Cultivation: From Poor Peasant to Celestial Lord

Xia Xing clenched his teeth, a glint of determination in his eyes. He glanced at the Black Iron Divine Statue slaughtering everything in its path not far away, then at the seemingly crazed Beastkeeping Commissioner in mid-air.

“Forget about those demonized Demon Beasts! Everyone, hold your breath and stick to the inner stone walls of the Underground Palace! That’s a blind spot in the collision!”

Xia Xing yanked his nearly exhausted companion to his feet and hissed, “We’re… going to knock on the Underground Palace’s gate! We’ll beg that Fellow Daoist for a chance to live!”

On the fringes of this battlefield where Divine Spirits clashed and all life withered, a few Qi Cultivation Stage Cultivators were like a cluster of ants cowering in a gale. They carefully avoided the Divine Power that could vaporize them in an instant. Using the billowing dust for cover, they groped their way, step by faltering step, toward that deepest, darkest place.

They knew this was perhaps the most desperate gamble of their lives, and the stakes were their Divine Souls and their very existence.

The already shattered sky, at this moment, seemed to be brutally crushed by a pair of invisible, giant hands.

Just as Xia Xing and the others were struggling toward the Underground Palace, an utterly mournful cry, shrill enough to shatter gold and stone, suddenly pierced down from the unattainable heights of the nine heavens.

The sound was filled with the despair of ten thousand years of obsession being brutally shattered, accompanied by waves of thunderous, bone-cracking sounds that resounded for thousands of miles.

Everyone looked up in terror, only to see the once-invincible Sky-Suppressing Kite, which had been determined to smash its cage. Now, its massive wings were broken, bent at unnatural angles.

Its dark purple Divine Body, once large enough to blot out the sun and sky, was now a mangled mess of Flesh and Blood after being repeatedly scoured by the turbulent currents of the Void.

Divine Blood rained down from the sky. Every drop that landed on the ground corroded a deep pit into the ruins below.

Finally, as this Ancient God, obsessed with “freedom,” made its last charge toward the dark rift, it was struck head-on by a Void Divine Thunder powerful enough to sever a divine throne.

It didn’t make it out.

Its ruined body, like a burning meteorite trailing a long plume of smoke, smashed heavily into the far western edge of the Secret Realm, facing complete Annihilation in the bottomless darkness.

“Lord Hongyuan… has fallen.”

Below the altar, the Clay Soil Land God let out a murmur, almost as if talking in its sleep, and collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

The fall of the Ancient God was the last straw.

With the demise of the Sky-Suppressing Kite, the Cyan Nether Secret Realm began to completely disintegrate.

The piercing sound of shattering space was no longer occasional, but had become a dense drumbeat.

If the previous collapse was a slow gnawing, then at this moment, the entire Cyan Nether Realm was frantically folding in on itself.

Starting from the outermost edges of the Secret Realm, vast swathes of land turned into the Void.

Those Cultivators who had been lingering at the edges, trying to find opportunities, didn’t even have time to scream before they fell with the crumbling earth into the Void, instantly ground into meaningless clouds of blood mist.

Even more terrifying, as the space rapidly compressed, the Spiritual Qi and cyan Evil Qi that had filled the entire Secret Realm were squeezed all at once toward Lingma Mountain at the very center.

Spiritual Qi and Evil Qi were originally incompatible, but under this extreme physical pressure, they were forcibly merged, transforming into a toxic, mountain-heavy wave of Qi that was as thick as black sludge.

This wave of Qi swept through like a tsunami.

“Aargh! My meridians! My Spiritual Power is dissolving!”

A few of the slower examinees were overtaken by the wave. The moment their bodies came into contact with the black sludge, their Protective Spiritual Light let out a piercing hiss as it dissolved. Then, their entire bodies melted away rapidly, like wax figures thrown into a furnace.

The space for survival was shrinking at a visible rate.

From a radius of a hundred li, to ten li, and now… all that remained was a mere three-li area with the Underground Palace at its core.

“Faster! A little faster!”

Xia Xing’s eyes were nearly splitting with desperation. He could feel the pitch-black Void nipping at his heels.

Every tremor of space felt like a heavy hammer blow to his Divine Soul.

At the foot of Lingma Mountain, the two Deities who had been locked in a fierce battle were also thrown off by this drastic change.

The Night Patrol God’s black-iron body swayed in the Qi wave, the ghastly white flame in its lantern twisting due to the extreme compression of space.

Its Purification movements slowed. It sensed a threat more severe than any living creature—this domain was about to be completely destroyed.

Meanwhile, the Beastkeeping Commissioner in mid-air grew even more frantic. He swung his long whip, recklessly driving the remaining Demon Beasts and Wuu Ziqing forward, trying to build a wall of Flesh and Blood to resist the collapse of the Void.

“Not enough! It’s still not enough!”

The Beastkeeping Commissioner roared, his vertical pupils sweeping over Xia Xing and the others as they ran toward the Underground Palace. His eyes were filled with the viciousness of an all-or-nothing gamble.

The entire Cyan Nether Realm had devolved into a bubbling cauldron of bloody porridge.

At the end of this world-ending calamity, besides the entrance to the Underground Palace which still glowed with a faint, Dark Gold light, not a single trace of what could be called life could be found in the entire world.

At the Lingma Mountain Foot, the last three-li radius of land had become a true Chaotic Scene.

The immense pressure from the collapsing Void forcibly crushed and compressed the Spiritual Qi and Evil Qi, transforming them into a roiling, black-smoke-like Mixed Element Qi Wave that rampaged across the land.

Every sound of space shattering was like the drumbeat of death, pounding on the spines of all surviving Cultivators.

“Help! The caverns are collapsing!”

“Run to the center! To that Stone Palace!”

Hundreds of surviving Cultivators, covered in blood and weakened by Spiritual Power exhaustion, swarmed toward the lone, Dark Gold Underground Palace like an anthill after a flood.