The Last Sentinel

Boom—!

The void trembled violently, and the sharp sound of space shattering swept across the star field as the two forces collided with a deafening roar.

The hundred-foot-tall Nascent Soul projection trembled violently, and spiderweb-like cracks spread from its shoulder to its forearm. Pale purple primordial spiritual energy continuously leaked out, which was the golden blazing fist energy of the Aquarius Gold Saint that had left an incurable mark of time on its body.

The moment the cracks appeared in the Nascent Soul projection, the Nascent Soul Ancestor tens of thousands of feet away suddenly froze, lowered his head abruptly, and his withered left arm trembled slightly.

His pupils contracted sharply as he stared intently at the hair-like cracks that had appeared out of thin air on his arm, identical to those of a nascent soul. The cracks penetrated deep into his flesh, and his meridians were breaking apart inch by inch. The piercing pain deep within his soul caused an uncontrollable panic to surge in his heart for the first time.

The old ancestor clenched his fists, tearing a hole in the cuff of his Taoist robe with his inner force. He gritted his teeth, his heart churning with shock: the Dharma form was connected to the soul of the original body, and this bizarre injury had long transcended the realm of ordinary combat: "This, this..."

"This move is called 'Entropy Increase Multidimensional Strike'!"

"Unlike ordinary direct physical or mental damage, this is a time-based killing move!"

"I can attack your temporal clones from a time dimension you've never been exposed to, thereby affecting your present self!"

Qi Tian stood in the void, his arms outstretched, his golden-white cloak billowing wildly in the turbulent flow of time and space.

The old ancestor's eyes gleamed: "A third form of attack that transcends the physical and spiritual realms? But a crack, merely the death of a past incarnation, what impact could it have on me at my peak?"

Qi Tian didn't speak, but crossed his arms in front of his heart. In an instant, Qi Tian's body became ethereal, and golden energy ripples spread out. Wherever he passed, the folds of space were smoothed out, and the flow of time was briefly disrupted. In one breath, he projected out hundreds of clear outlines and stable auras of Qi Tian!

These illusory clones of the Great Sage appeared one after another, completely sealing off the Nascent Soul Ancestor's escape routes on all sides.

Seeing this, the Nascent Soul Ancestor's tense nerves relaxed slightly, and he let out a disdainful sneer. His withered hands were behind his back, and the Nascent Soul in his dantian stirred slightly. His aged voice, filled with spiritual energy, echoed: "A mere child's play. A mere shadow clone dares to show off its skills in front of me?"

In the ancestor's understanding, clones were merely piles of spiritual energy, which could be crushed with a single wide-range divine power. However, this contempt lasted only half a breath. When figures of varying heights and clothing, yet identical in appearance and build, stepped out from the spacetime layer opposite the illusory figure of Qi Tian, ​​the ancestor's cold smile instantly froze.

These figures encompassed all stages of his life, from youth to old age, representing his past self on his life's timeline. The old ancestor's cloudy old eyes widened suddenly, bursting with shock. He subconsciously staggered half a step, his spiritual energy almost becoming unstable, his fingertips trembling, and even the protective spiritual light around him momentarily faltered.

Having lived for nearly ten thousand years, the Nascent Soul cultivator had never witnessed a battle tactic that involved cutting off one's own timeline for individual combat. A chilling aura, defying all understanding of the Great Dao, shot straight to the top of his head, and he exclaimed in shock, "What... what are you doing? These are all my past selves!"

"That's right." Qi Tian's golden battle boots shattered the void, creating ripples in spacetime. His figure was as upright as a divine peak. He raised his left hand and casually pointed at the void: "I am not fighting against you at this moment, but rather besieging all your individuals along your entire timeline. As long as any of your past avatars collapse, your true self will develop a primordial rift; when the rift breaks through the threshold of entropy increase and obliteration, your current peak form will be judged to perish by the laws of spacetime and completely erased from the past, present, and future."

These words struck the ancestor's mind like a thunderclap that could destroy the world.

His chest heaved violently, his arrogance built up over tens of thousands of years was brutally pierced, his beard and hair stood on end without wind, veins bulged on his forehead, his face flushed crimson, and his nascent soul churned violently within him. His immense spiritual power caused the nebula's energy to surge back wildly. He roared fiercely, "I, your ancestor, am a dragon among men, having traversed a path paved with blood, unstoppable by any of my generation! The pride of yesteryear are all but withered bones. You, a mere junior, dare to shake my foundation?"

Qi Tian nodded slightly, a faint, cold smile curving his lips as he objectively stated the overwhelming difference in power: "What if each of my temporal avatars possessed one-tenth of my peak combat strength? Not even half, just one-tenth would be enough to annihilate all your past avatars. Once the River of Time collapses at its source, your present-day true self will be utterly destroyed, body and soul."

These words shattered the patriarch's last glimmer of hope. His eyes blazed with fury, and he stopped arguing. He forcefully spread his arms, and the hundred-foot-tall Nascent Soul projection suddenly burst into flames. Golden-red flames enveloped the Dharma form, and the heat wave scorched the void, leaving black marks. The rolling fire wave, carrying immense weight, pressed down directly on Qi Tian.

Flames raged, and the ancestor was left with only a desperate last stand, intending to shatter the Qitian Time Sequence Formation with a full-force, self-destructive attack.

Qi Tian stood with his hands behind his back and said coldly, "Those who have not attained the Dao are all ants."

The flaming Nascent Soul projection paced back and forth, its enormous right hand crushing down towards Qi Tian!

Qi Tian remained standing with his hands behind his back, seemingly ignoring the situation, and said in an icy voice, "This is the difference between a Nascent Soul cultivator and a Deity Transformation cultivator, and also the huge gap between a 3.0 Planetary level and a 4.0 Eternal level cosmic warrior."

The Nascent Soul projection crashed down, its right palm like a mountain that blotted out the sun, and endless meteor flames crushed and overwhelmed Qi Tian.

"The God-level 4.0 Cosmic Warrior can absorb all versions of himself across timelines, thus avoiding being attacked by the enemy's multidimensional time attack."

The Nascent Soul's right palm was a hundred feet away from the top of Qi Tian's head!

"But you are only at the Nascent Soul stage; you will never be able to comprehend the Divine Transformation stage. The difference between us is not in strength, but in comprehension, in understanding the laws, and in the depth of our understanding of the cultivation system!"

The Nascent Soul's right palm slammed down, ready to crush Qi Tian to pieces!

"The game is over."

The unstoppable Nascent Soul giant hand suddenly froze. No matter how much the ancestor poured into it, his arm muscles trembled wildly and his meridians swelled as if about to burst, he could no longer sink down even an inch, as if he were locked in place by the shackles of time and space.

As Qi Tian finished speaking, a terrifying giant palm of Nascent Soul, burning with flames, was three feet above Qi Tian's head!

Even at this mere three feet distance, the Nascent Soul's right palm could no longer sink even a fraction!

Countless hair-thin cracks suddenly burst open in the palm of the Nascent Soul's right hand, spreading along the veins from the palm to cover the entire body of the Nascent Soul in an instant!

The Nascent Soul Ancestor maintained the same fighting posture as the Nascent Soul projection. Cracks suddenly burst open in the palm of the ancestor's right palm, and these cracks instantly spread all over his body, including blood vessels, organs, heart, dantian, purple mansion, primordial spirit, Dao palace, and life aperture...

The young opponent wasn't lying; he was telling the truth.

This blow is not simply physical or psychological.

Rather, it is a complete annihilation over the course of time!

This is a third kind of death, transcending the physical level of being pulverized and the spiritual level of being reduced to ashes—the erasure of one's mark, or perhaps the erasure of time!

The face of the Nascent Soul Ancestor was filled with an aura of decay and decay, a sense of a high-level cultivator reaching the end, with the three flowers dissipating and the five energies extinguished.

"The dimension of time..." A look of envy and fascination appeared on the ancestor's ashen face, as if in a final burst of energy: "Is this the meaning of the Supreme Arena's existence? To forge a path to higher levels of cultivation through insane competition!"

"I can already foresee the moment when a new wave of cultivation will sweep across all the heavens and myriad realms."

"Unfortunately, I am a remnant of the old era, ultimately unable to keep up with the great ship of the new era!"

"Hahaha—that's enough, that's enough!"

"A thousand years of cultivation is but a dream, in the end nothing but emptiness!"

"This old man is departing!"

As soon as he finished speaking, a hazy, desolate wave of energy swept over the ancestor, dissolving, twisting, and fading away along with his disintegrating nascent soul, turning into a starlight afterimage that melted into the deep space of the Aquarius constellation, trailing a long rainbow of light.

The dissipating aftershocks transformed into a thin layer of blood mist, adding an epic and poignant touch to this clash of laws.

The wind stopped and the fire died down, the void returned to calm, and the countless illusory images of time receded and returned to the original form of Qitian, the halo gradually receding inward.

The Nascent Soul Ancestor perished completely, his Dao dissipated and his body died.