Chapter 1350: Sacrifice!

I fought! My personal guard also fought! Sadly, they were so exhausted that they had no strength left.

Ol’ Luo’s blade managed to slice off a corner of Emperor Voidcleaver’s exoskeleton. But then a huge black mandible, pulsing with the power to cleave the void, slashed into his chest and ripped his heart out. Emperor Voidcleaver devoured it in a single gulp.

Among the personal guard was a female cultivator who wielded a bow. With a lamenting cry, she let loose an arrow that pierced a Lavagiant through the eyes, only to have her arms lopped off by the gruish blade of one of the nonhuman experts. She staggered back, blood spraying out of her mouth, a look of despair in her eyes. Biting the tip of her tongue, she spat some blood onto her broken bow. The bow thrummed and turned into an arrow of blood which shot with blinding speed into the back of another nonhuman expert. The arrow exploded! Innumerable shafts of light slammed into her, shredding her into ashes....

Each of my subordinates who fell became like a branding iron leaving a searing mark on my soul.

I attacked with pure madness! I held nothing back! I killed one nonhuman expert after another!

Violet flames swept back and forth. Sword energy slashed at the void. Corpses fell on the Peerless Plains. As my people fell, the corpses piled up.

I was soon covered in wounds. Burning magma scorched my bones. The razor-sharp blades of the Voidcleavers slashed bone-deep furrows into my back. Countless species of grues cast magical spells that dug into my marrow like maggots, eating away at my life force. Blood soon soaked my tattered robe, and my vision was dim with redness. My cultivation base drained away like water without anything to contain it. Every breath I took caused excruciating pain to assail my organs.

I killed many, but there were always more to come. There was no end....

Gradually, my consciousness began to descend into darkness and gloom. However, just when the world was about to turn pitch black....

Something massive and complex arrived. It was something filled with infinite grief and determination, like a gigantic wave that swept forth from all directions to slam into my sea of consciousness!

This was not an enemy attack. It was some sort of... resonance! It was like the final dying cry of all the countless souls of the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan! My field of vision suddenly soared. It extended infinitely!

It was as if my soul had broken free from its shell, and I was now looking down on the shattered lands below. I saw all of the formerly glorious cities in the Violet and Cyan Region, which were now little more than burning, smoking husks! Countless figures struggled in the flames, and when they fell, their calls of despair echoed in my ears.

The flags of the countless species flew over the capital city of Sea-Sealing County, pulsing with an aura of destruction. The city walls had long since fallen, and the interior was mostly rubble. I spotted my apprentice, Bai Xiaozhuo. He was soaked in blood, and his left arm had been severed. But, held aloft in his right hand was the governor’s seal!

He was surrounded by the bodies of commoners! There were men, women, old, and young. Their clothes were tattered and they were emaciated, but tears did not stain their faces. They looked numb and full of pure, unadulterated despair!

I looked to the western frontier and saw that what troops remained were closing their eyes. I looked to the northern ice plains and saw scout troops frozen and dying. The things I saw filled me with indescribable pain and grief, as if millions upon millions of needles were stabbing into my soul!

It was more intense than the military offensive of the powerful experts of all those species! My kingdom... my people!

At that moment, unending grief turned into a determination that surpassed life or death! It was as if black ice had completely frozen over all pain and sorrow!

I looked up. My blood-soaked gaze passed beyond the ferocious glares of the enemy, out of the Peerless Plains, through the mountains of South Phoenix, and above the highest heavens. There, cold and apathetic, was something that had not changed for aeons: the massive broken face!

Hīs face was as apathetic, cold, and dead as ever. It was like a face that had been ripped almost in half, cold and detached, plastered high in the dome of heaven. Hē was fundamentally a mockery to all of the joys and sorrows of life, and in fact, the very struggle to live. But right now, that ancient observer, that cold embodiment of natural laws... might be the only force capable of turning things around.

The last remaining citizens of the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan were dying. And I, Zi Qing, the exiled and powerless crown prince, had only one option....

“I... am Zi Qing!” I said hoarsely, my voice filled with a power that caused heaven and earth to tremble as it filled the kingdom. “And I am the crown prince of the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan!”

I threw my arms wide. My tattered robe flapped in the wind. Wounds opened, causing blood to gush forth. Strangely, that blood did not fall. Instead, it turned into blood-red flames that surrounded me!

“I hereby sacrifice my ravaged body! I ignite my soul! I burn my dao foundation! I incinerate all that is me! I set ablaze past, future, and... all karma!”

As the words left my mouth, every last scrap of my life force essence burned! My flesh and blood began to vanish. My bones moaned piteously. My soul was thrown into something like an eternal furnace. My cultivation base, which had just been restored, and every other aspect of my foundation, turned into pure, blazing essence!

“Call forth thine mightiness! Purge this foul taint! Burn down this world of chaos! Protect my Kingdom of Violet and Cyan... that its final ember ne’er be quenched! Life shall continue again! And when I awake, I will offer all that mine eyes behold!”

RUMBLE!!

***

A pillar of violet-gold light exploded up furiously, purer and more condensed than the destiny aura of Violet and Cyan, and filled with the personhood of a human emperor! It tore apart the blood-red curtain that the countless species had used to cover the Peerless Plains! It contained a decisive will that was willing to end all things in mutual destruction. It was like a violet river of stars piercing through the void and battering its way toward the broken face!

At the same time, Bai Xiaozhuo apparently sensed it, and looked in the direction of South Phoenix. Tears of blood streamed down his face as he cackled madly and mutilated his own face until only half was left, just like the broken face.

“I was born in these lands! I will die in these lands! My soul will guard over them! I will accompany the crown prince in death. Then I will awaken a thousand years before him, to pave the way for him as his dao protector. Sacrifice!”[1]

As he carried out the sacrifice, the people of Sea-Sealing County lent their support. They gathered around their governor, forming a large ring. Elderly ones. Wives. Children.... They looked up into the sky... at the cold, apathetic broken face that constantly looked down at the misery of the mortal world! And then, madness filled their faces as they all cried out the same thing together!

“Sacrifice!”

Countless voices became a flow that could rip apart heaven and earth!

Elderly ones. Wives. Children.... all of the surviving people of Sea-Sealing County, regardless of their age or how strong or weak they were, simultaneously... mutilated their faces to resemble the broken face! They did not hesitate or cower. There was only a kosmic determination to embrace death for the sake of rebirth.

Innumerable weak but incomparably pure motes of life force became like flowing starfire that ripped away from their mutilated forms!

Together, they formed a river that then became a sea! The final will of the discarnate souls of the people turned into a stream of life force, filled with silent determination and a lament that could incinerate all things...and joined the crown prince to fly high into the sky!

In the west of the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan, the scattered troops who still lived lit the signal fires. As the fire raged, they looked up at the broken face and mutilated their faces, whereupon they collapsed into motes of light....

In the ice plains in the north of the kingdom, the freezing scout troops used the last of their strength to stab their flags into the frigid soil. Turning toward their home, they looked at the broken face and, as one, mutilated their own faces. Blood red-light swept toward the rising tide of souls....

In countless locations in the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan, in the far corners, in the remote locations, countless feeble expressions of will chose the same path! They sacrificed themselves! They used their discarnate souls as the spark! In the end, the Sovereign Kingdom of Violet and Cyan sacrificed everything to that broken face who looked down upon all and hovered above the boundless timescape!

It was like hundreds of rivers returning to the ocean. The people of the kingdom surpassed all obstacles, to swirl around and converge on the violet-gold pillar of light shooting up from the crown prince!

They and the crown prince together... sacrificed themselves! They only requested... that in the future, Zi Qing, Violet and Cyan, would once again come to Revered Ancient!

Time seemed to slow to a standstill. The fighting and killing on the Peerless Plains crawled to a halt. The looks of brutality on the faces of the enemy experts froze, to be replaced by instinctual astonishment and terror that came from deep within. The only thing left in the world was that fiery, violet-gold light rising up against all odds, accompanied by endless sacrificed souls, heading toward... the cold broken face above the dome of heaven.

And then....

***

That cold broken face who had not moved for aeons opened hīs eyes. Within those eyes burned a fire of infinite coldness and chaos in the form of a blood-red vortex! It was a sun of extermination!

A gaze akin to the magical laws of a star ring descended, bringing indescribable pressure that surpassed the comprehension of living beings. That gaze, icy and apathetic, could look down on countless ancient things, and could penetrate all fabricated wills.

The gaze focused! It looked at... the source of the violet-gold pillar of light.

It looked at... me... the person within that pillar of light, rapidly crumbling into nothing.

The moment the blood-red gaze locked onto me, it felt like I had been plunged into a sun made of ice. Then, starting from the tips of my fingers and toes, I started crumbling into violet dust. Blood. Bones. Soul.... Everything that made Zi Qing crumbled into essence due to the gaze of the broken face.

I did not feel pain. There was only cold nothingness. It was as if my consciousness was drifting away. Right before I became nothing, I heard a deep voice speaking within the gaze from the blood-colored vortex.

“Permission granted.”

Then a terrifying aura appeared, something indescribable, from the beginning of the universe. It turned into a destructive tsunami that raged toward the Peerless Plains! It destroyed everything! Time became stretched out to eternity. As the final tempest of primal-chaos raged, my will became like a candle in the wind. Its spark... vanished.

The stream of millions upon millions of discarnate souls was all that remained, and as the blood-colored vortex in the broken face’s eyes churned, they rushed into destruction.... They used death for rebirth as they chanted... a silent dirge of death.

***

In the year 315 of the Violet Cyan calendar, its crown prince perished in the southern continent.

Bai Xiaozhuo, the apprentice of the crown prince, who had been the last governor of Sea-Sealing County, stood by. Weeping tears of blood, he disfigured half his face to make himself look like the broken face of the god.

Then, he spoke his final words before dying. “I will accompany the crown prince. Then I will awaken a thousand years before the crown prince, to serve as his dao protector.”

1. These words came up previously in

chapter 533.2

. ☜