Star Calamity

Gu Changyuan slowly rose to his feet.

From Xing Pojun’s reaction, Gu Changyuan read a great deal.

After he finished recounting what Xing Zixu had experienced in the Abyss of Chaos, he sensed waves of emotion stirring in the others present.

A more complex, deeper kind of ripple—something trapped in their chests, words unsaid.

As they exchanged more information, those waves did not dissipate; instead, they grew stronger.

Their minds seemed to remain fixed on the matter of "Xing Zixu in the Abyss of Chaos."

It wasn’t doubt about his account, but a deeper question about the event itself.

Why had Xing Zixu gone to the Abyss of Chaos?

Why had he encountered Gu Changyuan there, and why had he insisted on following him?

And finally, why had he trusted him so completely—entrusting him with the ancestral token, even the entire Xing clan?

Gu Changyuan wanted to know all of this.

This forced him to connect Xing Zixu’s appearance in the Abyss of Chaos to himself.

Gu Changyuan sensed Xing Huang’s gaze. Those golden eyes were fixed on him, carrying a hint of apology.

He met her gaze and nodded faintly.

Then he looked toward Xing Pojun, who had already shot up above the secret realm, rapidly analyzing the situation before him.

Xing Pojun was an Immortal Emperor.

Gu Changyuan wasn’t one hundred percent certain he could defeat him.

But Xing Pojun seemed to have no intention of using his cultivation level to suppress him.

The energy surging around him was, from beginning to end, pure and sheer—the primal power of the stars.

The seven dark red stars suspended in the air suddenly swelled, transforming in an instant into seven massive celestial mountains that blotted out the sky, hovering over the secret realm.

Starlight patterns swirled, splashing a tide of blood red in every direction, locking down heaven and earth with a suffocating pressure of ancient stellar laws, pressing down heavily.

Either Xing Pojun couldn’t gauge Gu Changyuan’s true cultivation depth and thus didn’t want to recklessly clash with him on that level.

Or he wanted to use the Dao of the Stars to test whether Gu Changyuan was fit to sit as the Progenitor of Ten Thousand Stars.

Either way, it worked to Gu Changyuan’s advantage.

Because if it came to mastery of the stellar way, Gu Changyuan felt he was no worse off than Xing Pojun.

Though he had only comprehended the Star Dao for a short time, his thirty-third disciple, Gu Xinger, was the host of the Chaos Star Spirit.

The convergence of the Seven Stars naturally resonated with the Dao of the Stars.

With her feedback from the Dao, combined with his own extraordinary enlightenment talent and deep foundation for comprehending all laws.

Gu Changyuan’s understanding and control of the Star Dao had reached an extraordinary peak.

He took a step, preparing to go out of the hall.

Just then, a hand suddenly grabbed his arm.

The grip wasn’t strong, but it was tight.

Five fingers clamped down on his forearm, the tips pressing in with a slight effort.

Gu Changyuan looked down and saw Xing Weiyang.

She was still lying there, slumped over the stone table.

Her head rested on her own arm, her long hair spilling across the tabletop, strands of deep purple gleaming coldly in the starlight.

But her right hand had lifted from the table, precisely grabbing hold of his arm.

Gu Changyuan looked at that hand, looked at her closed eyes.

She didn’t want him to go.

He didn’t know why, but a smile spread across his face.

Gently, he pried her hand loose, the movement soft, not hurting her, not waking her.

As Xing Weiyang’s fingers were loosened, they fell feebly in the air.

Her brow creased slightly, then quickly relaxed.

The arc at the corner of her mouth vanished, replaced by a tightly pressed, slightly downturned line.

Gu Changyuan’s gaze left Xing Weiyang and fell on Xing Huang.

She was looking back at him, her golden eyes swirling with complex emotion.

“When this battle is over, I want to hear that thing you’ve all been holding in your hearts.”

Gu Changyuan’s tone was gentle.

“Keeping it buried creates distance, doesn’t it?”

Xing Huang stared at him for a long moment.

Then the smile on her face shifted from its former warmth to something more genuine, more relaxed—a smile tinged with bitterness and release.

“Yes.”

Gu Changyuan nodded, then turned.

His figure shot out of the hall, moving with incredible speed.

Above the Sea of Stars, two figures stood facing each other.

Gu Changyuan’s right hand tightened slightly, and a black sword coalesced in his palm.

“Nine Calamity Sword Array—Eighth Calamity, Heaven’s Edict.”

The low murmur fell from Gu Changyuan’s lips, barely audible.

The moment the words left his mouth, an enormous river of stars materialized in the sky above his head.

The river was about a thousand zhang wide and ten thousand zhang long, suspended between Gu Changyuan and the seven dark stars.

Then, a star rose from that river.

Heaven’s Edict was not a purely offensive sword array; it was an amplifying formation.

The core of Heaven’s Edict was not “kill,” but “command.”

In the form of a heavenly decree, it amplified all of the caster’s attacks, all Daos, all laws.

That star, bearing the heavenly decree, fell into the river of stars.

In that instant, the entire river seemed to come alive.

What had been a quietly flowing river began to churn violently, the flickering of stars abruptly speeding up, the revolution of stellar orbits suddenly quickening.

Xing Pojun hovered opposite Gu Changyuan, with the seven dark red blood moons rotating slowly around him.

His body itself was his strongest weapon, tempered to its limit over an endless span of time.

An Emperor-level physical body, reinforced by the power of stellar curses—it made his form a terrifying instrument of slaughter.

And those seven dark stars were the core of his combat power.

The seven dark stars corresponded to the seven forms of the stellar murderous path: Kill, Attack, Break, Destroy, Slaughter, Massacre, and Annihilation.

These seven forms could be used individually or in combination; they could all target a single enemy or each strike a different opponent.

The seven dark stars were perfectly in sync with Xing Pojun’s will—when his mind moved, the stars moved; when his thoughts shifted, their attack patterns changed accordingly.

Now, Xing Pojun watched the starlight rising around Gu Changyuan, watched the river of stars amplified by Heaven’s Edict, watched the pitch-black longsword in Gu Changyuan’s hand, and a glimmer of satisfaction flashed in his eyes.

He was satisfied with Gu Changyuan’s readiness to fight, that he had shown his true skill from the first moment, with no probing, no holding back.

“Good.”

Xing Pojun said only that single word.

Then he moved.

His form shot forward like a black bolt of lightning, instantly closing the hundred-zhang gap between them.

The seven dark stars followed him, forming a dark red storm around his body.

Gu Changyuan felt the pressure wash over him.

Not suppression from cultivation level—pressure from sheer momentum.

Xing Pojun had lived for countless ages, fought countless battles; the momentum accumulated from seas of blood and mountains of corpses was something that no one who hadn’t experienced such slaughter could imitate.

But Gu Changyuan didn’t retreat. He, too, had been killing in the Abyss of Chaos for a thousand and a hundred years—wading through his own mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

Xing Pojun’s momentum pressed down on him, but it wasn’t overwhelming.

He had his own momentum.