The terrified screams of ten thousand slaughter-cultivators were entirely swallowed by the deafening roar of absolute, crushing gravity.
The grassy plateau outside the Azure Sword Sect had been transformed into a localized abyss. The surviving members of the Blood-Bone Valley and the Phantom Blade Sect, who had spent their entire lives terrorizing the mortal realm, were now plastered to the dirt, their bones groaning under the weight of a hundred thousand mountains.
Yan Shuo stood in the center of the crater. His pristine white robes were completely untouched by the dust and blood.
He slowly raised his hands, his palms facing the groveling army.
The Heaven-Swallowing Abyssal Art stirred within his dantian.
The technique did not require external formations...his body itself was the array, his dantian the core, and every living cultivator within range was nothing more than fuel.
This was not a technique that absorbed ambient Qi like orthodox cultivation. It was a forbidden law—one that treated living cultivators as spiritual furnaces, tearing the refined energy directly from their foundations.
Without a vessel capable of filtering karmic backlash, such an act would instantly corrode the soul.
But Yan Shuo’s Abyssal Star-Core did not reject impurity. It devoured it. Crushed it. Refined it.
To him, an army of cultivators was nothing more than a field of ripe crops.
The pitch-black gravity shifted from a downward crush to an inward, violent pull.
Whoosh.
It began with the weakest cultivators. The Foundation Establishment and early Core Formation disciples of the demonic sects felt a terrifying, agonizing tug deep within their dantians. It was not a physical force. It was a spiritual vacuum.
Wisps of vibrant, multi-colored spiritual energy were forcefully ripped from their bodies. Their blood essence, refined over decades of slaughter, evaporated into thick crimson mist that was violently dragged toward the fifteen-year-old youth standing in the center.
As their cultivation bases were devoured, their bodies rapidly aged. Their hair turned white, their skin wrinkled into dry parchment, and within three breaths, hundreds of them simply crumbled into fine, gray ash that scattered in the wind.
Yan Shuo inhaled slowly, his eyes half-closed. The massive influx of chaotic, impure energy rushed into his meridians, but it didn’t tear him apart. The Abyssal Star-Core acting as his foundation acted like a supreme-tier millstone, instantly crushing the impure slaughter-Qi, filtering out the karmic resentment, and converting it into absolute, pure power.
"More," Yan Shuo whispered, his voice resonating with an ancient, demonic hunger that made the Heavens themselves tremble.
He increased the gravitational pull.
Thousands more dissolved into spiritual mist, their life’s work effortlessly swallowed by the black hole in his stomach. The sheer density of the Qi rushing into his Golden Core was causing the air around him to physically warp and distort.
Standing safely inside the tea pavilion, unaffected by the localized gravity, Tantai Zhi watched the horrifying, apocalyptic scene with her hands clasped delicately over her chest.
She wasn’t repulsed. She wasn’t afraid of the mass slaughter happening ten paces away. Her cheeks were flushed a brilliant, radiant pink, and her golden eyes were practically sparkling with obsessive adoration.
"My husband has such a majestic appetite," Tantai Zhi murmured dreamily, completely ignoring the desperate screams of the dying army. "He is so diligent in his cultivation."
A few feet away, Su Mei was curled into a tight ball behind a boulder, clutching her burlap sack, her fox mind completely broken. He is eating an army! He is literally drinking ten thousand cultivators, and she is admiring his appetite! What kind of heaven-forsaken monsters did I pledge my soul to?!
Near the edge of the crater, Old Man Blood-Bone was fighting a losing battle.
As a Peak Nascent Soul Grandmaster, his foundation was deep enough to resist the initial vacuum. He pressed his hands against the dirt, his skeletal face contorted in absolute, mind-shattering horror as he watched his entire sect turn to dust and flow into the youth’s mouth.
He recognized that pull. Every ancient demonic cultivator knew the legends of the supreme overlord who had unified the dark path a century ago.
"The Heaven-Swallowing Abyssal Art..." Old Man Blood-Bone choked out, blood leaking from his sunken eyes. "You... you are the Nightmare of the Ancient Era! You are Demon Lord Yan!"
Yan Shuo slowly turned his gaze toward the trembling Grandmaster.
"I prefer Lord Yan," he corrected mildly. "But since you brought me such a bountiful feast, I will allow you the honor of contributing the main course."
"I will not die like a pig at a trough!" Old Man Blood-Bone roared.
Knowing his death was inevitable, the old man burned a century of his lifespan and his entire Nascent Soul in a single, desperate, suicidal strike. His physical body withered into nothingness as his entire being condensed into a massive, hundred-foot-long spear of boiling, supreme-tier blood-Qi.
It was an attack powerful enough to pierce a hole in the sky. He hurled the blood-spear directly at Yan Shuo’s chest, hoping to disrupt the devouring vacuum.
Yan Shuo didn’t even raise an eyebrow. He didn’t interrupt his meal to dodge.
He knew exactly who was standing behind him.
Before the blood-spear could even cross halfway over the crater, a flash of blinding crimson light illuminated the plateau.
Tantai Zhi didn’t draw her sword. She simply appeared directly in the path of the supreme attack, her majestic red robes fluttering. She raised her pale, delicate right hand and caught the hundred-foot-long spear of boiling blood-Qi entirely barehanded.
BOOM.
The kinetic shockwave leveled the surrounding trees, but Tantai Zhi didn’t take a single step backward. Her pure Yin Qi flared, instantly freezing the boiling blood into a massive icicle.
She slowly tightened her grip.
CRACK.
The supreme-tier blood-spear shattered into a million harmless shards of frozen crimson glass.
Tantai Zhi turned her golden, glowing eyes toward the fading remnant of Old Man Blood-Bone’s soul. The doting, sweet wife vanished, replaced by the suffocating, terrifying Goddess of Slaughter.
"Did you really think," Tantai Zhi whispered, her voice echoing with absolute, zero-degree killing intent, "that I would let a filthy bug interrupt my husband’s meal?"
She flicked her wrist, sending a single, microscopic needle of sword Qi directly into the old man’s lingering spiritual remnant, erasing his soul from the cycle of reincarnation permanently.
Yan Shuo smiled fondly at his wife’s protective back, then turned his attention to the massive, concentrated cloud of Nascent Soul essence left behind by the shattered spear.
He opened his mouth and inhaled sharply.
The peak Nascent Soul essence, combined with the refined Qi of ten thousand slaughter-cultivators, violently rushed into his meridians.
It was the final drop needed to overflow the ocean.
Deep within his dantian, his flawless Golden Core let out a loud, echoing CRACK.
The golden shell shattered completely. The massive ocean of stolen spiritual energy was violently compressed by the Abyssal Star-Core. The pitch-black gravity folded inward, refining the raw power until a tiny, perfectly formed figure materialized within his spiritual sea.
It was a Nascent Soul. But it was not golden, and it was not seated on a lotus.
It was a miniature version of Yan Shuo, wreathed in dark, suffocating abyssal energy, sitting on a throne of pitch-black gravity.
He had successfully broken through to the Nascent Soul realm.
But the Heavens do not easily tolerate the birth of a demon.
The moment the dark Nascent Soul opened its eyes within his dantian, the sky above the Azure Sword Sect violently warped. The blood-red clouds of the demonic armada were instantly blown away, replaced by a massive, swirling vortex of pitch-black tribulation clouds spanning hundreds of miles.
RUMBLE.
The sky lit up, not with the natural blue light of a standard heavenly tribulation, but with the apocalyptic, blood-red lightning of a Heavenly Punishment.
The Heavenly Dao had sensed an anomaly that defied its laws, and it was gathering enough destructive force to erase the entire mountain range from the face of the mortal realm.
Inside the sect barriers, Sect Master Zhao and the elders fell to their knees in absolute despair, weeping as they stared at the crimson lightning crackling in the sky. This was not a tribulation meant to test a cultivator; this was a heavenly execution.
Down on the plateau, Tantai Zhi immediately abandoned her cool demeanor. She rushed back to Yan Shuo, her face pale with frantic worry as she looked up at the apocalyptic sky.
"Husband!" she cried, gripping his arm tightly, her pure Yin Qi flaring to its absolute maximum as she prepared to draw her sword and physically fight the sky. "The Heavenly Dao is trying to strike you! Step back! Let me shatter the clouds! I will sever the tribulation for you!"
Yan Shuo stood bathed in the ominous red light of the coming lightning. He felt the terrifying, world-ending power gathering above him.
He looked down at his beautiful, fiercely devoted wife, who was fully prepared to declare war on the Heavens just to keep his white robes from getting singed.
A genuine, deeply arrogant laugh escaped Yan Shuo’s lips.
"Silly girl," Yan Shuo murmured affectionately, pulling her into a brief, reassuring embrace. He kissed the top of her head, causing her to instantly freeze in a state of blushing shock.
He let go, stepping forward so he was standing alone directly beneath the eye of the swirling black vortex. He snapped his paper fan open, pointing it casually up at the apocalyptic red lightning.
"Do not draw your sword against the Heavens today, Zhi’er," Yan Shuo smiled, his dark eyes flashing with the ancient, unyielding pride of a supreme Demon Lord. "I am still a bit hungry. And heavenly lightning... is long overdue."