Space twisted as vast ranks of undead thralls surged out to meet the Ancient Wilds behemoths. The behemoths were colossal—tens of thousands of giants occupying swathes of void—but against a million undead thralls, breaking through was near impossible. Generals against generals, soldiers against soldiers—Lin Moyu had long anticipated every scenario; to him, the world-rules only had a few stock plays.
All three fronts ignited. Most intense was Xiao Peng versus Nine-Sun Venerable—blow for blow, evenly matched, the void shattering in sheets, the vortices from Chaos to the Ancient Wilds destroyed one after another, space a chaos of rifts. Chaos-Seed muttered, "Xiao Peng's still a bit shy of the Golden-Winged Roc at its peak—otherwise this would be over." Xiao Peng had fully awakened his bloodline, but he still lagged that ancient pinnacle; otherwise, with the Roc's might, a single Nine-Sun Venerable wouldn't be a problem. Back then, there weren't such neat realm labels—only combat power—and the Golden-Winged Roc's was top-tier, not weaker than an ordinary Calamity Supreme.
The compound eye at Nine-Sun Venerable's brow suddenly erupted with power. Ripples buckled space and forced Xiao Peng back. A giant eye then formed in the void, studded with countless small eyes, each the size of a human head. All those eyes fixed on Xiao Peng, making his skin crawl with a bad premonition. He spread his wings and blasted endless golden light, stabbing like lightning at the eye. All the small eyes shut; a light-screen flashed across the giant eye and blocked the strike. Then every eye opened at once—boom—Xiao Peng was sent flying, his body laced with countless wounds, blood pouring as if slashed a thousand times. And that was only the opening. The myriad eyes opened and closed in waves; Xiao Peng was carved by invisible blades, his wounds multiplying. He couldn't even tell where the strikes came from.
He shrieked, a cry full of killing intent; golden light bled across the Wilds. In that light, countless Xiao Pengs split off, charging from all directions at Nine-Sun and the giant eye. "Whatever trick that is—I'll break it with force!" Xiao Peng had learned Lin Moyu's essence well: break all methods with strength. Under that unreasonable onslaught, Nine-Sun Venerable fell behind again. As an heir to the Golden-Winged Roc bloodline, Xiao Peng's battle power was likewise peerless—no easy prey.
The Primal Chaos Gem nodded. "Good. That's more like it." He didn't need Xiao Peng to win—only to lock the enemy down and keep him from approaching. Little Tree held the same line: against a Quasi–Calamity Supreme insect, he fought with ease—neither winning nor losing, simply stalling. On the third front, the undead thralls had seized the advantage; weaker behemoths fell in droves as sheer numbers suppressed them.
Time ticked on; Lin Moyu's aura climbed without end. By its swell he had long since reached Chaos Realm Perfect—anyone else would have finished by now, but for him this was only the beginning. Inside him, the nine domains were in grand fusion—domain power interlinked, daos harmonized, bridges forming between domains until interconnection was complete. Hard work: with Moyu as the core, nine would become one—seen as a single domain under his total control, a thought commanding all nine at once. Domain power surged like tsunamis, washing through him, resonating with body and soul, until they became one. He moved slowly, meticulously—external trouble he left to the Gem, Little Tree, and the rest.
His aura kept rising, touching the bottom line of the world-rules again and again—like a shameless rogue teasing them while doing nothing overt enough to cross the line. The Primal Chaos Gem felt the rules shift; the Calamity kept accelerating. "Bold of the master to keep teasing the rules. Rule or not, in a world without a Transcendent, it's the supreme." He couldn't help a wry edge: Moyu was doing it on purpose, giving the rules no face at all.
Chaos-Seed couldn't sense this. "What's the master doing?"
"He's provoking the rules," the Gem said. "Touching the bottom line over and over. Keep at it and heaven-and-earth will mark him as a mortal enemy."
Chaos-Seed still didn't get the concrete impact.
"In short," the Gem said, "the rules will rewrite cognition for countless beings, forge causes and effects, and make the master the Heaven-and-Earth Public Enemy. It will strip his fortune, close all daos to him, make cultivation grind to a halt, and trying to become a Calamity Supreme within this world will become brutally hard."
Chaos-Seed finally understood. "But the master won't care—and maybe he's doing it on purpose."
"Right," the Gem sighed. "He's deliberately taking on more of the Calamity. If he succeeds, the Calamity will shift states—his calamity-bearer identity will weigh more. Anyone who kills him will gain massive rewards—enough that becoming a Transcendent could become inevitable. He's entering the game with his own body to send Lin Mohan to the Transcendent tier."
Lin Moyu also grasped what Chaos Realm Perfect truly meant: not just more power and a realm tick, but the foundation of a Calamity Supreme. Most never understand why it's the foundation. At this tier the cultivator fuses with his domain; normally, domains are under world-rule cover, evolving daos to benefit endless lives. Now you must invert it—use the domain to build an invisible bridge to the world-rules, and comprehend them. Both are required. Many have reached this; some became today's Calamity Supremes, others fell short as Quasi–Calamity Supremes—same great realm, different paths, both with a chance to Transcend.
"I'm already the calamity-bearer," Moyu thought. "While the rules target me, they also open doors. But if I keep pushing the bottom line, I'll add another identity—Heaven-and-Earth Public Enemy. Since being the bearer already makes me enemy-like, I may as well be the enemy. Then those doors close, my fortune is stripped, and most beings in the world—by all kinds of engineered causes—will target me. Kill me, get a reward. And in the Calamity, with the path to advancement open, that reward matters."
His plan was simple—nothing like the Calamity Supreme's labyrinths: enter the board with his life, break the bottom line, gather the wrath of heaven-and-earth onto himself, stack Public Enemy atop calamity-bearer, and let that tidal wave push Lin Mohan to Transcendence. Dangerous—but among the best options. If it worked, not only would Lin Mohan become Transcendent and seize this world, Moyu could also fully detach and prove the Way as Lord of the Yushen World. Otherwise, the bond to this world would always tug at him.
The nine-domain fusion neared its end; Moyu's aura reached apex Perfect—even a hint beyond. Chaos Realm Perfect came as naturally as breathing. Fusion not yet done, his aura still climbed; a hairline crack opened in the veil between Chaos Realm and Calamity Supreme.
At that instant, the world-rules moved again. Perfect may be the foundation, but it is not the Supreme—there's an essential divide. With eighteen Perfect domains' worth of power (nine domains, each equivalent to two after compression), he was brushing the Supreme's edge—not permitted. The void of the Ancient Wilds fractured; for a million miles around him, countless spatial rifts opened, each a colossal corridor straight to Chaos. The rules tore open the void, linking Chaos to the Wilds—and figures poured through.
Humans. Behemoths. Insects. All kinds of beings, wielding all kinds of daos—over a billion in number. Chaos-Seed stared. "Aren't these the armies of the Four Extremes and Three Regions?" Those fronts were already at war as the Calamity sped up, frictions spiking. Apart from the Calamity Supreme tier, even many at Chaos Realm Perfect had grown violent. South and North versus Center and Upper had come first; later the East Extreme moved; in the last centuries even the West Extreme clashed with the Center, though they'd been restrained—briefly. Now the rules, to stop Lin Moyu, forced open passages and dragged combatants here.
The void teemed with life—over ten billion. Bathed in the rules' pressure, none of them felt surprised to find themselves here; if anything, the rules' influence grew stronger. Under it, billions of eyes turned in unison to Lin Moyu. In their sight, he wasn't a man but a supreme treasure—kill it and prove the Dao. Calamity Supreme—kill him and it's mine. The rules whispered to them. Some of it true, some not; impossible to parse. But who could resist that bait? Kill him and I ascend. The Supreme seat is mine. Strike!
Their eyes reddened as they charged.
"I'll block them," said Chaos-Seed. The numbers were huge, but few were at Perfect; if he cut loose, he could hold them.
"No," said the Primal Chaos Gem. "The master has arrangements."
Arrangements—again. Chaos-Seed blinked, then remembered who they were dealing with. The void twisted—and undead thralls erupted like a storm, their number soaring to hundreds of billions.