Chapter 823: Fear

Twenty supreme beings of the HalfStepTranscendenceRank, above the Space‑Time River, have stirred an endless, terrifying cataclysmic battle.

The entire Space‑Time River, from past to future, from the first instant of the first Epoch to the final moment of the last Epoch, trembles violently.

The waters of the Space‑Time River are churned upside down by collisions of the Supreme Dao Principles, countless timelines are shredded and reassembled in the flow, then ground into powder.

The past, present, and future dimensions have completely lost meaning on this battlefield; a Half-step Transcendence slashes a sword in the past, yet its blade light pierces out from a fissure in the future.

Primordial Supreme sets a killing formation in the future, but the array suddenly explodes in the center of the battlefield in the present.

Cause and effect are like a torn spiderweb, Fate like a churned mire, Reincarnation like a smashed turntable; all the Supreme Laws that form the foundation of the Zhutian Wanjie are forced into supporting roles in the chaotic battle of the twenty Half-step Transcendence beings.

Each time Ye Zhetian's Heavenly Emperor Cauldron falls, it carves golden fissures stretching billions of light‑years across the Space‑Time River, and the Unfortunate Lord's Unfortunate Sky Curtain continuously shatters and reforms within those cracks.

Ye Beichen's Life‑Death Sword weaves black and white, its blade pierces past and future, colliding simultaneously at countless temporal nodes with the Calamity Lord's Calamity Dao Diagram.

The Dust Emperor's Red Dust Dao Diagram and the End Times Lord's End Eye have deadlocked in the Void for countless ages; the towering red dust withers then blossoms, blossoms then withers, and the opposing Supreme Dao Principles of perpetual vitality and ultimate stillness engage in the most fundamental Dao struggle each cycle of decay‑renewal.

The clash of the Bull Lord and the Devourer Lord, two colossal beasts devouring each other, has pierced countless layers of spacetime; each strike of the Bull Lord's horns leaves deep, bone‑visible wounds on the Devourer Lord's devouring demonic body, and each bite of the Devourer Lord's abyssal maw tears large chunks of flesh from the Bull Lord's galaxy‑devouring form.

The showdown between Honghuang Longzu and the Void Lord evolved into an ultimate struggle of existence versus non‑existence; each descent of the Dragon Claw refills vast swaths of Void back into the material world, while each eruption of the Void Lord's Void Power turns large portions of the tangible dragon body into emptiness.

The Painter Lord's Great Dao paintings spread across heaven and earth; three rebellious masterpieces entangle endlessly with the Strange Lord's Strange Sky Curtain, each stroke of the brush rips a forcibly defined fissure in that curtain, and each backlash of the Strange Lord's strange power causes dozens of Great Dao paintings to lose their forms simultaneously.

The duel between Dan Tian Di and the Lord of Reincarnation is the most peculiar.

Dan Tian Di's myriad Dan fire refines the Reincarnation Lord's incoming Reincarnation Light furnace after furnace into nourishment for itself, while the Lord of Reincarnation's Six Paths Reincarnation Disc repeatedly feeds the Dao Fruit refined by Dan Tian Di back into the Reincarnation grind.

Refine, reincarnate, refine again, reincarnate again—their Dao struggle forms a bizarre loop, and in the short term neither can overcome the other.

The clash between the Fate Emperor and the Soul Lord is even more perilous; the Fate River and the Soul Dao's faint light duel silently in the Void, and the judgment of Fate and the erosion of the divine soul collide countless unseen times each instant.

At the battlefield's edge, Xuan Tian Di and the Lord of Darkness's darkness and the Three Pure Ones' light draw ever nearer.

Xuan Tian Di's One Qi Transforms into Three Purities, the three Dao clones—Tai Shi, Tai Yuan, and Tai Chu—and his true form strike simultaneously, firmly suppressing the Dark Origin of the Lord of Darkness.

Although the Lord of Darkness's true body descends upon the Dark Main Path, each of Xuan Tian Di's Three Pure One clones possesses power surpassing the Ultimate Leap, and when the three bodies merge back into the true form they reach an extremely high tier within Half-step Transcendence.

The Divine Demon Immortal and the Lord of Jiemie's divine demon and Jiemie light also draw near; the supreme combat power of the Divine Demon Immortal's nine Reincarnation bodies united confronts the Lord of Jiemie's bizarre lifeform of "Jiemie itself" in the fiercest Dao struggle.

The great battle continues.

To the senses of beings outside, this earth‑shaking Half-step Transcendence melee has persisted for a full hundred years, yet shows no sign of ending.

One hundred years span a lifetime for mortals;

For ordinary cultivators, it is also a considerable stretch of time.

But for beings of the Half-step Transcendence level, a hundred years are but a flick of the finger.

One of their breaths encompasses the rise and fall of an Epoch; a single thought of theirs births and ends countless worlds.

Waging war for a hundred years is to them like a mortal blinking once in a second.

Yet in the true battlefield atop the Space‑Time River, the flow of time differs starkly from the outside.

There, time has already passed by several hundred thousand years.

Hundreds of thousands of years—enough for countless civilizations to rise, flourish, and decline, and for innumerable races to progress from wilderness to prosperity to extinction.

Yet even after such an immense span, the great melee of the twenty Half-step Transcendence beings remains unresolved.

Both sides' strength is so closely matched that neither can gain decisive advantage in a short time.

However, beyond the supreme battlefield of the Half-step Transcendence tier, another layer of conflict also influences the course of this Epoch Great Calamity—the crucial battlefield of the Ultimate Leap tier.

The Ultimate Leap, in the eyes of ordinary cultivators, is an unattainably supreme realm.

They are supreme beings just below Half-step Transcendence, the Extinction Sequences of the Ten Tribes of No Return Road, and the pillars upholding the great legacies of the Zhutian Wanjie.

During the period when the Half-step Transcendence beings stormed the source of the Space‑Time River, the slaughter at the Ultimate Leap tier never ceased, its ferocity no less than that of the supreme battlefield.

On the Ultimate Leap battlefield, a figure is rewriting the entire war's course in an unimaginable way.

Ye Wuque.

He stands proudly atop the Summit of Nine Heavens Ten Earth, his black robe fluttering, black hair like a banner, surrounded by the radiant divine light of the Four Great Sacred Law Origins.

Golden Battle Force, silver Space‑Time Force, emerald Creation Force, and ink‑black Dark Force intertwine, the four‑colored holy light weaving around him into an endless Four Symbols Origin diagram.

He is like a Heavenly Emperor descending to the dust, overlooking the terrifying No Return Road powers converging from all directions; his deep eyes show no trace of fear, only the calm of an ancient well and a barely perceptible—anticipation.

At this moment, over twenty Ultimate Leap‑tier powerhouses encircle Ye Wuque from all sides.

It is a terrifying formation that would drive any Zhutian Wanjie force to despair—twenty‑plus Ultimate Leap beings; what does that even mean?

In past Epoch Great Calamities that made Zhutian Wanjie beings pale, the No Return Road side usually needed only three to five Ultimate Leap Extinction Sequences to utterly annihilate a super‑large world.

Now, to encircle and kill Ye Wuque alone, they have deployed over twenty!

These twenty‑plus Ultimate Leap beings come from different tribes within the Ten Tribes of No Return Road.

Some hail from the Ominous Clan, enveloped by gray‑white Unfortunate Origin, each step spreading Unfortunate Runes beneath their feet;

Some come from the Darkness Clan, where the pitch‑black Dark Force coalesces around them into ferocious dark battle armor, etched with the tragedies of countless worlds devoured by darkness;

Some originate from the Jiemie Clan, their bodies exuding the dead silence of Jiemie, where all vitality they pass turns into eternal stillness;

Some are from the Calamity Clan, dark‑red Calamity Dao patterns flowing over their forms, each breath accompanied by ominous disaster signs;

There are also Extinction Sequences from the Finality Clan, World‑Devouring Clan, Heavenly Soul Clan, Void Clan, and Strange Clan.

Each of these Extinction Sequences is an ancient colossus that has lived countless years, each bearing a notorious name, each having razed innumerable great worlds and Great Universes across the Zhutian Wanjie.

Any one of them can be called the ultimate nightmare of the Zhutian Wanjie.

Yet now they gather here solely to encircle a young man whose cultivation years are a fraction of theirs.

Nevertheless, even facing such a terrifying lineup, Ye Wuque's expression remains utterly composed.

His gaze sweeps over the faces of those Extinction Sequences, seeing their dread, their murderous intent, and the hint of fear deep in their eyes that even they refuse to acknowledge.

Yes, fear.

These Extinction Sequences that have loomed over the Zhutian Wanjie for endless ages, when confronting Ye Wuque, actually felt fear.

Because earlier, they had personally witnessed on this battlefield how this black‑robed young man moved invincibly.