Staying in the sect, controlling beasts and cultivating immortals

The once ferocious weapon, which devoured the finger bones of gods and demons and absorbed fragments of the Chaos Origin Core, now possessed a dim luster. The sword's dark, dusty blade was covered with fine cracks, especially a huge crack on the spine that almost pierced through the entire blade, a truly shocking sight.

The dark red divine rune on the sword, symbolizing the devouring of origins, now resembled a dying blood snake, its light faint and writhing with difficulty.

Only the Guixu Star Orbit Compass, forged from the remnants of the Myriad Manifestations Celestial Disc, at the hilt of the sword, still pulsates with an extremely slow and weak gray dot at its center, symbolizing "nothingness," like the last struggle of a dying heart, proving that this sword has not yet completely died.

“Emperor…Emperor…” Wang Cheng moved to Mo Heng’s side and followed his gaze. His tiger eyes instantly turned red, and a beast-like growl came from his throat. He struggled to stand up, but was forced to kneel down by the intense pain. He could only clench his fists tightly, and the knuckles of his Chaos Bone Arm cracked.

"Don't...don't move rashly..." Mo Heng's voice was weak but carried an undeniable urgency. He stared intently at the location of Yu Changsheng and the Extinction Sword, his turbid eyes flashing with the last glimmer of a formation master's almost instinctive deduction.

“That deep pit… is the ‘residue’ left after the Gate of Return to Nothingness was annihilated, the most unstable anchor point in this shattered space… and also… the place closest to the ‘Origin of Return to Nothingness’… The Emperor… the Emperor is using his body as a stake and the Sword of Annihilation as a wedge… to forcibly stabilize this void! If he falls now… this fragment that has been temporarily ‘solidified’ will… collapse completely in an instant… and we… all of us… will be swept back into the true turbulent currents of Return to Nothingness… and perish completely!”

As if to confirm Mo Heng's words, a piece of glassy ground a little distance away from the void pit suddenly emitted a faint "crack" sound, like ice shattering.

Immediately afterwards, that area silently collapsed and disintegrated, turning into a new, smaller void. The glass crystals at the edges dripped down like melted wax and were instantly swallowed up.

A faint yet utterly still suction force came, silently dragging several pieces of airship wreckage and the grayish-white marks left by several soldiers into it, where they disappeared.

A chill, more piercing than the omnipresent cold air of the void, instantly gripped all the survivors who were still conscious.

Fear, like cold vines, coiled around their hearts.

“We must… hold… this place…” Mo Heng’s breathing became rapid. He bit his already cracked lips hard, and the sharp pain brought a brief moment of clarity.

He looked at Wang Cheng, his eyes filled with a desperate, almost pleading expression: "General Wang... help me... gather... the remaining... Guixu Camp... the Annihilation War Puppets... with the Emperor's location... as the array's core... and deploy the 'Guixu Wall'! Only... by borrowing the Annihilation Dao principles dissipating from this void pit... can we temporarily... construct... a barrier... to isolate... spatial annihilation..."

Looking at Mo Heng's withered, dying face, and then at the figure at the edge of the pit, who was like a broken piece of porcelain but still stubbornly stuck in place, Wang Cheng's eyes were bloodshot and almost bursting.

He nodded sharply, letting out a low, beast-like growl, and slammed his remaining left arm against the ground!
"Guixu Camp! Those who aren't dead...get up!" The hoarse roar, like the furious cry of a wounded tiger, echoed clearly and with difficulty in this desolate land. "Annihilation War Puppet...activate!"

His voice seemed to possess a certain magic.

Scattered throughout the ruins, the relatively intact, gray-black metal-cast Annihilation War Puppets suddenly flickered with the dim gray-white flames in their eye sockets, as if they were awakened undead.

A dozen or so close-knit war puppets, their joints creaking with a harsh metallic scraping sound, struggled to their feet, their cold red eyes fixed on Wang Cheng.

Further away, some Guixu Camp scouts, who were buried under the wreckage and were seriously injured but not dead, struggled to crawl out of the ruins upon hearing their commander's roar.

Most of them were wounded and weak, but their eyes remained sharp as eagles, carrying the ferocity of someone who had survived a calamity and absolute obedience to orders. They silently gathered together, their steps faltering, but their goal was clear: to reach the location where Wang Cheng and Mo Heng were.

"Elder Mo! What...do you want us to do?"

A Guixu Camp captain, whose face was half burned and whose breath was weak, asked in a hoarse voice, his eyes fixed on Mo Heng.

Mo Heng struggled to sit up, his withered fingers, still wet with the blood from the corner of his mouth, began to rapidly trace lines on the cold, glazed floor in front of him.

Each stroke was incredibly difficult, as if draining his last bit of strength, leaving behind a dark red, twisted trail.

"Hear the command... Bing San... Kan position... Li fire... Extinction as the guide..."

His voice was broken and intermittent, each word accompanied by heavy breathing, yet he accurately reported profound directions and instructions. It was an extremely rudimentary "Return to the Ruins" formation diagram, which could only be effective by perfectly utilizing the environment of this place.

There were no array flags, no spirit stones, and no stable energy source.

The materials were scattered fragments of glass and metal from the wreckage of flying boats; the energy was the omnipresent chaotic void energy of this space and the ethereal Daoist aura emanating from the edge of the void pit. This was almost an impossible task.

But Wang Cheng and the elite Guixu Camp soldiers and the Silent War Puppets who struggled to their feet did not hesitate. Like the most precise parts, under Wang Cheng's hoarse commands and Mo Heng's faint guidance, they began a race against death to build their equipment.

The heavy metal debris was dragged along, scraping against the glass floor with a screeching sound. The Annihilation War Puppets used their cold metal arms as carving knives, painstakingly carving array patterns into the incredibly hard glass floor, guided by the Ink Balance Bloodline.

The cultivators of the Guixu Camp endured their pain and carefully infused their weak divine sense and remaining Guixu power into the engravings.

They dared not directly trigger the violent energy in the space, and could only rely on themselves as fragile "conductors" and "converters".

Time loses its meaning here; there is only heavy breathing, the scraping of metal, and the occasional, chilling low rumble of energy emanating from a spatial rift in the distance.

After an unknown amount of time, a rudimentary ring-shaped structure, made of twisted metal and blood-red patterns, painstakingly took shape around the edge of the void pit.

It barely encompassed the area where Yu Changsheng knelt, the Annihilation Sword deeply embedded in the ground, and most of the survivors. The light flowing on the array base was extremely dim, flickering uncertainly, as if it might be completely extinguished at any moment.

“Activate…the formation…” Mo Heng uttered the last two words, his whole body went limp as if all his bones had been removed, leaving only the faint rise and fall of his chest.

A fierce glint flashed in Wang Cheng's eyes. He raised his remaining left arm high, revealing the Chaos Bone Arm. He forced the dim gray light on the bone arm to its limit and slammed his fist into the core array node beneath his feet!
"The Ruins of Return! Rise—!"

hum!
A deep, muffled hum, seemingly emanating from the earth's core, resounded.

The entire simple circular array base trembled violently! The gray-white annihilation principles that had been drifting like smoke around the edge of the void pit seemed to be drawn by an invisible force, slowly and meticulously converging and flowing into the simple array patterns. The dim light on the array base suddenly brightened, then stabilized, forming an extremely thin, almost transparent, yet absolutely stable gray light film that isolated the aura of annihilation, like a huge, semi-transparent gray glass dome, enveloping the core area.

The moment this fragile yet crucial gray light membrane rose, the pervasive, unsettling "dissolving sensation" and the suction from the spatial rifts in this shattered space were instantly largely shut off.

It's safe now... temporarily.

Everyone involved in setting up the formation, whether it was Wang Cheng, Mo Heng, or the Guixu Camp soldiers and the Annihilation War Puppets who struggled to their feet, all collapsed to the ground as if their last bit of strength had been drained, leaving only heavy breathing.

The light on Wang Cheng's Chaotic Bone Arm completely went out, and even tiny cracks appeared on the metal surface.

Mo Heng was barely breathing and had fallen into an even deeper coma.

But their gazes were still drawn to the center of the light membrane—the edge of that void pit, where the broken figure still knelt on one knee like a pillar of strength.

It was as if it sensed the rise of this barrier constructed with the Dao of Nirvana, or as if it was touched by the temporary stabilization of this space.

Yu Changsheng's body, covered in cracks and wounds, moved very slightly, almost imperceptibly.

His lowered head slowly, with a rough, grinding sound like bones grinding together, lifted an inch.

Beneath the disheveled white hair, a pair of eyes slowly opened.

Those eyes, which once seemed to contain chaotic star vortexes and the abyss of nothingness, were now dull and lifeless, with spiderweb-like dark red cracks covering the depths of their pupils—a manifestation of the severe damage to their primordial spirit.

However, at the bottom of that chaotic abyss on the verge of collapse, a faint yet incredibly pure purple-gold light, like the last star refusing to fall in the cold night, stubbornly shone brightly.

His gaze first fell on the Annihilation Sword, which was deeply embedded in the glass floor before him. The sword was covered with cracks, and the dark red divine runes were barely hanging on.

The pulsation of the core gray dot on the Guixu Star Orbit compass at the sword's edge seemed to have become slightly stronger due to the establishment of the "Guixu Enclosure".

Then, his gaze slowly moved, sweeping across the tragic battlefield shrouded in a fragile gray light membrane: the unconscious and dying Mo Heng, Wang Cheng whose breath was as weak as a spider's thread but whose spine was still straight, Chen Xueqing whose life flame on the lotus platform could be extinguished at any moment, the heavily wounded Yanlong and Xiechi, and the remnants of the army struggling to gather together, their eyes filled with despair and the last glimmer of hope...

Finally, his gaze fell back on his cracked palms. The purplish-gold imperial blood continued to slowly and stubbornly seep from the deepest cracks, dripping onto the glazed floor beneath him.

At this moment, a sudden change occurred.

The anomaly was not dangerous, but rather originated from the imperial blood flowing from Yu Changsheng's palm. The purplish-gold blood dripped onto the scorching glass ground, but instead of evaporating and disappearing as before, it seemed to be accepted by the essence of this shattered world, spreading out a small patch of strange, vibrant purplish-gold patterns.

The patterns shimmered, faintly resonating with the remaining foundation of the Guixu Wall array beneath his feet. Thin yet pure chaotic essence was slowly guided in, nourishing his nearly depleted body.

His gaze, sweeping across the room, was dim yet profound, containing the power to pierce through illusion.

Mo Heng collapsed beside the blood-painted array diagram, his breath as faint as a thread, his life force seemingly about to be extinguished at any moment.
Wang Cheng's massive body slumped to the ground, his broken, chaotic bone arm hanging limply, each heavy breath accompanied by blood foam.
Chen Xueqing huddled on the remaining fragments of the jade platform, where only the core of the lotus remained. The illusory image of the Pure World Lotus was so faint that it was almost invisible. She was barely sustained by the last trace of the Daoist aura of the "Pure Domain." The Flaming Dragon and the Evil Beast lay prostrate beside her, their dragon scales dull and lifeless. The Evil Beast's Eternal Night Sea shrank into a small patch of mist, struggling to resist the erosion of the surrounding void power.

The remaining soldiers of the Guixu Camp huddled together silently with the Silent War Puppets, their armor shattered, their eyes filled with either confusion or death. Only a few struggled to maintain the weak operation of the Guixu Enclosure Formation.

The world was deathly silent, with only the spatial scars left by the Gate of Return to Nothingness emitting a low hum, reminding them that they were in dire straits.

Yu Changsheng's gaze finally returned to his bleeding palm, the purple-gold patterns still slowly spreading. He understood. This shattered space, forcibly opened by the Sword of Annihilation and devouring the remains of the Burial God and fragments of the Chaos Origin Core, had its underlying laws deeply tainted by the Chaos Emperor's Blood and the Origin of Return to Nothingness.

His blood here possesses a faint authority to communicate, guide, and even "tame" this violent and shattered law.

The next seven days were a period of silent struggle for survival, even more agonizing than the battle itself.

Yu Changsheng became the core of the Guixu Enclosure.

He no longer attempted to move, but instead sat cross-legged at the center of the array, using himself as the medium. The purplish-gold imperial blood continued to seep from the cracks in his Dao foundation, slowly and steadily merging into the glazed earth beneath his feet, and then, guided by his faint divine sense, combining with the array patterns of the Returning Ruins.

Each loss of blood made his face paler and his breath more feeble, but the effect was remarkable.

The gray light membrane, which was originally teetering on the brink of collapse and could only block most of the annihilation suction force, gradually deepened in color under the influence of the Chaos Emperor's blood, becoming like a materialized glass barrier.

The suction force of the surrounding void was firmly blocked more than ten feet away, and the feeling of the internal space crumbling was slightly reduced, with the constant threat of the ground collapsing no longer present. This provided everyone with the most basic protection.

The chaotic essence guided by Yu Changsheng was extremely thin and violent, but after being filtered by the Emperor's Blood and the Ruins of Return, it was transformed into a wisp of warm energy, which first nourished the core few people.

Wang Cheng's Chaotic Overlord Body's regenerative power was activated. Flesh buds slowly grew from his severed arm, wrapping around the bone fragments. Although he was still far from fully recovered, the injuries to his internal organs began to stabilize, and he was no longer in a near-death state. He struggled to sit up and silently guarded Yu Changsheng and Chen Xueqing not far away. His crimson eyes were fixed on the surging void outside the barrier, like a wounded lone wolf.

Chen Xueqing: That faint trace of chaotic essence mixed with the protective power of the Guixu Enclosure seeped into her parched meridians and shattered dantian like sweet rain.

The illusory image of the Pure Lotus, which was on the verge of dissipating, finally stopped dimming. The jade core fragment on the lotus platform began to absorb this special energy very weakly, slowly nourishing its life force.

Although she remained unconscious and her breathing was still alarmingly weak, the tide of her near-death experience was abruptly halted, and her life-threatening condition was prolonged. (End of Chapter)