Desolate Era (Book 41 - Book 45)

Ning sighed. “I really don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do with this last one.”


He was very well-rounded, true, but Autarch-class void dwellers were simply too difficult to handle. The cyclopean creature had an obvious weakness, which was why Ning was confident in his ability to deal with it! Ning hadn’t been sure if he could handle the other two, and so he had to probe them in battle first. He had discovered that his Cycle Sword Dao was capable of breaking the scaled creature’s armor, but there was nothing Ning could do which affected the dragon turtle.

Ning and Mogg both moved to the place where the dragon turtle was located, then stared at it. The dragon turtle simply sat there, silently inspecting its surroundings. It was trapped within an illusory formation, but it showed no signs of fear whatsoever.

“So what should we do?” Ning pondered.

“If we can’t kill it in a short period of time, we should just leave it there for now,” Autarch Mogg said. “Let’s go locate the core mechanisms controlling this behemoth hive first. We need to destroy this hive as soon as possible. If it comes to bother us again, use your formations to trap it. If need be, I’ll personally tie it down.”

“That’s all we can do.” Ning nodded. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go.”

Ning quickly led Mogg in advancing to the critical point he had discovered earlier while analyzing the functionings of this behemoth hive. As they left, the illusory formation Ning had established quickly dissipated. There was no way to maintain it from afar! This was a formation which Ning had to use all his power to cast and maintain, a powerful Autarch-class formation which used up an enormous amount of energy. Ning had used his mana to guide the limitless power of the Sword Dao in setting up this formation. Now that Ning was gone, it would be very difficult to use mere formation-base type treasures to supply the necessary amount of energy.

It must be remembered that not even Sithe Apocalypse-class formations were as mighty as this one! Thus, it would take Ning an extremely long period of time and many precious materials to create a physical variant, far longer than Ning would need to simply use his Karma Sword Dao to attrition the dragon turtle to death.

“Two of my old friends are gone, just like that.” The dragon turtle sighed to itself. “These Autarchs who train in their ‘Dao’ really are hard to deal with. Ugh. It is our own fault for being caught by the Sithe. We really were given no choices at all. Who the hell would want to fight against these cultivators anyhow?”

“…eh?” The dragon turtle stared at its surroundings in surprise. The illusory realm around it had vanished, revealing ordinary spacetime

“They left?” The dragon turtle grew anxious. “They’re still heading for the core regions. I have to stop them!”

Swoosh! The dragon turtle immediately warped through spacetime in pursuit.

……

This ‘behemoth hive’ was in reality an intricately designed super weapon, and it was filled with many separate spacetime continuums. One of them was merely three hundred meters in size, and it held a man who was seated in the lotus position, his long unbound hair. This man’s hair was black on one side and white on the other. He looked quite strange and mysterious.

His eyes looked like a series of concentric circles, and his gaze was as deep as a bottomless abyss. He quietly stared at the images displayed in front of him. The images shown were of Ning and Autarch Mogg battling against those three Autarch-class void dwellers. However, the images were blurry and indistinct. He was able to scry some of what had happened due to the residue left behind by the various attacks, but wasn’t able to truly ‘watch’ the battle.

“There’s no way for me to truly scry any of these cultivator Autarchs,” the black-white haired man murmured softly. “However… judging from their auras, they should’ve only sent two people.”

Autarchs were incredibly powerful. In their own Chaosverse, they were able to summon nigh-limitless amounts of power, and it was almost impossible to view them if they didn’t want to be viewed. The Sithe would only sense energies blocking their scans; they wouldn’t actually be able to see the Autarchs at all.

“Eh?” The black-white haired man’s face suddenly turned pale. The battle had just come to an end and both Ning and Mogg had vanished, leaving behind just the dragon turtle.

“Only one of those three void dwellers are left?” The black-white haired man was stunned. Ignoring everything else, he immediately activated the formation-base he was seated on.

Rumble… the formation-base slowly began to swivel in place, and a ripple of power began to manifest and take form as a pillar of light. Slowly, the pillar of light resolved into a humanoid figure. It was a balding, barefoot, loose-robed man of great stature and size who had a kind, sympathetic smile on his face. His eyes were absolutely mesmerizing, and those who saw him would feel the unconscious desire to submit to him.

“Almighty Iyerre,” the black-white haired man bowed respectfully.

“How are things, Anitya?” Iyerre asked.

“The cultivators have entered our super weapon, the ‘Annihilation Hive’, but there are only two of them. Their auras are vast, preventing me from seeing them clearly. However, two of the three Autarch-class void dwellers we imprisoned within the Annihilation Hive have already died. Only the defensively impregnable ‘Howler’ beast we captured remains alive,” the black-white haired man said respectfully.

Iyerre frowned slightly. “Only two of them came?” The loss of two void dwellers was a minor matter, but he was very disappointed that only two of the cultivators had entered the Annihilation Hive. If five or six had come in, the Sithe could’ve seized this opportunity to immediately launch the final war!





Book 43, Chapter 22 - The Central Nexus


“Just follow the plan,” Iyerre instructed. “If those two void dwellers died, they died. As long as the Howler beast is still alive, our plans remain unaffected.”

“Understood,” the black-white haired man said obediently.

“Feel free to contact me if anything major happens.” Iyerre’s lips crooked upwards in a smile. “I’ve spent countless aeons and paid an enormous price in order to create the Annihilation Hive. It won’t be easy for them to defeat it… and if they just send in two Autarchs, their chances are absolutely nil. If they send in more Autarchs they might be able to eventually figure out a way to destroy it… but in doing so, they’ll have lost the battle to us before it even began.”

The creation of the Annihilation Hive was Iyerre’s greatest accomplishment. He was extremely confident in its prowess.

……

This place was filled with countless spacetime bubbles of varying size, and they could be seen everywhere.

Ji Ning continued to examine the inner workings of the entire hive as he advanced, moving closer and closer to the critical point. After roughly an hour, they finally reached the spot.

“The central nexus point for the entire behemoth hive is located right up ahead.” Ning let out a sigh of relief. Ning had been focusing his full attention on inspecting the path before him, which had been rather tiring.

“The central nexus?” Autarch Mogg stared from afar as well.

Both of them carefully inspected the distant, empty region in front of them. At the very center of this empty region was a beautiful vortex of astral clouds. The astral clouds swirled in a vortex-like manner around the very center.