After a thousand years of cultivation, he returns at the pinnacle!

Shen Qingxue had read about the disaster three hundred years ago countless times in her textbooks.

The first chapter of every history textbook was the same—the arrival of the apostles and the catastrophe of mankind. She could recite those words by heart and draw those illustrations with her eyes closed. But words are words, and illustrations are illustrations. When she actually stood beneath the falling black ice flowers, she realized that the dry descriptions in the textbooks were less than one ten-thousandth of the truth.

Three hundred years ago, it was also a seemingly ordinary day.

The history book says this:

"On the nineteenth day of the seventh month of the first year of the Apostolic Calendar, in the height of summer, the sun blazed fiercely. Around two o'clock in the afternoon, the sky suddenly darkened and the temperature plummeted. People looked up and saw countless black ice flowers slowly drifting down from the clouds, covering the entire continent."

Those ice flowers are not ordinary ice.

They were as black as ink, crystal clear, and reflected no light in the sun. They fell silently, like snow from hell, gentle yet deadly.

At first, people thought it was some kind of rare natural phenomenon.

"Look! It's snowing! Black snow!"

"How can it snow in summer? What is this?"

"So beautiful...like a black diamond..."

The children excitedly reached out to catch the beautiful ice flowers. The adults, though puzzled, couldn't help but look up at this strange sight. After all, who would have thought that beautiful things are often the most deadly?

The first ice flower landed in a child's palm.

The child laughed and exclaimed, "It's so cold!" But before he could finish speaking, his smile froze. Where the ice flowers touched his skin, the skin began to turn black and ulcerate, as if burned by concentrated sulfuric acid, or as if being devoured at the cellular level by something unseen. Black lines spread rapidly along the blood vessels, from the palm to the wrist, from the wrist to the forearm, from the arm to the heart.

The child didn't even have time to scream before his entire body turned into a puddle of black pus within seconds.

His mother rushed over, trying to pick up her child, but the moment her hands touched the pus, the corrosion spread to her body. She screamed, struggled, and watched in despair as her fingers fell off one by one, and her skin festered in patches.

People around scattered and fled.

But the ice flowers are becoming more and more numerous and denser.

Black ice flowers blanketed the streets, rooftops, and squares. People had nowhere to escape. Those touched by the ice flowers fell one after another, turning into black pus that flowed into black rivers that meandered through the city streets.

Those who weren't directly touched were not spared either.

The black mist released after the ice flowers melted permeated the air. Every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass. People's lungs began to burn, and what they coughed up wasn't blood, but a black, viscous, foul-smelling liquid.

Cities were turned into ghost towns within hours.

Those once bustling streets are now littered with black pus and tattered clothes. Those once noisy squares are now deathly silent. Those once warm homes will never have their lights on again.

There is an illustration in the textbook, drawn by one of the survivors at the time.

The image shows a city sinking into black ice flowers, with dead bodies lying everywhere in the streets, and countless huge, twisted shadows in the sky.

Below the illustration is a line of small print: "The apostles have arrived, and human civilization has been destroyed."

When Shen Qingxue first saw this illustration as a child, she was so frightened that she had nightmares for several days. Later, as she grew up and read more books, she learned how many people died in that disaster—according to historians' estimates, in the first year after the apostles descended three hundred years ago, the human population decreased by seventy percent.

Seventy percent.

She had written this number countless times on her exam papers, always as the standard answer. But now, standing beneath the black ice flowers, she truly understood the meaning of this number.

Those are countless families like hers.

Countless fathers like Shen Wanshan, and countless daughters like her.

Countless children who haven't grown up yet, countless lives that haven't been lived.

They all turned into black pus in that ice flower display.

Shen Qingxue shivered, pulling herself out of her memories.

The sky above was completely dark; the sun and clouds were nowhere to be seen, only a bottomless darkness. The black ice flowers continued to fall, more and more numerous and denser, as if something was pouring down from a hole in the sky.

The chill of that ice flower still lingered in her palm. That chill wasn't just ordinary cold; it was something more fundamental—like a denial of life itself.

She looked down at her palm, which was empty, but she could feel the residue left behind after the ice flower melted, trying to seep into her skin.

Shen Qingxue's eyes sharpened.

She remembered a line in her textbook that the teacher always emphasized when discussing the coming of the apostles:

"The black ice flowers are extremely corrosive; any living creature that comes into contact with them will surely die. If you encounter ice flowers, the only way to survive is to break or melt them before they touch your body. Never let the ice flowers come into direct contact with your skin."

She clenched her fists tightly, and the ice-type spiritual power within her surged wildly.

Shen Qingxue took a deep breath and looked up at the sky.

More ice flowers are falling.

She raised her right hand, palm up, and ice-type spiritual energy surged forth like a tide. The moisture in the air condensed above her head, forming a huge ice shield that enveloped her and the Shen family guards around her.

The ice flowers fell onto the ice shield, making a crisp "crackling" sound, like hail hitting glass. Fine cracks began to appear on the surface of the ice shield—the corrosiveness of those black ice flowers was so great that they could even erode the ice itself.

"Everyone! Use your spiritual power to protect your body! Don't let the ice flowers come into direct contact with your skin!" Shen Wanshan's voice boomed in the darkness, carrying the unique pressure of an S-rank Awakened.

The Shen family guards seemed to awaken from a dream, and they all activated their spiritual power, forming a protective film on their bodies. Flames, lightning, wind blades, metal—various kinds of spiritual power lit up in the darkness, like faint but stubborn lamps.

A dark gray luster appeared on Shen Hu's steel body. Ice flowers fell on it, making a hissing sound, but they couldn't penetrate that alloy-level hardened skin. He looked up at the sky, and for the first time, a solemn expression appeared on his rugged face.

"Master, what on earth is going on?!"

Shen Wanshan did not answer.

He stood beneath the ice shield, gazing up at the dark sky, a complex emotion flickering in his eyes. It wasn't that he hadn't seen ice flowers before—he'd seen them in textbooks, in historical documentaries, and heard about them in the oral histories of survivors.

But what you see with your own eyes is another matter.

He had lived for over fifty years, experienced countless battles, and witnessed countless life-and-death situations. But at this moment, as those black ice flowers drifted down from the sky, he felt a sensation he had never felt before.

It's not fear, it's powerlessness.

Just like those who were the first to be touched by the ice flowers three hundred years ago, all human efforts seem so insignificant in the face of that power from another dimension.

The communication channel erupted in chaos once again.

"Patriarch Shen! How are things going over there?!" Zhao Tiangang's voice was no longer relaxed; instead, it was filled with barely suppressed tension.

"We can still hold on," Shen Wanshan said in a deep voice. "And you?"

"The ice flowers on the east side of the city are getting denser! Two of my men have already been corroded!" Zhao Tiangang's voice trembled. "What the hell is this?! Black ice? Where does ice come from in summer?!"

"It's an apostle." Shen Wanshan's voice was very soft, but it exploded like a bomb in the communication channel.

There was a three-second silence on the communication channel.

Then, all the sounds erupted simultaneously.

"An apostle?! You're saying this is an apostle?!"

"Impossible! An apostle hasn't appeared for three hundred years!"

"Shen Wanshan, are you sure?!"

Shen Wanshan didn't explain. He simply looked up at the sky, at the silently falling black ice flowers, and slowly uttered a sentence:

"Three hundred years ago, when the apostles descended, the ice flowers were just like these."

The communication channel fell silent again.

This time, no one objected.

Because they all knew that Shen Wanshan was telling the truth. Every awakened one had studied that history, and every scion of a noble family had memorized it. The black ice flowers were the only sign of the apostles' arrival, the beginning of the darkest era in human history.

"Then...what do we do?" Zhou Boyong's voice was a little hoarse. "The Apostles, the Apostles have really come? Can...can we defeat them?"

No one answered the question.

Because they all know the answer.

"Don't panic." Shen Wanshan's voice rang out again, this time with undeniable authority. "It's too early to draw conclusions. It might just be a small-scale anomaly, not necessarily the arrival of the Apostle itself. All units, report on casualties."

"Two people with minor injuries were found in the east of the city and have been evacuated."

"No casualties in the west of the city."

"No abnormalities reported in the south of the city."

Just as Shen Wanshan was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a voice suddenly came through the communication channel. It was Wu Shichang's voice, trembling violently:

"Something's happened in the north of the city."

"What is it?"

"We...we were clearing out monsters when a huge group suddenly poured out of the mine...not E-rank or D-rank, but B-rank...and A-rank...at least a hundred...it was like they were driven out by something..."

"What about casualties?"

Wu Shichang remained silent for three seconds.

"The Wu family... there were eighteen people, and now only I and two guards are left."

There was a deathly silence on the communication channel.

Shen Wanshan closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Everyone, evacuate back to the city immediately. Level one alert. Notify the Bureau of Surveillance, the military, and everyone else you can reach."

He paused, opened his eyes, and looked north.

If it truly is an apostle descending, then they are not facing demons or monsters, but rather indescribable beings from outer space—beings that nearly destroyed human civilization three hundred years ago.

It is an existence that humanity can never defeat.