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Chapter 76 - Chapter 76: The First Cut Of The End

An ominous weight settled in Di Jun's chest. He could feel it, like the slow pull of gravity before a star collapses.

He knew his kin were not fools. Not even the least intelligent among them believed that Lex's treasure was still here after Xuan Wu spoke. 

But that wasn't the point anymore.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. Where the Creator had set foot, something always remained: origin energy, knowledge, or traces of divine intent.

This unspoken truth infected them all. Even without proof, they believed. In the hands of Primordials, belief was more dangerous than any blade.

The tension thickened and twisted.

Then a deep, trembling voice rang out: "This area should be declared sacred!"

 Heads turned. Some nodded in quiet agreement: "Indeed, until we can remove all traces of the Creator, it should remain sacred."

But Vorak snarled, his horned form bristling with irritation. "That would make every inch of the universe sacred if we went by your logic," he snapped.

"Where would it end?"

Another voice shouted from the crowd, sharp and trembling: "Did he leave something behind?"

"Why here?" someone else demanded.

"Indeed, why here?" Xuan Wu said.

Like a match thrown onto dry kindling, their voices ignited into chaos.

Questions, accusations, and half-truths spilled into the void; whispers feeding into shouts and suspicion into certainty.

It became a storm of paranoia, growing louder and louder.

"Everyone! Silence!" Vyrinox shouted. The others quieted. "Cease your prattle and open your senses. Scan his aura. If you find no answer in words, let his strength speak for him. Let your hearts judge whether the Creator's shadow has graced him with more than presence."

He then folded his arms smugly. "Checkmate. Let's see how you explain this sudden rise in power."

Di Jun didn't move. But inwardly, he laughed. "So that was your purpose," he thought, turning his eyes toward Vyrinox with amused disdain.

"Even if they see through my rank, do you think chaos will carry your little agenda to victory?

His voice echoed silently into Vyrinox's mind.

"Do you really think it ends with that?"

But Vyrinox gave no reply. He simply stared back, a picture of calm with his lips sealed and his expression unreadable.

The perfect instigator pretending innocence.

The other Primordials turned to Di Jun. In that instant, he felt the weight of a hundred ancient stares, brimming with greed and calculation.

Di Jun's fingers tightened around an object in his pocket dimension. Then, with a flicker, he drew forth his divine spear.

It pulsed with radiant energy, resembling a piece of the sun itself.

The pressure in the air thickened with this move.

 "What, middle rank eight?" Xuan Wu cried out after probing Di Jun's cultivation rank.

Some of the Primordials took a step back, their instincts screaming at them to retreat.

The change in Di Jun's aura wasn't just an increase in rank; it was unnatural and overwhelming, like being too close to a newborn star.

The gathered Primordials silently reclassified him in their hearts, placing him beside Timorath and Vastoth.

He had undeniably become one of the top.

Even the most arrogant among them were gripped by fear.

But not all were cowed.

For some, the scent of power was too strong to ignore. Their ambition, long buried beneath civility and ancient etiquette, flared like dry oil catching fire.

In the world of Primordials, strength was everything. Rank determined status. Power determined dominion.

The stronger you were, the more realms you ruled and the more fear you commanded, and the more of creation itself bent at your feet.

For the weaker primordials they couldn't afford to fall behind.

Di Jun took a step forward. The divine spear in his hand blazed with radiant heat.

When his voice finally came, it rang like a war drum forged in the heart of the sun.

"I will say this once!" His tone scorched through the void, silencing even thought.

"If your thirst for power pushes you to challenge me, then step forward. But understand this: I do not answer ambition with mercy. I answer it with fire."

Just as they were about to attack Di Jun, the Celestial Eye moved.

Everyone's gaze shifted toward it, then toward the young golden crows who were beginning to awaken from their breakthroughs.

In that crucial moment of distraction, Vyrinox acted.

A strand of gray energy slipped from Vyrinox's tail, thin as spider silk and silent as breath. Deceptive and insidious, it carried no pressure or hostility. It moved like an unheard whisper within the cosmic energy.

The strand flew through the void with an overwhelming speed then struck the edge of Chang Xi's barrier.

The moment it touched the barrier, Chang Xi's senses flared.

In an instant, her consciousness expanded like a tidal wave, sweeping through space with divine clarity and probing every ripple and flicker in the space surrounding the barrier and also the inside.

She scanned once, then second time. Then dozens within a breath, but she found nothing except the gentle hum of cosmic energy.

"Good," Vyrinox mused, his eyes cool and distant. Even the Primordial floating idly beside him could not read them.

"Fortunately, I converted it into raw cosmic energy in time," he thought, relieved.

The energy strand pulsed, then changed. He restructured it mid-flight, aligning its frequency to match Chang Xi's barrier.

Slowly, the strand seeped in undetected, like a ghost passing through locked doors.

It reached the still-recovering crows, then split into ten fine strands, one for each.

Three threads latched onto the soulsea of the crows successfully, while he terminated the others instantly when he felt a primal warning washing all over him.

"Three is enough," he thought. "No need to push my luck, and alert Di Jun and the Celestial eye."

He didn't interfere further, he uncoiled and then moved to the rear of the group from the commotion.

"Now we wait. The seeds are planted. Let's see what fruit they bear. Perhaps even something we can't anticipate might bloom." he thought grinning as this clone faded without being noticed.

•••• 

Hovering beneath the World Tree, Lex held the newly forged book in one hand and gazed through the layers of reality.

Below, the drama surrounding the golden crows and Di Jun played out like a grand celestial play.

Luna hovered near his chest with her arms crossed.

"This Vyrinox," she said coldly. "He's always lurking around when something big happens.."

Lex chuckled low, the sound heavy with irony. "Yeah, he's ruthless—even for a Primordial. Maybe I should've created a bit more balance in him when I was creating them. I was hasty at the time."

Luna snorted. "Balance? Please."

She turned and looked up at him. "That kind of cruelty? That edge? They'll need it. If any of them ever reach the Voidsea, they'll be fighting monsters that eat time for breakfast. Out there, mercy is suicide. Kindness is just a prettier word for death."

Lex's smile faded, replaced by something unreadable. "Maybe," he said softly. "But if all they know is how to survive, then who's left to build? To protect?"

"Maybe one of the lesser beings will fulfill your obsession with creation," Luna said, floating beside Lex with her arms still crossed. Her voice held a hint of mischief and resignation.

Lex hummed, his eyes fixed on the chaos unfolding at the divine sun. "Then I'll wait," he said simply. "And I'll watch from a distance. Either way, this era has already entered the beginning of its end."

Luna snapped her head toward him, her brows knitting into a frown. "It wouldn't be ending this fast if you hadn't meddled," she said sharply.

"The plot's all tangled now. No one knows who the future favors anymore. Even the era's champion is a mystery."

Lex gave her a side-long look and smirked. "I barely interfered. All I did was borrow the Divine Sun for a bit."

He paused, his smirk widening into something unreadable.

 "But I know who will benefit most from this era."

Luna's curiosity flared, and her eyes glowed silver. "Who?"

Lex tilted his head slightly as if listening to the flow of fate itself. "It's not just one," he said, his voice suddenly distant as if he were speaking to the future. 

"Several. Their paths haven't crossed yet, but they will."

Luna floated closer, her tone playful. "Can I get a clue?"

Lex glanced down at her with a teasing smile. "Spoilers ruin the fun. Don't you want something to look forward to? You get bored easily."

"Tch. Fine," she grumbled, flicking her hair as she conjured a glowing clone of herself.

The second Luna hovered briefly, then drifted around him with practiced grace.

"Master," the clone said cheerfully. "This one will scout the Divine Realm."

Then, with a shimmer of light, the clone vanished.

"Don't get too attached," Lex called after it. He then glanced at the original Luna, who was still at his side. "Even the future I see now shifts every yoctosecond. Nothing is fixed—not even the so-called 'spoilers.' One ripple, and everything changes."

Luna grinned widely. "That just makes it more fun, Master!"

With a flash of silvery light, she vanished, racing toward Origin Island to chase after sentient rare cosmic herbs and the chaos at the divine realm like a child let loose in a divine playground.

Lex smiled faintly as he watched her disappear.

Then his expression became calm tinged with curiousity as he looked at the book in his hand.

He opened the fragmented Dao King Technique book and suspended it in front of his chest, the pages humming with dormant power.

The runes inside glowed with a terrifying pale blue glow.

"Worthy of being called a Dao King technique," Lex murmured, eyes tracing the first rune. 

"Even a single rune holds more complexity than my entire so-called Dao stealth method."

His gaze settle on a random rune near the top of the first page.

Without hesitation, he extended his consciousness toward it to understand it, gently at first.

The result? Nothing.

 It was like trying to navigate a labyrinth made of mirrors. Every thought looped back on itself.

Every path led to another dead end. Not even a thread of comprehension appeared in his mind.

 He sighed inwardly. "As expected. Without reaching the Dao Initiate Realm, or at least forming a Dao Gem, comprehending high-grade Dao techniques is like trying to read fate through fog."

But he wasn't ready to give up. "Let's see how Infinite Understanding holds up."

With a thought, he activated the crystal ball embedded deep in his soul sea.

It trembled, then shook violently. A click echoed through his mind like a limiter shattering.

In the next instant, Lex's understanding deepened to a terrifying level.

The rune in front of him changed. No longer just symbols and glow, it looked like a world unto itself.

Countless tiny swords shimmered into view, hidden within the rune and subtle beyond his base senses.

They moved gracefully, each one infinitesimal to the point that atoms seemed colossal in comparison.

 It was as if a quantum realm of micro-swords existed inside a single rune.

Lex's eyes widened slightly. "Incredible, so this is the level of technique Dao Kings cultivate, to compress sword Dao into sword qi then turn it into a metaphysical Dao rune world."

The rune began to unravel as understanding filled his mind, Its layers unfolded like petals, and Lex's mind drank it in.

As his comprehension deepened, sword qis began to move in the air around him. One. Hundreds of sword qis. Thousands, hundreds of thousands. Then millions tiny sword qis, till they reached billions.

They drifted out from the rune and through his aura, they looked like tiny blue lights orbiting his body in delicate, disciplined formations.

 Each sword qi was like a soldier responding to the presence of a general.

The sword qis around his body trembled, then exploded outward.

In an instant, the first layer of space around him shattered like glass. The air cracked as reality split apart.

Before it could settle, the second layer followed, torn apart by swarm of sword qi that circled him like blades with minds of their own.

They didn't stop.

Layer after layer of space collapsed and ripped apart due to the sheer sharpness of the sword qi.

When Lex opened his eyes from the deep contemplation, the world around him had completely changed.

He was no longer sitting in the first layer of space. He was now floating deep within the void between layers—a hidden place beneath the surface of reality where time twisted and space was unstable.

Shattered fragments of broken space drifted around him like floating mirrors, reflecting pieces of other planets and galaxies.

He looked around, stunned.

"What powerful sword qi," he murmured. "No not a sword qi but sword Dao Qi. If I hadn't been controlling them, they could've torn through the boundary wall and would have let in chaotic energies."

 The devastation they did didn't look random; it was precise and clean. Each cut had been sharp, controlled, and perfect.

 "I forgot this was no ordinary technique, but a glimpse into a true Dao king attack." he thought.

He took a deep breath, feeling the sword Dao qi gently circling him, now calm. It moved like soldiers waiting for their next command.

With a wave of his hand, the shattered space around Lex began to heal. The broken layers of reality, floating like shards of glass, slowly reformed as if the damage had never occurred.

His eyes turned upward and caught sight of the Celestial Mandate's true body, which was already beginning to stabilize the surrounding area.

Seeing this, Lex relaxed and turned his attention back to the Dao King Technique.

"The only place I can fully practice this technique is in the Voidsea," he thought. Without another word, his figure faded from the broken space and vanished completely.

Whoosh.

In an instant, he reappeared at the edge of the universe. With a single step, he crossed into the Voidsea—into the midst of swirling grey chaotic energies.

He scanned the endless expanse. After several hours and countless attempts, he found nothing, no presenc, and no threat.

"I forgot the Voidsea was desolate," he murmured to himself.

With a thought, he formed a massive island beneath his feet, roughly the size of the moon. At its center, he created a plain, quiet dojo, from the far outside it looked like a dot and compared to his universal body it was as small as a piece of sand.

He flew to the island and entered the dojo. Inside, there was nothing except a single futon placed in the middle of the marble floor.

He sat down cross-legged and took out the fragmented Dao King Technique.

The moment the book appeared, the air around him stilled. Even the chaotic energy of the Voidsea seemed to pause.

Lex opened the book slowly and focused completely on comprehending the runes

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