Zhao Ergou opened his mouth.
He wanted to say something.
But it felt as though his throat had closed up.
Zhang Shan leaned on his long spear.
Slowly, he straightened.
“Don’t cry.”
“His Majesty hasn’t fallen yet.”
Zhao Ergou wiped his eyes hard.
“I’m not crying.”
Zhang Shan did not call him out on it.
He turned to look at the army formation.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Western Wasteland Army.
One after another, they rose to their feet.
They no longer had the strength to help Wang Hao.
All they could do
was stand.
The eightieth breath.
The ninth level of the Abyssal Thunder Demon-Suppressing Tower opened.
All the remaining Heartblight
turned into a silver-black torrent
and surged into the ninth level.
Inside the tower.
The purple thunder dragon, already exhausted,
was reduced to a vague skeletal frame.
After the Heartblight flooded in,
the dragon bones opened their eyes.
Two clusters of silver-black thunderfire
burned within those hollow sockets.
Xuanming’s final lingering will
condensed into a giant face.
“This Immortal will not become nourishment for some cursed artifact!”
“Wang Hao!”
“You may be able to save them once!”
“But you cannot save them a second time!”
“So long as even a single wisp of Heartblight remains in this world—”
The silver-haired youth drove his sword into the giant face.
“You’re already dead.”
“You sure do talk a lot.”
The blade began devouring it madly.
The thunder dragon skeleton opened its jaws as well.
Sword and tower alike
tore at Xuanming’s lingering will.
The Abyssal Thunder Demon-Suppressing Tower seized the left half.
The new Heavenly Son Sword swallowed the right half.
The black tower trembled,
as if to insist that it had swallowed it first.
The silver-haired youth refused to yield.
“Whoever grabs it gets it.”
Both sides exerted force at once.
Xuanming’s final giant face
was ripped apart down the middle.
“No—!”
Boom!
Thunderlight exploded.
Xuanming’s lingering will was completely extinguished.
The ninety-ninth breath.
The final silver-black thread
flew out from an infant’s chest.
Following the river of Imperial Dao,
it entered the Abyssal Thunder Demon-Suppressing Tower.
The tiny cursed heart within the infant’s pupils vanished.
A loud, healthy cry rang out once more.
The hundredth breath.
The Abyssal Thunder Demon-Suppressing Tower.
All nine levels closed at once.
The tower’s body swelled violently,
then abruptly contracted.
Silver-black thunder patterns
appeared across its pitch-black surface.
【Xuanming Heartblight has been purged!】
【The Great Xia Heart Plague has been lifted!】
【The Abyssal Thunder Demon-Suppressing Tower has successfully imprisoned Xuanming Heart Thunder!】
【The cursed artifact’s abilities have evolved!】
【New thunder soldier acquired: Cursed-Heart Thunder Trooper!】
【The ninth level’s thunder might has begun accumulating once more!】
【Current complete Ninth-Realm attacks: Zero → One!】
【Warning!】
【The Abyssal Thunder Demon-Suppressing Tower has entered deep dormancy!】
【Estimated awakening time: Unknown!】
The black tower swayed once
and fell toward Wang Hao.
Before sinking fully into dormancy,
it still sent Wang Hao one final thought.
Thirty-five percent.
Not a fraction less.
Wang Hao caught the Abyssal Thunder Demon-Suppressing Tower
with his fractured Imperial Bone.
“Don’t worry.”
“I’ve written it down.”
At last, the black tower fell silent.
A faint smile appeared
at the corner of Wang Hao’s lips.
Writing it down was one thing.
When he would actually pay it
was another matter entirely.
But in the next instant,
the smile vanished from Wang Hao’s face.
Deep within Xuanming’s corpse ash,
that transparent heart had already shattered completely.
Countless gray-white fragments
slowly gathered in the starry void.
It was not reviving.
Nor was it a new Heart Plague.
It was forming a coffin.
Twenty-four phantom realms of death
emerged upon its surface.
Twenty-four silver-black chains
extended from all around the coffin.
The end of every chain
was linked to a mountain or river nexus somewhere in the Nine Provinces.
A system prompt appeared.
【Immortal-Cursed Burial Coffin detected!】
【Although Xuanming has been slain, the level of his remains exceeds the maximum limit that the Nine Provinces world can bear!】
[If the corpse remains in the Nine Provinces, the laws of immortal aberration will contaminate the mountains and rivers of Great Xia within a hundred years!]
[The Immortal-Aberration Burial Coffin must be sent out of the Nine Provinces within twelve shichen!]
[Warning!]
[The burial coffin has become bound to the mountains and rivers of the Nine Provinces!]
[No single martial warrior can move it!]
[At least hundreds of millions of living beings must lift the coffin together!]
Wang Hao looked at the colossal silver-black coffin stretching a million li across.
Then he looked at the twenty-four chains running through the Nine Provinces.
Slowly, he spoke.
His voice carried throughout Great Xia.
“He’s not quite dead yet.”
“But he’s already prepared his own coffin.”
“Everyone, lend a hand.”
“Send the Fifth Immortal Calamity...”
“...on his way.”
The silver-black burial coffin
lay across the shattered Immortal Domain.
It was a million li long.
Upon its lid,
twenty-four faces of Xuanming rested with their eyes shut.
There was no pain on their faces.
No rage, either.
Only the eerie stillness of death remained.
Twenty-four chains pierced through the void
and descended into the Nine Provinces.
The first
was linked to the northern snowfields.
The second
to Bloodward Pass in the western wastes.
The third
plunged into the depths of the Eastern Sea.
The fourth
coiled around the mountains of the southern frontier.
The remaining chains
ran through prefectures,
cities,
rivers,
and imperial roads.
The final chain
drove straight beneath the imperial capital,
locking down Great Xia’s Dragon Vein.
The burial coffin was silent.
Yet every time it trembled,
the mountains and rivers of the Nine Provinces shuddered with it.
In the northern snowlands,
entire mountain ranges collapsed.
In the Eastern Sea,
the tides rolled backward, surging a thousand zhang high.
Across the southern frontier,
the earth split open into one abyss after another.
Xuanming was already dead.
But the corpse of an immortal aberration
was still more than the Nine Provinces could bear.
The laws of immortal aberration were seeping out from the coffin.
Silver represented immortality.
Black represented aberration.
The two intertwined with one another.
Wherever they passed,
flowers and grass withered.
Birds and beasts lost their heartbeats.
Even within stone,
tiny veins began to grow.
Twelve shichen.
If they could not send the burial coffin away within twelve shichen,
Xuanming’s corpse would take root in the Nine Provinces completely.
Great Xia would not be destroyed at once.
But from that day onward,
every child born
might be born without a heart.
Every person who died
might become a heart-thrall of Xuanming.
The entire Nine Provinces
would slowly turn into a second Burial-Star Heart Realm.
Wang Hao knelt on one knee amid the stars.
The Thunder Abyss Demon-Suppressing Tower had fallen silent.
The new Son-of-Heaven Sword had only just entered the Eighth Realm,
yet after devouring too much immortal-aberration essence,
its aura surged and faded unpredictably.
The silver-haired youth stood beside Wang Hao.
The bones of his newly regrown left arm
were continuously leaking silver-black mist.
He reached for the nearest chain
and pulled with all his strength.
The chain did not move in the slightest.
Instead, several cracks split across his right arm.
The silver-haired youth frowned.
“This coffin is heavier than Xuanming.”
Wang Hao said,
“People playing dead
are usually heavy.”
The silver-haired youth did not understand.
“Why?”
“Because they have thick skin.”
The silver-haired youth pondered this.
Then he looked earnestly at Wang Hao.
Wang Hao turned his head.
“What are you looking at Us for?”
The silver-haired youth averted his gaze.
“Nothing.”
Wang Hao’s eyes turned dangerous.
“Were you just thinking
about how large a coffin We would need after We die?”
The silver-haired youth immediately shook his head.
“No.”
“One Seventh-Realm material as punishment.”
“Master!”
“Talking back.”
“Add another.”
The silver-haired youth fell silent.
He was deeply unconvinced,
but he did not dare show it.
His master
did not even have hands anymore,
yet he could still keep the accounts crystal clear.
That was a skill
this sword truly admired.
Throughout the Nine Provinces,
everyone heard Wang Hao’s imperial decree.
“Send the Fifth Immortal Calamity on his way.”
Western Wasteland.
Zhao Ergou looked up at the silver-black chain suspended beyond the city walls.
The chain was a thousand zhang thick.
Its surface was covered in densely packed hearts.
Every single one of them
beat slowly.
Thump.
Thump.
The sound made one’s scalp crawl.
Zhang Shan hefted his spear
and walked up to the chain.
Zhao Ergou followed him.
“Uncle Zhang.”
“How are we supposed to lift this?”
Zhang Shan did not know either.
He placed a hand against the chain.
The instant his palm touched it,
a face of Xuanming emerged from within the links.
The face opened its eyes
and stared at Zhang Shan without a sound.
The pressure of an immortal wraith
crashed straight into his sea of consciousness.
Zhang Shan’s body stiffened.
His knees began to buckle.
With his level of cultivation,
he simply could not withstand the lingering might of an immortal wraith’s corpse.
But just as his knees were about to touch the ground,
Zhang Shan let out a low roar
and forced himself upright again.
“When you were alive,
I never knelt to you.
“Now you’re dead,
and you still want me to kneel?”
He grabbed the chain with both hands
and braced his shoulder beneath it.
“Western Wasteland Army!”
“Lift the coffin!”
Zhao Ergou was the first to rush forward.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers followed close behind.
Some bore the chain on their shoulders.
Some used their weapons to pry it up.
Some tied war chariots to the chain.
There were even badly wounded soldiers
who could only sit on the ground,
using their one remaining arm
to cling desperately to the ropes.
The army formation rose.
Blood and vitality gathered.
The strength of hundreds of thousands
flowed along the chain toward the Star-Burial Heart Realm.
The silver-black burial coffin
swayed slightly.
Only once.
It did not move.
Zhao Ergou’s face turned red with strain.
His feet sank into the earth.
“Why is it so damn heavy?”
Zhang Shan gritted his teeth.
“Stupid question!
“There’s an immortal inside!”
Zhao Ergou panted heavily.
“If I’d known,
I would’ve cursed him a little less earlier!”
“The harder you curse someone,
“the heavier they are to carry after they die!”
Zhang Shan nearly laughed in spite of himself.
“Who told you that?”
“When my dad was buried,
“that’s what the people in the village said!”
“They said that people who get cursed too much
“carry too much resentment after death!”
Zhang Shan snapped,
“Then curse him some more!
“Curse the resentment out of him!”
Zhao Ergou’s eyes lit up.
It sounded perfectly reasonable to him.
“Xuanming!
“You never paid back the money you owed!
“Now you’re dead, and you’re still weighing down my shoulders!
“No wonder you lost your head!”
The soldiers around them
joined in the furious cursing.
“You headless bastard!”
“Twenty-four hearts, and not one of them grew you a face!”
“You think being an immortal wraith makes you so great?”
“You’re dead, and you still have to let us carry you!”
The curses grew louder and louder.
The face of Xuanming emerging from the chain
actually began to twist.
The lingering might of the immortal wraith was scattered by the fury of the masses.
The weight on the soldiers’ shoulders
immediately eased somewhat.
The same scene
was playing out across every province of Great Xia.
Northern Frontier.
The old general’s Martial God avatar had already shattered.
He himself had only half a life left.
Yet he still dragged his spear
to the foot of the chain.
Hundreds of thousands of Northern Frontier troops
shouldered the chain,
forming an endless dragon-like procession across the snowfields.
Eastern Sea.
Countless warships were linked together with iron cables.
Massive seagoing vessels,
tower ships,
fishing boats,
and even several makeshift rafts tied together—
every vessel
worked together to haul the burial-coffin chain that had fallen into the sea.
The Eastern Sea Martial God stood atop a wave.
One hand gripped the chain.
The other pointed west.
“Raise the sails!”
“Send him to his grave!”
Boom!
A million sails unfurled at once.
The gale was drawn forth by the formation.
The entire Eastern Sea
was pulling the chain outward.
Southern Frontier.
Massive demon beasts emerged from the forests.
Thick ropes were looped around their bodies.
They marched alongside the warriors from the city.
An aged giant elephant.
Its shoulders had been rubbed raw and bloody by the ropes.
With every step it took,
the earth trembled.
Upon the elephant’s back
sat a little girl with her hair in two horn-shaped braids.
She held a bamboo pole in her hand,
waving it forward again and again.
“Move!”
“Drag those bad things out!”
The elephant let out a deep, rumbling cry.
Its pace quickened once more.
Central Province.
Countless sects threw open their mountain gates.
Their disciples poured forth in full force.
In the past,
these sects had fought one another.
For spirit veins.
For cultivation arts.
For the ownership of a few mountain peaks.
They could even wage war for decades.
But today,
everyone stood beside the same chain.
A one-armed sect master
and the sworn enemy he had battled for half his life
shouldered the same pry bar.
They exchanged a glance.
Neither said a word.
They simply exerted their strength together.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
