Desolate Era

by RWX

  “I understand.” Ning nodded. All void dwellers possessed bodies that were far stronger than even the bodies of Chaos Primordials… and the Autarch-class ones were even more insanely powerful! What made them truly dangerous was that they had so little understanding of the Dao that the ‘rejection’ they suffered upon entering this Chaosverse was almost meaningless to them, as they could hardly use the Dao to begin with! They still remained terrifying forces to be reckoned with.

  “We previously managed to kill two of these Autarch-class void dwellers, but that was when we surrounded and outnumbered them,” Autarch Mogg sent mentally. “There are only two of us right now. This is going to be very difficult.”

  “Let’s chat with them first and see if there is a way we can avoid fighting.” Ning could also sense the threat which these three Autarch-class creatures posed.

  “Gentlemen!” Ning chuckled. “Why must we fight to the death? This war is a war between us and the Sithe. Why don’t the three of you just leave our Chaosverse and go back to your Infinite Void? Stay far away from the war. I imagine it is unlikely the Sithe would be able to capture you a second time. In fact, I’m surprised they captured you at all!”

  “Hmph. We let our guards down,” the cyclopean creature said coldly.

  “If we escaped, the Sithe can forget about capturing us again.” The fiery-scaled creature gritted its teeth, then howled furiously, “But what’s the point of saying all this? Do you really think you have a way to let us leave?”

  The dragon turtle stared intently at Ning as well.

  It was true that the three held no grudges against the local cultivators at all. If they could return home safely, they would be more than willing to do so. They might’ve been captured by the Sithe and forced to accept some tasks, but they weren’t bound by lifeblood oaths! Or, to be precise, there was no way for them to swear lifeblood oaths at all. They were completely different from both the cultivators and the Sithe!

  For both the cultivators and the Sithe, both the Dao and the Dao-heart were extremely important. All of them trained from young as cultivators, slowly rising in power thanks to the Dao. These void dwellers, however, were evil, chaotic, and berserk creatures by nature. They didn’t even have Dao-hearts per se; the only law they understood was the law of survival. They would fight to the death, and the strong would live while the weak would die! They followed only the most brutish and barbaric of ‘laws’, the law of strength.

  It was much like how weak mortals were completely incapable of swearing ‘lifeblood oaths’ without the help of something like an oathstone. They could swear until they were blue in the face, but they would never have to face the fear of their truesouls being destroyed. The same was true for these void dwellers! It was impossible for them to swear lifeblood oaths.

  Thus, the Sithe generally had two options when dealing with the void dwellers they captured. They could either torture them into insanity, or they could slowly manage to tame them! However, it was virtually impossible to tame an Autarch-class void dweller, and so the only real choice was to either torture them or to negotiate with them as equals and come to an agreement.

  “Why don’t the three of you just leave this hive?” Ning probed. “After that, you can just leave our Chaosverse. I don’t think anyone would or could stop you.”

  “Leave the hive?” The cyclopean creature let out a cold laugh. “This is a place which can only be entered, not exited! The only way to leave is for the Sithe to voluntarily let you leave. If you don’t believe me, try for yourselves! Let’s see if the two of you can leave or not.”

  “There’s no way out?” Ning was startled. Neither he nor Mogg had encountered any impediments at all as they flew into the deep abyss.

  “Coming in is easy, but leaving is impossible,” the cyclopean creature said. “The three of us have tried to leave countless times, but there is no way out!”

  Ning had the feeling that the creature wasn’t lying. There wasn’t a need to lie over something like this.

  “Well, that’s easily solved,” Ning said. “Once we destroy this thing from the inside, we’ll be able to leave.”

  “Destroy it? You two?” the titanic fiery-scaled creature boomed mockingly.

  “You should at least let us give it a try. Maybe we’d succeed,” Ning said. “Just stand there and watch! You can always attack us later, if we really aren’t able to destroy it.”

  Ning’s goal was simple. He wanted for these three Autarch-class void dwellers to not cause him any trouble as he tested out methods for destroying this behemoth hive. It must be remembered that these creatures had tremendous brutish force, but they couldn’t compare to the cultivators when it came to understanding the Dao. There was no way they could unlock the mysteries behind such an intricately designed weapon, but that didn’t mean Ning and Mogg couldn’t do so either.

  “Impossible.”

  “No way.” The other two Autarch-class void dwellers instantly rejected Ning’s suggestion.

  “Cultivator leaders, let me speak plainly with you,” the dragon turtle said coldly. “Long ago, we came to an agreement with the Sithe after our capture. We made them certain promises. The first promise was that we had to each kill at least one of the ‘leaders of the cultivators’, while the second was that we had to protect this place for a full chaos cycle. Once we complete both objectives, we’ll be released and granted freedom.”

  “We have to protect this place for a chaos cycle, so there’s no way we’ll let you try and destroy it. If we stand back, we’ll have instantly voided the agreement and the Sithe would never let us leave,” the cyclopean creature said.

  “A full chaos cycle?” Ning and Mogg both grew anxious. That was unacceptable. Given how fast this thing was devouring energy, the Chaosverse probably would’ve been reduced to a husk of itself by then! The Sithe would’ve long ago taken control over the Chaosverse after a chaos cycle.

  “There are two paths available to us,” the dragon turtle continued. “The first is for us to stand by the side of the Sithe. The second is for us to stand by your side… but if we do so, we’ll have made an irreversible choice! The three of us know just how terrifying this hive is, and we have no reason to believe that you two will be able to deal with it. We can’t just entrust our very lives to the two of you, unless you can somehow prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that you can destroy this hive.”

  Ning and Mogg were both speechless. Prove beyond the shadow of a doubt? They didn’t even know how the thing operated yet. How were they supposed to do that?

  “Hmph.” The dragon turtle snorted. “And here I thought you cultivators had something really impressive up your sleeves.”

  “You disappoint us. KILL THEM!” The cyclopean creature was the first to attack. Whoosh! Its body blurred as it transformed into a strange ripple that instantly appeared before Ning and Mogg. It was so fast that even Ning was rendered speechless! Even when Ning used the Storm Sword Dao, he was still considerably slower than this creature.

  “Leave this one to me!” Autarch Mogg held a long saber in each of his six arms, and he similarly transformed into a spatial ripple to fight back. As the master of the Space Daobirth Essence, Autarch Mogg was more or less able to stave off this cyclopean creature.

  Slash! Dimensional tears began to appear and disappear in the space around the two. The cyclopean void dweller’s attacks were completely suppressing Autarch Mogg in both speed and ferocity, but the Autarch’s incredibly high level of insight ensured that his six long sabers formed a completely airtight defense. He would probably be able to hold on for quite some time.

  “These Autarch-class void dwellers all became kings of their kind through constant slaughter. None of them are easy to deal with.” Ning knew all along that killing these things in sole combat would be extremely difficult; in the past, the Autarchs had only accomplished it through strength in numbers. Still… Ning was confident in his abilities. Six million chaos cycles of training had been completely transformative for him.


  “Leave this one to me, you old bastard?” the fiery-scaled void dweller said.

  “Fine.” The dragon turtle was very patient and elected to silently watch from afar.

  “Hey, One-Eye! Let’s see who kills our opponent first!” The fiery-scaled creature let out a roaring laugh, filled with such power that when it blasted into Ning’s ears, Ning felt as though it was trying to tear his head apart. Next, the vast creature exploded into motion, transforming into a streak of fiery light that rammed straight towards Ning.

  “I haven’t had a chance to really have a good fight since mastering the Eternal Omega Sword Dao and spending six million chaos cycles in training.” Ning could feel his blood pumping with excitement. It had been a long time since he got into a really good battle. Previously, it was because his truesoul was collapsing and he didn’t dare to fight with abandon. These days, it was because it was almost impossible for him to find a good opponent.

  “I wonder how long it’ll take me to beat him? Will ten seconds be enough, or shall I need as much time as is needed to boil a kettle of tea?” Ning manifested three heads and six arms, his six Northmoon swords at the ready.

  Book 43, Chapter 19 - Captured

  Ji Ning’s body blurred, transforming to become 540,000 meters tall. However, compared to the titanic fiery-scaled void dweller, he was still a bit smaller.

  “Die!” The creature lashed out at Ning with its terrifyingly sharp claws, which its physical prowess ensured were deadlier than even Universe treasures.

  Bang! Ning was instantly torn apart into countless pieces.

  “Eh?” The fiery-scaled void dweller was shocked. “An illusion!” Everything it could see was nothing more than part of the illusions created by Ning’s Sword Dao!

  “Storm Execution!” Six streaks of sword-light howled forth, slashing against the blazing flames covering the scaled creature’s neck. It stumbled backwards, but nothing more than a few white marks were left behind on the scales protecting the neck. However, right as Ning’s swords connected with the creature’s neck, Ning used the Dao of Karma to pour the power of the strike throughout the creature’s body, causing internal destruction with abandon.

  “What a powerful cultivator!” The scaled creature lifted its head up, letting out a bellow: “But your illusions are useless against me!”

  BOOM! The flames covering its body expanded dramatically, its internal flames pouring out from within to cover an area of a million kilometers. The power of these flames was so great that it actually managed to push back Ning’s Sword Dao Domain and his heartworld projection.

  “My six strikes weren’t even able to break its scales! I was able to injure its vital essence through karma, but as an Autarch-class void dweller it has an absolutely prodigious amount of essence.” Ning immediately began to consider what to do next. The flames the void dweller had released were pushing back against the Sword Dao Domain. Once it overtook Ning’s illusions, Ning would be forced to reveal his true location and he would no longer be able to catch the creature offguard.

  Kill it through the Karma Sword Dao? That was too time-consuming! The Autarch-class stone lifeform the Autarchs had encountered and slain all those years ago had been indestructibly hard, as it truly was a stone by nature. Not even the Autarchs were able to injure it, and so their only option had been to exhaust it to death after tens of thousands of years!

  However, Ning felt certain that this scaled creature wouldn’t be quite as tough to deal with as that stone lifeform had been. There had to be a flaw Ning could exploit.

  “Its body is unspeakably powerful, which is why it has Autarch-class power. It has far more vital essence than actual Autarch’s; to kill it using the Karma Sword Dao is going to be too slow. I’ll have to come up with another idea for breaking through its defenses… but I hit it six times in a row and merely left behind a few white marks on its scales.”

  Ning pondered for a moment, then came to a conclusion.

  “Die, cultivator! Die!” The towering scaled creature charged at Ning with incomparable ferocity, its tail smashing apart anything which got in its way.

  Now that Ning had some experience from their first clash, he immediately changed tactics. Whoosh! Ning dodged in a ghostly manner, transforming into the storm itself as he charged towards the scaled void dweller.

  “He’s fast!” The scaled creature was shocked. “Only One-Eye is his superior in speed.”

  The wind and the lightning thundered in harmony, with the scaled creature’s claws and tail completely unable to stop Ning’s attack.

  “Kill!” Ning simultaneously chopped out with all six swords at the same time, his swords spinning out like the spokes of a wheel! The edges of each sword was covered in blurry light. A closer look would’ve shown that the blurry sword-light was actually composed of countless interspersed white and black specks of light that were connected to each other. The specks of light were spinning in blaze, with the white light blazing like fire while the black light hissed with dark corrosive power.

  The Dark Sword Dao – it infused corrosive darkness into the Dao of the Sword

  The Light Sword Dao – it infused blazing light into the Dao of the Sword.

  When joined together, they came to form the Cycle Sword Dao which Ning had developed. Working in harmony, the two were able to support and reinforce each other with tremendous synergy, allowing for blazing strikes of corrosive power that ate through anything in its path! It was like the merciless cycle of life and death itself, chopping through all things in its path.

  Whoosh! Six streaks of gray sword-light shot out at the same time, spinning at the scaled creature like the blades of a giant windmill.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! The corrosive power of the Cycle Sword Dao was utterly unstoppable. Even the fiery-red scales of the void dweller began to crack. Moments later they broke apart entirely, with a gaping wound appearing below them. Gold blood seeped out, followed by the flesh quickly healing.

  “You actually injured me!” The scaled creature went completely berserk. A layer of red light appeared over its entire body, and its power increased dramatically. It began to launch a furious counter-attack while howling, “Hurry up and help me out, you old bastard!” Its scales were its pride and joy. The fact that they had been shattered caused it to feel that it was in danger.

  “Coming.” The dragon turtle immediately came flying over.

  “Illusion Sword Dao!”

  The scaled creature’s flames were only able to cover an area of a million kilometers; beyond that, Ning’s illusions continued to reign supreme. Countless Nings appeared within that area, and all of them began to assault the scaled creature from afar at the same time. The dragon turtle had no idea which one was the real one.

  Whoosh! Whoosh! The light of the Cycle Sword Dao continued to spin out like the spokes of a wheel, its strikes screaming through the air from a million kilometers away. A million kilometers might seem to be a very great distance, but it was actually extremely short for someone of Ning’s abilities. All it did was give the scaled void dweller a chance to react to Ning’s attacks, but there was no way the dragon turtle would be able to actually help it.

  Ning was completely dominant on a technical level. His Cycle Sword Dao once more tore open a giant gaping wound in the scaled creature’s body.

  “Aaaaaaah! Die, die!” The scaled creature launched wild counter-attacks with abandon, but Ning was far too nimble. Each time after he attacked he retreated back into his illusions, making it impossible for them to locate where he truly was.

  “Old bastard! Old bastard!” the scaled creature called out furiously.

  “I can’t locate the real one! Each time he moves into extremely close range as he attacks, then retreats right away. I don’t have enough time!” the dragon turtle responded anxiously as well.

  “During the last war we fought against the Sithe, two Autarch-class void dwellers were on their side. The end result was that both of them died, while all of us were untouched.�
�� Ning’s voice rang out in the air as he continuously launched more attacks, his terrifying Cycle Sword Dao repeatedly ripping huge wounds into the scaled creature’s body.

  The scales were so extremely durable that Autarch-class attacks were generally unable to breach them, but Ning’s Cycle Sword Dao was a perfect counter and so Ning was able to breach through them. Given how tough the scales were, they were equally difficult and time-consuming to repair once destroyed.

  “All you creatures can do is rely on the natural power of your bodies.”

  Slash! Another wave of attacks from the Cycle Sword Dao chopped past the scaled creature.

  “Even if we cannot beat you, staying alive is simplicity itself… and once we find your weaknesses, you are dead.”

  Slash! Slash! The light of the Cycle Sword Dao left more and more gaping wounds on the scaled creature’s body.

  “The Sithe put you here, yes… but did you really think they intending on letting you survive? They simply wanted you to slow us down at the cost of your own lives.”

  Riiiiip! The scaled creature’s long tail was actually severed midway through!

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” The scaled void dweller’s titanic body was now covered with wounds. Its tail had actually been chopped off, and even its arms were half-severed. Its lacerated flesh was quickly healing, but its scales wouldn’t be able to recover within a short period of time. It grew increasingly frantic, as it could sense how death was impending.

  “One-Eye!” the scaled creature roared loudly.

  The skinny cyclopean creature was battling Autarch Mogg nearby and had been keeping an eye on the situation. It called out anxiously in its shrill voice, “I can’t find his true body, and he’s too fast! Your flames aren’t able to cover enough area to force him to reveal himself.”