The Desolate Era

Book 41, The Daoguard Tower, Chapter 20 – Broken One By One

What they didn’t know was that Ji Ning didn’t actually ‘shout’. He had just mastered his Wind Sword Dao, and had given it a little test by blowing some air out of his lungs, but the air had quickly moved at such incredible speeds that all of the exiles were absolutely stunned and terrified by it.

“He’s terrifying.”

“He was able to slay Hegemons with ease from a distant of hundreds of billions of kilometers. He truly is unfathomably powerful. All the Hegemons and Emperors in Purgatory combined might stand a chance, but if we were to fight separately we would be defeated one-by-one.”

“Join forces. Our only chance is to join forces.” The exiles were all extraordinarily talented figures; they instantly knew what they had to do. But… it was already too late!

“Now that I have mastered the Wind Sword Dao, it is time to make my move. I certainly can’t win a war of attrition against them.” Ning rose to his feet, taking a single step forwards and warping forwards to the location where the five slain Hegemons had been at. He waved his hand, collecting all of the fallen treasures and Sithe weapons. These were all fine treasures that he could either leave to the Three Realms or gift to his disciples and friends.

Next, Ning took another step forwards and reappeared next to a lake which was hundreds of billions of kilometers.

Two Emperors were by the lakeside, carefully scrying the area where Ning had been just a moment ago. Suddenly, a dimensional ripple appeared next to them, followed by a white-robed Daolord appearing from it. His appearance terrified the two Emperors so much that their legs went soft. “How is this possible? How did he find us? We set up formations early on to track from very far away if anyone moves close to us. It didn’t look like the Daolord made any preparations either. How did he do this?!”

They couldn’t understand it at all. In truth, this enormous hidden dimension did put Ning under quite a bit of pressure. Godsense was blocked out; his only choice was to use his eyes. However, his vision was also impaired by many types of invisible energy, limiting the distance at which he could see.

“I spent half a million years training next to the Realmgate mastering the Wind Sword Dao, just for this moment,” Ning mused.

If he remained far away from his enemies and was unable to locate them, he would end up in a passive situation where he could only endure attacks from them. This was why he chose to sit down and master his Wind Sword Dao. Ning had previously spent three thousand chaos cycles training in various Daos; if he had chosen to focus on the Wind Sword Dao, he would’ve completed it long ago. However, he had not; he had let things happen normally, preferring to spend more of his time on the more-difficult Space Sword Dao. There was no need to focus that much on a fairly simple Sword Dao.

In Purgatory, he was completely unable to locate any of his foes, and so he chose to focus on the Wind Sword Dao. The wind was something without form or shape, but it blew across the entire world. Thanks to the Wind Sword Dao, Ning was able to ride the wind with his senses and accurately locate every single one of the Hegemons and Emperors! He might not be able to see them with the naked eye, but he could sense them with the wind!

“Flee!” The terrified Emperors hurriedly sought to flee, but Ning glared at them. His gaze seemed to solidify and transform into two streams of wind. At first, the wind seemed quite gentle, but when it blew past the two Emperors it transformed into a raging gale. The two Emperors tried to flee, but the gale was composed of countless tiny streaks of sword-light that effortlessly ground them into dust.

“Next.” Ning didn’t even waste time on picking up their treasures. Instead, he immediately warped through space towards the next squad of enemies.

……

If Ning wanted to actually use some of his energy, he could actually use a Northbow sword to pierce through spacetime and slay them from afar. However, that took up too much of his power. He wasn’t willing to resort to this. If he wanted to kill them while conserving his energy, he had to kill them at close range.

This was because this hidden dimension had a suppressive effect on his Sword Dao Domain, preventing it from expanding to its usual size. When Ning had used his Wind Sword Dao to form a Sword Dao Domain that used a howling wind to assault his foes, he had only been able to strike from a distant of a few hundreds of billions of kilometers. At this distance, Ning was able to use his Wind Sword Dao to suppress spacetime and prevent his foes from fleeing.

The problem was, there were other foes who were trillions of kilometers away. Some were even more distant! Ning was unable to suppress spacetime at such a great distance! When his enemies saw him attacking, they would be able to escape via blinking away. That’s why he had to get close to them, then attack!

……

“The white-robed Daolord is attacking us!”

“He’s warping through space to attack us. Hurry up and join forces! If we stay separated like this, we’re all going to die.” The exiles were absolutely terrified by now.

Whoosh. Ning appeared before yet another squad. This squad had a total of three Emperors. When they saw the white-robed Daolord appear, their hearts were filled with terror. They didn’t hesitate at all, immediately unleashing their most powerful Sithe weapons to battle against Ning. They knew that escape was completely impossible; they had no chance of successfully fleeing at all.

Two of the Emperors each wielded a strange scepter which glowed with a blurry light that swept out to cover Ning. Not even Ning’s Sword Dao Domain was able to block this blurry light, as it was formless and incorporeal. It completely covered Ning.

The third Emperor wielded a longspear. He suddenly threw it forwards, sending it howling through the air like a stream of light that shot through the Sword Dao Domain and stabbed at Ning.

“What a powerful illusion! My Dao-heart is perfect and I have reached a high level of mastery over illusions, but I was still slightly affected by it. It seems I need to upgrade my Dao of Illusions to Hegemony as soon as possible. When I ran into that Sithe Exalt Dauber, I was slightly affected by him as well.” Ning couldn’t help but sigh. The Sithe truly had reached incomprehensible heights in every single Dao.

Although Ning was slightly affected by the illusions, his remained extremely clear-minded and his will was resolute. As for the powerful longspear shooting towards him? Ning simply stood there, not even moving. He took control over his Sword Dao Domain, transforming countless streams of sword-light into streams of water and gusts of wind that blasted at the longspear. Although the spear was able to tear through the obstruction of the sword-light, its trajectory was slightly changed.

Given the distances at which they were fighting, even the tiniest of adjustments would result in a wide miss. By the time the longspear flew past Ning, it missed by over thirty meters.

“If many of them attacked me at the same time with a variety of attacks, I might be in a bit of trouble. Just three of them? Nothing to fear at all.” As Ning dealt with the enemy attacks, he launched attacks of his own as well. He sent a howling wind towards his foes, and by the time he dodged the longspear his wind had already ground those three Emperors into dust.

Only then did Ning reach out to grab the now-ownerless longspear. “Next.” Ning immediately warped through space, moving towards the next squad.

……

The Sacred Realm. The iridescent Elder Hall. The blue-haired youth and his two disciples were standing before a giant illusory image which was currently displaying the scene of Ning slaying the exiles. As the controller of this entire hidden dimension who was also responsible for keeping an eye on the outside world, he had the complete ability to watch over everything which happened within this dimension. Every action Ning took was witnessed by him.

“Those fools.” The blue-haired youth’s face tightened, and he focused his gaze on the image as he sent his godsense out of the Elder Hall and into Purgatory. “Spacetime, freeze!” The blue-haired youth immediately suppressed spacetime, seeking to block Ning’s advance.

……

After Ning warped forwards to kill two different squads in Purgatory, the Exalt in the Sacred Realm was finally incited to action, suppressing spacetime in the region around Ning. The exiles, however, did not suffer from spacetime suppression. Thus, they were able to quickly warp through space to join together, while Ning was noticeably slowed down.

“I haven’t even picked up any treasures yet. The major power behind this hidden dimension has already chosen to suppress spacetime around me, eh?” Ning chuckled. “But do you think suppressing spacetime will be enough to bar my path?”

Whoosh. Ning once more tore a forcible hole through the void before him, creating a rippling spatial tunnel which sent him hurtling more than six hundred billion kilometers away.

This was the power of his Space Sword Dao! Compared to the might of his Space Sword Dao, even the Autarchs who didn’t specialize the Dao of Space such as Autarch Titanos or Autarch Ekong were slightly inferior when it came to tearing through space. The Sithe Exalt was using the power of the Elder Hall to suppress spacetime around him, but Ning conserved his energy and used just the power of the Dao itself to tear through the frozen spacetime and teleport a fairly short distance!

After teleporting more than six hundred billion kilometers, he was already outside the region of suppressed spacetime. As a result, he was able to quickly teleport towards yet another squad, which he dispatched with ease.

This sight truly shocked the Exalt in control of the Sacred Realm. “I knew that I wouldn’t be able stop him if he went all-out… but he was actually able to warp through spacetime just by using the power of his Sword Dao Domain?” The Sithe Exalt was scarcely able to believe it. “He’s already completely surpassed me in terms of mastery over the Dao of Space? But his Dao is that of the sword… how could he have reached such heights in the Dao of Space as well?”

He didn’t want to believe it, but the display before him was showing him images of Ning dealing with one squad after another. The various squads of Emperors began to flee frantically, and slowly some were beginning to finally join forces together.