Chapter 495: Growing More Sinister

"Harvest festival? Too slow." Gu Yuan's voice echoed in the vast underground palace, carrying a chilling indifference, "The Lord requires results, not the process."

Before his words faded, he spread his arms, his whole body like a black sun hovering above the blood sea.

"All transformations return to the origin, devour heaven and earth!"

Accompanied by a low roar, Gu Yuan's body transformed into a bottomless black vortex.

This was not merely the operation of a technique, but his physique, a primeval sacred body forged from the origin of the World Tree, under the impetus of Extinction Source Power, fully unleashing its most primal and domineering devouring instinct!

Boom—!!!

The entire underground palace began to tremble violently.

The blood crystal sea that had lain still for hundreds of thousands of years below surged violently at this moment!

Countless blood-colored crystals, as if pulled by an irresistible force, turned into streams of scarlet light, converging into a mighty blood river that pierced heaven and earth, wildly pouring backward into the black vortex that Gu Yuan had become!

"No! My lord! You cannot do this!"

Seventy-three, sitting paralyzed on the ground, witnessed this and let out a terrified scream,

"These martial soul blood crystals contain the monstrous resentment accumulated over seven hundred thousand years! If you devour them outright, your soul will be instantly overwhelmed, reducing you to a mad demon who knows only slaughter!"

He wasn't concerned for Gu Yuan; he was afraid!

Once Lord Forty-Nine goes mad here, the first to die will be him!

However, Gu Yuan turned a deaf ear to his warning.

The speed of the black vortex's rotation increased ever faster, and its devouring power grew more terrifying.

The blood river formed from twelve billion nine hundred sixty million martial soul blood crystals was swallowed by him at a visible speed!

As a vast influx of life essence surged in, Gu Yuan's aura began to climb at an astonishing speed.

True Immortal Peak!

Half-Step Immortal King!

Ordinary Immortal King!

Jue Dian Immortal King!

……

In less than the time it takes to burn an incense stick, his aura had already surpassed the limit that Seventy-three could comprehend, and even faintly touched the realm belonging to the legendary Titanic Immortal King!

Even if this power is to be returned, merely bearing such an amount is extraordinarily heaven-defying!

At the same time, the doom of the Abyss Realm officially descended.

The underground palace is the foundation of the entire Abyss Realm, and those twelve hundred million martial soul blood crystals are closely tied to the realm's last primordial source power.

When Gu Yuan violently uprooted all the blood crystals, the whole Abyss Realm began an irreversible collapse.

Crack! Crack!

Upon the Abyss Realm's continent, deep, bottomless giant rifts spread like a spider's web.

Mountains and rivers collapsed, rivers flowed backward, and prosperous cities turned to ruins amidst the violent tremors.

Above the Heavenly Dome, the eternal great sun's light swiftly dimmed, ultimately shattering like broken glass, scattering as a rain of fire across the sky.

Countless beings who still held hope for this realm lifted their heads, gazed in horror at this apocalyptic sight, and uttered despairing wails.

They did not know what had happened; they only knew that their world was heading toward destruction.

In the underground palace, Seventy-three curled up in a corner, trembling. He looked at the terrifying figure hovering in midair, its aura swollen to the point he could not even look up, and only endless fear remained in his eyes.

Madman!

This Forty-Nine is nothing but a complete lunatic!

He actually dared to devour an entire world by his own power!

At this very moment, Gu Yuan's devouring seemed to have reached a critical point.

When the last martial soul blood crystal was sucked into his body, his aura suddenly stalled.

Immediately afterward, a torrent of negative will, composed purely of despair, hatred, resentment, and madness—ten thousand times more terrifying than the resentment gathered from a hundred million blood crystals—exploded in his sea of consciousness.

"Why?! We have painstakingly cultivated our whole lives, why is this the outcome?!"

"The Martial Ancestor deceived us! After the Immortal Gate, it is not ascension, but death!"

"I am unwilling! My wife and children are still waiting for me to return home in triumph!"

"Kill! Slaughter them all! Slaughter those thieves who have deceived us generation after generation!"

Hundreds of millions of voices roared simultaneously in his mind.

That was the most vicious curse left by the thirty-seventh generation of martial artists of the Abyss Realm at the moment their lives were exhausted.

These curses, after fermenting for seven hundred thousand years, have coalesced into a terrifying existence akin to the Dao itself.

It is formless and substanceless, yet everywhere.

It erodes souls, twists wills, and can turn even the firmest Dao heart into a nurturing bed for its growth in an instant.

Gu Yuan's body began to tremble violently.

In his jet-black eyes, a flicker of painful struggle appeared.

Strands of black mist seeped from his seven apertures, within which seemed to be millions of distorted faces wailing.

"Give up……"

"Accept us……"

"Become part of us……"

"You will gain……eternal……power……"

That negative will, like the sweetest devil's whisper, tempted him to abandon resistance and merge with this endless resentment.

On Gu Yuan's face, the human emotions were rapidly fading.

In their place came an absolute, icy indifference that regarded all things as mere straw dogs.

The Extinction Source Demon Pattern on his body began to writhe and expand wildly, as if it would completely devour him and become the perfect vessel of that negative will.

"It's… it's losing control…"

From afar, Qi Shi San, watching the ever more terrifying change on Gu Yuan, was frightened to the point of his liver and gallbladder splitting.

He could feel that once Gu Yuan was completely assimilated by this will, he would no longer be an apostle of Zang Tian Ge, but a world‑ending demon existing solely for destruction…

However, at the very moment when Gu Yuan's consciousness was about to be utterly drowned.

Deep within his ancient holy body, forged from the World Tree's primal origin, a barely perceptible multicolored afterglow quietly lit up.

It was the World Tree's most primal power of purification and tolerance.

If Gu Yuan's Ten Thousand Transformations Returning to Origin Manual was an overwhelmingly domineering plunder.

Then the World Tree's primal power was an all‑embracing tolerance that could contain a hundred rivers.

It would gradually decompose those raging, destruction‑driven negative emotions, stripping away the purest soul power and life imprint within them.

Destruction, at this moment, was transmuted into new life.

Gu Yuan's consciousness, on the brink of assimilation, clutched the last lifeline and began to wildly cooperate with the World Tree's transformation.

The struggle in his eyes gradually subsided, yet the cold indifference did not fully fade; it settled, becoming an indelible undertone deep within his gaze.

His aura no longer expanded wildly; instead it began a more solid, more restrained qualitative metamorphosis.

He remains Gu Yuan, yet he is no longer the Gu Yuan he once was.

Humanity, washed by that overwhelming resentment, was left only with the purest rationality and absolute selfishness.

He became even more evil.

…