Desolate Era (Book 36 - Book 40)

“How brutish. Now this is the definition of the ‘brute-force method’,” Ning murmured softly. He took a single step forwards. Whoosh! He instantly warped through space and appeared right in front of the Blazesun Ruler.

“That’s fast!” The Blazesun Ruler was shocked. Ning was simply far too fast; this was an enormous advantage which Ning had thanks to his overwhelmingly superior level of insight into the Dao! “But fast alone is useless.” The Blazesun Ruler immediately chopped downwards with his giant axe with tremendous power. He felt confident that even if his opponent was the Sithe Exalt he had battled so long ago during the Dawn War, the only choice would be to use a ‘soft’ technique to ablate the power of his strike.

Ning, however, just waved his sword. His strike seemed quite ordinary, but it was bizarrely fast, so fast that the Blazesun Ruler’s giant axe was completely unable to block it. Ning’s sword slammed directly against the Blazesun Ruler’s body… and in that instant, the power of Ning’s sword suddenly erupted. In this instant, Ning’s sword became the most dazzling thing in this entire realm, and his sword-light blazed with a light that shone thousands of times brighter than the giant axe.

Now THIS was Ning’s full-power strike!

SLASH! The sword pierced straight through the layer of liquid black armor and cut deep into the Blazesun Ruler’s body, piercing all the way through and coming out from his back.

“What an impressive ‘invulnerable form’.” The power of this sword-strike was causing enormous internal destruction to the Blazesun Ruler’s vital energy, but Ning could sense that the Blazesun Ruler’s ‘invulnerable flameform’ was resisting it fiercely. The power of Ning’s strike was used up after merely destroying 5% of the Blazesun Ruler’s truesoul.

This had been a full-strength strike from Ning! If Ning wanted to actually kill the Blazesun Ruler, it would take him twenty such attacks… but if the Blazesun Ruler had other protective abilities up his sleeve, it might take fifty attacks or even more. The black warship was a good example; Ning had the vague feeling that it was powerful enough to completely disrupt the tempo of this battle. If it was factored in, it would probably take Ning more than a hundred strikes in order to kill the Blazesun Ruler.

It must be remembered that this would not be a hundred ordinary strikes; this would be a hundred full-force strikes! That could well cost Ning nearly half of his life force… and if his opponent was more difficult to deal with than anticipated, Ning could actually die from this fight.

“W-what…” as the Blazesun Ruler’s body was chopped through, his body transformed into fire and furiously strove to defend. He was at the Hegemonic level of insight, after all; his body was incredibly tough and he possessed a formidable invulnerable form which made it so that even the Sithe Exalt he fought had been unable to injure him.

“He managed to injure me heavily with just one strike!” The Blazesun Ruler’s face was completely ashen. If a single strike could wipe out 5% of his truesoul… this was terrifying. This was his truesoul!

Not even the supremely exalted Autarchs would be able to kill him with just one or two strikes. It would take the Autarchs a somewhat extended battle in order to kill him. It was likely that they weren’t much more powerful than this Daolord Darknorth.

In truth, his guess was spot-on. In terms of profundity, the Eternal Omega Sword Dao was on par with the Daobirths of the Autarchs; the only difference was that the Eternal Omega Sword Dao wasn’t quite as ‘broad’. However, Ning was currently wielding what could be described as the number-one offensive treasure of the entire Chaosverse, the Northbow swords. This meant that his full-force attack was indeed on par with an Autarch’s attack.

“Flee. Flee!” All other thoughts fled from the Blazesun Ruler’s mind as he immediately turned tail and fled. What he wanted was a fun and exciting battle, not to be massacred and killed!

Whoosh! The Blazesun Ruler quickly fled into his black warship, then immediately sent it tearing through the membrane surrounding Wellspring Sea and fleeing far away. Ning didn’t move to stop him, just watching as he fled.

“Master, are you really going to let him run away like that?” The Flamewing God finally regained his usual aura of bravado. “You should’ve just killed him and taken his warship away. That thing looks better than our realmship.”

“Let’s leave as well,” Ning said.

“Leave?” Nuwa, Su Youji, and the others all flew over. Su Youji asked in confusion, “Why do we have to leave?”

“If I really wanted to kill him, it’d probably cost me half of my own life,” Ning said. “Let’s hurry up and leave. I scared him off with that attack, but he’ll quickly realize that I won’t be able to kill him that easily. He might even go and invite four or five of the other Domain Rulers to come with him. If that happens, we’ll be in trouble.”

Su Youji and Flamewing had been feeling excited, but now they came back to their senses. They remembered that their master was a Daolord who had failed the Daomerge; each strike he used was consuming his own life force.

“Let’s go.” Ning immediately led them into the realmship and hurriedly left the Wellspring Sea.





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Book 40, Chapter 1 - The Imprisoned Exalt


Spacetime around the Wellspring Sea was in a state of constant flux. It had taken even the Blazesun Ruler a full three years of travel via his warship before he had managed to pass through it. Ji Ning was at a higher level of insight than him, but it had still taken Ning a full five months before passing through the region of dangerous, distorted spacetime.

If you made a mistake when passing through a region of distorted spacetime, you could end up within a spacetime fragment and be forever unable to escape! If you were ‘lucky’, you might simply be teleported to an incredibly distant place… which might end up being a death trap.

This was why the Blazesun Ruler had felt so certain that he was the only person to discover the Blazesun Wellspring Sea. At first, he didn’t even consider the possibility that Ning would be there. It was only after his forces had searched the entire Blazesun Domain to no avail that he had thought of this place and came here to test us luck.

“Head in that direction,” Ning ordered as he used his Sword Dao domain to chop a spacetime tunnel open for the realmship to pass through.

“This Wellspring Sea truly was hidden quite well,” Hegemon Azurefiend mumbled to himself.

“I often visit the Blazesun Domain, but I’ve never even heard of this place,” Patriarch Treewind said.

They continued to advance through the twisting, changing spacetime continuum. They constantly changed directions as they advanced, and after a full month Ning suddenly called out, “Halt!”

“Master, we haven’t left yet,” Hegemon Azurefiend said.

“I’m preparing to train here for a period of time,” Ning said with a smile. “This is currently the safest place in the entire Blazesun Domain.”

“Huh?” Everyone present looked flabbergasted.

“The Wellspring Sea is like a boulder which is sitting within many currents of chaotic spacetime,” Ning said. “It doesn’t matter which way we go; we’ll still run into those streams. The Blazesun Ruler is at a lower level of insight than me; even if he came back with four other Domain Rulers, he would still just follow the pathways he is already familiar with. There’s no way he would search and scan all of the possible routes. At his current level, if he dared to do so he’d probably get lost! My guess is that the reason why he was even able to find the Wellspring Sea was because he had the warship helping him out; otherwise, he would never have been able to find this place.”