After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

The Eye of Tribulation opened above Jiangcheng, its terrifying pressure like a mountain weighing down on everyone's shoulders.

Wang Pangzi, who was left behind at the temporary joint investigation center, slammed the life-saving nail in his hand onto the floor tile with a "bang".

He grabbed the encrypted communicator from the table, his voice strained:

"What exactly did White Pagoda Island bomb? That thing in the sky is aimed at destroying the world!"

The communicator transmitted Chen Ya's calm and even command:

"Activate all defensive formations in Jiangcheng at full speed. The fleet is withdrawing; demon soldiers are covering the rear. Prepare to take over."

White Pagoda Island.

Zhou Ran could no longer suppress the surging cultivation within his body.

His nascent soul is undergoing reshaping and transformation.

The transformation from Nascent Soul to Deity is a heaven-defying act that has exceeded the tolerance limits of the Heavenly Dao Laws of Blue Star.

The heavenly tribulation lightning in the sky was sent down to eliminate him, this anomaly who disrupted the balance.

"You all leave immediately. This is a disaster for me; I'll take the blame myself."

Zhou Ran gripped the Taihuang Black Blade in reverse with his right hand and plunged the blade heavily into the hard alloy ground.

An irresistible force exploded from the blade, like an iron wall, forcibly blasting Chen Ya, Xiao Rou, and the two demon soldiers towards the entrance of the escape passage.

Qin San stood still, gripping the hilt of the long sword at his waist with his other hand.

"Your subordinate will remain to protect the Dharma."

"Go back to Jiangcheng."

Zhou Ran didn't turn around; his words carried the absolute weight of a command.

"This is a heavenly tribulation, not a killing spree. Your presence here will only distract me from saving your lives."

Qin San knew Zhou Ran's style very well. After weighing the pros and cons, he stopped being stubborn, sheathed his sword, turned around and protected Chen Ya, and quickly retreated towards the coastline.

Xu Youwei walked at the back. The broken hairpin holding the silver eye in her palm was humming continuously, and the silver eye was trembling incessantly due to instinctive fear, fearing the law itself that was about to descend from the sky.

Xu Youwei glanced back at Zhou Ran's back, said nothing, and quickened her pace to catch up with the group.

She knew that if she stayed, there would only be one outcome.

Within just five minutes, the Qinghui Trust's evacuation fleet started at full speed, engines roaring, breaking through the sea surface and speeding towards Jiangcheng.

Zhou Ran stood alone in the devastated hall of the White Tower. He looked up, peering through the shattered alloy dome of the ceiling into the sky above.

The purplish-black calamity clouds had expanded to a scale capable of swallowing the sky and devouring the sun, spanning the entire high seas.

That was not just the power of thunder; the clouds were interwoven with the purest obliteration commands of the Blue Star's Great Dao rules.

Zhou Ran pulled the Taihuang Black Blade from the ground.

This sword once accompanied the Demon Emperor Ye Futian in his conquest of countless realms, shattering countless heavenly tribulations and lightning strikes.

Just as he poured all his true energy into the blade, preparing to take the first bolt of heavenly lightning that was about to strike, a sudden change occurred.

As the Primordial Black Blade was infused with true energy, the demonic array patterns inside the blade momentarily froze during the energy flow.

This pause is extremely brief, but in the face of a life-or-death calamity, even the slightest difference can be enough to annihilate a person, body and soul.

The pure fighting spirit that Dao Neiye Futian retained did not turn against him; the source of the obstacle came from an extremely distant space beyond.

The Sixth Heaven of the Demon Realm.

Seated atop the throne of bones was the fourth demon duke, codenamed "Bone Devourer".

He did not descend upon Blue Star like Xuan Ying and Gu Li. At this moment, a massive blood mirror, forged from tens of thousands of living souls, floated before him.

The image of Zhou Ran standing under the lightning tribulation with a knife was clearly reflected in the blood mirror.

"Ye Futian actually died in that lowly lower realm."

The withered knuckles of the Grand Duke of Bone Swallowing tapped lightly on the armrest of the throne, the sound filled with undisguised covetousness.

"The Taihuang Black Blade has also fallen into the hands of a mortal."

"As long as this Zhou fellow is reduced to ashes by the heavenly tribulation, all power in the Demon Realm will belong to me."

The Bone-Swallowing Grand Duke extended a skin-and-bones finger, the tip of which touched the surface of the Blood Mirror.

He used the spatial laws of the highest level in the Demon Realm to interfere with the sensing array at the bottom of the Primordial Black Blade.

Not only that, he also extracted a wisp of residual aura collected at the place where Ye Futian fell, and directly placed this coordinate carrying the karma of the Demon Emperor into the depths of the high seas of Blue Star.

The coordinates were placed at the very seabed where Herman's soul had been forcibly extracted not long ago.

Beneath the deep sea, an ancient altar of the gods, covered by thick sediment and ancient seaweed, precisely captured this aura.

The array patterns on the altar, which had been dormant for 30,000 years, were activated.

boom!

A beam of blood-red light, over a hundred meters in diameter, shot into the sky from the seabed thousands of meters deep.

The blood-red light disregarded the pressure of the thousand-meter-high water, piercing through the sea surface and soaring straight into the sky.

This streak of blood-red light was incredibly fast, carrying the power to shatter boundaries, and crashed straight into the eye of the lightning tribulation in the sky, which was gathering power.

The Heavenly Dao's annihilation mechanism, which had been firmly locked onto Zhou Ran's aura, was torn open by this blood-red light carrying laws from a higher plane. The lightning within the tribulation clouds lost its target and began to churn violently and chaotically.

Zhou Ran immediately noticed the abnormality inside the Taihuang Black Blade. He flipped his left wrist, and the blade had already cut a deep, bone-revealing gash on his forearm.

He used his own Demon Emperor's essence blood to forcefully erase the foreign interference and regain control of the black blade.

He didn't look at the scattered lightning in the sky, but instead turned his gaze to the blood-red light tearing through the sky in the distance.

He could sense that the blood-red light was not there to shield him from disaster.

Within the area shrouded in blood-red light, the seawater began to boil on a large scale. The seawater defied gravity and surged upwards.

Thousands of tons of seawater converged in mid-air, compressing into a constantly rotating water sphere.

At the core of the water sphere, a humanoid phantom is slowly coalescing.

The phantom was draped in a robe with dark star patterns, and its face was a distorted void, which would swallow up any gaze that tried to peek into its true appearance.

The aura of rules emanating from him originated from the same source as "Sample Number One" underground on White Tower Island, but the two were worlds apart in magnitude.

Without using any conventional spatial channels, relying solely on the coordinates provided by the underwater altar, he traversed immeasurable star fields and forcibly projected a wisp of his own image onto Earth.

After the phantom took shape, it merely glanced casually in Zhou Ran's direction.

Centered on the illusory image, the sea within a radius of a hundred miles showed no signs of evaporation; the seawater simply vanished into thin air.

The deep seabed, exposed to the air, breaks apart into huge, bottomless rifts due to the loss of pressure balance from the seawater.

On the evacuation ship, Chen Ya stared intently at the energy monitoring readings on the main control screen. The data transmitted by the detectors skyrocketed, eventually overwhelming the screen, which then emitted a piercing alarm and went completely black.

Zhou Ran gripped the black knife tightly with both hands.

The main character has arrived.

The Emperor's projection has arrived.

The seawater vanished into thin air, and the White Pagoda Island beneath Zhou Ran's feet lost its support, becoming a solitary, enormous stone pillar standing at the bottom of a vast, dried-up abyss.

The phantom figure, draped in a robe of stars, hovered high in the sky. He didn't actually "see" Zhou Ran with his so-called gaze; it was merely a procedural judgment made by a high-level life form towards a low-dimensional object.

The phantom didn't utter a single unnecessary word.

He simply raised his right hand slowly, his index finger pointing at Zhou Ran's location on White Tower Island from a great distance.

Press down with one finger.

There were no dazzling lights or shadows that changed the color of the world, nor any spiritual storms powerful enough to destroy mountains and shatter peaks. The finger contained only the rule of "erasure" in its purest form.

It was as if someone had drawn a line on the "Blue Star Retention List" with a black pen. The purpose of this stroke was to completely erase Zhou Ran from physical space, timeline, and all causal chains.

Zhou Ran's muscles tensed to their limit in an instant. This was the instinctive reaction of a mortal being facing an absolute threat of death.

He didn't hold any cards back.

The nascent soul power that had just begun to manifest within his dantian was squeezed to its last trace.

In his left hand, the Heart Seal of the River of Oblivion shone brightly; in his right hand, the Grand Commander's Command unleashed a powerful aura.

The two supreme treasures of the Underworld were simultaneously unleashed. The eerie green light of judgment and the dark laws of power rapidly intertwined before Zhou Ran, forming an indestructible defensive barrier.

The phantom's fingertip touched the barrier silently.

There was no sound of an explosion.

"Click."

A terrifying crack, running from front to back, burst open on the seal of the Grand Commander. The eerie green light of the Wangchuan Heart Seal was forcibly extinguished the moment it made contact, and the seal surface was covered with fine, net-like cracks.

These two ancient treasures, powerful enough to suppress the fortune of the entire underworld, couldn't even buy a second of time before their defenses collapsed in the face of the pure erasure of the rules.

The fingertip pierced through the barrier and continued to push forward.

Zhou Ran had nowhere to retreat. He used his burgeoning life force as fuel, recklessly pouring it into the illusory image of the white bone pen at his fingertips.

The pen strokes pierced the void before him with deadly force. A foot in front of him, he used his burning lifespan to write five large characters:

I am not in this realm.