Volume One, Chapter 18: Young Master, Please Forgive My Negligence
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The two plates of “Genesis Twin Extremes,” enough to give even a Dao Ancestor indigestion, together with the two plates carved from “Dao-Ancestor-grade white jade,” were swallowed into Little Black’s belly in an instant.
Little Black smacked its lips, apparently finding the taste acceptable, then lay back down and resumed dozing.
And yet, in the very next moment—
A sudden mutation occurred!
“Boom!”
An indescribably terrifying force exploded inside Little Black’s body. It was the primal power contained within the Annihilation Demon Lord, the Mother of Resentment, the Undying Divine Phoenix, the Bloodheart Sacred Fruit, and countless other forbidden entities. Within the stomach of the Chaos Devouring Beast, those forces fused and underwent the most violent of transformations.
Little Black’s originally gaunt body began to swell wildly, like a balloon being inflated.
Ten feet!
One hundred feet!
One thousand feet!
Ten thousand feet!
Its form broke through the limits of space, expanding to an unimaginable size. The courtyard, the estate, and even the entire Mortal Realm were reduced to grains of sand before its swelling body.
Its true form was revealed without concealment: a hideous and terrifying chaos behemoth, clad in black scales and bearing a single horn upon its head.
At that very moment, in a vast world known as the “Profound Heaven Realm,” countless billions of light-years away from the Mortal Realm—
The chosen son of heaven of the Profound Heaven Realm, a young man named Lin Fan, stood proudly at the summit of the world, bathing in nine-colored divine ascension lightning.
“Hahaha! Three hundred years! For three hundred years, I, Lin Fan, have endured humiliation and hardship. Today, I will finally shatter the void and ascend to the Upper Realm!”
Laughing wildly, he drew down the final bolt of divine lightning to temper his body.
So long as he succeeded, he would be able to lead the entire Profound Heaven Realm in its ascension, turning the whole world into his domain and becoming a supreme overlord of the Upper Realm.
Yet at that moment, without warning, the entire sky of the Profound Heaven Realm went dark.
It was not a mass of storm clouds.
It was not night.
It was a foot.
A colossal beast’s claw, covered in black scales and too immense to be measured by any unit, slowly descended from beyond an infinitely distant dimension.
A faint sheen of Mapo Tofu oil still glistened upon it.
Every living being in the Profound Heaven Realm, including Lin Fan, the chosen son of heaven, raised their heads in a daze and stared at the enormous claw descending slowly from above, blotting out the entire world. Their minds were utterly blank.
“What... is that?” The wild laughter on Lin Fan’s face froze.
There was no time for him to think.
“Plop.”
With a soft sound, the Profound Heaven Realm, together with its newly ascendant chosen son of heaven and the unfinished tribulation of ascension, was flattened beneath that single step into a two-dimensional “painting.”
Then, in an instant, it vanished, reduced to the purest dust in the universe.
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...
The Gu Estate.
Gu Changsheng looked at Little Black, whose body had swollen enormously and whose foot had apparently stepped on something somewhere, and irritably rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Why have you gotten fat again? How many times have I told you? You have to exercise after eating, or you’ll gain weight.” He complained, “You’re so fat now. How are you supposed to guard the gate?”
Hearing this, Uncle Fu immediately bowed.
“Please calm yourself, Young Master. This old servant has been negligent.”
He turned and shouted at Little Black, which had already expanded to a size comparable to an entire universe.
“You vile beast! Restrain your form at once! If you disturb the Young Master’s peace, what use are you?”
As he spoke, he took an object from his sleeve.
It appeared to be an ordinary collar, woven from countless fine golden chains. Yet Ye Qingxian and Ji Ruxue could see it clearly: every single chain had been condensed from the complete laws of an entire great world.
A full three thousand chains of law had been woven into this “Body-Binding Collar.”
Uncle Fu casually tossed it into the air. The collar expanded with the wind, crossing infinite distances in an instant before fitting precisely around Little Black’s incomparably massive neck.
“Awooo...”
Little Black let out a plaintive whimper. Under the collar’s restraint, its swollen body began to shrink rapidly.
A moment later, it had once again become the gaunt old yellow dog dozing at the entrance.
It was as though everything that had just happened had merely been an illusion.
Gu Changsheng nodded in satisfaction.
“Much easier on the eyes.”
He yawned, settled back into his chair, and murmured, “At last, I can have some peace and quiet.”
[The host’s act of “disposing of leftovers” has indirectly resulted in the annihilation of an entire great world and the fall of that world’s chosen son of heaven.]
[The host’s philosophy of “healthy eating” has inflicted a dimensionality-reducing impact upon his pet.]
[Reward: Passive Aura — Epicurean Majesty.]
[Epicurean Majesty: Any food left uneaten or discarded by the host will grant other living beings effects of at least tenfold enhancement—or mutation.]
[Family Fortune +10%.]
Gu Changsheng glanced at the panel. He had no interest in that so-called aura, but the ten percent increase in family fortune made him look twice.
“Fortune can increase?”
He muttered to himself, then immediately decided it did not matter.
It had nothing to do with him anyway.
He rolled over and closed his eyes. This time, he finally fell into a deep sleep.
Only Ye Qingxian and Ji Ruxue remained behind, standing like two stone statues and floundering helplessly in the wind.
Their entire understanding of the world had been crushed and rebuilt again and again that day. By now, it had been reduced to an indescribable pool of sludge.
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For Ye Qingxian and Ji Ruxue, the aftermath of this upheaval had only just begun to ferment within the depths of their souls.
The two women stood rigidly in place like clay figures stripped of their bones, unable to move for a long while.
Ye Qingxian’s gaze was fixed upon the stone table.
Resting there was a pair of chopsticks Gu Changsheng had used.
They were utterly ordinary chopsticks, made from a material that seemed like jade but was not jade, like wood but not wood. They bore no ornate patterns, and because they had been used, a faint sheen of oil still clung to them.
Yet in the eyes of Ye Qingxian, once known as the Sword Dao Empress, the sight revealed by those chopsticks was more terrifying than the birth and destruction of the universe.
The moment her divine sense brushed against them, she seemed to fall into a chaotic ocean formed entirely from pure sword intent.
Those chopsticks were no longer chopsticks.
They were “principle.”
They were “law.”
They were the first and final “rules”—the rules that severed the river of time, divided yin and yang and the five elements, and defined the life and death of all things.
One chopstick represented the “Beginning.” With the slightest stir, it could bring existence forth from nothing, evolve the Three Thousand Great Dao, and give birth to myriad laws. It was the pinnacle of creation, the source of all derivation.
The other chopstick represented the “End.” With a casual stroke, it could return all existence to silence, erase causality, and invert every concept. It was the endpoint of destruction, the true meaning of annihilation.
These two chopsticks—the manifestations of the Beginning and the End—had been held in the Young Master’s hands as he picked up the Dao Bone of the Annihilation Demon Lord and placed it into his mouth to chew.
What kind of horrifying scene was that?
It meant that, in the eyes of the Young Master, so-called “creation” and “destruction,” so-called “great principles” and “laws,” were nothing more than utensils used for eating.
At that moment, Ye Qingxian’s Sword Dao collapsed in silence.
The sword heart of which she had been so proud, the ultimate realm of the sword she had pursued all her life—before those chopsticks, they were as small as a mote of dust and as laughable as a farce.
Yet after the collapse came not a wasteland of despair, but the dawn of rebirth.
Within that ocean of chaotic sword intent, she glimpsed an entirely new possibility.
So the end of the sword was not a sharper sword, nor a faster sword, but...
Laying down the sword.
Only when the sword was no longer a sword could it become everything.
“Buzz...”
A faint, ethereal sword cry emerged from within Ye Qingxian’s body. Without circulating any cultivation technique, her aura began to rise wildly in an utterly incomprehensible manner.
It was a qualitative transformation—a leap from “technique” to “the Dao.”
Ji Ruxue’s condition was much the same.
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