Essence Devouring Art

CRACK!!

Like an ant striking a star!

But the erupting Power was as deep as an abyss and as vast as the sea, tyrannical and peerless. Layer after layer of Power shockwaves expanded from a single point, bursting outward in concentric rings.

The twin hammers forged from Star Essence were pulverized, unable to resist for even an instant.

The concussive blast turned them into countless specks of dust.

His vaunted Fifteen-Layered Dharma Heaven Domain crumbled and collapsed under the sheer brute force. His colossal physique, which could prop up the heavens and reach into the Star Sea, cracked and fell back like a toppled golden mountain or a shattered jade pillar.

”A poor choice.”

Yaya retracted her fist. A Purgatory of blood roiled in her crimson eyes, and her ankle-length, silver hair flared wantonly like a galaxy. She licked her scarlet lips, opened her mouth, and inhaled, drawing in the entire battlefield.

”ROAR!!”

The roar of an Emperor from the primordial Wilderness echoed. In the darkness of starry space, a colossal, abyssal mouth with an indistinct face suddenly appeared.

The moment it began to inhale, the surrounding stars dimmed and disintegrated, rapidly losing their essence.

The hundreds of millions of Stone Spirit Race soldiers on the battlefield, including the Stone King who had been defeated in a single blow, found their bodies and souls broken down as if by a black hole. They exploded into countless streams of pure Life Origin, flowing like a meteor shower into the abyssal mouth in the darkness.

”*Hiccup*... How boring.”

The bloody light in Yaya’s eyes faded. She gazed at the now-empty battlefield, let out a small burp, and seemed rather listless.

’Couldn’t even take a single punch.’

’Too weak.’

She needed a stronger opponent.

”Your humble servant, Tengba, pays his respects to Your Highness.”

From within the Snake God Palace, Tengba watched Yaya annihilate the Stone Spirit Race army with a single breath and kill the Stone King with one punch. His heart pounded in terror, and he rushed out to kowtow, his posture one of utmost humility.

It wasn’t just because of her strength.

It was also because of Yaya’s identity.

Few people knew the truth.

During the Four Tribulations, the Soaring Snake Race had defected from Mountain and Sea, a place they still considered their ancestral paradise.

Now, after so much time had passed, many of the old-timers in the clan were homesick and desperate to return to their Ancestral Land in Mountain and Sea.

Eighteen years ago,

they had found Yaya by a stroke of luck.

She was their key to atoning for their sins and earning their return to Mountain and Sea.

Yaya’s status was simply too special and noble.

It was connected to one of the peak races that ruled Mountain and Sea.

If they could latch onto this connection,

a single word from that race could erase the crime of their past defection.

In recent years,

Desolate Gods had frequently descended upon Hongyuan.

In truth, that race had been searching for the lost Yaya all along.

However, Yaya seemed to have an unfulfilled wish.

She had always resisted returning to her people. The Soaring Snake Race didn’t want to antagonize her and end up with nothing for their efforts, so they could only follow her lead.

”The Taiyi Emperor Star?”

Yaya ignored Tengba’s kowtow. The bloody light in her crimson eyes flickered as she became interested in a message from her Communication Jade Talisman.

’Celestial Prides from all across the All Heavens gathering to compete.’

’Just thinking about it...’

She could feel every cell in her body trembling with anticipation.

...

Yaya wasn’t the only one.

In a desolate region somewhere in the Qingming World,

”The Taiyi Emperor Star... It’s about time we paid a visit to that important treasure ground.”

Clad in blood-colored battle armor, his gaze far more weathered than before, Zhao Jianji crushed an enemy’s soul in his hand. He took out a Communication Jade Talisman and issued an order to the Primordial Demons:

”Cease all exploration missions. Take the Desolate Divine Body Soldiers, arm yourselves completely, and head for Chaotic Star Heaven.”

In eighteen years,

of the original one hundred Primordial Demons,

only seventy-two remained.

After enduring countless hardships to excavate treacherous treasure troves across the All Heavens, they had unearthed a vast amount of treasure from old monsters.

To this day,

with the help of a massive amount of wondrous creations,

the Primordial Demons had, just as Wu Dao envisioned,

all broken through the limits of the Pseudo Dharma Aspect and entered a higher realm in their own ways.

The ceaseless life-and-death tempering, day and night, had also given them an individual foundation of strength that was no less than any of their Celestial Pride peers from across the All Heavens.

However, no matter how strong they became, their fundamentally altered self-awareness and the Demon Embryo that grew with them—fused with their souls, bodies, and origins, causing them to flourish or perish as one—ensured their loyalty remained utterly unchanged.

They steadfastly carried out the ironclad rules the Alliance Leader had set for them long ago.

...

While forces from all corners of the All Heavens rushed toward the Taiyi Emperor Star,

Wu Dao, within the Star Ruins Forbidden Area of Chaotic Star Heaven,

remained unhurried.

Leading his many avatars, he delved deeper and deeper into the Eye of Hell, using the Power of Annihilation from the forbidden area’s rotating magnetic field turbines.

Every single second was spent doing push-ups at the brink of life and death, excavating and stealing more of his Dao Body’s potential.

One month.

Two months.

Three months.

...

Time flowed on relentlessly.

More and more Celestial Prides from across the All Heavens rushed to the Taiyi Emperor Star. Every day, news of duels between them and newly opened treasures spread, shaking the Chaotic Star Celestial Domain.

Deep within the Star Ruins Forbidden Area,

there was still no activity.

Only an increasingly powerful, world-shocking God and Demon aura constantly swelled from the depths of the Eye of Hell. With every breath, the surrounding cosmos, stars, and vast lands rose and fell, as if the Great Dao itself were stirring in a womb.

One day, eight months later,

the Jiaoxu Star Palace completely gave up its search for the Celestial Demon. For half a month, no golden light had patrolled the Star Ruins Forbidden Area.

「In a certain Extreme Cold Abyss within the forbidden area,」

a snow-covered ’Wu Dao’ opened his eyes. He slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air, which transformed into a world-ending heatwave that melted and evaporated hundreds of millions of miles of glaciers.

WHOOSH—

He waved his hand.

A storm of magnetic fields swept away the vast, cloud-like mist, leaving nothing behind.

Wu Dao rose to his full height.

His gaze fell upon the altar at the bottom of the Abyss, which covered hundreds of millions of miles.

In the center of the altar,

stood a solid, cylindrical black tower, like a pillar holding up the sky. A closer look revealed countless dense and intricate Array Patterns engraved upon it.

Each Talisman,

shone with a dim light like a star in the universe, constructing a cosmos of Ten Directions, depicting one profound and distant star chart after another.

Deeper within,

the vast order of space-time was faintly discernible.

The Star Axis Tower!

In the countless years since the Heaven Opening of the Five Tribulations,

the Primordial Extraordinary Civilization had progressed from primitive slash-and-burn methods to a dazzling presence across the All Heavens and Myriad Realms.

Naturally, this was not achieved through brute force alone.

Auxiliary paths beyond the various Main Paths, as well as Extraordinary creations, had long since solved all sorts of developmental problems for the civilization.

Inter-Star Realm,

and even inter-Celestial Domain teleportation via Star Hubs,

was one of the brightest stars among these countless miracles.

A Celestial Domain is boundlessly vast.

If one relied solely on their own power to traverse it,

forget a Celestial Domain—

a single Star Sea could drive a Dharma Aspect to despair. Only those who became Saints or Emperors possessed the ability to cross a Celestial Domain quickly.

During the Second Tribulation,

the All Heavens and Myriad Realms Alliance was formed.

To overcome developmental obstacles like the difficulty of inter-Celestial Domain travel, the All Heavens joined forces to build Transmission Star Hubs that could manipulate the space-time Power of the Grand Cosmos’s Celestial Realms.

Once a Star Hub was activated,

even the lowest-grade one could cross the distance of a Star Sea

in an instant.

Within the Juntian of each Celestial Domain, there were even Super Star Hubs for inter-Celestial Domain travel, the scale of which was truly unimaginable.

The Star Ruins Forbidden Area,

once the core of this Border Wilderness’s Extraordinary Civilization, naturally possessed a Star Hub.

However, it was smashed into a wasteland long ago.

The Star Hub’s unique field was damaged.

Relocating it was impossible, as it couldn’t be matched and reconstructed.

Coupled with the various dangerous, deadly, and chaotic fields of order rampaging within the forbidden area,

it was gradually forgotten by the world.

BUZZ—

At the bottom of the Abyss,

beneath the Heaven-Reaching Star Hub,

Wu Dao placed a Palm Seal on the base of the Star Hub. A vast Magnetic Field Power surged into it, spreading like a ripple across the altar that spanned hundreds of millions of miles.

Within his Divine Sea,

as the Magnetic Field spread,

a three-dimensional model of the Star Hub and altar materialized and began to rotate. Every Grand Array, whether intact or damaged, was revealed in minute detail.

A man leaves his name where he passes, just as a goose leaves its cry.

The ”film” of the world records the traces of all Magnetic Field activity from past to present.

When he was weak,

Wu Dao could already activate a regional Magnetic Field to replay past events.

Now,

although he couldn’t fully activate the Star Hub’s Magnetic Field, creating a model of it to identify and fix flaws was not difficult.

The Taiyi Emperor Star was located in the Juntian of Chaotic Star Heaven.

It was far too distant and unreachable.

If he relied on his ’own two feet,’

he could exhaust his entire lifespan,

and Wu Dao would still never make it.

The Star Hubs of Chaotic Star Heaven had four tiers:

Border Wilderness, Outer Ring, Inner Ring, and Juntian.

After repairing this Star Hub,

Wu Dao could save a great deal of time traveling to the core of the Jiao Su Star Realm and quickly transfer to the Taiyi Emperor Star in Juntian.

Haaa—

After investigating the complete structure and layout of the Star Hub, Wu Dao withdrew his hand and muttered to himself,

”The overall structure is fine. The lost materials can be gathered from the surroundings via magnetic resonance.

The hardest part will be reconnecting the broken ley lines of the Grand Array—that is, gathering the various types of Magnetic Field Power needed to reactivate the altar’s Grand Array.”

A divine light flickered in Wu Dao’s eyes. After surveying the surrounding space-time, he could see the broken Magnetic Field ley lines within the altar.

The other ends of the original connections,

due to changes in the terrestrial and celestial environment,

had long been tangled into a messy knot by the forbidden area’s chaotic Magnetic Field. Untangling and reconnecting them would be a massive undertaking.

’The avatars’ Primordial Dao Wheels are already scrapped, so their Cultivation efficiency has plummeted. Moving them over to repair the Star Hub won’t have much of an impact.’

Wu Dao closed his eyes and sat upright.

He mobilized the other avatars within the Eye of Hell.

At the same time,

his main consciousness returned to his Main Body, deep within the magnetic Abyss of the Eye of Hell.

After eight months of arduous Cultivation,

with the assistance of his Primordial Dao Wheel and thirty avatars who also shouldered Primordial Dao Wheels,

Wu Dao’s strength had been improving by the day.

His Main Body continuously delved deeper into the Eye of Hell, seeking the higher limits of the human body, piercing through an unknown number of layers.

Faintly,

he had already touched the core magnetic turbine region of the Eye of Hell.

Each rotating magnetic disk was like an Eternal Stone Maiden. The thrill of conquest was overwhelming, but piercing through them had become incredibly difficult; advancing even an inch would cause him to explode into particles.

WHOOSH—

INHALE—

Within an unknown layer of the Eye of Hell’s magnetic turbines, an indescribably terrifying Magnetic Field Power of Annihilation filled every inch of space.

In the center,

a dark Star Sea ebbed and flowed.

Countless cellular Primordial Magnetic Crystal Particles constantly exploded into microscopic matter, only to ceaselessly reassemble with enhanced structures, rapidly evolving to adapt to the harsh environment.

RUMBLE—

Deep within the Star Sea,

it was as if an Immortal Furnace was turning.

The Ancestor Essence Blood of the Yong Bird had long been digested.

Wu Dao’s Sea of Origin now possessed a hint of a Taichu Innate God Demon’s aura, marking a great stride on his evolutionary path toward becoming a Life Ancestor.

Within his surrounding Primordial Magnetic Field,

the Three-Phase Divine Punishment Dharma Aspect continuously bombarded the magnetic turbines, climbing toward a higher Celestial Domain.

Of his various Primordial Magnetic Dharma Aspects—

the twenty Heaven-Opening Techniques, One Origin, Ten Thousand Transformations, Immune to All Laws...

he shouldered the lion’s share.

The Primordial Dao Wheel and his avatars handled the rest, and their growth rate was also extraordinary. The rotation speed of the Primordial Magnetic Vortex Wheel increased visibly every day.

But these good days

came to an end today.

KACHA—

Another sound of disintegration and shattering rang out.

Following his thirty avatars,

the Primordial Dao Wheel on Wu Dao’s back, after eight months of nonstop Cultivation and overloaded deductive operations,

had also reached the end of its operational lifespan.

Only the four strongest core Dharma Aspects remained.

If nothing unexpected happened,

the core would also be destroyed in a few more days at most.

Normally,

its operational lifespan wouldn’t be this short.

But Wu Dao had pushed it too hard.

To maintain accelerated Cultivation at all times,

the Primordial Dao Wheel was constantly running at two hundred percent of Shen Wutian’s maximum load, rapidly consuming the Life Magnetic Field potential of its nodes. It was equivalent to killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.