Chapter 728 – Second Rank Power, World Destroying Finger - Part 3

By now, Li Yuan had gained a decent understanding of the undying folk, those twisted by the cursed ghostly locust tree. Their minds had clearly been tainted. Their culture was warped.

These undying folk had become completely...primitive. There was a raw, uncivilized aura about them, like they’d reverted to some ancient, tribal state.

The power of the locust tree had made them strong, long-lived, but also seemingly brainwashed, their minds scrubbed clean of complexity.

Li Yuan was about to intervene again when a wave of cheering rose from the village. Then, one by one, the villagers dropped to their knees in reverence, bowing to the very girl who had just been tied up moments ago.

Even the man who had held the sacrificial stone knife, now tear-streaked and trembling, stepped back in awe and prostrated himself before her, babbling something with deep emotion.

The girl, now covered in the beast-hide, looked confused and dazed. But as the villagers chanted and muttered in reverent tones, understanding began to dawn on her.

She slowly turned toward the sky, eyes filled with a newfound sense of holiness, and bowed deeply in solemn worship.

Li Yuan had no idea what they thought was happening. And frankly, he didn’t care. As long as the barbaric scene of human sacrifice was over, he was done with them.

With a flick of his sleeve, he and the crow stepped onto the voidship. In a blink, they crossed the skies and arrived at the Eastern Sea.

Instead of diving directly into the sea, Li Yuan hovered above its world and began scouring the cosmos, searching for the dark realm of the Ghost Sealing Pagoda.

The voidship drifted steadily through patches of void, where invisible forces tugged fiercely from all directions.

But the voidship held firm, serene and unshaken.

Li Yuan didn’t immediately find the pagoda’s dark realm, but a new idea flickered in his mind, an idea for a second rank combat skill.

If world creation was the functional power of the second rank, then what exactly was its offensive power?

“Let’s find out.”

He now had a theory. With a thought, he reappeared in the skies above the Eastern Sea. Gazing down at the endless stretch of blue, it didn’t take long for him to spot a vicious sea beast lurking beneath the waves.

Li Yuan fixed his gaze on the creature.

With a twist of his five fingers, a tiny, bean-sized world was born in the starlit void. Though the world was incredibly compact, its outer shell was still relatively fragile.

The miniature world instantly locked onto the sea beast below.

Li Yuan gently clenched his fist.

The world collapsed.

Its destruction triggered a violently condensed surge of energy, so dense, so sharp it ripped straight through the boundary of the mortal world and pierced toward the beast like a divine needle.

And then, a terrifying scene unfolded.

The deep sea suddenly lit up as an indescribable ripple of force, like a long spear, stabbed into the beast’s side. The impact left behind nothing more than a sesame-sized hole.

Time itself seemed to freeze.

Such a tiny wound meant nothing to a creature of that size normally.

But in the next moment, the beast’s body locked up completely. Then, like jelly being sucked through a straw, it began collapsing in on itself, shrinking and vanishing into that minuscule wound.

In the blink of an eye, the creature was gone. Not a trace left. No bones. No blood. It had been utterly erased from existence.

Right then, Li Yuan’s status window flickered to life.

NEW! World Destroying Finger - Rank 2 (1/10,000)

He had a name for it now, World Destroying Finger.

And that? That was just the basic level.

The fact that he could unlock a new skill at all caught Li Yuan off guard. A mix of surprise, delight, and gravity filled his chest.

He stared at the newly appeared World Destroying Finger, then glanced at the

+

button beside it.

He had about 379,727 available stat points, and it would take 309,999 points to max the skill out.

“Back to square one, huh...” Li Yuan muttered.

He’d always thought he had a mountain of unused stat points, saved up over years. But now he realized all those stockpiled gains were only enough to push him to peak second rank and max out one second rank skill.

“Hah...” Li Yuan sighed.

All these years, and Yan Yu had faithfully delivered seven points per day. That alone hadn’t been easy.

Still...now that he’d reached second rank, he couldn’t help but wonder. Could his relationship with Yan Yu go one step further? Maybe that’d unlock even more skill points?

The thought passed in a flash.

After all, he hadn’t even seen her lately. And even if he did...it wasn’t like he had any idea what

further

would even look like between them.

After everything they’d already done together, what boundaries were left?

But at this moment, none of that mattered.

Li Yuan didn’t hesitate. He dumped all 309,999 points into the skill.

In an instant, his World-Destroying Finger reached full mastery.

A flood of memories surged through him, wrapping around his consciousness like a cloak of mist, deep, old, and strangely familiar.

Peace settled over Li Yuan’s mind as he opened himself to the incoming memories.

This time, though...something was different.

For the first time, he realized: these visions were likely not random. The memories he’d experienced might not be fabricated at all. They could be fragments of real history embedded in the fabric of this world.

Someone had once mastered the World Destroying Finger. And because they had, the memory of it still lingered...ready for him to inherit.

And now...

The world around him shifted.

He became a child.

At age five, his village was ravaged by war. Soldiers swept through, killing everyone. He only survived because he was hiding in a cellar.

After the massacre, the boy climbed out into a silent, ruined world. His grandfather had once told him, “There’s a Daoist temple to the east. The Immortals live there.”

With nowhere else to go, the boy headed east.

Snow fell thick and heavy that day.

He knelt outside the temple gates until he collapsed from the cold. Finally, a Daoist came out and carried him inside.

The Daoist looked at him and said, “Heaven and Earth have no kindness. The temple won’t take you in just because you’re suffering. I saved you because I chose to. But now that you’re alive, you should leave.”

The boy dropped to his knees and kowtowed, pressing his forehead to the ground again and again, refusing to rise.

The man said nothing. He carried the boy back outside and closed the gates.

And still the boy knelt in the snow.

Three days and three nights passed. He didn’t faint. His body began to emit a strange, ethereal aura, something pure and otherworldly.

That aura shielded him from the cold.

The Daoist, sensing something extraordinary, believed the boy carried a hidden destiny. So he opened the gates once more, brought him inside, and began teaching him the ways of the heavenly seal.

The boy’s training flew by in flashes of memory.

In the blink of an eye, he was no longer a child, but a full-grown Daoist.

He walked the mortal world, offering aid wherever he went. His strength became overwhelming, godlike.

One day, temples across the land began to raise statues in his image.

Soon after, his statue stood at the very heart of the Daoist temple. People chanted his name in reverence.

Time passed. Dynasties rose and fell. The ocean turned to mulberry fields.

And the memory, like mist on a morning breeze, dissolved into nothing.

The Dao Sovereign devoted himself to mastering his power and eventually reached the pinnacle of the heavenly seal path.

By that point, he could create a world with a flick of the wrist and destroy it just as easily.

Between creation and destruction...lay a divine power beyond comprehension.

And so, he began to explore it.

At first, he would summon a world in a single thought, then destroy it instantly, using the raw burst of energy from that annihilation to pierce through space and descend upon the mortal realm.

As his experiments continued, he began trying to collapse multiple worlds at once to magnify the piercing force.

But no matter how many he shattered, the power always slipped out of his control.

Still, the Dao Sovereign didn’t give up. He kept refining his skill. Year after year, trial after trial, until over a decade later, he finally gained control.

He reached the point where he could collapse three worlds at once, and though the force it generated could still only pierce a single sliver of space, it was stable and reliable.

But then he hit a wall.

Sensing a bottleneck, he left the temple and began to roam the land.

He hunted great demons, and not one could survive a single strike from him.

Battle after battle, his skill grew sharper. With every kill, he became more precise.

Eventually, his skill evolved from shattering three worlds...to seven.

But then, another wall.

One day, while wandering alone beneath the stars, he felt the limits of his power pressing in once more.

So he secluded himself to meditate.

Time passed. He didn’t know how long.

And then, suddenly, understanding dawned.

When he emerged, he found that he could not only collapse seven worlds...he could now control the force released when they died.

Standing on the edge of a mountain cliff, hands clasped behind his back, he watched the sky. Tiny ripples began to fall from the heavens, like invisible lightning, silent and ethereal.

He sat down cross-legged, and those bolts of unseen lightning fell precisely around him, striking down demons with surgical accuracy.

People began to call it Heavenly Tribulation.

And they said the Dao Sovereign commanded the Heavenly Tribulation, its thunder colorless.

The Daoist sect flourished. Temples burned incense day and night in his honor.

But the Dao Sovereign continued to retreat into seclusion, for he believed this so-called Heavenly Tribulation still hadn’t reached its true form.

To mortals, and even to most powerful cultivators, his strength had become unfathomable, almost mythic. He could slay any monster, uphold the entire Daoist order.

But there was one thing even he could not break through, the Outer Region.

That terrifying, unknown place, like the gaping maw of a star-devouring beast, remained sealed off to him.

The world kept shrinking, and yet, he could do nothing.

So the Dao Sovereign locked himself away again, determined to reach beyond.

More centuries passed. How many, no one knew.

Still, he found no answer.

But one day, he decided to stop thinking and start walking again.

After coming out of seclusion, he wandered the wilderness...and there, by chance, he met a strange man with a blurred face.

The man spoke to him of the Dao.

They debated for months without pause, without sleep.

And then, clarity.

A sudden, breathtaking epiphany.

He had broken through.

Gone beyond.

With a single thought, he could now collapse a hundred worlds.

But this time, the power that emerged was no longer a fine thread of invisible lightning.

It was...a finger.

The World Destroying Finger.