Outside Of Time

Chapter 1833: Sacrifice! Editor: Atlas Studios

I am fighting!

My guards are fighting too!

But they are exhausted beyond measure, their strength spent.

Old Luo’s blade only grazed the edge of the Void-Rending Insect Emperor’s armguard before a pitch-black claw—wreathed in spatial rending force—blinked through space and pierced his chest, tearing out his heart and devouring it in one bite.

Among the guards, a female archer let out a cry as mournful as a cuckoo’s lament. Her arrow pierced one molten eye of a lava giant, but in the next instant, an eerie shadow blade from another enemy severed both her arms.

Staggering, blood gushing from her mouth, she suddenly raised her head and looked toward me—her eyes filled with final resolve.

Then she bit her tongue, spraying a mouthful of essence blood onto her broken bow. The shattered weapon hummed and transformed into a blazing blood-arrow, streaking with impossible speed toward another enemy besieging me—

It exploded against their spine!

As for her, she was instantly engulfed by beams of light, reduced to ashes...

Each fallen comrade was like a red-hot brand, searing my soul.

I fought like a madman!

Giving everything!

Slaying enemy after enemy!

Purple flames raged, sword energy split the heavens.

Corpses piled upon the Peerless Plains as my personal guards fell one by one.

But my wounds multiplied rapidly.

Scorching magma nearly burned through my bones. The Void-Rending Insect Race’s spatial blades left deep gashes on my back. Bizarre entity spells clung like maggots, ceaselessly eroding my vitality.

Blood soaked my tattered robes. My vision blurred from the crimson flow.

My cultivation, like water without a source, drained away swiftly.

Every breath carried the searing pain of ruptured organs.

I killed many, but the enemies were endless.

An inexhaustible tide...

Slowly, my consciousness too began sinking into boundless darkness.

Yet, at the moment the world turned utterly black—

A vast, chaotic, immeasurably sorrowful yet unyielding will—like an invisible tsunami—suddenly surged from all directions and crashed into my mind!

This was no attack, but a... resonance!

A final cry from countless dying souls across the entire Purple Green Kingdom!

My vision abruptly expanded infinitely, as if my soul had broken free from my dying shell to overlook this ravaged land.

I saw the once-glorious cities of the Purple Green Region now reduced to towering flames and billowing smoke.

Countless tiny figures writhed and collapsed in the inferno—their despairing wails ringing in my ears.

I saw the colossal totem of myriad races hovering over the ruined walls of Fenghai County, radiating annihilation.

At the center of the rubble stood my disciple—Bai Xiaozhuo.

Drenched in blood, his left arm severed at the shoulder, his remaining right hand held aloft the shattered seal of the county governor.

Around him were the last surviving commoners.

Men and women, young and old, ragged and gaunt—their eyes held no tears, only a numb yet utterly pure resolve!

I saw the western border’s last soldiers closing their eyes.

I saw the frozen scouts of the northern ice plains drawing final breaths.

These scenes became indescribable agony—like billions of steel needles piercing my soul!

More excruciating than any enemy’s strike!

My kingdom... my people!

Boundless grief crystallized into a resolve transcending life and death—

Harder than black ice, freezing all pain, all despair!

I snapped my head upward!

My bloodied gaze pierced through the snarling faces of enemies, through the deathly stillness of Peerless Plains, through the layered mountains of Nanhuang Continent—

Straight toward the colossal, eternally indifferent fragmented-face hanging coldly in the ninth heaven!

It remained broken, icy, lifeless—

Like a torn mask pasted upon the endless sky.

Its very existence mocked all mortal suffering, all struggles between life and death.

Yet now, this eternal spectator, this embodiment of apathy... was perhaps the only force that could overturn our doom!

The last of the Purple Green Kingdom were dying.

And I—Zi Qing, the exiled, worthless so-called crown prince—could only do one thing...

”I... Zi Qing!”

My voice was hoarse, shattered, yet carried world-shaking power—drowning out all battle cries across the kingdom.

”By the name of the Crown Prince of the Purple Green Kingdom!”

I spread my arms. Tattered robes flapped violently as all my wounds split open simultaneously—

Blood gushed like fountains but strangely didn’t fall, instead transforming into burning crimson flames wreathed around me!

”I sacrifice this broken body! Burn my soul! Ignite my Dao foundation! Consume my all! Devour my past and future... every thread of karma!”

Each word burned my life’s essence more fiercely!

Flesh melted. Bones groaned under unbearable strain. My soul felt cast into an eternal furnace. The cultivation I’d barely recovered, every foundation of my being—all turned to pure, blazing origin energy!

”Draw upon Thy power! Purge this filth! Burn this fallen era! Guard the last ember of my kingdom... that it may never fade!”

”If another life awaits—”

”Upon revival, I shall sacrifice all I behold!”

BOOM—!!

An indescribable pillar of purple-gold light—purer, denser, more infused with imperial authority and towering wrath than even the kingdom’s burning fortune—erupted from my combusting body!

It tore through the blood-drenched night over Peerless Plains! Shattered the myriad races’ coalition’s blockade!

Carrying a resolve that would rather jade shatter than tile survive, it shot upward like a reverse-flowing galaxy—

Piercing infinite void to collide violently with the colossal face in the sky!

Simultaneously, in Fenghai County—

Bai Xiaozhuo seemed to sense something. Tears streamed down as he gazed south toward Nanhuang Continent, then let out a maddened laugh.

He tore at his own face in a blood sacrifice—leaving only half, mirroring the fragmented-face’s visage—

And cried out:

”Born of this land! Dead on this land! Our souls shall guard this land! I follow my crown prince—to awaken a thousand years before him and pave his path!”

”Sacrifice!”

As his body burned, the surviving citizens of Fenghai County—supporting each other—formed a massive human ring around their governor.

Elders, women, children... all looked up at that eternally indifferent face in the sky—

Then, as one, their expressions twisted with fanatic resolve!

”Sacrifice!”

Countless voices merged into a heaven-rending tide!

The elderly, women, children... every surviving citizen of Fenghai County, regardless of age or strength, performed the same act in unison—self-mutilation, transforming into fragmented reflections of the fragmented-face!

Without hesitation, without retreat, only a resolve that shook the cosmos—a determination to march toward death for the sake of life!

In that instant, countless faint yet pure sparks of life, like stars flowing against the current, detached from each self-mutilated figure.

Flecks of light gathered into streams, surging into a vast sea—a river of life forged from the final will of the remnants of the Purple Green Kingdom’s people.

Silent yet brimming with a sorrow that could incinerate all, they rose together with their Crown Prince...

Piercing the heavens!

At the same time, in the western border town of the Purple Green Kingdom, the last surviving soldiers ignited the beacon. Amid the roaring flames, they turned their bloodied faces toward the sky, self-mutilating as their figures twisted into motes of light within the inferno...

On the northern ice plains, a frozen scouting party mustered their last strength to plant a bloodstained war banner deep into the frozen earth. Facing their homeland and the fragmented-face in the sky, they too self-mutilated, their crimson glow merging into the soul-tide sweeping the world...

Across the Purple Green Kingdom—in countless places, countless corners, amidst scattered, desperate, yet heroic battles—innumerable faint wills made the same choice at this moment.

They offered themselves as sacrifice! Their remnant souls as the guide! To the cold, aloof fragmented-face hovering above the river of time, they presented the last vestiges of the Purple Green Kingdom!

Soaring upward!

Like a hundred rivers returning to the sea, transcending endless spatial barriers, they converged instantly, entwining around the purple-gold pillar of light emanating from their Crown Prince.

Joining their Crown Prince... in sacrifice!

All for one plea—

May Zi Qing rise again in Wanggu!

Time seemed to freeze completely at this moment.

The slaughter on the Peerless Plains came to a standstill.

The cruel expressions on the faces of the myriad races’ powerhouses stiffened, replaced by shock and a primal, instinctive fear!

The world was left with only that purple-gold pillar of flame defying the heavens, the endless sacrificial souls accompanying it, and... high above, that eternally indifferent fragmented-face.

Then...

The perpetually cold, unchanging fragmented-face slowly... opened Its eye.

Within it swirled endless frigidity and the chaotic flames of a crimson vortex—

Like the day of annihilation!

An indescribable pressure, surpassing all mortal comprehension, descended as though the laws of the entire star ring had condensed into a single gaze.

This gaze was icy, indifferent, carrying the absolute will to scrutinize eternity and pierce all falsehoods.

Then, it focused.

Fixed upon... the source of the purple-gold pillar.

Fixed upon... within that pillar of light, the rapidly dissipating... me.

My body, the moment that crimson gaze fell upon it, began dissolving like snow cast into blazing sunlight—starting from my fingertips, inch by inch, into scattered purple dust.

Flesh, bones, soul... every element constituting the existence known as ”Zi Qing” was deconstructed under the fragmented-face’s gaze, reduced to primal essence.

I felt no pain.

Only a chilling sense of nothingness.

As though my consciousness, too, was scattering with it.

In the final moment before complete dissolution, beneath the cold scrutiny of that crimson vortex, I heard a low voice.

”Granted.”

The instant this voice echoed, an indescribable terror—like the birth of the universe—erupted like an invisible apocalyptic tsunami, engulfing the entire Peerless Plains!

Annihilating all!

Time stretched into eternity.

My consciousness, amidst this final all-consuming storm of chaos, flickered like the last ember of a dying candle...

And vanished completely.

Only that pillar connecting heaven and earth, ignited by the final will of countless remnant souls, continued to burn, surge, and extinguish within the crimson vortex of the opened fragmented-face’s eye...

Like a silent elegy—

...

In the 9315th year of the Purple Green Calendar, the crown prince died in the Nanhuang Continent in autumn.

The disciple of the Crown Prince, the last county governor of Fenghai County, Bai Xiaozhuo, laughed mournfully. When he saw the entire county’s cultivators die in front of him, he wept blood and mutilated himself. Only half of his face was left, which was the same as the god’s fragmented-face.

Before he died, he had said.

”I follow my crown prince—to awaken a thousand years before him and pave his path!”