang’s Heaven-Reaching abilities, he was sure to know Wu Dao’s whereabouts.

As for Prince Nanyang,

he took the news of Wu Dao’s disappearance very seriously.

In the ’future’ he had seen,

Wu Dao was very likely the main force for resisting the Ten Tribulations; nothing could be allowed to happen to him.

Unfortunately...

Celestial Treasures were not omnipotent.

He paid a great price to use his ”Destiny” Celestial Treasure in conjunction with the ”Fate Return” Great Divine Technique to scry for information on Wu Dao, only to learn that he was not dead.

But he had no idea where Wu Dao was.

However,

to appease the Overlord Whale Alliance,

Prince Nanyang still sent a group of experts from his rear guard to search the Ten Thousand Peaks Forest Sea.

The matter of Wu Dao suppressing the Eye of the Gap.

When Qiu Tianjing asked his master,

Prince Nanyang had already learned of it.

This included the great calamity hidden within the core of the Eye of the Gap.

He guessed that,

Wu Dao had most likely triggered that calamity, which was why he had encountered an unknown disaster.

After entering the Ten Thousand Peaks Forest Sea,

the search party quickly discovered the battlefield where Wu Dao had fought the Eye of the Gap.

After all, with the core five to six hundred li turned into an Abyss and the battlefield ruins stretching for thousands of li, it would have been hard not to find it.

With the help of Divine Ability Users,

the battlefield ruins were quickly cleared and searched.

The results were a mixed bag of good and bad news.

In the Dark World beneath the Abyss,

they discovered the core of the Eye of the Gap: the Stone Eye.

And...

an inactive human husk,

decayed into countless rotten particles.

Within Prince Nanyang’s faction,

quite a few people knew that Wu Dao practiced the Immortal Black Tortoise Divine Skill. Faced with the empty husk Wu Dao had left behind,

they all guessed that Wu Dao must have encountered a major crisis, abandoned this body, and was now reviving somewhere safe.

This also proved

that what Prince Nanyang had said was true; Wu Dao was indeed not dead.

But there was still one problem...

If Wu Dao had escaped the crisis,

why, in two months,

had there been no word from him?

With Wu Dao’s Monster-Level physique,

even if he was seriously injured,

it shouldn’t have taken this long to recover.

A deep sense of doubt shrouded them.

Qiu Tianjing felt that the problem might lie with the core of the Eye of the Gap, so he immediately sent it to Prince Nanyang on the front lines.

After Prince Nanyang received the core of the Eye of the Gap, his cultivation, at the peak of the current era, quickly detected a lingering trace of an extremely terrifying aura within it.

Even though it was just a trace,

it still exuded the pressure of a Supreme God and Demon looking down upon all worlds from high in the heavens. He didn’t dare activate his Celestial Treasure Divine Techniques to scry it.

The mere thought of scrying it

enveloped him in endless premonitions of death.

If he had actually tried,

he would have definitely encountered an unimaginable terror.

Helpless,

Prince Nanyang had no choice but to trust Wu Dao once more, believing he would overcome this tribulation, and ceased the useless search.

Although the members of Prince Nanyang’s faction gave up the search, the Primordial Demons of the Overlord Whale Alliance did not.

In the hearts of the Primordial Demons,

Wu Dao’s status was like that of the Mother Goddess Creator, so naturally, they could not entertain any thoughts of giving up.

Besides using the Overlord Whale Alliance’s influence to search for Wu Dao, most of the Primordial Demons had spent the last two months digging through the battlefield ruins, hoping to find new clues.

Unfortunately,

after two whole months of digging,

they had found nothing.

The domineering voice that filled them with passion and made them willing to pledge their lives had never again sounded from the Communication Jade Talisman.

”Alliance Leader, are you there?”

Zhao Jianji sat dejectedly on the ruins, sending a routine message into the Communication Jade Talisman.

The Overlord Whale Alliance was able to dominate two Prefectures

and no one dared to challenge it,

ultimately because Wu Dao was there to oversee it. Their backing from Prince Nanyang was only a secondary factor.

If Wu Dao remained missing,

although they would still have Prince Nanyang’s protection,

a stepmother is never as good as one’s own mother.

The future decline of the Overlord Whale Alliance would be absolutely inevitable.

The fate of the old guard of the Overlord Whale Alliance, the Primordial Demons, would become like rootless duckweed, drifting unpredictably wherever the current took them.

”Alliance Leader...”

Zhao Jianji clutched the unresponsive Communication Jade Talisman, his expression despondent and his eyes slightly red. He looked as helpless as an unloved, abandoned child.

THUMP—

But just then,

the Primordial Magnetic Demon Embryo in his heart suddenly throbbed without any warning.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP—

It wasn’t just him.

The Primordial Magnetic Demon Embryos of all the Primordial Demons, both present and absent, began to throb in unison. They released a wave of great joy and encouragement, as if paying homage to a supreme existence in an unknown land.

’This is...!’

A tremor ran through Zhao Jianji’s eyes, and his expression was immediately consumed by ecstasy!

The Primordial Magnetic Embryo was stirring!

After the Demon Embryo was planted in them,

this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

Zhao Jianji had noticed a pattern.

Each time the Primordial Magnetic Demon Embryo throbbed on its own,

Wu Dao’s aura would be even more terrifying than before when he reappeared.

For it to throb again

could only mean one thing.

Wu Dao was fine! In fact, his power had improved yet again!

The heavy gloom in his heart

was swept away completely after the Demon Embryo throbbed.

”Hahaha! Let’s go home! Home!”

Zhao Jianji wept with joy. Waving to the other equally overjoyed Primordial Demons, he led them away from the Ten Thousand Peaks Forest Sea.

Since Wu Dao’s power had improved,

it meant he had simply been in death-seclusion. He had probably felt a sudden opportunity arise, which was why he hadn’t notified anyone.

Now that he had broken through,

they would surely see him again soon.

Before that happened,

they had to protect Wu Dao’s foundation well and not fall into disarray.

However...

what Zhao Jianji couldn’t imagine was that

Wu Dao’s situation

was far from as good as he thought.

In fact, it could be said that from the day he disappeared, his life had been hanging by a thread!

...

Southern Border Territory, the Boundless Gobi Desert.

Eighteen thousand two hundred meters up in the vault of heaven.

The gray Celestial Thunder Gang Wind formed a chaotic, world-ending ocean.

VMMMM—

Extreme Supreme Yang Qi Blood sprayed light and heat, forming an Eightfold Extreme Yang Celestial Vault.

Eight-Wheeled Glazed Great Suns briefly rose, hanging high in the vault, illuminating the chaos and shining upon the great thousand worlds before quickly vanishing without a trace.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH—

At the eye of the storm in the churning sea of gray Celestial Thunder Gang Wind,

Wu Dao’s nine-foot-tall, heroic physique, which seemed to be constructed from indestructible glazed celestial crystal, sat quietly, as heavy as a star and as stable as a Celestial Pillar.

Within his magnificent and towering body, the Sacred Spirit aura and the God and Demon Magnetic Field pressure released by his bloodline were even more potent. A single trace could collapse the void, making the Celestial Punishment Power afraid to approach.

But the increase in his power

did not cause the slightest ripple in his emotions.

Or rather,

he was currently incapable of producing any emotions at all.

Within his god-like, saintly eyes,

there was only emptiness.

He possessed no spiritual wisdom or humanity.

It seemed

this body was merely an empty shell.

A shell without a soul.

All of its current actions

were not controlled by a soul or consciousness.

It was merely executing a physical program etched into an incredibly terrifying and indelible instinct to ’seek power’.

Hahh—

After resting for a moment,

the program within the empty body’s instincts started up again.

Coldly and mechanically, Wu Dao continued to climb higher into the ocean of Celestial Thunder Gang Wind.

The physique that had just broken through and grown stronger

was once again reduced to countless cellular particles in the next instant.

Even the cells themselves were torn apart.

The Celestial Thunder Gang Wind began to exert its Celestial Punishment Power.

Its destructive Power,

madly tempered the deeper microscopic structures within the cells.

Recombination, destruction, adaptation.

This process repeated in a loop,

unceasingly unearthing the body’s potential and strengthening the cells.

Unfortunately,

just how incredible this feeling was,

was something Wu Dao could no longer experience.

Because...

his soul and consciousness

were not within his body.

Strictly speaking,

they were both there and not there.

They existed in a strange superposition of existence and non-existence.

...

「Two months ago.」

Deep beneath the Abyss of Sunset Cave.

In the Dark World.

As the Eye of the Gap shot out an ominous bloody light,

Wu Dao instantly felt the entire world vanish. His sense of self was banished to a well of eternal darkness, unable to perceive any information from the outside world.

Darkness!

Darkness!

An endless darkness!

There was no time or space, and the Ten Directions did not exist!

The endless darkness enveloped Wu Dao completely, from every direction, leaving no corner untouched.

Any of his senses,

were utterly unable to extend beyond his body.

He was like a tiny falling stone plunging into a bottomless Black Abyss; no matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t move an inch.

Falling...

Falling...

Falling endlessly into the darkness.

Extreme loneliness.

Self-doubt.

The urge to assimilate with the darkness.

...assaulted Wu Dao’s soul and consciousness relentlessly.

VMMMM—

The Divine Ghost Heaven opened.

All negative emotions were swept away.

Struggling was useless.

So Wu Dao simply stopped wasting his energy.

His eyes like those of a Divine Buddha, he sat cross-legged in the darkness.

Devoid of thought and desire,

he allowed his body to fall into the endless depths of darkness.

No matter how many despairing, negative emotions arose, he would instantly cut them down, remaining unmoved by any change and untainted by worldly delusion.

The calamity hidden within the Eye of the Gap

had completely surpassed Wu Dao’s imagination.

The moment the Stone Eye’s calamity emerged,

the apocalyptic image of worlds collapsing, Gods and Demons bleeding, and the universe wailing was deeply etched into his mind.

From the depths of the unknown,

a voice told him

that those terrifying apocalyptic scenes were from an ancient history that had truly occurred.

What level of being had caused it?

He couldn’t even begin to imagine right now.