Chapter 1620: Ancestral God Fate Reveals the Human Heart, Soul on the Punishment Pillar Loses Arrogant Bone

"No!!!"

Ultimately, the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree exhausted all her means but still couldn't break free from the Buddha's suppression. All she could do was add a touch of confusion, a hint of terror, and a sliver of self-doubt to her unwilling roar.

The Buddha of Resentment...

This was an utterly unfamiliar Buddha title. Indeed, the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree had devoured many Half-Saints and knew of the "Ten Revered Ones," even the line from their song: "If the Buddha bears resentment, the hells shall overflow."

But this person's Dao...

No, let alone his Dao. Even this person's existence on the Sacred God Continent was like a meteor streaking across the sky, swiftly passing away. The only legends he left behind were of the battle of the Ten Revered Ones. Who he fought specifically was no longer remembered by the world, and he subsequently vanished completely from the human realm.

The Primordial Infant Sacred Tree had never imagined that such a person, who had died young, would leave behind such terrifying Saint Emperor-level power for Dao Qiongcang. That Buddha's image surpassed this world, surpassed everything. His Great Dao, from its very conceptual level, crushed almost all beings originating from the Sacred God Continent, except for the Ten Ancestors.

The Ten Ancestors...

Right, it wasn't that his Dao could rival the Ten Ancestors. It was the Dao of the Ten Ancestors that could only be mentioned in the same breath as his!

Such a remarkably talented individual could cultivate to the Saint Emperor realm in two or three decades, and was a Saint Emperor who could suppress her with merely residual power. If he had another two or three decades, what would prevent him from adding another to the Ten Ancestors, or even reaching a higher level?

But why...

You are so unknown!

The Primordial Infant Sacred Tree hated this person's anonymity, to the point where she had previously dismissed the words "Resentment" with utter disdain. If only she had known this earlier, when she was pulling people through the Plaque of the God of Fate's Temple, she would never have made this seemingly powerless "Strategist" her first choice.

There was no turning back; she had hit a dead end. Chaotic and complex thoughts, along with a lifetime of memories flashing before her eyes, surged forth simultaneously, blurring her Saintly Sense and her very self.

"Pain!!"

The Primordial Infant Sacred Tree was in immense pain. She could no longer see anything. She felt her head splitting, her body tearing apart, and even her soul and consciousness fracturing. It was as if she was in the chaotic primordial embrace at the birth of heaven and earth, and in a daze, the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree saw her own genesis once more.

She finally fell silent: "Will I undergo another reincarnation...?"

The sword suppressed the Primordial Infant. A golden torrent purified the wicked tendrils. It surged forth along the branches covering the ground and walls, and instantly spread throughout the entire God of Fate's Temple. Such majestic power surged outwards, yet when it reached the spiderwebs, dust, and stones in the corners of the temple, it passed like a spring breeze, harming nothing.

Tiny spiders, hidden in the shadows and protected by the temple's power, innocently looked up in the golden ocean, then continued diligently spinning their webs... A dark snake, its belly full from recently devouring a mouse, was brushed by the Buddha's aura; its long body shuddered, and then, as if nothing had happened, it flicked its tongue and slithered back into a damp hole in the temple corner... Black-scaled insects lingering at the edge of the battlefield remained unharmed... Eyeless birds perched on the temple's rafters remained undisturbed...

The majestic Vow Power of the Buddha of Resentment annihilated all forms of evil, yet the tiny lives within this temple, insignificant to Innate and Grandmaster cultivators, were able to protect themselves.

In front of the Wrathful Immortal Buddha Sword, the golden light receded, revealing Dao Qiongcang's unperturbed face. It was as if striking down a pseudo-Ancestor God with one sword was a trivial matter that could be done effortlessly. And indeed, it was so. The Primordial Infant Sacred Tree was fundamentally not skilled in the Dao of combat. Her original purpose of birth was merely to protect this world; the Primordial Infant's Dao formation was inherently different from that of blood trees, agave, and similar entities.

After discarding her fear of the unknown, when the opponent's figure emerged from the shadows, and when the root of the "abnormalities" became clear... In Dao Qiongcang's eyes, this Ancestral Tree's combat power was actually only average, perhaps slightly above. Even if she had obtained the Ancestor God's Karmic Fate, let alone the power of the Buddha of Resentment at his peak, she likely couldn't withstand even a few rounds against the likes of the current dilapidated and restricted Eight Revered Ones, Kuilei Han, and others.

The higher one cultivated the Dao, the more pronounced the polarization became. Non-combatants tried to compensate for their shortcomings in combat through various other means, but inherently, they were far inferior to those born for combat and their flashes of inspiration during battle.

Dao Qiongcang sighed with emotion. In fact, he didn't consider himself a pure combatant, but rather someone who embraced diverse knowledge, was skilled at using his intellect, and enjoyed leveraging strengths to compensate for weaknesses. These sword techniques, these powers, though seemingly formidable, were all imitated and borrowed. Before their true owners, they were worthless.

But non-combatants also had their own Dao. The Primordial Infant Sacred Tree had gone wrong from the very beginning; her Dao should have simply been the culmination of the Primordial Infant, a unique gift from heaven. She shouldn't have been insatiably greedy and acted against heaven's will.

As for Dao Qiongcang... The Heavenly Secret Art was the straightest path to becoming a God or an Ancestor. No matter how brilliant ancient sword techniques were, or how powerful the Second Generation's Thorough God's Vow Power was, none could waver his original intent.

"Learn from it to control it, not to be controlled by it."

The Primordial Infant Sacred Tree was a cautionary tale, and naturally, there would be more who would lose their original intent in the future. Thinking of this, he let out a chuckle, and Dao Qiongcang no longer pondered. He simply stepped forward, grasped the Buddha sword, and after the purification was complete, pulled it out with force, then paused and sighed: "They should be here now, shouldn't they?"

*Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!*

Space, Dao Arts, and even the entire God of Fate's Temple suddenly burst and quaked as the Wrathful Immortal Buddha Sword was pulled out. High walls crumbled everywhere, and sections of the ground collapsed. In the corners of the deep temple, amidst rumbling roars, eerie shrieks echoed: "Ugh ahhh..."

The shrieking sounds started faint and gradually grew louder, expanding layer by layer, and instantly affected the entire God of Fate's Temple.

"Snap."

A tiny spider spinning its web on a spiderweb suddenly swelled in size, growing from fingernail-sized to human height, and immediately dropped to the ground. Its abdomen swelled, its spider legs grew larger, and its entire body "expanded" uncontrollably. Suddenly, with several cracking sounds, the human-sized spider burst apart, and thousands of tiny spiders burst forth from its abdomen and legs, swarming outwards in a dense mass.

"Crack crack crack crack crack..."

Those thousands of tiny spiders swelled as they moved, their bodies increasingly expanding, seemingly inheriting their mother's fate as each developed a large, pregnant belly. The pregnant bellies burst open, each splitting into a thousand, then thousands upon millions. Spiders bore spiders, spiders crushed spiders, spiders ate spiders; spider legs, spider mouths, spiders devoured spider marrow... Looking around, there were only spiders!

The vast and boundless Giant Passage of the God of Fate's Temple, in just a blink of an eye, was completely blocked by mountains of spiders. And this was merely the tip of the iceberg of the strange occurrences within the God of Fate's Temple.

Turning to look right... Dense masses of shadowy-scaled venomous snakes were squashed into piles. Snake eggs, snake corpses, snake offspring, and snake mothers were crammed together into mountains of snakes, looking like giant earthworms pulled from a drained lake and piled up, twisted and coiled, a truly sickening sight.

Looking up... Eyeless birds, which had lost their sight in the darkness, jostled each other on the rafters and then fell with thuds. After being startled upon landing, the giant bird mothers first shattered, countless bird eggs cracked open, and new chicks rapidly grew, then pressed against each other. Some mutated to be wingless, some featherless, and some even mutated from eyeless to being covered in eyes... The greatness of life was interpreted to its fullest extent at this moment.

"What a mess!"

Dao Qiongcang's Saintly Sense swept across the scene. Even though he was considered half a "life researcher," witnessing this scene still made his hair stand on end, and he felt his trypophobia kicking in. In a word: utter chaos! More chaotic and unsettling than Bei Huai's hometown!

After the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree was suppressed and killed by the Wrathful Immortal Buddha Sword... In fact, how could an Ancestral Tree, nearly an Ancestor God, fall so easily? After losing the constraints of her physical body, and with her soul and consciousness also spiraling out of control due to the purification of the Wrathful Immortal Buddha Sword and Vow Power. Her "fall" was actually a return to the Great Dao, originally still under control, but with mutated "Super-Daoized Life Attributes"—a process of Daoization!

When a whale falls, all things grow. The disappearance of the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree brought about a mutation in the life rules of the God of Fate's Temple, and everything began to "multiply" uncontrollably.

Even Dao Qiongcang... Being amidst it, he also needed to continuously sever fallen Dao Infants and control his consciousness to remain unaffected by such strangeness. The slightest oversight, and he might instantly split from "one Dao Qiongcang" into "ten thousand Dao Qiongcangs."

Snakes, rats, and insects were in a chaotic mess. Dao Qiongcang cast Great Purification Art and Great Protection Art on himself while still waiting! He looked around, his expression alert. It could be said that even when he was carried into the God of Fate's Temple by the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree earlier, he had never been as nervous as he was now.

"Buzz—"

Amidst the scene of chaos, suddenly, in the void, a dazzling light lotus bloomed, seemingly rising from the mud. The petals of the lotus light peeled back layer by layer, revealing a head-sized, dazzling, iridescent crystal gem within.

"Beep!"

"Unknown object detected. Decoding..."

"Decoding successful: Ancestor God's Karmic Fate."

It's here!

In that instant, Dao Qiongcang's eyes burst with light. Having waited for so long, having dealt with the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree in the quickest way possible, and even having provoked the Ancestral Tree before the battle to make it desperately hold the passage of the God of Fate's Temple, preventing Xu Xiaoshou, Yue Gongli, and others from entering—what was the purpose? Wasn't it precisely this "Ancestor God's Karmic Fate" before him?

To be honest, Dao Qiongcang's desire for the Ancestor God's Karmic Fate wasn't that strong; he adopted a "if it's there, it's there; if not, so be it" mentality. But that was outside the Divine Remains! If weighing between life and death and the Great Dao, Dao Qiongcang would certainly choose the former, because the Dao cannot be achieved in a single stroke; one must live to complete its cultivation. But now he was already in the game.

As the saying goes, "If you don't enter the tiger's den, how can you catch its cub?" Since this Ancestor God's Karmic Fate was destined to fall into the hands of trees or people, why couldn't he take it? Even if he didn't want to use it himself, merely studying its power, learning from it, and mastering it, wouldn't that also be good? Wouldn't it also offer a chance to counterbalance the Ancestor God's power in the present moment?

"Come!"

Dao Qiongcang reached out with a beckoning gesture. His Saintly power remotely enveloped the accompanying light lotus, the magnificent Ancestor God's Karmic Fate, about to draw it in. Just then.

"Buzz..."

His mind reeled with dizziness. At the far end of the God of Fate's Temple, starlight seemed to surge, and at the very edge of his Saintly Sense's reach, a hazy figure appeared. Dao Qiongcang didn't even have time to fully perceive the figure's appearance.

"Agh!"

Blood and tears streamed from his eyes, his eyeballs burst directly, and his head, too, disintegrated into eight pieces like an exploded watermelon. At the same time, space surged, and two loud shouts, overlapping, came from behind him: "Dao Nitian, are you okay?"

"Oh my Dao, this door was so difficult to open that I'm late. Are you still alive? You won't blame me, will you?"

Dao Qiongcang was about to take the Ancestor God's Karmic Fate, but hearing the voices, his legs straightened, his body tilted backward, and he fell stiffly amidst the mountains of snakes and spiders.

Do not disturb in death.

"What is this?"

"Where did these spiders come from? The God of Fate's Temple doesn't have this many spiders!"

"Holy crap, snakes! And so many snake eggs? Ugh!"

"Chickens! Oh, wait, birds?"

"Dao, my Dao, where are you? Ah! Why are you being... possessed by spiders?"

Xu Xiaoshou and his group successively stormed into the God of Fate's Temple, creating a commotion as if two aunties had just entered a bustling wet market. It must be mentioned that after the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree seized control of the God of Fate's Temple, its defensive capabilities were truly Ancestor God-level. No matter how much they bombarded it from outside just now, the plaque wouldn't break, and the passage wouldn't open.

But in less than a quarter of an hour... Suddenly, the God of Fate's Temple seemed to have had a change of heart and genuinely opened the passage.

The adventurous Yue Gongli, who charged ahead, after being kicked in, was immediately startled by the mountains of spiders, snake eggs, birds, and other bizarre entities. In his impression, after the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree's sneak attack, the God of Fate's Temple shouldn't have had so many living creatures! No, even without that sneak attack, it was absolutely impossible for there to be such a dense concentration of disgusting creatures here. Not to mention their grotesque appearances, their reproductive capabilities were more exaggerated than mountain floods or tsunamis, with one wave surpassing the next, and they were still reproducing!

"Life profundities..."

Xu Xiaoshou glanced around and immediately felt that the life rules here were somewhat similar to those in the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree's nascent Divine Court at that time. But they were more out of control, more nonsensical! His stomach swelled, and he hurriedly aborted. Everyone's stomachs swelled, and they followed suit, aborting. Each of them furiously aborted while searching for the original warrior, Dao Qiongcang, and finally, amidst the broken bodily fluids accumulated from the snakes and insects, they found their friend with a shattered head.

In an instant, everyone fell silent.

"Dao Qiongcang, was he killed by the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree?"

Their thoughts couldn't keep up with the strangeness, and before they could ponder further, Old Sang had already pointed to the light not far away and let out an exclamation: "Ancestor God's Karmic Fate!"

Xu Xiaoshou turned his gaze, without fear, but instead, an inexplicable shiver ran through his heart: The Ancestor God's Karmic Fate was on the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree... it could only manifest at the end of her rope... Dao Qiongcang was struck down by Ancestor God-level power... But what was out of control here wasn't the Heavenly Secret Dao Principles but the life rules... That must mean the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree was killed in such a short time... But why was Dao Qiongcang's head burst without a sound...

"Evil God of Malevolence!"

In a flash of lightning, Xu Xiaoshou could only think of one possibility: Dao Qiongcang had exchanged blows with the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree, but an old, cunning Evil God of Malevolence was still ambushing them here.

"Don't go over there!"

With a raised gaze, several streaks of Saintly light were already darting towards the Ancestor God's Karmic Fate, incredibly greedy. Xu Xiaoshou felt a chill run down his spine, and without thinking, he deployed the Spatial Dao Disk beneath his feet, its shimmering light enveloping the four guided individuals: Sang, Shui, Cen, and Bai.

"Teleport!"

Behind them, Yue Gongli, who had already cowered and retreated to the teleportation passage entrance with half a foot already out of the God of Fate's Temple, suddenly felt a spatial anomaly. After a blur before his eyes, he found that before him was no longer the path home, but a dazzling Ancestor God's Karmic Fate. At that moment, Yue Gongli swore he was first stunned.

"So beautiful..."

The next instant, his Saintly Sense detected a streak of light, and the fox's head exploded into minced meat. At the same time, Xu Xiaoshou, who had used spatial displacement to swap a wave of life and death, let out a roar filled with urgency and anxiety: "Let's go home!"

He enveloped the four people and was about to leave the God of Fate's Temple through the spatial passage. Before he could move, he suddenly felt his foot grabbed. When he looked down, he could only suppress the urge to kick that person to pieces. Because the one grabbing him was none other than Dao Qiongcang, whose head had exploded into watermelon slices: "Going home? You might as well pack me up too!"

Xu Xiaoshou hooked his foot, clamping Dao Qiongcang's headless corpse with his knee, too rushed to ponder why a corpse could still speak, and was about to leave...

"Damn you, Xu Xiaoshou, what about me?"

"Isn't my life a life too!"

A wisp of soul floated out from Yue Gongli's headless corpse, and in its resentment, it used its soul power to grab the Ancestor God's Karmic Fate and flung it towards the spatial passage. Cen Qiaofu was being carried upside down on Xu Xiaoshou's back, and watched helplessly as the brilliant stream of light flew towards them, his mind blurred, and he showed a look of infatuation: "Oh, what a treasure this is."

He cupped the Ancestor God's Karmic Fate. His head also exploded into a bloody mess.

"Buzz!"

Spatial teleportation.

After landing, the familiar environment didn't appear, nor did the plaque of the God of Fate's Temple come into view. Just like when they were in the First Heaven, and the spatial teleportation had taken them into the Primordial Infant Sacred Tree's nascent Divine Court. This time, Xu Xiaoshou also arrived in an unfamiliar world, a Star River World.

He had Old Sang tucked under his left arm, Water Ghost at his right waist, White Helm on his shoulder, a headless Qiaofu on his back, a headless Qiongcang clamped between his knees, and the soul body of Yue Gongli trailing behind him... As soon as they entered this world, black holes were everywhere, with scattered stars twinkling, adding a touch of embellishment. The first thing that caught their eye was actually a majestic Star River Altar.

Behind the altar stood a blurred gigantic figure, dressed in a star-gold gilded robe, wearing a tassel-adorned crown, calmly raising his head, solemn and sacred. He casually raised his left palm, with three enormous God-Slaying Orders floating above his palm, his right hand pressing down, wielding the illusory and filling the real. Under his gaze.

In the distance of the Star River World, there was also a vast execution ground, and in the center of the execution ground stood a hot-gold execution pillar reaching up into the unknown. On the execution pillar, a struggling, desperately pleading soul body was bound, showing only humility in its words, with no dignity: "...Have mercy on me, I beg you, Lord True God of Malevolence, spare this humble one, please don't punish me anymore! As long as you release me, I, Feng Yujin, swear to be your ox and horse for life! That Xu Xiaoshou, I'll help you kill him. That Dao Qiongcang, I'll bring his head to you as an offering... I am willing to betray the entire Sacred God Continent for you! You should know, ah, regarding the words 'Malevolence'... I! Fengtian Saint Emperor! Am the most loyal, ah!"

*Gasp*, suddenly, his voice choked. That soul body, desperately kowtowing and pleading to the giant altar, utterly devoid of pride or backbone, sensed something and turned its head to look...

Wow, so many people.