A Catastrophe Caused by One Man

He looked so much like him!

This man bore an almost identical resemblance to him, with the exact same contours of his brows and eyes, yet their temperaments were worlds apart.

He had none of Ye Xuan's icy, calculating ruthlessness. Instead, he exuded a deep tenderness, yet a shattering despair that had reached its absolute peak.

He wore an opulent black-and-red robe, which was now completely soaked through with blood.

The man stared at the Dao Ancestors before him, who were tearing the heavens apart and falling one by one as they slaughtered each other. He clutched his head in his hands, tears mixing with blood as they streamed down his face, and roared in agony,

"No... this isn't how it's supposed to be! Stop! All of you, stop this at once!"

Yet his cries sounded feeble and powerless, drowned out by the thunderous collisions between the warring Dao Ancestors.

"Boom!"

The void was ripped apart violently, and a woman in blazing red, covered head to toe in blood, burst out from the chaotic currents of space.

Her aura was terrifying beyond measure, and around her swirled a thick, tangible sea of blood so dense it seemed to take solid form. It was the purest, most supreme manifestation of the Slaughter Dao!

The Killing Dao Ancestor!

Her hair hung loose and wild, her stunning features twisted into a grimace of madness, and in her hand she swung a blood-dripping pitch-black longsword.

Every stroke of her sword sent galaxies spinning backward and all living things into oblivion.

As she frantically hacked and slashed at the other female Dao Ancestors charging toward her, she let out a shrill, deranged cry,

"Bound by dreams, the winds of fate rise again, I wash all mortal toil away with this slaughter!"

The sweep of her sword was so deadly that three weaker Dao Ancestors failed to dodge in time. Their foundational Great Daos were severed, their trillions-zhang tall Dharma Forms crumbled into a shower of celestial light, and they were slain forever.

But the Killing Dao Ancestor had paid a terrible price for this. A strand of foreign Dao force had pierced through her chest, sending blood gushing forth, and her aura had dwindled drastically.

Even so, she did not cease her killing spree. She snapped her head around, fixed her bloodshot eyes on the man kneeling on the ground in the black-and-red robe, and let out a maddened, blood-curdling scream like a cuckoo crying its heart out,

"Fang Yuan! You underestimated us far too much!"

"Every single one of us truly loves you, loves you to the point of being willing to die for you, so much that we would rip our own hearts, livers, spleens, lungs, and kidneys out just to give them to you!"

Blood and tears streamed from the corners of the Killing Dao Ancestor's eyes, her voice sharp and jarring with overwhelming jealousy and hatred. "But who are we? We are the exalted Dao Ancestors! The most noble beings in all the myriad worlds! How could we ever let you take a harem, and let us Dao Ancestors share one man like those lowly mortal women?"

"That's right, it's absolutely impossible!"

Standing nearby, a female Thunder Dao Ancestor wreathed in chaotic lightning sneered. Half of her body had been shattered, yet she remained overwhelmingly powerful. "I will never share a husband with any other woman! If it comes down to it, I'll kill! I'll kill every last one of them! The one who survives will be the only wife!"

"Fang Yuan is mine! He belongs to me and me alone!"

"You delusional whore! He's my husband!"

"Fang Yuan is only mine, I am his true wife!"

With each hysterical shriek, more and more female Dao Ancestors manifested their terrifying Dharma Forms stretching hundreds of millions of zhang high, and tore into one another in a frenzied brawl.

The Great Daos swelled and exploded wildly, and the sun, moon, and stars shattered like fireworks under the force of their clashes. The entire world had been reduced to a chaotic, devastated ruin.

Fang Yuan, who was still kneeling on the ground, watched this apocalyptic catastrophe he had sparked, and the light in his eyes died out completely.

"It's all my fault... I am the one who deserves to die the most."

He repeatedly bashed his head against the glazed earth, his forehead bleeding profusely, and begged in anguish, "I'm begging you all, stop killing each other... I'm begging you..."

Just then, the great river of time surged violently.

A woman shrouded in the vast, endless currents of the long river of time stepped forward, riding the waves of the ages as she descended slowly.

The Time Dao Ancestor!

She did not join the fray. Instead, she looked down at Fang Yuan kneeling in the pool of blood with a gaze so complex it defied description, brimming with equal parts love and seething hatred.

"Fang Yuan, when you relied on those petty tricks of yours to provoke all of us Dao Ancestors, you should have known this day would come."

The Time Dao Ancestor's voice was ethereal and icy, carrying a madness born of seeing through every secret. "You used the Emotion Dao to suppress all other Great Daos, but what was that based on? Was it your peerless cultivation? No. Your true combat strength is trivial in our eyes. Any one of us could reduce you to nothing in just three moves."

She slowly crouched down, stretched out her cold fingers, and gently stroked Fang Yuan's blood-stained face, her gaze growing hazy and obsessive. "But we loved you so deeply... we loved you as if you were our very lives, so much that we could never bear to say a single harsh word to you, let alone harm you."

"It was that unreserved, all-consuming love that gave you the audacity to trample all over our feelings without a care!"

The Time Dao Ancestor shot to her feet, pointed at the cataclysmic battle raging around them, and shouted sharply, "Fang Yuan, you have betrayed so many people! You thought you could play us all against each other, that you could balance everything? This is your retribution!"

Fang Yuan wept tears of bright, shocking blood, and he cried out to the sky, his voice thick with endless regret and despair,

"It's all my fault! Kill me! Just kill me! Stop killing each other!"

He pounded his chest wildly. "I thought that as long as you all loved me, and I treated every single one of you well, giving each of you equal affection, I could have a harem and live happily forever after..."

"But I was wrong... so terribly wrong. I never had the ability to bear so many such heavy, overwhelming burdens of love!"

But those female Dao Ancestors, lost in the throes of utter jealousy and possessiveness, had already been driven completely mad.

Some refined the powers of yin and yang to seal their rivals in the netherworld for all eternity.

Others burned the heavens and boiled the seas to erase every last trace of existence.

Yet no matter how brutal and reckless their battle grew, no matter how devastating the residual waves of their Dao forces became, they all strangely avoided the small patch of land where Fang Yuan knelt.

Even at the cost of their own bodies and souls, deep in their subconscious, none of them could bear to hurt that man even a single hair.

Fang Yuan could only kneel there in utter despair, a helpless bystander watching the immortal annihilation catastrophe his own amorous ways had unleashed.

"It's all my fault... I regret it... I truly regret it..." he whispered to himself, his heart turned to cold ash.

The frenzied battle raged on for what felt like an eternity, until the entire world was reduced to nothing but empty void.

Just then, something unexpected happened!

A dishevelled female Dao Ancestor, half of her face disfigured from the fighting, broke through the encirclement and appeared right before Fang Yuan.

A look of utter, unhinged madness, the kind that would burn everything down to bring ruin to everyone, glinted in her eyes.

"Fang Yuan... since I can't have you, and none of the others are willing to let go..."

The mad woman stretched out her hand, her fingertips swirling with the all-destroying power of the Great Dao. With a sickening squelch, she drove her hand straight through Fang Yuan's heart without the slightest hesitation.

Fang Yuan jolted violently, staring in disbelief at the bloody hand protruding from his chest.

"Then we'll die together! In the realm of the dead, you will belong to me and only me forever!" The mad woman clung to him, cackling wildly.