Chapter 1348: 祭

Chapter 1353: The Sacrifice! (Fourth Update)

I am fighting!My personal guards are also fighting!But exhausted to their limits, they are powerless.

Old Luo's blade only grazed a corner of the Sky-Rending Emperor's arm guard. The next second, a gigantic claw, covered in dark, eerie carapaces and wreathed in space-tearing energy, pierced through his chest as if teleporting, extracted his heart, and swallowed it whole.

Among the guards, a female archer let out a mournful cry like a cuckoo's lament. Her arrow pierced one of the Lava Giant's molten eyes, but another myriad-race powerhouse's eerie shadow blade instantly severed both her arms.

She staggered, spitting blood, yet suddenly looked up in my direction, her eyes reflecting ultimate resolve.

Then, biting down hard on her tongue, she sprayed a stream of vital blood onto her broken bow. The bow hummed, transforming into a burning blood-arrow that shot towards another myriad-race powerhouse besieging me with incredible speed, exploding violently on its back!

She herself was instantly engulfed by several beams of light, turning to ashes...

Every fallen figure was like a searing brand, scorching my soul.

I fought frantically!Exhausting all I had!Killing one myriad-race powerhouse after another!

Purple flames raged across the battlefield, and sword energy rent the sky.Corpses piled up on this Peerless Plain, growing ever more numerous as all my personal guards fell.

But the wounds on my body were also rapidly increasing.Burning lava had almost seared through my bones, the Sky-Rending Insectoid's space-tearing blade left wounds on my back so deep the bone was visible, and strange myriad-race spells, like maggots on bone, relentlessly eroded my life force.

Blood soaked my tattered robes, and my vision was blurred by the flowing gore.My cultivation, like rootless water, rapidly dissipated.Each breath brought a burning pain from my shattered internal organs.

I killed many, but there were even more enemies.Endless...

Gradually, my consciousness began to plunge into boundless darkness.But just as the world plunged into complete blackness!

A vast, complex will, filled with boundless sorrow and determination, surged like an invisible tsunami from all directions, slamming into my sea of consciousness!This was not an attack, but a... resonance!A final cry from countless dying souls across the entire Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom!

At that moment, my vision expanded and soared infinitely!It was as if my soul had escaped its dying body, gazing down upon this ravaged land.

I saw, within the great Violet-Azure Domain, once-glorious cities now reduced to towering flames and billowing black smoke!Countless tiny figures struggled and fell within the flames, their desperate cries seemingly in my very ears.

I saw, in Feng Hai Prefecture, a gigantic myriad-race totem hovering above the prefectural city, emanating an aura of destruction.The city walls had long since collapsed, and the city itself was in ruins. At the center of those ruins, I saw my disciple, Bai Xiaozhuo.

He was drenched in blood, his left arm severed at the shoulder. His sole remaining right hand held high a shattered prefectural seal!Around him were countless surviving civilians!Men, women, old, and young, their clothes ragged, their faces gaunt. There were no tears in their eyes, only a nearly numb, yet incredibly pure, resolve!

I saw, in the western border town, the last few remaining soldiers closing their eyes.I saw, on the northern ice plains, a frozen scout team dying.

Each of these scenes became an indescribable agony and sorrow, like countless steel needles piercing my soul instantly!More violent than any attack from the myriad-race powerhouses!My kingdom... my people!

Boundless grief, at this moment, forged a determination that transcended life and death!Like the hardest profound ice, it froze all pain, all despair!

I abruptly looked up!My blood-streaked gaze pierced through the ferocious faces of the myriad-race powerhouses before me, through the desolate outline of the Peerless Plain, through the layered mountains of Southern Phoenix Continent, and directly towards the nine heavens above, towards that indifferently suspended, seemingly eternal—gigantic sundered face!

It remained incomplete, cold, and silent.Like a cold mask, mostly torn away, affixed to the boundless firmament.Its very existence was the greatest mockery of all human joys and sorrows, life and death struggles.

Yet now, this eternal bystander, this indifferent embodiment of rules... might be the only force capable of breaking this deadlock!The last citizens of the Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom were dying.And I, Zi Qing, this exiled, incapable so-called Crown Prince, what I could do now was...

“I... Zi Qing!”My voice was hoarse and broken, yet it carried an earth-shaking power, overriding all the sounds of battle and roaring in the Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom.

“In the name of the Crown Prince of the Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom!”I spread my arms wide, my tattered robes flapping wildly in the fierce wind. All the wounds on my body burst open simultaneously, and blood gushed out like fountains. Yet, strangely, it did not fall; instead, it transformed into burning, crimson light, coiling around me!

“I sacrifice my broken body! Burn my life soul! Ignite my Dao foundation! Burn all I possess! Burn my past, my future... all my karma!”Every word uttered was accompanied by the most complete burning of my life's essence!My flesh and blood melted away, my bones groaned under immense strain, and my soul felt as if it had been cast into an eternal furnace. My recently recovered cultivation, along with the very foundation of my existence, all transformed at this moment into the purest, most ardent essence!

“Invoke your power! Cleanse this defilement! Incinerate this chaotic era! Protect the last lingering embers of my Violet-Azure Kingdom!”“Should there be a next life!”“When I awaken, I shall offer all that I have witnessed!”

Boom!!An indescribable column of purple-gold light, purer and more condensed than the burning flow of the Violet-Azure Kingdom's fate, infused with the aura of a Human Emperor and towering resentment, erupted from that burning, ruined body!It tore through the bloody night veil covering the Peerless Plain, tearing apart the blockade jointly set up by the myriad-race powerhouses!

Carrying a resolute will to perish together, to embrace death and find life, it surged like a reverse purple galaxy, piercing through endless void, slamming violently into the sundered face in the sky!

At the same time, in Feng Hai Prefecture.Bai Xiaozhuo seemed to sense it, tears streaming down his face as he looked towards Southern Phoenix Continent. He then laughed madly, mutilating himself until he wept blood, leaving only half his face, matching the sundered face.Then he cried out.

“Born on this land! Died on this land! My soul shall also guard this land! I follow the Crown Prince into the beyond, and shall awaken a thousand years before him to protect his path.”“Sacrifice!”

With his sacrifice, the surrounding civilians of Feng Hai Prefecture, supporting each other, formed a massive human circle around their prefect.The old, the women, the children... they lifted their heads, gazing at the sundered face eternally suspended in the sky, indifferently overlooking the human tragedy!

Then, their expressions all turned frenzied, and they all spoke!“Sacrifice!”Countless voices converged into a torrent that rent the heavens and earth!

Old, women, children... all the surviving civilians of Feng Hai Prefecture, regardless of age or strength, simultaneously performed the same action... self-mutilating, mimicking the sundered face!There was no hesitation, no retreat, only a world-shattering resolve to embrace death and find life!

In an instant, countless faint yet incredibly pure specks of life-light, like upstream sparks, peeled away from each self-mutilated figure!Dot by dot, they gathered into a river, then surged into a sea!A current of life-light, formed from the final will of countless residual souls of the Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom's people, resolute and silent yet bearing a mournful cry that would burn all, ascended into the sky... with their Crown Prince!Piercing straight through the firmament!

At the same time, in the western border town of the Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom, the last few remaining soldiers lit the beacon towers. Amidst the soaring flames, facing the sundered face in the sky, they mutilated themselves until they wept blood, their figures distorting in the intense heat, turning into specks of light...

On the northern ice plains of the Violet-Azure Kingdom, the frozen scout team used their last strength to plunge their blood-stained battle flag deep into the frozen earth. Facing the direction of their homeland, facing the sundered face in the sky, they collectively mutilated themselves, their crimson glows merging into the soul-tide that swept across the heavens and earth...

Across the entire Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom, in countless places, countless corners, and countless scattered, desperate, yet incredibly magnificent life-or-death battles, innumerable faint wills.All, at this very moment, unanimously chose the same path!Offering themselves as sacrifice! Using their residual souls as guides! Presenting the Violet-Azure Upper Kingdom's last remnants to the sundered face, suspended above countless ages, indifferently looking down upon all beings!

Soaring into the sky!Like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, they traversed endless spatial barriers, instantly converging and intertwining with the purple-gold light column emitted by their Crown Prince!To sacrifice... together with their Crown Prince!Seeking only... that Violet-Azure's future might re-emerge into the Age of Antiquity!

Time, at this moment, seemed to come to a complete halt.The battle on the Peerless Plain froze.The cruel expressions on the faces of the myriad-race powerhouses stiffened, replaced by astonishment and a primal fear born from the depths of their being!

The entire world was left with only the purple-gold light surging upwards, countless souls from all directions accompanying the sacrifice, and then... above the firmament, that eternally cold sundered face.Then...

At that instant, the eternally unchanging, cold sundered face slowly opened its eyes.Within, a crimson vortex burned with endless cold and chaotic fire!Like a sun of utter annihilation!

An indescribable pressure, surpassing the limits of mortal comprehension, descended abruptly, as if the very laws of the entire star-ring had condensed into a single gaze!This gaze was cold, indifferent, bearing an absolute will that scrutinized eons and pierced through all illusions.

Then, this gaze focused!Staring at... the source of the purple-gold light column.Staring at... me, rapidly dissipating within the light column.

The instant that crimson gaze descended, my body, like snow cast into the scorching sun, turned to dispersing purple dust, starting from my fingertips and dissolving inch by inch.My flesh, bones, divine soul... everything that constituted the being "Zi Qing" was utterly decomposed and transformed into pure essence under the gaze of the sundered face.

I felt no pain.Only a cold sense of nothingness.As if my consciousness was also drifting away.

In the final moment before complete dissipation, beneath the cold gaze of that crimson vortex, I heard a deep voice.“Granted.”

The instant this voice echoed, an indescribable, terrifying aura, like the dawn of the universe, erupted across the entire Peerless Plain like an invisible world-ending tsunami!Shattering all!

Time seemed stretched into eternity.My consciousness, amidst this final, all-encompassing chaotic storm, like the last spark of a dying candle in the wind, completely... dissipated.

Only that torrent, piercing through heaven and earth, ignited by the final will of billions of residual souls, continued to burn, surge, and be annihilated within the crimson vortex of the sundered face's open eye...Like a silent funeral dirge... born of death.

In the 9315th year of the Zi Qing Calendar, autumn, the Crown Prince fell in Southern Continent.The Crown Prince's disciple, Bai Xiaozhuo, the last prefect of Feng Hai Prefecture, let out a mournful, wretched laugh, mutilated himself until he wept blood, leaving only half his face, matching the divine sundered face.Before his death, he had said:“I follow the Crown Prince into the beyond, and shall awaken a thousand years before him to protect his path.”