Chapter 98: Ch.11
We stayed in tiny realm for another three months before we'd finished gathering all the artifacts we could find. There was still no sign of the temporal demon spirit book but Yu Yan had the idea that it would become evident once we broke the barrier surrounding this world.
She was confident that Nie Li could hide it's aura from the sage emperor with the upgraded thunder god meteorite sword. As a god slayer artifact itself, I approved of the possibility. When everyone was ready and returned to their scrolls, I stood with Nie Li and his friends just below the barrier.
He swung his sword at full strength and when it collided with the barrier, I felt the world shake before it cracked then shattered. While it was doing so, Yu Yan instructed him on how to conceal the entire world by simply covering it in the god slayer artifact's aura.
While he did so, I felt out and summoned the book when it's presence was revealed to my senses as the last of the barrier fell. Nie Li immediately put it in his scroll as they followed it in. I opened a portal to the draconic ruins realm while taking the scroll.
I then popped over to little heaven, another world that had both human and demon beasts in it. I released the sky origin realm experts that had the sigils on them and they swept the legend rank beast out of existence while bringing back the humans to be put in the scrolls each scroll was layered now.
One inside the other while having a time barrier on each, making the last one's time up to forty times faster inside than the outside world. All of humanity would soon be at the peak of martial ancestor realm soon enough, or further. I'd yet to find the godhood of time or even sense it, leaving me to assume the spiritual god of time was still alive and in a place I couldn't enter.
It made me ever so much more suspicious of Nie Li's vine tree. I continued to hop from world to world gathering all but the demon beasts and killing any at legend rank and above. This really would be humanity's last stand for breaking the space-time seal.
All the experts that bothered to respond said the same thing, they'd only act if the sage emperor came out. If not, then they would remain like the first one I'd run across. Crazy bastards the lot of them, then again I was wanting to do the same after the hundredth world.
When the demon god sect lost contact with it's operatives in several of those worlds, I snickered as they sent a few to investigate. After killing them, I summoned Nie Li out saying. "It's time we took it to the next step. The demon god sect is getting suspicious."
He nodded and we headed to the sect in question while cloaked in our void forms. When we arrived, we spent a week carving sigils into the walls of the demon god sect before it finally worked. After that, we slaughtered the entire sect including the female dragon sect master and it's hidden martial ancestors.
We then set our trap and waited, it was less than an hour before a deity rank demon beast arrived. It reminded me of what Cthulhu looked like, towering over the sect in the air. I tethered to it instantly and drained it of divine energy.
It's peak deity rank energy wasn't able to resist for more than a few seconds to call out for help before I absorbed it all and tossed the body to Nie Li who put in the scroll with the other one.
Our warriors, hundreds of thousands of deity rank experts and nearly a billion martial ancestor realm experts, were all hidden and ready. As if by divine prediction, the four last deity rank beasts and a million deity rank experts behind them, came in a hurry.
I saw them and turned to Nie Li. "Begin breaking the seal once the battle starts. Don't hesitate, and whatever you do, don't fucking stop!"
He took his friends and I turned to Duan Jian. "Take the strongest thousand deity rank sky origin clan members and defend them at all costs. Do not look back and don't hesitate or all is lost. Use the concealing arrays with the sigils I made to hide why he's doing for as long as possible."
He flickered away with the warriors and once the trap was set, I reached out as I teleported in front of the deity beasts and their army. I tethered to them all with my world tree, absorbing immediately but slowly.
More and more tethers locked in place as the felt me drawing from them all. I could sense their confusion as the energy was slowly leaving them at faster rates the longer they were in my presence. When the last of my tethers, the billionth one, locked into place, they got pissy and charged me in frustration.
Drawing from a million deity ranks at a thousand tethers apiece probably wasn't my brightest move but hen, my world tree was loving it until it started to bloat. When I engaged the first one hundred, I yelled. "NOW!"
My voice shook the battlefield as our own warriors showed themselves launching surprise attacks. I shifted into my thunderbird form and electrocuted the four deity rank beasts. I left nothing to chance as I summoned my vibro spirit swords and launched myself into battle.
I killed them as swiftly as I could while turning my draining power to max, taking massive amounts of divine energy inside myself. Truly a dumb move on my part until I directed the world tree to push it all into my inner scroll like realm. The realm I'd created as a copy of scroll painting began to shine and evolve.
With such an influx of divine energy, it's evolution was guaranteed. I fought and killed the enemy deity warriors, only crippling the beasts for now as they were connected to the sage emperor and if they all died he'd come for sure.
It became a grind of death and destruction as we continued to slowly push the sage emperor's army to their own destruction. We took major losses as well but then, it was to be expected.
It became a massive grind of death as both sides fought to kill the other at all costs. Only the children were spared this battle as they were all safely tucked away in a scroll of their own now, far from here.
Thousands died every moment as more came forward to take their place. With the sigils on our bodies, it gave us an advantage as they couldn't sense us except with their eyes while we could sense them at every moment.
The sky origin clan members worked their arrays while those originally from tiny world used a massive god growth rate array they'd transferred from glory city. Amidst all this death and destruction, the array kept growing stronger and stronger.
Soon enough it was able to help if only to stall the enemies while those fighting them killed them. Time went on unceasingly while we fought as hours turned into days until finally, what was left of their million strong army broke apart and fled.
I took one of it's groups on by myself now, fighting several thousand in my ice dragon form. That along with my thunderbird, golden land turtle and razor back shark form made up the last of my demon beasts. I changed forms rapidly durning battle depending on what I needed.
Now I needed to slow them down the most so when they were all frozen solid for a second, I changed into my thunderbird and electrocuted the lot of them. When I was finished, I drained them dry, finishing off what little divine energy they had left.
Thousands still escaped but then, we'd wiped out most of them so it was fine. We lost half our martial ancestor realm forces, about five hundred million in total, during the battle. Over three fourths of our own deity ranks were killed as well but ever so slight, it was a victory.
I had the last of the surviving deity ranks load up the bodies of both sides into rings before taking them and the survivors into my own inner realm. There I spoke as a voice from the sky. "Cultivate here as quickly as you can. The divine energy now accumulated and produced here will see to it that you can grow faster."
I headed to where I knew Nie Li and the rest would be and found him using the book and it's pages to slowly unravel the seal as to not alert the sage emperor. When I came into the formation, I tapped his head and injected him and his vine with a massive dose of divine energy. So much so that his friends curled up in pain, as did Duan Jian.
Their own realms were forced to take the burden with his but then, once he started breaking through, it basically showed them each the way. When I was done there, I teleported to the gates of the ancestral saint lands. There, only a hundred or so deity ranks and a thousand martial ancestors remained to guard the bone.
I skipped right passed them and entered the final chamber where it's guardians, three peak deity realm experts guarded it.
When they saw me, I held up my hands. "Relax old guys, I've come to destroy this thing. I'm sure you've been watching and noticed the massive battle that just took place? Well, I'm the one who organized it. Very soon the sage emperor's going to wake up mightily pissed that most his army is dead."
The leader of them asked. "And why should we trust you?"
I tethered to them and injected them with divine energy before breaking the link saying. "Because if I were an enemy, I could've just as easily taken your energy instead of giving you my own. I intend to absorb the energy in that bone and drain it permanently, weakening the sage emperor for good and using that chance to break through to emperor realm myself. Along with several others, we should be able to kill the bastard for good."
When they didn't seem to agree and instead thought it would be better to keep it here as insurance, I knocked them all out with a special technique that blocked their intent and divine energy from their own minds temporarily.
I broke passed the deadly array that housed the bone with proficiency before sitting there and absorbing it. All of my tethers connected to it as I felt a massive pain in my head with a burst of energy from the bone, I stepped into emperor realm, evolving my dao into my own path, solidifying my place as an emperor expert.
My world tree hit the ceiling of how high it could grow before branching out as it's trunk thickened. Once it was thick enough, I'd a feeling it would shatter the barrier of it's limits and I'd step into the supreme realm.
I drained the last of the bone as it crumbled to dust particles before leaving. I arrived back at Nie Li's side and put my hand on his back, seeing that he'd already grown to the with stage of the deity realm. I injected what I could wrestle away from my vine into his own before taking over the formation and unraveling the seal at a slightly faster rate.
When I felt the changes in each of them as they all approached the peak, I smiled. Soon enough Nie Li broke through the last barrier and entered the emperor realm with me. The other scrunched up their faces as he woke up and they started breaking through as well.
When the last of them, Lu Piao, broke through, Nie Li nodded to me and I sighed, turning the formation up to max and tearing through the seal at an insane rate. At the pace we were going before it would've taken a year to break the seal for good. Now it shouldn't take more than a few hours!
Unfortunately that was time we did not have, the sage emperor sensed what was happening almost immediately. He couldn't sense where or how but he knew his seal was weakening quickly. We felt him reaching out and searching the seal for where and why it was doing so and when he found the where, he made contact with his servants and found out the why.
I could feel his anger even here as I passed the array back to Nie Li. "We'll hold him off, you must break the seal!"
He gulped and nodded as the rest of his friends stood up ready to fight. The emperor realm only had three ranks, mortal, divine and sage. With him being drastically weakened from what I did, he was at best only a divine emperor in power right now.
When he formed his intent and will before marching what remains of his army in our direction, I pulled out all the deity ranks that were ready and well rested, as time inside my realm was ten times faster than the outside, and told them. "Get in formation, the final battle is upon us!"
Most were recently turned deity ranks from the millions of martial ancestor realms and even so the rest of the martial ancestor realms came with them. This would be it, the battle to decide the fate of this galaxy of cultivation worlds.
I looked back at the seal and sighed. "This is going to be a long day."
When the army approached once more, I didn't tether to them, but to the sage emperor himself. I immediately used all that I had to draw out his energy while he resisted like a stubborn mule. I grunted and nodded to Duan Jian and Nie Li's friends and we charged at him together.
We formed a formation around him while I was the shield of sorts when he struck. Constantly bombarding him with techniques and weapon swings we fought on. Our armies clashed below and his was quickly overwhelmed.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case for us above. Our daos clashed as we were repeatedly beaten back by him. We were getting our asses handed to us! When he got tired of beating me around like a piñata, he managed to impale me on his Naginata through my stomach.
I felt his energy corroding through my own in an attempt to dispel my intent and will. Duan Jian yelled and launched his own attack at the sage emperor's back while I held onto his weapon to keep him stuck in place, unable to defend. The sage emperor let out a roar as I saw a fiery blade pierce his chest from behind and exit the front.
The others attacked as one then and just when I thought we had him, he activated some kind of life saving treasure that blasted us all back. Fortunately or not, I took his weapon with me when I was thrown back. Even as I struggled to remove it from my stomach where I landed, in a mountain side, I saw the seal finally give way and what appeared to be Nie Li attacking the sage emperor with the thundergod meteorite sword in a rage.
I'd like to say I saw the battle from start to finish, but once I removed the naginata from my body, I had to focus on removing the corrosive effects it'd had on my body. I slipped into a self induced coma while I healed.
That fact that I'd woke up told me that I'd won. I can't say it was an overwhelming victory but Nie Li was there to tell me how it ended, albeit barely. He'd been severely injured and his own body was weakened to the point that he looked mortal again. He'd used a secret technique to sacrifice his cultivation for a devastating blow that had obliterated the weakened sage emperor.
He had a human body again thanks to the quick actions of the sky origin clan members that both saved him and found us. As soon as I saw them, I grabbed the contract we'd signed and drained it of power, drawing on the seal that kept them prisoners and draining that to. When they felt what I did, their entire clan celebrated.
That night while they through a bonfire cookout and had fun, I sat on a log and watched them from afar in amusement. Lucifer appeared next to me and said solemnly. "It's time I got to work and sent you to the next reality."
I sighed. "Does it have to be now?"
He nodded. "The space time seal and artifact were more precious than they know. It was in fact Cronus's book of time they had. It only translated to their language when it felt into this reality during the last war. When the idiot used it, he set the equilibrium of this entire reality off balance. Sending the kid back in time was the reality trying to set things right to buy it more time ironically. When you all broke the seal, well, time catches up to all mortals in the end. A great wave of it is coming now to end them all, and I'll be the one to clean up the mess."
I gave them one last look before nodding resolutely. "Alright, take me to this reality of gods and divinity you spoke of. I might as well leave immediately."
He smiled sadly. "I may take great pleasure in the suffering of others, but never my own child. This, this is just my role in the natural order of things. By all means, kill slaughter and have fun, but try to remember, in the end, all mortal things die, leaving you only with those of us that have gone beyond the mortal coil."
He tapped my head and I woke up in another body and world.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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stone