Abyssal Rift, I Sense a Bigger Catch

Deep within the rift at Guixu, there was no darkness.

Instead, there was something older than darkness, more congealed, a nothingness that resembled death itself.

The moment Wang Hao stepped into the rift, the seawater around him did not surge in. Instead, it seemed to be severed by some invisible rule.

Beneath his feet was a broken stairway of ancient stone, descending into a colossal ruin gnawed through by the passage of eons.

Floating around the ruin were shattered bronze pillars, severed runic chains, and the desiccated bones of ancient battlefield corpses, long turned to ash.

Those bones still carried a terrifying resonance of the Dao.

Even after countless ages, those auras still exuded a pressure that made even Martial God realm cultivators' hearts race.

"This is..." Han Shanyue landed and his voice tightened. "An ancient battlefield?"

"To be precise, a corner of one." Wang Hao looked up at the fractured sky in the distance. "This is merely the outer edge of the site. The true core is likely much deeper."

The moment he finished speaking, a low, hair-raising rumble came from the black fog ahead.

The half-step tenth tier abomination had followed them inside.

But after entering this ruin, its condition had visibly worsened.

It seemed suppressed by the killing intent left behind by the ancient battlefield. Countless eerie patterns on its surface twitched slightly, its recovery speed slowed by at least thirty percent compared to the outside.

Wang Hao's eyes lit up.

"Just as I thought."

"This place suppresses it."

"Your Majesty, how do you manage to predict everything?" Yue Ji asked in a low voice.

Wang Hao smiled. "It's not that I can predict everything. It's that I'm sufficiently devious."

Everyone: "..."

Wang Hao ignored their expressions and walked straight toward the center of the ruin.

Along the way, the system notification chimed again.

[Ding!]

[Special check-in location detected: Outer perimeter of the Guixu Ancient Battlefield.]

[Check in?]

"Check in."

[Check-in successful.]

[Rewards: A fragment of the Ancient Battlefield Map, a Spear of Godslaying (damaged), the ancient war formation manual "Myriad Calamity Soul Seal Array", intel update: at the core of the ancient battlefield lies a "Forest of Demon-Sealing Stele", beneath which an ancient "Transcendent Remnant Soul" is said to be suppressed.]

When Wang Hao saw the last piece of intel, his pupils contracted slightly.

A Transcendent Remnant Soul.

And one suppressed since ancient times, no less.

If this news got out, it would be enough to make those old monsters of the holy lands in the Central Province sell everything they owned to come rushing over.

"Good stuff." Wang Hao muttered to himself.

"What good stuff?" Heavenly Sword leaned in, his face full of excitement.

"Something that could turn the Central Province upside down."

"I like the sound of that." Heavenly Sword perked up immediately. "Your Majesty, how do you plan to use it?"

"Hold that thought." Wang Hao looked up. "Right now, let's take care of this big fish in front of us first."

"And if we can't kill it?" Han Shanyue asked, pragmatic as always.

Wang Hao glanced at him. "Then we rephrase. First, we chase it off."

"Chase it where?"

"To the Central Province."

Everyone halted mid-step.

Demon Lord whirled around, his pitch-black pupils suddenly contracting. "Your Majesty, you mean—"

"Yes."

Wang Hao's tone was calm.

"If we can't kill it, we force it to go to the Central Province."

"The sixteen holy lands there love playing dirty, right? Well, let them get a firsthand taste of what a real 'half-step tenth tier' is."

"The war on the Eastern Wasteland front has gone on long enough. If we keep draining resources, we'll exhaust our spirit stones and manpower. But that thing is different—it's a massive variable in itself. Once it reaches the Central Province, Li Cangming and those old fossils won't be able to hide behind their walls anymore."

"They wanted to use the abomination to weaken me."

"Fine. I'll hand them the mess to deal with themselves."

Demon Lord felt a chill run down his spine.

This wasn't the first time he'd seen Wang Hao scheme against someone, but this time, it was clearly more ruthless.

This wasn't simple retaliation.

This was kicking someone straight into a fire pit, then slamming the lid shut on top of them.

"Your Majesty," Wei Zhongxian spoke up cautiously, "if we truly drive this thing to the Central Province, the common folk there..."

"It won't get a chance to enter the cities directly." Wang Hao cut him off.

"I'll keep chasing it down all the way, forcing it toward the most fortified mountain gates of those sixteen holy lands. To recover, it needs to devour more abominations. To devour more, it has to start killing in the Central Province. Once it starts killing, no matter how deep the Central Province's hidden reserves are, they'll have to surface on their own."

He paused, a faint smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.

"What I want to see isn't how many people it kills."

"What I want to see is where the Central Province's true trump cards are hidden."

At those words, even Yue Ji fell silent.

She suddenly realized that this emperor was never simply waging war.

He was using war to force his enemies to flip the table—to force everyone hiding behind it to step into the open.

The half-step tenth tier abomination, seeing that Wang Hao and his group were not moving, sensed that they no longer intended to fight to the death.

It let out a low, savage roar. The black fog in the underwater ruin contracted violently, forming hundreds of massive tentacles that lashed out toward them.

Wang Hao raised a hand and struck.

The Eighth Palm of the Heaven-Sealing, Earth-Imprisoning Palm Technique.

A golden palm imprint slammed into the black fog, severing the tentacles in one blow.

But this time, the abomination had clearly learned. It no longer attacked head-on. Instead, it recondensed the severed black mist into a massive net that covered the entire ruin, clearly trying to use the terrain of the Guixu Rift to trap them all.

"Oh? It can even use tactics now?" Heavenly Sword raised an eyebrow. "This thing's got a bit more brains than before."

"Half-step tenth tier. It's got some tricks." Wang Hao looked up. "But still not enough."

He turned to Ao Guang. "Can the dragon clan manipulate the ocean currents?"

Ao Guang paused, then nodded. "Yes."

"Good."

Wang Hao pointed toward the depths of the ancient battlefield.

"Reverse the outer currents of the Guixu Rift. Flood the seawater into the ruin."

"Flood it in?"

"Yes." A glint of cunning flashed in Wang Hao's eyes.

"Since this place suppresses it, let's crank up the pressure. The residual killing intent, resentment, and broken Dao traces of the ancient battlefield, combined with the polluted death energy from the seawater outside—I'm going to make it a grand stew."

"It liked to recover in its own lair, didn't it?"

"Well, now let it recover in its own grave."

Ao Guang's eyes brightened. He let out a thunderous roar, and the dragon clan's formation masters simultaneously began to chant.

The ocean currents were forcibly redirected. Massive amounts of black seawater poured in through the rift, thundering down into the ruin below.

In an instant, the ancient battlefield seemed to come alive.

The ruined formations, broken steles, and shattered weapons that had lain dormant for countless years all flickered faintly as the seawater washed over them.

Waves of broken yet still sharp killing intent rose from beneath the earth.

The half-step tenth tier abomination froze mid-motion.

It let out a pained shriek, its origin form clearly pierced by the residual will of this ancient battlefield.

Wang Hao's eyes flashed with brilliance.

"Now."

"Myriad Calamity Soul Seal Array—activate."

He retrieved the formation manual from his system rewards and flung it out casually.

The manual unfurled in midair, transforming into countless black-gold rune lines that settled onto the stone steps, broken pillars, and bones beneath their feet.

In moments, a vast and boundless ancient formation slowly took shape across the ruin, chains of runes rising from all directions, layering ever closer around the half-step tenth tier abomination.

"Crush it now!"

BOOM!

The moment the formation took shape, the anomaly's half-step-to-tenth-rank aura was suppressed by a notch.

It was, after all, not a true tenth-stage being.

It could withstand an entire army, it could dominate the South Sea, but facing the remnants of an ancient battlefield's formation combined with Wang Hao's utterly shameless tactics, it revealed for the first time its true disadvantage.

"Wang Hao!"

It was completely enraged now.

"You seek death!"

"If I, the Emperor, feared death, I would have been done in back in the Eastern Wasteland long ago."

Wang Hao smiled, but his eyes were growing colder and colder.

"Blade-boy, go."

"Heh heh, been waiting for you to say that!"

The Heavenly Sword turned into a streak of black-golden light, plunging straight into the center of the Myriad Calamities Soul-Locking Formation, madly hacking and slashing at the creature's spine. The more it fought, the wilder it got, and the wilder it got, the stronger it became. It even seemed to be absorbing the murderous sword intent lingering in that ancient battlefield, its sword power growing even more ferocious.

"At this rate, I feel like I might climb the rankings!" it shouted while hacking. "Wang Hao, don't stop me!"

"Don't rush the ranking first," Wang Hao said calmly. "Bite twice more at its legs first."

"On it!"

Everyone else: "..."

This master and his blade—neither of them looked like a good person.

Just then, from deep within the ruins, an even more ancient, even weightier rumble of stone tablets reverberated.

Wang Hao suddenly looked up.

He saw, beyond the layers of black mist, massive stone tablets slowly rising from the ground.

The Forest of Demon-Sealing Tablets had arrived.

And beneath that forest, something even more terrifying was beginning to stir awake.