Chapter 1965: Transformed Abyss
Chapter 1965 - Transformed Abyss
Partially Edited Chapter - Rubble
Yun Che circulated the Divine Miracle of Life by force to stabilize his injuries. He then closed his eyes and sat cross-legged. It wasn't until a long time later before he finally managed to calm his mind and steady his soul.
He should not be using soul energy in his current state, but he just couldn't wait even a second longer.
His consciousness swam quickly around his soul sea until finally, he found the long-forgotten shadow in a deep and distant corner of his soul.
Back when he first inherited the Devil Emperor's Blood, his heart had been bursting at the seams with hatred. His entire being had been devoted to building up the strength necessary to exact retribution on those who had wronged him. That was why he could barely muster the energy to be curious about the "immense secret" and "immense hidden malaise" the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor had mentioned to him, much less delve deeper into it.
If it couldn't help him destroy the world, then it was useless to him. It was as simple as that.
It was also why it hadn't left a deep imprint in his mind.
His Eternal Calamity of Darkness had not reached perfection after he annihilated Long Bai, and he stopped cultivating it on purpose later on because he knew that progress was usually difficult after one had attained great completion in any cultivation art. At this stage, he could only wait for the Eternal Calamity of Darkness to merge naturally with his body and soul.
At first, he thought that it would be an extremely long process that would take thousands or even tens of thousands of years to complete.
It was the core power of an ancient Devil Emperor after all.
In reality, it had taken him only half a year to achieve perfect compatibility with the cultivation art after he had cultivated the last World-Defying Heaven Manual.
Since then, using the Eternal Calamity of Darkness became as natural as moving his limbs.
He should have recalled the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor's words then, but there was already no one left in the entire cosmos who could challenge him. Add to the fact that he was completely unconcerned the first time he heard the dire warning, and the memory simply never came to mind.
Today, after barely coming out alive from an unprecedented crisis and feeling a crushing soul pressure even when he was in a coma, he finally recalled the words the Jie Yuan had engraved in his Devil Emperor's Blood.
An "immense hidden malaise"... unless he was gravely mistaken, Yun Che strongly believed that the hidden malaise Jie Yuan mentioned back then was none other than the Abyss!
Did she know this would happen all those years ago!?
It goes to show how powerful the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor's soul really was. The dark soul light had resided in his soul sea since a long time ago, and yet he never noticed them not only because he didn't care at the time, but also because they did not permeate even the tiniest wisp of soul aura.
Realizing that he had allowed himself to get distracted again, Yun Che concentrated his mind and touched the dark soul light with the Eternal Calamity of Darkness.
The dark soul light immediately spread out and took the form of the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor.
Although Yun Che knew that it was just a soul image that would disappear in a moment, he still shook with indescribable emotions when he saw Jie Yuan once more.
Her eyes were darker than the abyss, and her face was riddled with terrifying scars. The aura she gave off was more oppressive than ten thousand skies combined. There was no one in the world who could face her without quaking in their boots, but Yun Che knew better than anyone that beneath her devilish exterior lay a soft and gentle heart that was anything but evil.
It wasn't until he was forced to escape to the Northern Divine Region that he realized how much aid Jie Yuan had prepared for him before she left the Primal Chaos. He also came to comprehend some of the more mysterious things she had mentioned all those years ago.
Unfortunately, he could no longer thank her for everything.
In his soul sea, Jie Yuan opened her devilish eyes and said slowly, "We meet again, Yun Che. The fact that you and I stand together once more must mean that you have attained perfect mastery of the Eternal Calamity of Darkness, and that you have become the supreme monarch of the Primal Chaos. In that case, it is time I share some heavy truths with you."
"Primal Chaos today has become incredibly weak. Its energies are incredibly sparse, and its laws are beyond fragile. It is practically a different world compared to the one during the Era of the Gods."
"Although the war between the Gods and Devils disturbed the natural order and collapsed countless laws, the energy of Primal Chaos could not have declined this far. A world's natural spirit energies should always remain in a state of constant balance and cycle for eternity."
Jie Yuan was saying that the total spirit energy of a universe should never change. It was literally the most basic of common senses to her, a Devil Emperor.
In reality, the world that once hosted countless True Gods and Devil Gods had declined to the point where it could not sustain even the birth of a Half-God.
Its space and order had also become so fragile that the mere strength of a Half-God could destroy it.
It had only been a few million years since she left Primal Chaos. This was impossible.
Jie Yuan continued, "The energies of Primal Chaos cannot disappear out of nowhere. It can only have flown somewhere else."
"At first, I thought that the war between gods and devils may have caused some imperceptible cracks in the Wall of Primal Chaos, and that the world had been leaking energy this whole time."
"It was the only explanation and possibility I could think of."
"When I arrived at the space currently known as the Northern Divine Region though, I immediately noticed that its dark energies were flowing unnaturally."
In terms of overall strength, Jie Yuan was not the strongest Devil Emperor of them all.
However, she was the owner of the most primal and pure dark energy. Her affinity and mastery of dark energies was rivaled by none even to this day.
Thanks to that, her ability to perceive dark energies was also second to none.
"You once told me that the domain of the Northern Divine Region keeps shrinking for seemingly no apparent reason. Clearly, the root cause is a continuous loss of dark energies."
"I followed the streams of darkness and discovered that they had flown into the God Realm of Absolute Beginning."
"After I followed them into the God Realm of Absolute Beginning, I discovered that they were all flowing into..."
"The Abyss of Nothingness!"
The law and order of Primal Chaos was utterly destroyed during the war between the gods and the devils. As a result, the energies of Primal Chaos started flowing into the Abyss of Nothingness, its laws had also become fractured because of the war. The Ancestral Will was the one who told him about this.
Now, it was clear that Jie Yuan had also discovered the same truth thanks to her acute sensitivity toward dark energies.
It was at this moment that Jie Yuan's soul image suddenly projected a ray of devilish light. The next thing Yun Che knew, a grayish white image had appeared inside his soul sea.
In the image, Jie Yuan was floating in the sky and looking down on a massive, bottomless pit. The sky above her was obviously the gray sky of the God Realm of Absolute Beginning, and the pit the Abyss of Nothingness. It looked like a sinister, open maw of a hungry devil, intent on devouring everything that had the misfortune of falling into its mouth.
"It is clear that something extraordinary has happened to the Abyss of Nothingness."
Jie Yuan spoke again, "Today, the outflow of most energies in the Primal Chaos have basically come to a halt—most likely because a new balance has been achieved. However, the same can not be said for dark, devilish energies. The reason is because most living beings carrying dark profound energy were forced to live in the Northern Divine Region, meaning there are too many dark, devilish energies in one place. That is why dark energies are still flowing into the changed Abyss even when all other energies have achieved a balance."
"Since you have risen to the pinnacle of the world, the dark profound practitioners are no longer confined to the Northern Divine Region as a matter of course. This means that the outflow of dark energies should gradually come to a stop."
"Still... What has happened to the Abyss of Nothingness? Why is it consuming the energies of Primal Chaos non-stop?"
Meanwhile, Yun Che's excitement was rapidly cooling down.
The "immense hidden malaise" Jie Yuan spoke of was the Abyss, but he had already heard everything she said from the Ancestral Will herself.
At the end of the war of gods and devils, the Ancestral Will had discovered the unnatural changes of the Abyss too late. The damaged Abyss had already broken free of her original design and strayed completely out of her control.
Plus, she only possessed a will at the time. She had neither the power nor the physical existence to determine exactly what was happening to the Abyss. She was unable to determine the consequences that might result from it either.
It was such a massive and unpredictable threat so massive and unpredictable that she decided to undergo a thousand life cycles and be reborn in the Primal Chaos.
The Ancestral Will had no idea that a second World of Existence had somehow appeared on the other end of the Abyss, in what should have been a pure World of Extinction.
Yun Che was hoping that Jie Yuan somehow knew about the second World of Existence and had prepared some back-up plans for him. However, the Ancestral God herself could not find out what was going on on the other side of the Abyss. It only stood to reason that Jie Yuan, her inferior, could not do better.
In other words, there was no miraculous plan that might give him a shot at resisting the Abyss.
Just when Yun Che was about to lose all hope, Jie Yuan continued into a deeper voice,
"The Abyss of Nothingness is a pit that turns everything that falls into it into nothing. It is a power of destruction that not even Ni Xuan or I was able to comprehend."
"Ni Xuan and I have approached the Abyss of Nothingness countless times in the past. We were a Devil Emperor and a Creation God, but the Abyss never failed to inflict upon us a piercing, uncontrollable sense of panic when we got too close to it. It was how we knew that even we would be turned into nothingness if we dared to fly past a certain threshold."
"But now, that sense of panic has become so weak it is almost non-existent. Not only that, it has been replaced by a constant wave of irritating anxiety."
"Could it be..." She said seemingly to herself even though this was a recording for Yun Che, "That the Abyss' pure power of destruction underwent some sort of transformation because it became mixed with the energies of Primal Chaos?"
"Or maybe it was the other way around? Maybe the Abyss changed because its power of destruction had undergone some sort of transformation?"
The question resounded above the Abyss of Nothingness as the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor fell into a long silence. Then, she did something that caused Yun Che's heart to skip a beat.
She actually started descending straight toward the Abyss!
Yun Che: "...!!"
Darkness quickly consumed the light around Jie Yuan. Before he knew it, Jie Yuan had crossed into the forbidden domain everyone knew to stay away unless they had a death wish.
As it turned out, Jie Yuan had left behind her feelings in her soul imprint. As a result, he felt everything she felt that day.
Yun Che immediately felt two things at once. The first was an extremely special energy with laws he could not perceive. It assaulted Jie Yuan from every direction immediately after she crossed the threshold, and if he wasn't mistaken it was most likely the energy of Extinction. The second energy he felt was a terrific pulling force. It was like an invisible hand that was trying to drag her into the bottomless pit that was the Abyss.
Jie Yuan's brow immediately furrowed. Instead of panic, she felt utterly shocked and confused.
It was because neither the energy of extinction nor the pulling force could threaten her at all!
To her knowledge, the Abyss of Nothingness was a fatal pit that never failed to reduce even a True God into nothing. Never.
However, the energy attacking her was so weak that it could not even threaten a True God in the slightest, much less a Devil Emperor.
In fact, Yun Che was certain that this level of energy could not even threaten him, a mere Divine Sovereign with the strength and tenacity of a peak Divine Master.
The pulling force was a completely different story though. It was so powerful it was almost irresistible.
As Jie Yuan continued to fall downward, the energy of extinction and pulling force swiftly grew stronger and stronger. In just a few breaths, the pulling force had grown to the point where he could not break free even if he struggled with all his might.
Jie Yuan wasn't him though. She continued to descend into the pit without a care. Ten breaths... a hundred breaths... an hour... two hours... six hours...
The deeper she fell, the stronger the energy of extinction would become. However, it wasn't growing nearly as quickly as he imagined it would. On the other hand, the pulling force was, once again, a completely different story. It took only a moment to grow to a point that was beyond his ability to withstand or even comprehend.
Finally, after an indefinite amount of time, Jie Yuan slowed to a stop.
No light, sound, or even matter existed in this place.
There wasn't a single intact space in this place either. All he could sense was spatial fragments and vortices.
The clearest things he felt were the energy of extinction that attacked from every direction, and the pulling force that was literally beyond his ability to describe.
Tiny depressions appeared all over Jie Yuan's body non-stop, but that was all. Even at this depth, the energy of extinction wasn't even powerful enough to do any real damage to her.
The pulling force though... it had become so powerful that even she, a Devil Emperor, had to take it seriously.
She did not know how much longer it would take before she reached the end of the Abyss. She did not know if it even had an end.
What she did know was that the pulling force was most likely going to keep growing until it reached a point where even she was unable to resist. If that happened, she would never be able to return to Primal Chaos.
She still had too much unfinished business in her life that she needed to settle. It was a gamble she didn't dare to take.
Devilish light erupted from her body, and Jie Yuan shot back toward the top.
She moved just as quickly as she fell despite the terrifying pulling force.
A mighty explosion instantly resounded across the Abyss of Nothingness.
The image ended here, but it wasn't over yet. A new image appeared showing Jie Yuan floating above the entrance to the Abyss of Nothingness once more.
The Abyss of Nothingness was a place that returned everything to nothing... or it should have been. Despite falling into it for six hours straight, the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor was able to return safe and sound.
Yun Che himself could sense that the energy of extinction in it was not nearly as scary as it used to be. Even at the depth where Jie Yuan had finally decided to stop her descent and turn back, he was certain that he would be able to survive it for at least a while.
The true terror of the changed Abyss wasn't its ability to destroy, but its pulling force!
The Abyss had changed a long time ago. In other words, both animate and inanimate objects that willingly or unwillingly fell into the Abyss of Nothingness for the past one million years had, in fact, not been returned to nothing—not immediately at least. Instead, they were pulled into the unknown depths of the Abyss by an irresistible force, never to return.