Chapter 1176: Bloodline Retrace, Seizing the Past

Boroedo and its companion appeared in the Sea of Chaos before they could react.

𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The turbid current that brimmed with annihilation and dissolution continued to transform all matter and energy to origin, causing the Underground Palace of Evil Gods, which was stripped of the principles’ support, to collapse layer by layer.

Within the palace, Boroedo and its companion watched the sky and earth crumble, and their faces changed. This was not the chaotic void around the mythical world where mythical powerhouses could roam, but the far more perilous Sea of Chaos where even true-spirit-level beings could barely survive.

Had their cultivation been at its peak, it would not have mattered. However, they had both fallen from the true spirit level, and scarcely maintained a peak ancient-titan-level cultivation. Just as the two Hell Apostles prepared to burn their souls for a moment’s resistance and try to draw upon the power of the Supreme Hell to flee, the surrounding space-time solidified.

A golden-white light screen surfaced around them, forming a light dome ten thousand kilometers across that kept the world-ending turbid current at bay. In the distance, a colossal figure glanced back at them from within the raging shockwaves of turbid qi, then slowly faded away.

Although Chen Chu’s arrival had long been within Heng’s expectations, he would not have come here without Boroedo’s coordinates and the news that this place held much origin. So he did not stint in lending a hand and saved them in passing.

After sending the two evil gods out, Chen Chu stood amid the collapsing cosmic void and looked toward the world of Cescilles drifting in the starry sky.

Boom!

Space-time quaked. Beneath the sundered world, a boundless golden hand slowly appeared in the depths of the dark starry void and lifted one hemisphere of the world.

Of course, "lift" was only a figure of speech. An almost tangible silver spatial energy layered upon itself as stacked subspace strata to buffer the impact between that vast hand and the shattered sphere.

The empires and kingdoms built in a ring around the World Tree sapling upon that half-world gazed upward at the figure beyond the outer heavens that had reached out to hold their world.

The sheer difference in power levels made it difficult to see the being clearly. They could only vaguely make out a peerless deity crowned with an imperial crown and robed in splendid black imperial robes. Ten layers of seven-colored light wheels unfurled behind it, covering heaven and earth.

Beneath the World Tree sapling, the academy principal Amitya and vice-principal Estelle, who had flown back over the Valkyrie Academy, faintly realized who that figure was. When they recalled what had happened a century ago, they felt a little dazed.

Though their contact had been brief, the youth named Chu had risen like the sun from the moment he had been summoned, shaking everyone time and again.

Boom!

A purple-black halberd light billions of kilometers long swept across the firmament, rending chaos and carving a cross-section tens of billions of kilometers wide. Roaring currents of chaotic qi, steeped in destructive intent, surged above and below yet could not close again. Heaven and earth split wherever the halberd light passed, and the elements of earth, fire, wind, and lightning appeared.

Gradually, the embryo of a world was born.

After a cultivator broke through to the primordial level, they possessed the might to create a world in the Sea of Chaos, establishing a complete great world. If it was condensed as a divine region, it would take a further step and transform into a Great Thousand World.

Given Chen Chu’s current cultivation, creating a great world came as easily as lifting a hand. As this embryonic world stabilized and the land began to condense, space-time shattered. In the outer heavens, a hemisphere a million kilometers across appeared.

The sky-shrouding golden hand gently set the half-world in the sky, like a divine realm floating above the heavens. It was only after he had set this world in order that Chen Chu returned to the black world.

The cosmic starry expanse had completely collapsed, revealing the place’s true face. It was the boundless corpse of the Emperor Heng, and below it, the undying demonic body already half swallowed by a black hole.

As with the Dragon Emperor, Chen Chu arrived on the head of the corpse, which was as vast as a galactic system. There, too, Heng had left an eternal mark. Unlike the demonic body that bore the Abyssal Lord’s personal mark, Heng had erased all traces of itself when it departed.

What lay before Chen Chu was a pure repository of experience, a primordial source that gathered past, future, and present. Chen Chu, with his true form restored to normal and standing a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers tall, was as tiny as a mote of dust upon a rune with a diameter of hundreds of millions of kilometers.

He soundlessly merged with it.

Boom!

The white rune trembled and sent out rings of white ripples. Wherever they passed, the emperor’s corpse melted like wax before a flame. Soon, a white sphere of light roughly one and a half light-years across floated in the chaos.

There were no earth-shaking fluctuations of principle, nor dimensional rifts from shattered space-time. The sphere’s glow was dim, slowly turning as it drifted. If not for the colossal demonic body beneath it, this would have looked no different from an ordinary world one might find anywhere in the Sea of Chaos.

The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Primordial Heavens were, in truth, the cultivation of space-time. The Fourth Primordial Heaven retraced the past. The Fifth Primordial Heaven occupied the future. The Sixth Primordial Heaven stood in the present, fusing past and future into a single eternity.

Thus, as the space-time origin that could be directly absorbed and smelted into his true form enveloped Chen Chu, his mind trembled, and countless scenes flickered around him.

There was Chen Chu in his school uniform, walking with Chen Hu on the way to class.

There was Chen Chu in a dark-red battle armor, sitting in the transport leaving the airport, slightly nervous yet faintly excited, awaiting an attack from the demon cultists.

There was the night he had rampaged across the southern battlefield, cutting through dozens of peers from martial arts high schools and ascending to number one among the southern younger generation.

There was the global livestream, the battle with the Blood God outside the city, his counter-ambush on two demon kings in the mythical world, and his clash against a demon god.

There was even a prior-life scene of Chen Chu in a suit, seated in an office, sternly reviewing documents.

All of it appeared as space-time origin streamed through him. The scene closest to the present was from a hundred years ago when Chen Chu had been summoned to the great world of Cescilles, which was being slowly dyed gold and white by a mighty force.

At the same time, as Chen Chu began to break through to the primordial sovereign level, the Dragon Emperor, with its whole body stained red with blood, roared again from below. A layer of blood-flame burned across its body.

Boom!

A terrifying surge of vitality erupted. The Dragon Emperor’s aura soared several dozenfold as it burned its essence. The black hole ring spanning the chaos shuddered. Its inward pull multiplied several times over, devouring the demonic body at an even faster pace.

At the same time, the mounting pressure crushed the Dragon Emperor’s body again and again, leaving deep gaping wounds down to the bone. Blood fountained like an ocean.

The Silver Dragon beat its wings, circling above the Dragon Emperor’s head as it screeched worriedly.

Since the future that had been seen lay hundreds of thousands of years in the future, even it had not known that Chen Chu was the colossal beast, and that the colossal beast’s body was his.

So when Heng had arranged its contingencies back then, it had treated the colossal beast’s body as Chen Chu’s external incarnation and had not taken care of the demonic body nearly as well.

Even so, the Dragon Emperor could still bear it. The Silver Dragon watched anxiously as the Dragon Emperor’s body kept collapsing and knitting back together. At its worst, it was nearly torn to four pieces. Yet no matter how grave the injury, the power of its Undying Blood healed it in an instant, at the cost of only a little life force.

Time passed. A little over a month later, the black hole ring that veiled the chaos finally swallowed the demonic body whole.

The Dragon Emperor threw back its head and roared, a trace of ease threaded through its ferocity and brutality. It had finally eaten that undying corpse. Next came digestion.

Saixitia, I am going to sleep. Do not wander.

The Silver Dragon’s eyes lit up with excitement.

No problem, Ao Tian. Rest easy. The great Saixitia will not go anywhere.

When the Dragon Emperor slept, the silent intent of its realm’s breakthrough and the life aura that leaked from it were tremendous tonics. Perhaps the great Saixitia would soon reach the peak of the true spirit level, then break through to the primordial level!

The Silver Dragon grinned widely at the thought. Once it broke through to the primordial level, it would go home and show off in front of its mother and Thorsafi.

That's for calling me a fool back then.

They would never have guessed that Saixitia was the smartest of them all. It had seen that Ao Tian was extraordinary at first glance, so it had joined it to found the Dragon Palace. Ever since it had followed Ao Tian, Saixitia’s strength had soared, rising all the way to where it stood now.

Hahaha... The great Saixitia is indeed the smartest.

While the Silver Dragon basked in visions of a brilliant future, the Dragon Emperor erupted within. Endless space-time origin, steeped in darkness, evil, and destructive intent, spewed forth.

Boom!

Its peerlessly tough body detonated, bursting into a storm of flesh and blood. A tangible black-hole sphere appeared where the Dragon Emperor shattered and ballooned at a terrifying speed, reaching tens of millions, then billions of kilometers in a blink.

At last, a black hole no smaller than the white sphere of light hung silently in the chaos, a black celestial body roughly a light-year across. The Dragon Emperor’s scattered flesh and blood had already been devoured by the burgeoning maw of the black hole, leaving only the Silver Dragon lying bewildered upon the black planet.

Where is Ao Tian?

No one knew that Chen Chu had already broken into the primordial level and was now advancing toward the realm of Primordial Sovereign.

***

While he remained in seclusion, decades passed in the blink of an eye.

Although Chen Chu had been in seclusion for three years, the bustling Chaotic Imperial City hardly changed. For cultivators who were already at the mythical level or above, three years was nothing but a single trip abroad or a short meditative retreat to recover.

Thus the city’s cultivators did not mind, nor did the burly golden-bearded man who had waited for so long. Even the peak-civilization powerhouses behind it watched quietly, waiting for the moment to launch a thunderous, crushing strike.

As everything ran in perfect order, the cultivators of the Human Federation who had journeyed years earlier to the Flamewheel Divine Region all made considerable gains over the three years.

Among the heavenly kings, the already peak Heavenly King Xuanwu, Heavenly King Jiuyou, and the so-called strongest, Yan Kuang, all broke through to the ancient god level after absorbing the essence of cultivation in the divine region.

The Primordial King, as well as the Celestial King, who had been at the middle stage of the ancient titan level, both advanced to the late stage.

However, the greatest leap belonged to Zhenwu. As it roamed the Xuanhuang Province, its strength surged past the rest through good fortune and reached the peak of the ancient titan level.

As for the one with the "deepest" ties to Chen Chu among them, Yan Ruoyi had followed Shi Feitong into the outer heavens three years ago and successfully condensed the Chaotic Supreme Dragon King Body.

Her strength had grown fearsome after cycling chaotic force and absorbing its embedded principle particles. Since she was now a chaotic lifeform, her cultivation system differed from that of the mythical world. Judged purely by power, she stood roughly at the beginning stage of the ancient titan level. She was no weaker than her father, Heavenly King Xuanwu.

This both gratified and baffled Heavenly King Xuanwu.

Yet measured against one other person, everyone else paled into insignificance.

The linked territory between the Blue Planet's world and the mythical world in the Human Federation’s Sun Divine Region had expanded a thousandfold over three years. One human city after another, where civilization’s technology and the transcendent interwove, stood between heaven and earth.

A golden palace complex stretched for tens of thousands of kilometers above Logistics City at the former Passage One, floating ten thousand kilometers in the sky.

A burly youth in golden battle armor, ten meters tall, sat upon the throne within the most majestic divine palace of the complex. A domineering, searing aura radiated from him, and invisible golden light streamed outward, piercing the divine palace and the heavens to blanket all human-held lands.

The formless pressure made every mythical king, every heavenly king, the Heavenly Feathered Race’s chief gods, and the Faerie Lords throughout the territory look up in shock.

Two unfamiliar races had already joined the Human Alliance, with a combined strength no less than that of the Heavenly Feathered Race and Fairies. Everyone gazed at the divine palace high above the heavens, shaken to the core. Some even cried out in disbelief.

"P-Peak of the true spirit level!"

"How is that possible? The Eternal Divine King’s cultivation rose again!"

"Right. Did he not just break through to the late stage of the true spirit level last month? How could he have advanced again already?"

"Terrifying. No wonder he’s that one’s younger brother. His monstrous talent is not inferior at all."

"Yes. When that one left back then, he seemed to have just broken through as well... Huh, what realm was the Divine Might King at when he left?"

"Uh... Now that you mention it, I realize I don't remember either."

"We only knew he was strong. Very strong. One of the human race’s peak powerhouses at the time."

Chen Hu, seated high upon the throne of the divine palace, seemed like a king among kings, and every powerhouse gazed up in awe. As the human elites grew fervent and the alien elites felt cowed, space within the golden divine palace silently fractured, opening a pitch-black hole into the deep void.

A somewhat grim figure stood within that depth, emanating a pressure greater than true spirits.

A raspy voice, tinged with a namelessly terrifying aura, penetrated the void and slowly rang out within the golden divine palace. "Your cultivation surged again out of nowhere?"

Chen Hu nodded slowly, his voice deep and commanding. "Mhmm. It rose again, and this was the fifth time in the past few years."

The rasp came again from the depths of the void, its tone carrying a solemn weight. "Fate never feeds back without cause. Every boon comes with a paid price. A strength that rises suddenly without a source may not be a good sign. For instance, did that ancient elder, the source of your inherited power, not completely perish?"

Qian Tian’s words made Chen Hu pause for a heartbeat. Then he shook his head with certainty. "It should not be that. My divine abilities gave me no ominous foreboding. Besides, I more or less know where this power came from."

"From where?"

"My brother. Back when the second mythical surge erupted, my strength spiked once when my brother held up the heavens. Although the feeling then was far weaker than in recent times, it should be the same thing."