Chapter 1536 - Refining the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast

With death closing in, Liu Wuxie had no choice. His only option was to refine the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast.

𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

When Achiel saw Liu Wuxie lunge forward and deliberately close the distance, bafflement struck him at once. He couldn't understand what Liu Wuxie intended, and the confusion twisted into panic so sharp that it pushed him toward the verge of tears, yet he still couldn't stop that reckless move.

"Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, swallow it!" Even now, Liu Wuxie didn't know how vast the cauldron truly was. However, since it bore the name Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, it meant it could devour everything in the world, even the heavens—let alone the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast.

To humans, the beast looked unimaginably massive, yet before the boundless heavens, it amounted to nothing more than a drop in the ocean.

Liu Wuxie gambled with his life on the line, and if he lost, he would sink into the Limitless Sea for eternity. The Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron shot into the air, and Liu Wuxie locked his gaze onto it and didn't dare to relax for even a moment.

The surrounding space shuddered violently as a pitch-black cauldron appeared and began to expand. Liu Wuxie had faced similar moments before, using the cauldron to devour opponents and refine them.

Back then, his confidence had never wavered because he always believed he would succeed. This time, the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast was too massive, and even Liu Wuxie couldn't fully confirm that the cauldron could swallow it.

The cauldron expanded tens of thousands of times its size in the blink of an eye. As it swelled, it even swallowed up the surrounding storm, as though it didn't merely want to devour the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast, but the Limitless Storm as well.

Shock numbed Liu Wuxie's scalp in an instant. This was the first time he had seen the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron in its complete form, and it looked like a moving universe, bottomless, with secrets buried so deep that no one could measure them.

Bit by bit, the massive Divine Devouring Pythonbeast shrank into something like a speck of dust compared to the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron.

As for Liu Wuxie, standing before the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast, he didn't even qualify as a speck of dust. Darkness blotted out the sky and swallowed half of it.

At that moment, countless cultivators across the Spirit Martial Astral Domain lifted their heads in the direction of the Limitless Storm. They watched as a black hole formed above the Limitless Storm, swallowing the smaller planets orbiting nearby. Vast stretches of cloud were torn away, revealing the dark vortex in full.

"Look! It's the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast!" With the clouds stripped away, the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast finally appeared before everyone's eyes, massive enough to span hundreds of millions of miles.

That vast black hole turned half of the Spirit Martial Astral Domain into darkness, as it devoured all light.

Liu Wuxie's jaw fell open. He had always known the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron was powerful, yet he had never imagined it could be this terrifying. All this time, the cauldron had hovered above the desolate world in silence, appearing only occasionally.

Then a savage suction force surged again, and the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast lost control over its body and was dragged straight into the black hole. The black hole appeared and vanished in a flash, and everything unfolded in only half a breath. The moment the beast disappeared, clarity returned to the world.

The Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron shrank rapidly and returned to the desolate world. Demonic flame immediately surged and wrapped around the beast. Achiel appeared outside, scared as he stared at Liu Wuxie.

"Achiel, you'll have to travel on your own now. I need to go into seclusion for some time," Liu Wuxie said and vanished. He guided the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron into Achiel’s body, allowing him to continue the journey alone.

Achiel understood how grave the situation was, especially after watching Liu Wuxie nearly collapse earlier.

Powerhouses rushed over from every direction, convinced that a heaven-defying treasure had appeared in the Limitless Sea, since it could even devour the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast. A treasure of that level had to be an immortal artifact.

Liu Wuxie split a thread of his consciousness and entered the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, while his body entered the Heavenly Deity Monument. The instant he stepped into the eternal world, he collapsed onto the ground and lost consciousness.

No one knew how long it took before Liu Wuxie finally regained consciousness. The Divine Devouring Pythonbeast still thrashed inside the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, and even with its primordial spirit severed, it could recover within a few hundred years. That meant Liu Wuxie had to refine the beast and kill it thoroughly.

After the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron had expanded this time, Liu Wuxie discovered it had grown even more attuned to the world, as countless heaven-and-earth laws manifested. The discovery of an accidental move stunned both the cauldron and Liu Wuxie.

As the Desolate Devouring Art began circulating, it began to extract ancient laws from the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast. Demonic flame tempered the extraction, and the beast released agonized screams.

Countless chains bound the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast tightly, preventing it from moving while Liu Wuxie drew power from its body. The more he extracted, the more his physique strengthened.

Then something even more terrifying unfolded, as countless bizarre laws appeared around the cauldron and latched onto the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast's surface. They clung to the beast like parasites, devouring its ancient laws.

It didn't take long before the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron began transforming, and cracking sounds rang from the surrounding space. More mysterious runes manifested and attached themselves to the cauldron's surface, signaling that the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron's power had grown even stronger than before.

As refinement grew easier, the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast's struggle began to weaken. Nourished by ancient laws, the desolate world became sturdier than before, even though it expanded only slightly. Even the immortal energy and immortal runes Liu Wuxie had exhausted earlier began to recover rapidly.

"I should be able to rely on the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast to reach the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm." After drawing in a vast amount of ancient laws, Liu Wuxie recovered roughly seventy to eighty percent of his injuries, and the desolate world stabilized as well.

The recovery of Liu Wuxie's soul sea also accelerated, thanks to the Spirit Martial Astral Domain's unique environment and his refinement of the Sacred Soul Flower.

The Sacred Soul Flower possessed formidable regenerative ability, and Liu Wuxie's soul sea had already grasped that ability. That meant as long as his soul sea didn't dry up, it could continuously generate soul energy to replenish what he lost, and the recovery speed had increased tremendously compared to before.

Everything moved in the right direction, yet Achiel found himself in a terrible situation. Although he fled without hesitation and escaped tens of thousands of meters, two powerhouses at the Heaven Gaze Realm had locked onto him.

While only a few breaths passed in the outside world, ten full years had already gone by in the eternal world. The desolate world brimmed with energy, and the amount of immortal energy increased by one-third compared to before.

The number of immortal runes increased as well. With Liu Wuxie's true essence fully restored, immortal energy drifted above the desolate world like clouds. When his soul sea reached full saturation, his soul energy refined itself further than before, and the third Soul Spear began to stir restlessly, on the verge of splitting at any moment.

Even so, he still faced a long path before he could divide the Soul Spears into hundreds as Achiel had described. For now, he already felt satisfied as long as he could split the third Soul Spear.

Once his body reached saturation, too, the gateway to the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm appeared with signs of a breakthrough.

As for the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast, little remained inside the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, with seventy percent of its energy absorbed by the cauldron, twenty percent by the desolate world, and Liu Wuxie only taking ten percent.

Even though he absorbed only ten percent, it still more than sufficed for him to reach the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm.

The Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron continued to split and transform, and the space inside expanded. But strangely, it no longer hovered above the desolate world; instead, it sank into its depths.

Those changes unsettled Liu Wuxie. After absorbing the Divine Devouring Pythonbeast, the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron began changing with more things inside. Yet, he couldn't quite describe them in words, and even he didn't understand them as he continued feeling his way through.

Liu Wuxie planned to study it after his breakthrough, and perhaps it would truly happen as he suspected that the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron would one day merge with the desolate world. He could already sense it moving toward that trend.

He immediately mobilized his immortal energy and pushed into a breakthrough to the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm. That crushing force tore the gateway to the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm apart like paper and pierced through it in an instant.

Then the laws of the Earth Immortal Realm poured out from the gateway, sank into the desolate world, and stirred only a small ripple. Liu Wuxie intended to stabilize his cultivation next, but he didn't hurry because only a minute had passed outside.

Since the eternal world held no flow of time, laws continued morphing until it felt as though ten years had passed, and Liu Wuxie's cultivation climbed higher, stopping at the pinnacle of the Earth Immortal Realm.

Liu Wuxie rose to his feet and released a roar that turned into ripples spreading in every direction. He only dared to do it because he stood inside the eternal world. After all, doing it outside would have triggered widespread panic.

His strength was longer merely at the fourth-level Earth Immortal Realm. Even powerhouses at the third-level Heaven Gaze Realm couldn't unleash a force as terrifying as Liu Wuxie's.

As his true essence surged, immortal energy brewed, and immortal runes flickered, Liu Wuxie formed seals with both hands. A faint phantom began to appear behind him, and that phantom represented the power of the domain.

Liu Wuxie wanted to see his domain. Some people's domains resembled ferocious beasts; others formed light screens; some took the shape of trees, and so on. Every domain differed, and since Liu Wuxie had absorbed all things of heaven and earth, his curiosity only deepened over what his domain would become.

The laws of heaven and earth gathered around Liu Wuxie, and the phantom behind him became clearer than before. As he channeled more power, the phantom solidified little by little.

Liu Wuxie fixed his divine sense behind him and finally saw something resembling an axe diagram. But his strength had reached its limit, and the phantom refused to solidify further, forcing him to stop.

"An axe?" Liu Wuxie frowned. He had never expected his domain to take the form of an axe diagram, and the result only left him more puzzled. Most domains were tied directly to the cultivation technique one practiced, yet he couldn't see how his own technique connected to an axe.

For example, someone who cultivated a wood-attribute technique might manifest a colossal tree in their domain. Someone who cultivated the metal attribute might form a longsword. Someone who cultivated the fire attribute might manifest as a blazing fireball.

Liu Wuxie had cultivated the five elements along with light and darkness. Logically, those forces should have manifested in his domain, yet his domain became an axe diagram instead, and that contradiction dragged him into deep thought. Even without those forces manifesting, the domain should at least have carried death or curse attributes.

The domain behind him began to fade, but Liu Wuxie's emotions still wouldn't settle. The axe diagram left him baffled, and he wondered if something had gone wrong in his cultivation.

Ever since Liu Wuxie had begun cultivating in this lifetime, he had never practiced any axe-related martial technique. Even in his previous life as an Immortal Emperor, he had never come into contact with anything related to axes.

The axe diagram became a riddle, tightly tangled in his mind. He soon shook his head and pushed it aside for now because he couldn't explain it yet, and perhaps he had been mistaken.

With a flicker of his divine sense, Liu Wuxie shifted his gaze outward, and a hint of murderous intent flashed through his eyes.