Bombarding Cultivators with Cluster Artillery

Jiang Ding slowly opened his eyes. No longer did his pupils reflect the Cosmic Starry Sky and the shifts of the Great Dao, but were instead filled with an indescribable, desolate sorrow.

He stared blankly ahead, like a wooden puppet.

The Empress and Gong Caiyu stayed by the Ancient Emperor’s side, quietly feeling this rarely seen gentleness and frailty of the Ancient Emperor.

”Let’s go...”

Jiang Ding took a deep breath.

The world around them changed; sun and moon wheeled in alternation.

When space stabilized again, the three of them were already back in their home in Fulin Community on the Mother Star. The surroundings were warmly arranged, spotless and dust-free.

On the dining table, a variety of steaming dishes.

Vaguely, they seemed to be the dishes Grandfather and Grandmother had liked back then, the ones they often asked Jiang Ding, during his Foundation Establishment days, to cook. Now, after four million years of Human World Reincarnation, they were actually still the same.

”Dingding?”

His mother Lin Wanqiu stretched out her hand and waved it in front of Jiang Ding.

In her eyes, the son who had always stayed by her side had suddenly fallen into a daze for a long time, and within his gaze was an emotion that pricked at her heart like needles.

A being invincible in the Human World, a lifeform destined in the future to overlook the Endless Universe Starry Sky for ninety million years, was this moment so fragile.

”Mm, mm-mm-mm.”

Jiang Ding jolted awake and continued eating.

Yet everything tasted like wax.

In the end, after a few bites, he stopped, put down his chopsticks, did not do anything else, only watched his mother, watched her features and her smile, as though he wished to engrave them, deeply imprinting them in his heart.

”You’re already an Ancient Emperor, how can you still be this soft?”

Lin Wanqiu tenderly rubbed his head.

She knew her remaining lifespan down to the last instant—three hours, twenty-three minutes, and forty-seven seconds. This clarity was an instinct as natural as breathing to an Eight Tribulation Venerable.

In this world, her son would henceforth be just one person.

She had felt this way many years ago when her father and mother passed, when her younger brother passed. Now, as time flowed on, her son too would experience this same agony. In the Human World there truly is no lifeform that can escape such Destined Fate; the Reincarnation of the universe is equally cruel and merciless.

”Be good, big brother,”

”Don’t be afraid, you still have Sister-in-law and Sister Caiyu to keep you company.”

Jiang Yuan said with a giggling smile.

They appeared very detached, not overly concerned, and compared to the Ancient Emperor their capacity to endure was greater.

”Mm.”

”Mm-mm.”

Jiang Ding said nothing, lowered his head, and gently closed his eyes.

The family chatted idly as usual, speaking of everything—reminiscing about the past, about the embarrassing stories from his elementary and kindergarten days, saying how Jiang Ding had always liked to carry a wooden sword and wander everywhere, taking it wherever he went; saying how when he first began to cultivate Qi he arrogantly claimed to be a Heavenly Monarch; saying how he had been extremely naughty as a child...

From time to time Lin Wanqiu got up to wash dishes, tidy the house, and do chores, chatting with her family as she worked.

Gong Caiyu’s heart suddenly clenched.

This scene truly resembled an utterly ordinary day. Who could have imagined that today would be their final parting?

Time slipped by, second by second.

Never before had the Ancient Emperor felt time flow this quickly. Clearly, in the past, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand years had meant nothing to him. He never cared. He was a young Forbidden Area Ancient Emperor who had not even lived a tenth of his allotted span. A hundred thousand years, to him, was nothing more than one small experiment, a period for contemplating and deducing the Heavenly Dao.

But now he was counting every second, desperately wishing to make this moment of time freeze in place, yet he could not.

Even an Ancient Emperor who walked the path of time was powerless before birth, aging, sickness, and death.

Immortality belongs, and belongs solely, to the Immortal.

No one can escape.

The Ancient Emperor of the Sun, the Beidou Ancient Emperor, the Jiyan Ancient Emperor... all the Ancient Emperors had once sent off their own mothers, and now the Supreme Great Sun Ancient Emperor was likewise living through this scene.

Tick.

Tick, tick.

The second hand moved step by step, ticking away over three hours, approaching the final end.

By this time, the deathly aura on Lin Wanqiu and Jiang Yuan could no longer be suppressed. Strands of white hair appeared on their heads; smooth skin rapidly wrinkled; their figures hunched; a stench unique to the elderly rose from them. They were undergoing the Heavenly People Five Declines that all Life must pass through, walking toward their destined death.

”Mom...”

”Jiang Yuan, you lazy, mischievous imp...”

Jiang Ding’s voice was somewhat hoarse.

”Don’t cry.”

”Don’t be sad, my Supreme Great Sun Ancient Emperor, my future Immortal.” Lin Wanqiu stretched out her weak, powerless hand, gently wiping away the tears on the green-clothed youth’s cheeks. ”In the future you are destined to be invincible above and below the heavens, to gaze upon all the Ancient Emperors throughout history in the Golden Era, upon all the Elites and heroes across infinite time, and to fulfill all your dreams.”

”Go and fulfill all of your dreams. Don’t live a life with regrets.”

”Mom... rest... for a while... first.”

Her Life aura faded away bit by bit until it completely vanished, leaving not even the slightest remnant of Life. From that moment on, this body possessed only physical properties and could no longer be called Life.

”Big brother, hug...”

Jiang Yuan had likewise reached the end of her Life. She feared loneliness and solitude, wished to walk the Yellow Springs Road together with their mother, to be companions on that path, and voluntarily relinquished the short span of more than twenty years.

The girl snuggled against her brother’s chest, her body gradually turning cold.

Time seemed to freeze at that very instant.

The Supreme Great Sun Ancient Emperor seemed to turn into a stone statue, motionless, with not even a trace of breath.

For a very, very long time, he remained like this.

Unmoving.

”Your Majesty, Your Majesty...”

”Young Master...”

The Empress and Gong Caiyu softly called the Ancient Emperor by name.

It seemed that from this moment on, people began to instinctively avoid the name ”Jiang Ding.” Before long, the two characters chosen by his mother would completely dissolve into the currents of time, just as people never knew what names the Ancient Emperor of the Sun and the Beidou Ancient Emperor once bore.

People only knew that the Ancient Emperor of the Sun was the Ancient Emperor of the Sun, and the Beidou Ancient Emperor was the Beidou Ancient Emperor.

As if they had been born already as the Great Sun, born already as the Big Dipper; no one ever again mentioned the names their mothers had once cried. There was no Jiang Ding, only the Supreme Great Sun.

An Ancient Emperor of the Supreme Great Sun who had been born as the Supreme Great Sun.

The two women called out for a long time and received no answer.

So they fell silent.

The two women silently accompanied the Ancient Emperor.

Time flowed on.

Ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years...

No one knew how many years passed. The Ancient Emperor still remained in his own home, forever staying in that moment when his mother and sister died. During that period, Yuan had once come, stayed with him for a while, and then left again.

The Ancient Emperor had not changed in any way.

Only from this day forth, the Ancient Emperor was no longer anyone’s son; he could no longer, as a matter of course, call someone ”mother,” nor come home to see a familiar figure. The expectation he had grown used to from childhood was gone.

Between heaven and earth, there was no one left to call him Dingding, no one left to grab his ear and sternly warn him about anything.

Only the Supreme Great Sun remained,

the Supreme Great Sun Ancient Emperor seated high upon the summit of the Endless Starry Sky.