The Great Emperor

The Buddha Patriarch had been defeated!

When this thought pierced the hearts and minds of every believer in the Buddhist kingdom like an icy poisonous thorn, the entire Western Regions fell into an eerie silence.

It was not truly soundlessness. It was the vacuum produced when the faith of countless living beings collapsed and all hope was utterly extinguished—a vacuum more suffocating than any scream.

At the edge of the original site of Mount Sumeru’s ancient monastery, an area that had just endured an imperial-level clash and had now been replaced by profound nothingness and charred rifts, the surviving high monks and arhats stared blankly at the sky.

Once, that sky had been filled with boundless Buddha light, while the imprints of three Buddha Patriarchs had towered between heaven and earth.

Now, only slowly fading energy embers remained, along with that absolute void that swallowed all light and froze the soul.

An old monk with a full head of white hair, whose cultivation had already reached the Saint King Realm, began to tremble violently.

The string of Buddhist beads he had nurtured for several thousand years was clenched tightly in his hand. As his Dao heart completely shattered, the beads burst into dust with a soft pop, scattering through the gaps between his fingers.

He opened and closed his mouth, but in the end, his eyes rolled back. The Buddha light surrounding him dimmed completely, and he toppled backward, his aura rapidly weakening. His Dao heart had collapsed, his soul had fractured—and he died on the spot!

“How could the Buddha Patriarch have been defeated?”

Farther away, a younger arhat knelt upon the scorched earth, both hands clawing desperately into the ground. His fingernails split and bled, yet he remained unaware of it.

His eyes were empty as he repeated the same words over and over, as though trying to drive this utterly absurd sight from his mind.

His lifelong faith, the Buddhist teachings he had painstakingly cultivated, and his pursuit of transcendence had all become a joke in this moment.

More ordinary monks and believers simply collapsed to the ground, their gazes vacant, as though every trace of vitality and spirit had been torn from them.

The Buddha Patriarch they had worshiped for generations, the supreme existence in their hearts, had actually been shattered by a single palm strike?

This upheaval of their very understanding of reality terrified and bewildered them even more than death.

The sky over the Western Regions seemed to collapse completely at that moment, leaving behind nothing but endless darkness.

The five Quasi-Emperor ancient Buddhas were now barely breathing. In Longevity Ancient Buddha’s eyes, nothing remained but hollow, ashen despair.

His lips moved, but no sound came out. Only silent hopelessness flowed from him.

He had exhausted his wisdom, calculated every cause and effect, and laid down one contingency after another. He had even summoned the imprints of the Buddha Patriarchs—the ultimate foundation of the Buddhist sect.

Yet before that absolute power, everything had proved as laughable as sandcastles built by children, collapsing at the slightest touch.

What were ten-thousand-year schemes? What was the fortune of the Buddhist sect? Before the other party’s icy verdict—“You have violated the laws of heaven and earth. Your crime deserves death”—all of it had become a joke.

“Hah… hah…”

Longevity Ancient Buddha finally made a sound. It was like the wheezing of a broken bellows, filled with boundless sorrow and despair.

“The Buddhist sect’s foundation of countless ages has been destroyed by our own hands!”

His voice was like the final toll of a funeral bell, ringing in the hearts of the other four ancient Buddhas.

Their last sliver of hope and fighting spirit vanished completely with that mournful cry.

At that moment, throughout the Great World of Xuanhuang, powerful beings from all sides who had witnessed the scene through water mirrors and divine abilities drew countless sharp breaths and cried out in shock after their brief, ultimate astonishment.

But more than shock, what filled them was a bone-deep chill and an absurdity they found impossible to believe.

The imprints of three Buddha Patriarchs, empowered by the faith of countless beings, had failed to withstand even a single palm strike.

Instead, they had been crushed with overwhelming ease when he turned his hand!

An Emperor?

At that moment, every ancient existence who had witnessed the scene could not suppress the same thought.

Could this person have already ascended to the Imperial Realm?

No. Impossible!

Almost simultaneously, several divine senses originating from the forbidden life zones—ancient and terrifying like ice that had endured for ten thousand years—rejected the notion with absolute certainty.

The Imperial Path had been severed. The laws of heaven and earth forbade it. In this world, there was no longer any foundation upon which one could become an Emperor.

If a new Emperor truly emerged, all the myriad laws would resonate, the imprint of the Heavenly Heart would manifest, and the heavens and all worlds would celebrate together in a magnificent spectacle.

The aura of such a person’s ascension could never be concealed. It would be even less possible to hide it from these ancient beings who had once controlled the Heavenly Heart throughout their endless years.

But if he was not an Emperor…

How could one explain the power before their eyes—the power that had shattered the imprints of the Buddha Patriarchs with a flick of the finger, determined the fate of the Buddhist sect with a single palm, and mysteriously erased the resulting shock waves?

This unanswered question was like an icy shackle tightening around the minds of every watcher. It pushed their estimation of Little Black to an almost unfathomably terrifying level.

Yet Little Black, high in the sky, had no interest whatsoever in the shock, fear, or suspicions coming from every direction.

His eyes, black as an abyss, had remained fixed on a single target from beginning to end.

The imprints of the Buddha Patriarchs had been destroyed, and the Buddhist sect’s higher-ups had perished. But across the vast ruins of the Buddhist kingdom below, temples still remained.

There were still believers in collapse, as well as the five ancient Buddhas whose Dao hearts had died, yet whose lives had not been completely extinguished.

According to Little Black’s cold and merciless logic, since he had pronounced them guilty and deserving of death, then everything upon which that guilt depended—the hypocritical and avaricious system of the Buddhist kingdom—had no reason to continue existing.

To uproot the weeds, one had to remove the roots.

He hesitated no longer.

The enormous black palm that had just shattered the imprints of the Buddha Patriarchs did not withdraw. Instead, its five fingers spread slightly.

Within its palm, a point of absolute annihilation began to slowly rotate and condense. It was so profoundly dark that it seemed capable of swallowing all light and vitality throughout the heavens and myriad worlds.

A destructive aura purer and more decisive than before began to spread.

This time, his target was no formation, imperial weapon, or imprint.

He was targeting the entire territory below, a land steeped in Buddhism for countless ages, along with every living being that remained upon it.

He intended to erase this so-called Buddhist kingdom completely—the shattered faith, the surviving structures, the despairing living beings, and even the final bodies and true spirits of the five ancient Buddhas below.

“Not good! He’s going to strike again! He intends to erase this entire region!”

An ancient being watching the battle cried out in horror.

Though he had no affection for the Buddhist sect and was even pleased to see it decline, such a brutal and thorough method of annihilation, leaving not a blade of grass alive, still sent a chill racing from his spine to the crown of his head.

“Is this the fate of provoking a taboo existence? Not even a trace of bloodline or a fragment of inheritance will be left behind?”

An old ancestor of a neutral faction murmured to himself, the alarm bells ringing in his heart.

The five ancient Buddhas sitting amid the ruins seemed to sense the even colder and purer will of destruction descending from the heavens.

They no longer had the strength even to raise their heads. They could only allow despair, like a tide, to drown the last remnants of their consciousness.

It was over. Everything was over…

Yet just as Little Black was about to strike—

A peaceful Buddhist light appeared in the void between Little Black and the ruins below.

It was not dazzling, and was even somewhat dim, yet it was exceptionally firm and serene. Like a ray of dawn piercing the heavy gloom of death, it appeared without hesitation and precisely blocked the path of Little Black’s enormous hand of destruction!

The Buddhist light receded, revealing a withered yet upright figure.

He wore gray monastic robes. His features were lean and austere, and his white brows hung down to his shoulders.

He was none other than the Abbot of the Great Leiyin Temple, Ancient Buddha Huixin, who had just arrived at full speed!

Below, countless believers and monks who had fallen into despair and awaited the final judgment raised their heads in bewilderment.

They saw that frail figure standing beneath the palm of destruction, blocking its descent.

That was not the familiar Xumi Ancient Buddha, radiant in a blaze of golden light. Instead, it was a more restrained and tranquil Buddhist aura. In the midst of despair, a faint glimmer of hope—so subtle that even they themselves had not noticed it—quietly began to take root.

“Amitabha.”

Ancient Buddha Huixin pressed his palms together and bowed deeply toward the black-robed figure high in the sky, who seemed both god and demon, the end of all things contained within his palm.

“This humble monk is Huixin, a disciple of the Great Leiyin Temple in the Western Regions. Greetings, fellow Daoist.”