Desolate Era

The towering divine sword had stabbed through all eight layers of clouds. Mana flowed through the area immediately around it, blasting away at its surroundings. This was the combined mana of Ji Ning, Autarch Titanos, Autarch Bolin, and all of the others. For their mana to be there was equivalent to them being there in person, and they could use mana to scan and scry an area. Every single drop of mana contained parts of their soul and truesoul, after all. As their mana surged through the area, it quickly covered the area where Autarch Bolin’s true body was located.

“You finally made it.” An unremarkable spark of energy quickly began to fly through the mana towards the titanic sword. This was the form Autarch Bolin’s true body had taken once it entered the false death stage.

“Thank you, everyone.” Bolin’s true body only showed itself after going inside the giant sword, and he immediately laughed loudly and delighted. All this time, he had been worried that his hiding spot would be discovered, at which point he would have nowhere to run and would most assuredly die.

“Bolin, hurry up and take control of the formation! With your main body in control, we’ll be able to up the power even further,” Ning sent.

“Alright.” Bolin’s body quickly sped up through the interior of the giant sword, rising through the clouds. The divine sword was like a giant mountain which stretched from the very bottom all the way through the ninth layer of clouds, allowing Bolin to easily traverse the Grassland World and stealthily pass through the five heads of the black serpent which were keeping the rift in the clouds open! No one was the wiser as he reached the void outside the Grassland World.

“I’ve made it out alive.” Only after exiting the Grassland World did Autarch Bolin finally let out a sigh of relief. He flew through the void and quickly reached his avatar’s location in the formation, which he swapped with. The power of the entire formation instantly increased by another 20%. His avatar had already died once, after all, and so it was fairly weak. It was by far the weakest link in the outer formation, far weaker than the true body.

“Congratulations, Bolin!”

“Bolin, remember that you owe us some fine wine for saving you from that calamity.” Stonerule, Ekong, and the others all sent happy messages to him.

Autarch Bolin smiled. “Easily done! I’ll send my avatar back and hide inside the Grassland World in my stead. Who knows, it might serve us in good stead!” He then willed his avatar to fly back into the Grassland World, following the same path he had taken in leaving. After mastering the Samsara Daobirth Essence, Autarch Bolin was superior to all other Autarchs when it came to hiding himself.

He was able to completely hide his aura and sever all karmic connections, making it impossible for even the Chaosverse to detect his existence. Even if his avatar ended up being discovered and failed its missions, its loss was a minor matter. To let his true body die while exploring would be a true shame.

……

Boom! After the towering sword stabbed straight through all of the blocking clouds, it stabbed into the grasslands themselves. However, the grass was so extremely sturdy that the sword didn’t manage to pierce too deeply inside of it.

“There’s no way to dig any deeper into the grassland,” Ning sent mentally. “Gentlemen, what do you think we should do?”

“The Grassland World’s core should be located deep within its depths,” Autarch Titanos said. “Based on what I’ve seen from researching various powerful Sithe weapons, the most powerful formations will be located around the most important regions. Right now, the problem is that the sword needs to endure the restrictive power of eight layers of clouds while continuing to drill downwards. It’s only able to unleash a fraction of its full power, and I don’t think there’s any chance we’ll be able to damage the core components while doing so.”

“Right,” Ning agreed. “Stabbing through the eight layers is already consuming a bit over half of the power, while those nine chains are taking up another twenty percent. That leaves just thirty percent to deal with the grasslands below.”

“The two of you can decide on what to do,” Autarch Mogg said.

“You two understand formations better than the rest of us. You decide,” Autarch Ekong agreed. The other Autarchs were going to let Ning and Titanos take the lead, because they were the most skilled in the Dao of Formations. Titanos in particular had spent countless aeons analyzing artifice and weaponry.

“The remaining thirty percent stands no chance of punching through,” Ning agreed.

“Then let’s get rid of those nine layers of clouds first,” Autarch Titanos said. “The clouds serve as a protective eggshell around the yolk. If we can scrape away the clouds, we can deal with the interior as we please.”

“Destroy the nine layers of clouds?” Ning was intrigued.

“The core is inside the grasslands, while the nine clouds are outside. There has to be some sort of formation keeping these troublesome clouds active,” Titanos said.

“Which means if we can destroy the relevant formations, the clouds will disperse on their own,” Ning agreed.

“Right.” These two understood formations very well, and they quickly managed to come up with a method for dealing with the clouds.

“Break for me!” Ning began to twist and turn the titanic sword, sending it chopping back and forth through the clouds. Each time it did so, it created new gaping wounds within the lower eight layers of clouds! The clouds continued to cover the tears, while the sword continued to stir its way through them like a spoon.

The process continued, with the clouds reforming each time after the divine sword cut through them. This rapid healing process consumed an enormous amount of energy.

“Eh?” The mana within the divine sword was able to follow the energy ripples of the healing process, allowing formation experts Ning and Titanos to discover nine different energy wellsprings in the time needed to boil a kettle of tea.

“So they are located in nine different places at the farthest corners of the clouds?”

Not even Autarchs were able to see to the ends of the vast Grassland World, because there were spacetime formations blocking their site and hiding nine critical components of the formations powering the clouds.

“Break!”

The sword assaulted the nine points with raw force, stabbing out towards the ends of the grasslands and blasting through spacetime barriers with a rumbling sound. Although the sword only had 30% of its full power left, it still had more power than any full-force strike from one of the seven operating independently. The spacetime barriers were completely incapable of stopping it. They completely imploded and crumbled, revealing the true scene behind them.

Here, there were a series of thick clouds. All nine layers of clouds were grouped together here, masking something.

“Nine layers of clouds are protecting this place?” Ning and Titanos were delighted. Their guesses had been spot-on; otherwise, why would this place be so carefully hidden and protected?

The enormous sword first withdrew back to the outermost ninth layer of clouds, reuniting with the black serpent. Then… “Break! Break! Break!” Ning and Autarch Titanos worked in harmony, the divine sword leading the way with the black serpent following right behind it. The nine violet-gold chains sought to bar their path, but they were held back by the sword-light radiating from the divine sword.

The divine sword tore through the ninth layer of gray clouds as it made its way to the place hidden by formations previously.

“BREAK!!!” The black serpent immediately took responsibility for keeping the ninth layer of clouds ‘open’, while the divine sword pressed the attack. It quickly broke through all eight layers of clouds, revealing countless glittering runes and complicated glyphs which were working together in an unfathomably profound manner. Energy was being sent from deep within the grasslands into the runes, which then sent the energy into the layers of clouds.

“This is a conduit formation!” Ning and Titanos were delighted.

“It’s incredibly complicated. I don’t understand it at all,” Autarch Titanos said. “Let’s break it.”

“Right.” Ning didn’t understand it either. Even if they spent ten years working on it, they probably wouldn’t manage to figure out more than a tiny bit of it. The best way to deal with a complicated formation like this was to overwhelm it with power.

Slash! The divine sword pierced through the opening which the black serpent was maintaining, carrying apocalyptic levels of force as it cut through the eight layers of clouds and then stabbed against the runes.

Boom! Countless runes and glyphs began to tremble. “Haha, illusory runes eh? Then I’ll destroy spacetime in the area. Let’s see if your formation can remain stable then!” Ning continued to violently attack, striking each blow with maximum power and causing the runes to shudder and flicker.

……

Deep within the depths of the grasslands. The two men and the woman were beginning to truly panic now.

“What should we do? They found the formation linking us to the nine clouds almost right away.” The red-robed man frowned.

“Should we ignite the quintessence core?” the black-robed man said nervously.

“Ignite the quintessence core?” The silver-robed woman and the red-robed man were both stunned. The ‘quintessence core’ referred to the energy source powering the entire world. The reason why the Autarchs had been unable to truly break into the Sithelands which had invaded their Chaosverse was precisely because the Sithelands had its own miniaturized quintessence. This quintessence core provided the Sithelands with energy, allowing the Sithe to construct those stable and deadly Daoguard Towers! However, over the aeons the energy of that miniature quintessence had been gradually depleted. By now, there was little remaining.

The reason why the Grassland World was so powerful was because it had a quintessence core of its own as well! Iyerre had asked his own teacher to give it to him, and his teacher had obliged. That was the only reason why Iyerre had been able to create this mighty weapon. Otherwise, there would’ve been no way to power the Grassland World. Even the mightiest of weapons needed sufficiently strong external power sources here. This was a foreign Chaosverse, after all; they were rejected here and could not draw upon the local prime essences.

“Igniting the quintessence core will consume an enormous amount of energy. If we use it all up, we’ll have lost this battle,” the silver-robed woman said. “We should check with Iyerre first.” She immediately reached out to contact Iyerre.

A short while later a blurry pillar of light appeared which gradually resolved into the tall, barefoot, balding figure of Iyerre.

“What is it?” Iyerre asked.

“The cultivators set up a trap for us here. The Grassland World has been caught, and the nine layers of clouds are unable to stop them,” the silver-robed woman said quickly. “They’ve even discovered the conduit formation powering the nine cloud layers. Soon, they’ll have destroyed it. Once the nine clouds are destroyed, the Grassland World will be on the verge of destruction as well.”

“WHAT!?” Iyerre’s face was drained of all blood, and a look of shock appeared in his eyes. He was unable to remain calm any longer.