Year 20,048 of the Dao Calendar. The Dao Court did not fall in a final, earth-shaking battle, nor did it crumble piece by piece under visible pressure. It collapsed as if the very foundation of existence had rotted away overnight, silent and absolute. Darkness did not creep across the heavens—it erupted. A strange black fire ignited in the sky, spreading like a living entity, devouring everything in its path. The sun was swallowed whole, its light erased, turning day into nothing more than a fragile illusion that could shatter at any moment.
From the deepest reaches of existence, the Endless Abyss awakened. Its ancient seals, which had held firm for tens of thousands of years, shattered in an instant. What followed was not a gradual release, but a catastrophic surge. It burst forth from beneath the Ancestral Court, swallowing the Great Wilderness Royal Court in a single, unstoppable tide. And from that abyss, they came—twisted figures crawling out from the darkness, once human but now warped into grotesque forms beyond recognition. These Bizarre Slaves spread like rot through flesh, like a plague that could not be stopped. Wherever they passed, life did not simply end—it was corrupted, transformed into something unrecognizable.
Within days, the Great Wilderness descended into absolute chaos. Famine, war, and now an unstoppable plague merged into a single apocalyptic calamity. Far from the initial collapse, the Barbarian Wilds still stood, but only barely. Since Mo Hua’s disappearance, the fragile unity he had built had begun to fracture. Tribes split apart, old grudges resurfaced, and bloodshed became routine. Dan Zhu struggled to maintain order from within, while Bone Slaughterer fought relentlessly to crush threats from outside. It was unstable, but still survivable—until the night the Nian Luo Tribe vanished without a trace.
There had been no warning, no battle, no cries for help. By morning, nothing remained except wandering figures with hollow eyes and broken bodies, neither alive nor dead. And wherever they went, the infection followed. At first, the Barbarian Tribes dismissed them as corpse slaves, a familiar horror in a brutal world. But they soon realized their mistake. These were not puppets, nor were they undead controlled by cultivators. They were something far more terrifying—something deliberate. They carried an unseen will, a force that did not merely destroy the body but invaded the mind, corrupting thoughts, twisting consciousness, eroding everything that made a person human.
When Dan Zhu saw the darkness gathering on the horizon, a chill ran through his heart. He remembered Mo Hua’s warning—the coming of the Dark Age. Without hesitation, he ordered all tribes to cease their wars and retreat into fortified defenses. At first, confusion and resistance followed. Many refused to believe, others hesitated, unwilling to abandon their conflicts. But as the plague spread and entire tribes disappeared overnight, doubt turned into terror. The Barbarian Wilds transformed almost instantly. Cliffs became walls, mountains became fortresses, sacred runes burned without rest, and the Thick Earth Grand Array was activated to shield what little remained of their world. Yet no matter what they built, no one truly understood how to fight the enemy. The real horror was not the Bizarre Slaves themselves, but the infection—silent, invisible, and unstoppable.
With no other path left, Dan Zhu turned to the legacy Mo Hua had left behind. He buried himself in manuscripts, studying ancient arrays, fragments of the Divine Dao, and scattered notes that once seemed incomplete and insignificant. Now, every word carried weight. Somewhere within those teachings lay the key to survival. Under crushing pressure, he began to piece together methods to resist the corruption, slowly forming strategies to protect his people. But no matter how hard he tried, it was not enough. People continued to fall. Friends, comrades, warriors who had fought beside him—all were lost, not in glorious battle, but in quiet despair, one after another.
Then one day, it reached him. A whisper, soft and almost gentle, echoed within his mind. His vision dulled, his eyes turning gray, dark veins pulsing beneath his skin. He did not need confirmation. He understood immediately—he had been infected. For a fleeting moment, exhaustion washed over him, and he almost welcomed the end. But that thought vanished as quickly as it came. He knew that if he fell, the Barbarian Wilds would collapse, and if he transformed, he would become their greatest catastrophe.
So he made his decision.
At Vermilion Bird Mountain, beneath the ancient Divine Altar, Dan Zhu handed Bone Slaughterer a divine bow and calmly told him to kill him if he lost control. There was no hesitation in his voice, no fear in his eyes—only absolute certainty. Bone Slaughterer accepted in silence, though his heart grew heavy with a burden he never wished to carry.
Dan Zhu ascended the altar alone. Each step burned his soul, the lingering power of the Divine Dao scorching his very being, yet he welcomed the pain because it kept him conscious, kept him himself. As he knelt before the statue, memories flooded his mind—his past, his battles, and Mo Hua’s teachings. Then the corruption surged. Devil runes spread through his consciousness like parasites, gnawing at his thoughts, twisting his desires, threatening to consume him entirely.
In the moment he was about to collapse, he saw a figure—Mo Hua, standing before him, smiling gently as always. But the figure said nothing. It simply faded away.
And Dan Zhu understood.
This was not a battle of strength or cultivation, but a trial of the Dao Heart. No one could fight it for him. No one could save him.
So instead of resisting, he did the unthinkable—he opened himself to the corruption. Darkness flooded into him, carrying every desire, fear, and fragment of human weakness. Yet instead of being consumed, he used it. He tempered his Dao Heart within the very flames meant to destroy him.
Black fire engulfed his body, burning him from the inside out. Below, Bone Slaughterer drew the bow, ready to release the arrow at the slightest sign of failure. The darkness surged to its peak—and then, something changed. From within the consuming black flames, a crimson light emerged, faint at first, then growing brighter and brighter, until it revealed a heart burning with unwavering brilliance—the Vermilion Bird Heart, reborn through suffering, untouched by corruption.
Dan Zhu slowly stood, his gaze clear and steady. The darkness remained within him, but it could no longer control him. He had endured it, refined it, and transcended it.
When he stepped down from the altar, Bone Slaughterer could only stare in disbelief. Dan Zhu spoke calmly, his voice carrying a quiet, unshakable power—only a Dao Heart free of fear and desire could withstand endless darkness. Behind them, the leaders of the tribes fell to their knees, hope igniting in their eyes for the first time since the calamity began. It was small and fragile, like a spark in an endless night—but it was enough.
Far away, deep within the Endless Abyss, the Devil Daoist watched in silence, a faint smile forming on his lips. Even this spark of hope was merely another piece on the board.
As the Endless Abyss continued to spread, the Great Wilderness became the final refuge, the last fragment of land where life still struggled to exist. Survivors poured in from every direction, forming long, desperate lines stretching across the wasteland like scars carved into the earth. At the boundary, the Thick Earth Array glowed with a heavy earthen light, forcing open a narrow path through the choking mist of famine and decay. Among the refugees walked a frail Barbarian Slave, unremarkable at first glance, yet those behind him followed with unwavering trust. In his hands, he tightly clutched a worn formation book, studying it whenever he found even a moment, ignoring hunger, exhaustion, and fear. This youth was Hui Nu.
He had never known who gave him the book. To him, it was simply a lifeline. But everything changed when he entered the Great Wilderness and saw the statue. The moment his eyes fell upon it, his body froze. The face carved into the stone was calm, youthful, distant—watching the world itself. Around him, Barbarians knelt in reverence, their voices echoing, “Divine Envoy Sir…” Hui Nu’s fingers trembled as he tightened his grip on the book, his chest surging with emotion. “Sir…”
Elsewhere, deep within a hidden tribe, captured cultivators knelt bound together—Feng Zichen, Ao Zheng, Stone Heaven Gang, and others, once proud geniuses now reduced to prisoners awaiting an uncertain fate. The abyss had erupted, the Devil Dao had spread, and every path to survival had been cut off. “No one is coming to save us,” Feng Zichen whispered bitterly. “This is the Great Wilderness,” Ao Zheng replied coldly. “We have no allies here.” Silence followed, heavy and suffocating, until Stone Heaven Gang slowly lifted his head and pointed toward the center of the tribe. “Not necessarily.” They followed his gaze—and froze. A towering statue stood there, worshipped even by a terrifying Barbarian general. And when they saw its face, their pupils shrank. “…Mo Hua?!”
Deep within the Endless Abyss, in the Return to Ruins where even light dared not linger, the Devil Daoist slowly opened his eyes. Across the vast darkness, faint sparks flickered—fragile, insignificant, like stars drowning in an endless night—yet they did not go out. A trace of interest appeared in his cold gaze. To reach such a level at merely Foundation Establishment… impressive, but meaningless in the end. The Divine Dao Array roared with terrifying power as ancestors were refined, erased, and corrupted. Among the six remaining Void Glimpse Ancestors, only Old Ancestor Hua stood firm, his Dao Heart unbroken. “It will break,” the Devil Daoist said with a faint smile.
Time stretched. Silence deepened.
Then—
a sound.
Soft.
Childlike.
Wrong.
“Hee… hee…”
The laughter echoed not through the abyss, but from within his own mind.
Old Ancestor Hua’s eyes snapped open.
Before him stood an infant, pitch-black, burning with strange fire, its face eerily familiar, its innocent eyes locked onto him.
Watching.
Smiling.
And in that moment—
something far more terrifying than the abyss had begun.
Comments
Post a Comment