Chapter 857: One Axe to Split the Heavens
…
Upper Realm, Lingxiao Palace.
"Crack."
It was an unusually crisp sound of shattering.
In the silent hall, dead quiet as a tomb, that sound detonated like thunder, striking every immortal official's ears.
All the immortals turned toward the sound.
There, suspended over the center of the hall—the Myriad Realms Thunder Pool Mirror used to observe and judge heavenly thunder punishnts—now a shocking fissure split it clean down the middle.
And beneath that fissure.
The decree plaque of the Thunder Ministry’s lord, the Nine Heavens’ Responding Origin Thunder Voice Universal Purifying Venerable One—
was broken.
"The Venerable One… has fallen?!"
An immortal official's voice trembled, shattering the suffocating silence.
Then ca a chorus of sharp intakes of breath.
The Thunder Ministry Venerable One was the supre executor of heavenly slaughter, a top-tier power with sky-reaching cultivation!
Even a single will-projection of his could subdue all foes in the mortal realm.
But now.
He was dead.
His true body had been killed by a mortal from the Lower Realm.
No bones remained; his form and spirit were utterly obliterated.
This was simply incomprehensible.
No matter how refined a mortal's cultivation, how could they harm an immortal of the Upper Realm?
No matter how exquisite a mortal weapon, how could it shatter an immortal's true spirit?
A shattered true spirit does not enter reincarnation.
Universal Purifying Venerable One was completely gone.
Only the birth of a new Thunder Purifying Immortal Venerable could soday take his place.
"Silence."
Behind the beaded curtain, the Haotian Emperor's voice remained calm, yet carried a chill that made all the immortals tremble.
He rose slowly, stepped forward, and the pearl curtain that hid his imperial face parted on its own.
Haotian Emperor stood before the broken Thunder Pool Mirror.
His gaze pierced the mirror’s crack, cut through the roiling tribulation clouds, and landed on that half-demon half-immortal bloodstained man from the Lower Realm, clutching a rusted axe.
"Interesting."
In Haotian Emperor's eyes, it was as if suns and moons flickered into being and died.
"Half-demon, half-immortal, bearing the Ancestral Dragon’s aura."
"This youth… could he be the remnant left behind by that old loach?"
At those words, every immortal in the hall changed expression drastically.
Ancestral Dragon.
The Human Emperor who once tried to mobilize a nation against the heavens and sever the gods' offerings.
Even after death he beca a Dragon Soul that never ceased opposing them, the greatest taboo the Celestial Court had endured for ten thousand years.
"No."
At that mont, an elderly immortal with white hair and a whisk broom frowned and said, "Your Majesty, if he were an Ancestral Dragon heir, he would be bound by ten-thousand-year karmic cycles. But this youth…"
The old immortal's eyes flashed as he scrutinized Chen Huaian closely.
"He is very clean."
"Little gray gas, no karmic ties."
"He seems like an… anomalous ergence, not of this world's five phases, not bound to the six paths of reincarnation."
Haotian Emperor was silent.
An Ancestral Dragon heir not entangled in causality?
How could that be?
Unless… this entire board had been overturned from the start by so unknown force.
"No matter who he is."
Haotian Emperor's gaze suddenly turned ice-cold, and in that instant the entire Lingxiao Hall chilled to freezing.
"If he wishes to cleave the heavens."
"Then I shall show him how high... this sky truly is."
"All of you, hear the order."
Haotian Emperor raised his hand. In his palm, a seal exuding chaotic primordial aura—the Heavenly Emperor Seal—slowly floated into being.
"Mobilize the thirty-three heavens’ primordial sources, bless the thunder tribulation."
"No matter the cost."
"Crush him for ."
…
Lower Realm, summit of the floating peak.
The sky changed again.
The clouds Chen Huaian had blasted open with a single punch now began closing faster, more frenzied, more desperate than before.
This ti it was not purple lightning, nor black Yin Thunder.
It was a lightning never seen before—a gray thunder.
It carried an aura of deathly silence, rot, decay.
It had no sound, no light, like the last sigh when the world's lifespan reaches its end.
—The Five Great Elents’ Extinction Divine Thunder.
This was annihilation by the Heavenly Dao.
It was the world-ending strike the Lingxiao Hall had forced, combining the thirty-three heavens’ primordial sources.
"Rumble—!!!"
The tribulation clouds contracted and finally condensed into a gray, vast Thunder Eye spanning tens of thousands of miles.
There was no emotion in that eye.
Only a sliver of Haotian Emperor’s personal, supre will had descended—enough to crush everything.
"Kneel."
Two words.
Pressed down from the vault of heaven.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The space around the floating peak collapsed instantly, the ground sinking a hundred zhang.
Chen Huaian's body slamd down; his kneecaps cried out under the unbearable weight.
The oppressive force was overwhelming, enough to make his newly reforged half-demon half-immortal body tremble and begin cracking.
But he gritted his teeth and did not kneel.
He braced the axe handle on the ground like a nail, pinning himself to the ruin.
"Is this… your limit?"
Chen Huaian lifted his head.
On that blood-streaked face there was no fear—only a heart-stopping madness.
"Co on!!"
"Let see what tricks you old dogs hiding in the sky can still pull!!"
Boom!
As if enraged, the gray Thunder Eye unleashed a gray bolt without warning.
Sizzle—sizzle—
That bolt did not simply strike; like a colossal gray python, it coiled tightly around Chen Huaian.
It corroded him.
It dissolved.
Under that gray thunder, the golden dragon markings on his skin quickly dimd; the true-immortal body he had just ford began to lt like wax.
Flesh dissolved, exposing stark white bone.
Pain.
A pain that pierced the soul.
Yet Chen Huaian laughed.
"Heh… hahaha…"
"Good… good stuff…"
He didn't resist. Instead, he opened a mouth already bared to the gums and bit down hard on the gray thunderbolt!
Heavenly Demon Art refines and consus the world.
Whatever it is—first let it into the mouth and taste it!
Madness.
That was the only thought in the minds of the immortals and gods who witnessed the scene.
He was eating the tribulation!
He treated the Haotian Emperor’s world-ending thunder as the final fuel to temper his flesh!
"Let it… refine !!!"
Chen Huaian roared. The indomitable will of the Ancestral Dragon inside him fused perfectly with the Heavenly Demon Art's ravenous ferocity.
The gray thunder ravaged inside him, destroying everything, yet in the next instant was forcibly reorganized by that domineering life force.
Break to rebuild.
Fall to rise.
Every destruction beca the seed of a stronger rebirth.
Gradually.
The once-dim golden dragon patterns began to transform.
Within that gold, a streak of destruction-colored gray slowly stained.
He was assimilating the Heavenly Dao.
He was converting the sky's power into his own.
…
Lingxiao Hall.
Haotian Emperor's expression finally changed.
"This youth… cannot be left!"
He slamd the Heavenly Emperor Seal down hard.
Boom!!!
Above the Lower Realm, the vast gray Thunder Eye that had concealed the heavens opened fully.
A terrifying beam of light, capable of erasing an entire province, coalesced in its center.
This ti it was not a probe or torture.
It was utter—erasure.
…
Summit of the floating peak.
Chen Huaian felt the dread fluctuation above, one that could reduce him to ash.
He knew.
The final mont had co.
The power within him had reached the limit the Lower Realm could bear.
Had he been in the Cangyun Realm, he would have already undergone Feathered Transformation and ascended.
It was the Earth Star's world-rules suppressing him, preventing him from becoming immortal, preventing his final tamorphosis.
He lowered his gaze to the Kuangtian Axe in his hands. The rust had long since flaked away; golden arcs of lightning danced across the bright blade, immortal spirit qi condensing around the handle.
It was ravenous.
It had accumulated enough power.
"Fine, then this Venerable One will give you a hand!"
Chen Huaian relaxed his clenched jaw and let the remaining gray thunder drift through his body, finally converging into the Kuangtian Axe.
At this mont he was bloodied, ragged.
The Black Scales Sword had long since shattered into scrap.
Only his eyes remained whole.
Eyes that shone terrifyingly, as if two burning suns were alight within them.
"This sky…"
Chen Huaian slowly raised the Kuangtian Axe.
Its blade brimd with thunderlight; chaotic clouds swirled about the axe like primordial fog.
It looked ordinary compared to the many splendid immortal weapons held by the immortals above, almost laughable.
But at this mont.
In Chen Huaian's hands the axe seed to co alive.
It trembled.
It hungered.
It rembered the prival beginning, when a giant once gripped it and roared into the boundless chaos.
—"Though I beco mountains and rivers, I will split open a world… for these beings!"
It rembered the ancient age when a Human Emperor held it against deluges and divine punishnts and vowed.
—"If Heaven sends tribulation, I will punish Heaven! If mountains and rivers block the way, I will… cleave the mountains!"
It rembered the pledge made by an emperor thousands of years ago, who swore as he pointed to the sky.
—"If I die, I will beco the Dragon Soul, protect the Chinese lands, and never bow to Heaven!"
Three swings.
One for life, one for survival, one for dignity.
Now.
This was the fourth.
"…It has blinded us for too long."
Chen Huaian whispered softly.
In the next instant.
At the precise mont before the world-erasing beam would strike down.
He moved.
Just his hands gripping the axe handle, his feet crushing the ground, pouring every ounce of strength, every shred of will, every bit of defiance into one final act—
Toward that world-erasing Thunder Eye.
Toward the immortals high above in Lingxiao.
Toward the ten-thousand-year fate of reincarnation.
He swung an axe.
…
Heavens fell silent.
No light.
No sound.
Not even an energy ripple.
That beam, capable of wiping a province from existence, was, in front of that swing, pierced as if it were an illusion and the axe passed straight through.
That axe did not cleave thunder.
It cleaved the boundary.
Ssshh——
A faint tearing sound.
Like paper split down the middle.
From the vast Thunder Eye on high, a pitch-black, profound crack, looking into endless depths, abruptly appeared in the vault of heaven.
It spread.
Upwards, cutting through the tribulation clouds.
Cutting through the Thunder Eye.
Cutting through the void.
Cutting through… the Gate of Heaven.
In the stunned, horrified gazes of every immortal and mortal present,
that crack extended to the horizon, slicing the entire firmant cleanly into two halves!
—The sky was split open.
This single swing cut the separation between Upper and Lower Realms that had stood for ten thousand years.
It split the great chasm known as "the divide between immortal and mortal."
Rumble—!!!
A storm erupted.
This ti the wind blew from below upward.
The turbid qi that had accumulated in Lower Realm coffins—once regarded by immortals as monstrous floods—finally found an outlet.
They roared, they rejoiced, and surged through the freshly split fissure into the Upper Realm!
It was the Lower Realm's counterattack.
It was humanity's revanche.
Lingxiao Hall shuddered; Yaochi's waters churned.
The thirty-three heavens, once pristine and pure, now resembled water into which ink had been poured, frantically stained by this mortal "smoke-and-fire" vitality.
…
Lower Realm.
The axe in Chen Huaian's hand shattered.
The Kuangtian Axe that had borne supre will completed its final mission and disintegrated into rust flakes that scattered on the wind.
Only a bare axe haft remained in Chen Huaian's grasp.
He tightened his hold, looked up at the vast fissure, at the shattered Thunder Eye, at the Jade Palaces and Towers faintly visible beyond the ruins.
"The road is open."
Chen Huaian stepped forward.
One stride, thunder birthed the void beneath his feet.
The remaining tribulation lightning, not yet dispersed, seed newly claid, surging toward the haft in his hand.
A thunderstorm cocoon wrapped him.
Countless destructive laws interwove, compressed, and reford around the haft!
Gradually.
At the haft's tip,
a blade entirely condensed from tribulation lightning slowly manifested.
It was not true lightning, but a rule-force of destruction.
It was shaping itself into a divine sword that had absorbed the Lower Realm's heaven-and-earth rules, bathed in countless immortal bloods, and devoured the Heavenly Dao's will.
Chen Huaian climbed upward step by step.
Each step spanned a thousand zhang.
With each step, his aura swelled.
Ragged clothes, half-demon, half-immortal.
Staggering steps, yet immovable as a mountain.
When he reached the fissure's edge, the ruined Gate of Heaven,
his aura changed completely.
No longer mortal.
No longer rely a cultivator.
It was a leap in the level of existence, a perfection transcending all living things.
No celestial music to escort him.
No golden lotuses bursting from the earth.
No imperial decree from the Celestial Court.
Chen Huaian standing there was the Dao.
Chen Huaian standing there was an Immortal.
Kill all who block the path.
I, am——a true immortal!
…
Wind swept across the Gate's ruins.
Chen Huaian stood level with the Upper Realm.
Ahead, the Lingxiao Treasure Hall lay in chaos, tainted by turbid qi.
Behind him, the Nine Provinces of the mortal world cheered and began to awaken.
He raised the divine sword still dripping thunder sap.
Slowly he lifted it.
Its point no longer aid at the mortal dust.
It aid at the heart of the Heavenly Palace, at the imperial gaze full of shock and dread.
A sar of blood-tinged smile curved Chen Huaian's lips.
His voice was quiet.
Yet like heavenly law, it resounded across the thirty-three heavens.
"Hah! This sky…"
"This Venerable One has co up!"
…
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