Some fought against the tides of time, traversing the river of ages from the distant future, charging toward this very moment.
Their speed was unimaginable!
Yet, they remained shrouded in mist, wrapped in the currents of time, their true forms obscured—only vague outlines could be glimpsed. Even so, the sight was enough to shake the heavens.
How could the gray-haired powerhouse not be alarmed? Had those figures detected them? Had they come for this very reason?
A chill ran down his spine. If his ultimate battle with Shi Hao had drawn the attention of beings from the downstream flow of time, provoking such a fierce reaction, did it mean they had already interfered with that realm, altering something fundamental?
The thought made even a quasi-Immortal Emperor like him shudder. If that were the case, the karmic backlash he would face would be catastrophic.
Perhaps he would be erased from existence itself!
After achieving invincibility across the ages, neither heaven could bury him nor earth could destroy him. No one in the world could slay him. Yet, even he could not trample upon all the laws of the universe at will. Some forbidden domains remained untouchable.
Otherwise, bound by karma, he would bring about his own end!
Shi Hao’s gaze was profound as he stared into the downstream flow of time. His pupils reflected scenes of creation and destruction, yet he remained silent.
But in this moment, it was as if the myriad heavens of eternity lay within his grasp. He seemed to have glimpsed the very essence of existence. With a final roar, his supreme might erupted.
Shi Hao raised his fist and struck, aiming to obliterate the gray-haired man.
**BOOM!**
At that instant, the hazy figures downstream in the river of time also flickered into obscurity.
The battle here was too overwhelming, too radiant—a clash of true forms in the present, blood staining the cosmos. The rivers of past and future trembled, their visions vanishing.
Simultaneously, the gray-haired man howled, swiftly recalling the divine light of his soul that had been battling downstream in the river of time. He also summoned back the shadowy avatar that had been fighting upstream in the past.
Fear gnawed at him. Had he triggered some great karmic backlash? Had his soul-light clashing with Shi Hao downstream trespassed into forbidden realms?
If he had interfered with events that altered other timelines, his present self might unravel—depending on the severity.
**”You’re afraid,”** Shi Hao said coldly.
From beginning to end, he remained composed, as if observing something unrelated to himself. He feared nothing, unwavering in his resolve.
**”I am an Emperor—how could I fear? If karma comes, I shall shatter it with my own strength! In all the vastness of existence, who dares claim they can sever my form?!”** the gray-haired man roared.
His death-gray eyes blazed, golden pupils igniting into radiant edges of light, illuminating the present.
**BOOM!**
The final battle erupted.
A life-and-death struggle, growing ever more brutal. Both were quasi-Immortal Emperors—who could truly claim superiority? To reach this level, they were already supreme beings.
From ancient times to the present, across countless epochs, how many quasi-Immortal Emperors had ever existed?
At the very least, before this, Shi Hao had never encountered a living one. Only after stepping into the dark world had he met the first!
He had also glimpsed those figures downstream in the river of time. A premonition stirred within him—even separated by the ages, even with time itself as a barrier, he would eventually meet them, even cross paths.
In fact, he faintly sensed that their meeting would come sooner rather than later.
**”The future…”**
He thought of the man who had fought atop a cauldron at the border of the Emperor’s Pass, of Cao Yousheng from billions of years later, of the peerless woman in white—all visions of future beings he had once glimpsed.
Each encounter with that era had occurred at different points in their respective timelines.
For example, the quasi-Immortal Emperor Shi Hao of today was nothing like the youth he had once been.
Surely, the same was true for those beings. Each fleeting appearance belonged to a different stage of their existence.
**”Shi Hao, do you not realize that all your efforts are futile? You will never comprehend what you truly face. Your end will be tragic, pitiful!”**
The gray-haired man’s voice was icy, laced with cruelty and an inexplicable complexity.
**”All but me are but dust beneath my fist!”**
This was Shi Hao’s reply—unyielding, resolute, brimming with absolute confidence. His conviction had never wavered.
No matter what trials this era brought, his will remained unshaken. He believed he could suppress all enemies across eternity, never yielding, never retreating.
**”Hahaha…”** The gray-haired powerhouse laughed, but his gaze grew colder. His movements were lightning-fast, his form dreamlike. Every clash carried the force of creation itself.
**BOOM!**
His hair began to glow, shifting from ashen gray to radiant gold. His entire aura transformed—divine, majestic, his withered flesh gradually filling with vitality.
**”Sacrifice to Heaven, Earth, and the Fallen!”**
His eyes blazed with terrifying light. With a mere turn of his pupils, he conjured a primal altar before him.
His body shone brilliantly, droplets of blood falling—some black, some gold, some crimson—onto the altar.
Even Shi Hao felt a chill. Visions flickered across the altar’s surface, depicting ancient events of unfathomable magnitude.
The path this being had walked was twisted, horrifying—a road paved with cruelty.
He had sacrificed an entire generation of heroes, offering all his rivals as tributes upon the altar. When he finally ascended to quasi-Immortal Emperor, he had even sacrificed his own world.
He had **live-offered** heaven and earth!
A once-vast realm had withered into a stagnant ripple within the sea of worlds.
He had led his celestial court across the sea, into the dark lands. Yet, for reasons unknown, even they had become sacrifices, reduced to bones, leaving him alone in this desolate dark heaven.
**BOOM!**
As the gray-haired man’s body blazed, his very state seemed to shift. With his own blood, he communed with the altar woven from the symbols of the Great Dao.
Now, he sought to **live-sacrifice** Shi Hao.
Sacrifice to Heaven, Earth, and the Fallen—not in reverence, but to **consume** them.
Now, he aimed to offer Shi Hao himself.
**”Delusional!”**
Shi Hao’s response was ice. His body radiated light, smoke rising from his back as the flames of the Great Dao erupted, searing toward the altar.
Even as strange laws enveloped him, even with the altar blocking his path, he remained unshaken.
**”Break!”**
Shi Hao roared. As he struck, a crimson brilliance surged from his palm, morphing into a guillotine—radiant yet stained with blood.
**”Sever!”**
He bellowed, manifesting the Guillotine of Immortal Slaying, a weapon to annihilate all things.
In his youth, he had walked the Immortal Execution Platform multiple times, absorbing its light. Now, as a quasi-Immortal Emperor, he could replicate all divine arts under heaven.
**CRACK!**
The altar fractured—but so did the guillotine.
**BOOM!**
Both artifacts shattered into dust, vanishing without a trace.
**”Kill!”**
Opposite him, the golden light faded. The gray-haired man’s body withered once more, his hair dulling, his blood turning black. The two clashed in a frenzy.
A quasi-Immortal Emperor was said to be unkillable, eternal—but only because he had never met his match.
Now, as these two titans fought, one would inevitably fall.
**BOOM!**
Wings sprouted from the gray-haired man’s back—no longer tattered, but one black, one white. A bizarre yin-yang force erupted, forming a diagram of the Great Dao as they flapped, crushing toward Shi Hao.
With a hum, a Kun fish leaped from Shi Hao’s back, shifting from lunar yin to solar yang. Golden light exploded as a roc soared billions of miles into the sky.
He countered the yin-yang diagram with his own mastery of the dual forces.
**BOOM!**
Shi Hao’s fist struck, his fingers morphing into dragon heads as he formed a seal to suppress his foe.
**”Bang!”**
The gray-haired man’s right palm sharpened into a crimson beak—a True Phoenix’s beak, blindingly radiant, like a pair of divine shears aiming to sever the dragon’s head.
**BOOM!**
The cosmos shattered as they plunged into the sea of chaos. Blood sprayed as the battle reached its zenith.
With every move, their power boiled over. In a single thought, worlds perished and were born—destruction and creation intertwined!
**”Sizzle!”**
Extreme immortal light tore through the chaos. The gray-haired man roared, his fist annihilating all, piercing through past, present, and future. This strike was peerless.
The beam stood parallel to the river of time, illuminating the ancient past and the distant future like lightning splitting the night.
The final moment had come—life or death.
They unleashed their ultimate techniques.
**”Bang!”**
Shi Hao manifested the supreme art. Every major acupoint in his body blazed as three figures—past, present, and future—emerged from his chest, merging with his true form.
At this moment, he was **peerless**.
Around him, the forms of the Kun Peng, the True Dragon, the Thunder Emperor, and more materialized—all manifestations of his mastery over the Great Dao’s symbols, his combat prowess at its peak.
**BOOM!**
In the cataclysmic collision, the two powerhouses shattered the chaos. When they emerged, they tore through the endless black mist of the dark lands, finally seeing **light**.
They had fought their way out of the darkness.
**”Pfft!”**
The gray-haired man’s brow split open, pierced by Shi Hao’s finger. The radiance of a quasi-Immortal Emperor illuminated all eras—unmatched, supreme.
**”Defeat… so this is how it feels. I finally understand.”**
The gray-haired man laughed—a mix of melancholy, confusion, and madness. The power within him surged, cracking his skull as his soul-light blazed.
He did not die. As a quasi-Immortal Emperor, even a torn soul could not easily perish.
Blood trickled from his brow as he staggered back, glaring coldly at Shi Hao.
Meanwhile, Shi Hao stared ahead, his pupils transforming into the most primal symbols of the Great Dao. Their brilliance threatened to incinerate the heavens.
This place was no longer dark. All traces of corruption and strangeness seemed to have been purged.
He knew—this was likely the true approach to the **Ultimate Land**.
Legends spoke of crossing the sea of worlds, traversing the dark lands, to finally reach the ultimate ancient ground.
Here, the black mist was absent, but the world was not radiant—just ordinary, tinged with twilight.
Like the dusk of the gods.
On the ground lay a few immortal corpses, unrotted, engulfed in flames like torches, their hues eerie and sorrowful. All were Immortal Kings.
Most striking of all was a seated figure, his body dissolving into flames, emitting the aura of a quasi-Immortal Emperor.
Had a quasi-Immortal Emperor perished?
Within those flames floated a shattered willow tree, barely a foot tall, on the verge of complete annihilation.
**”Willow Deity!”**
Shi Hao shouted, his emotions surging for the first time.
He had found the Willow Deity here—but it was nearly destroyed, preserved only by the quasi-Immortal Emperor’s flames, suspended in a state of near-extinction.
Perhaps, under this protection, it might not fully wither.
**”See? Even a quasi-Immortal Emperor, ignorant of heaven’s will, will meet his end. This is your precedent,”** the gray-haired man said coldly.
**”Who was he?”** Shi Hao asked.
**”The one from your so-called ‘Era of Fallen Emperors’—the being who successfully crossed the sea. This is his fate.”**
Shi Hao felt the loneliness of this path. That man, countless epochs ago, had journeyed here alone—only to meet such an end.
Would this be his own destiny as well?
**”Hmm!”**
Shi Hao shuddered, sensing a wave of sorrow. Then, a fist-sized flame—composed of Great Dao symbols—flew from his body, merging into the fallen being’s form.
**”Oh? The Emperor’s Flame that once escaped has returned to you, only to come back here now,”** the gray-haired man mused, though he seemed indifferent.
That flame was the fallen quasi-Immortal Emperor’s Dao fire.
Here, Shi Hao felt the weight of death—an overwhelming pressure unlike any before.
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