Against the Gods

NEW NOVEL: First and foremost, I'm delighted to announce that our long-time veteran translator littleshanks has finally launched his new novel, Rise!  Rise is a novel about the esports scene in Shanghai, the competitive gaming capital of China. It follows the story of Lin Feng, a boy who has just moved to the city for his last year of high school. He's a passionate gamer and dreams of being the best professional League of Legends player in the world. The twist? He almost achieved his dream, but failed at the...

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“That… that’s…”

“The founder of the Eternal Heaven Realm…?” A higher realm king said with a  bewildered look on his face.

“That can’t be… right? If it is her, how on earth did she live this long? Maybe she just looks like her?”

“Also, why does she look so much like the Eternal Heaven Pearl Spirit? Maybe the reason behind her immortality is…”

……………...

Everyone was shocked a second time before they even got a chance to recover from the shock that was the Eternal Heaven Pearl being taken over by another entity.

“Great… Ancestor?” Outside Eternal Heaven God Realm, a Guardian was staring at the sky with a dumbfounded look on their face.

“My lord, is… is she really the Great Ancestor?” Another Guardian asked with a shaky voice.

Zhou Xuzi closed his eyes before answering his question quietly, “The Eternal Heaven Pearl Spirit was actually close to death already when it finally accepted the great ancestor as its master.”

During the last stages of the ancient war between the gods and the devils, the Evil Infant had unleashed “Myriad Tribulations” using the Sky Poison Pearl and killed countless living things and artifact spirits.

The Sky Poison Pearl only started regenerating its divine power after He Ling became its new origin spirit. Its origin spirit was dead a long time ago.

In the Eternal Heaven Pearl’s case, its origin spirit was poisoned by Eternal Tribulation. Although it hadn’t perished immediately, the poison continuously ate away at its body until it was weak and near death by the time it accepted the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor as its master.

“The Great Ancestor had stayed by the Eternal Heaven Pearl’s her whole life. It so happened that the Great Ancestor was almost at the end of her lifespan when the Eternal Heaven Pearl’s origin spirit was about to pass on. Therefore, the origin spirit admitted her soul into its consciousness space and used her Heart of Glazed Glass as a catalyst to transform her into the new soul spirit.”

For generations, this secret was only known to the Eternal Heaven God Emperor and the two most important Guardians of the Eternal Heaven Realm.

The Eternal Heaven Pearl’s soul spirit was nothing like a normal artifact spirit.

In Zhou Xuzi’s opinion, no mortal’s soul should be able to become the new Eternal Heaven Pearl Spirit. His ancestor succeeded only because she had a Heart of Glazed Glass.

It was why he couldn’t understand how Yun Che was able to rob the Eternal Heaven Pearl from his ancestor’s control, and so quickly and easily that it was unthinkable.

Zhou Xuzi’s eyes grew more and more unfocused. “The world thought that the Eternal Heaven Pearl had continued to lend its service to the Eternal Heaven Realm because of its friendship with the Great Ancestor… in reality, the Eternal Heaven Pearl is our Great Ancestor, and her will is the will of the Eternal Heaven Realm!”

As long as the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor remained the Eternal Heaven Pearl Spirit, the Eternal Heaven Pearl would always belong to the Eternal Heaven Realm.

So why and how did he…

When was this nightmare going to end?

All the Guardians looked deeply shaken. “So that spirit really… really is the Great Ancestor?”

“...” This time, Zhou Xuzi didn’t answer their question. His unfocused eyes were completely colorless.

After the Great Ancestor was driven out of the Eternal Heaven Pearl, she had returned to her real body which was kept sealed beneath the Eternal Heaven Tower.

However, her real body was running out of lifespan in the first place, and this would be the first time body and soul rejoined one another after hundreds and thousands of years. He had no doubt that she would experience a strong sense of incompatibility.

Not only would she be unable to manipulate her powers properly, she would die… in two hours at most.

This was her end-of-life rally.

Boom— 

The sounds of crumbling resounded like ten thousand tides hitting the shore at once. Even the star regions outside Eternal Heaven Realm were quaking from the motion.

The Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor slowly opened her eyes as the world died around her like it was the apocalypse. Her pale white eyes shone with endless divinity and ancient experience.

“Devil Master Yun Che,” she started while floating proudly in the sky, “you are the killer of my descendants and the plunderer of my home. This noble one will slay you even if her death is—” 

“So much bullshit!” Yun Che cut her off impatiently. “Yan One, Yan Two, destroy her!”

Two black tears appeared across space as Yan One and Yan Two charged toward the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor and attacked her before she even managed to finish her sentence.

The Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor pressed her palms together and muttered something under her breath. A giant palm seal dropped down on the two Yama Ancestors when she made a pressing motion.

However, the palm seal was torn in half by a black light the second it took form.

Right behind the shattered attack was a glowing black arm and the twisted, violent face of Yan One.

The founder of the Eternal Heaven God Realm was the strongest profound practitioner of the Eastern Divine Region at the time. To this day, only a handful of people had ever surpassed her cultivation or her achievements.

Nonetheless, she wasn’t who she was hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Her body and her soul had been separated for hundreds of thousands of years. It was impossible for them to merge together and be perfectly compatible.

Even crueler was the fact that age wise, she wasn’t even old enough to call herself the granddaughter of the Yama Ancestors.

Even when she was at her peak, she was still no match for Yan One… much less Yan One and Yan Two together!

Earlier, Yan One had no interest in unleashing his full power in the slightest because the Guardians just weren’t worth his time. But the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor? For the first time since the start of the battle, his hand was glowing with a black light that could terrify even the true yama devils of hell.

Shred!

The first swipe tore the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor’s hand seal apart. The second swipe pierced the white light surrounding her body and caused something to crack in the most shrill way imaginable. Beads of blood immediately poured out of the cracks across the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor’s protective energy and white clothes.

One exchange was all it took for Yan One to wound her.

The Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor’s return was supposed to be a rallying miracle unlike any other. She was the master of the Eternal Heaven Pearl and the reason the Eternal Heaven Realm had stood strong in the Eastern Divine Regions for hundreds and thousands of years… in the eyes of countless Eastern Divine Region profound practitioners, she was as untouchable as an ancient divine spirit.

Yan One had still shredded that supposedly invincible legend into pieces in one strike.

Yan Two was next after Yan One had injured the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor. His ghastly claw shredded all the space in its path and sent the ancient woman flying tens of kilometers away, but before she could even catch a breath Yan One was already attacking her again… their terrifying power made her feel like an entire level of hell was descending on top of her. 

The Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor had fought countless opponents in the past, but none of them had ever been as terrifying as Yan One or Yan Two.

A fight between Divine Masters was terrible enough… but the fight between god emperors was even worse!

The powerful space of the God Realm was torn apart repeatedly before the Yama Ancestors’ power like it was nothing but a flimsy piece of cloth. Every time they made a move, black scars and black holes cut through the sky as if it had a physical form.

To avoid their power impacting Yun Che, they had been purposefully drawing the battlefield away from him.

Although the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor had been trying to kill Yun Che from the start, the two Yama Ancestors were so powerful that she was blown away by their power from the very beginning. She couldn’t find a single opportunity to unleash her power besides that initial hand seal.

The denizens of Eternal Heaven Realm, the realm kings, and the profound practitioners of the Eastern Divine Region were all stunned as the poor woman was sent flying further and further away from her homeworld...

If the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor had passed away several hundred thousand years ago, she would have remained the eternal legend even if the Eternal Heaven Realm was destroyed today.

Unfortunately she was alive, and she had appeared only to be thrashed utterly by Yan One and Yan Two. The death of a legend was being played out right before everyone’s eyes.

“Heh.” Yun Che sneered. “We might not have been able to stop her had she used common sense and run away, but no, she just had to spout her nonsense and commit suicide!”

“She wouldn’t run away,” Qianye Ying’er said. “Without the Eternal Heaven Pearl to sustain her life, her body would wilt, and her soul would dissipate in two hours at most. This is but her end-of-life rally.”

“Is that so?” Yun Che said with a pitying look on his face. “Then I guess we should help her on her way.”

Not far away from him, Yan Three was shouting at his brothers mockingly, “Two old men ganging up on an old woman? Where is your shame, old ghosts!”

It was at this moment Yun Che ordered, “Yan Three, go help them.”

“Yes, Master!”

Yan Three let out a strange scream and leaped to the air. He then appeared behind the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor and thrust his black, ghastly claws at her heart.

Naturally, Yan Three’s intervention made things worse for her than they already were.

At this point, her arrogance had devolved completely into shock. She might not have shown her face all this time, but she knew everything that happened in the world. However, she had never even sensed someone remotely close to these three devil people until today.

As her white clothes slowly turned red, and her divine power grew weaker and weaker before the Yama Ancestors’ combined strength, she suddenly recalled a dark rumor from the past. She growled, “You are… the founders of the Yama Devil Realm!?”

A black scar five kilometers long pierced space and her body without mercy. Behind the explosive power was Yan Two’s ghastly face, “You know too much!”

A white flash overcame the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor as she destroyed his dark power by force, but it didn’t change the fact that she was bleeding all over. Then, Yan One hit her at the back of her heart before she could do anything.

BOOM!!

A bloody claw mark appeared behind her back. At the same time, three dark balls of energy exploded in front of her chest.

The Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor stumbled as several jets of blood spilled out of her mouth. When she looked up again, the divine light in her pupils had almost faded into nothing. She groaned, “How… did you leave… the Bone Sea of Eternal Darkness… and why… are you obeying… a junior...” 

She truly was the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor and the Eternal Heaven Pearl Spirit who had lived for hundreds of thousands of years. She knew far more secrets than she was given credit for, but not Yun Che’s. Not that it would change her fate or Eternal Heaven’s fate even if she did.

She was already covered in wounds, but she could clearly feel herself losing her life and her soul every time she strained her dying body to unleash her power.

She let out a long sigh before her eyes flashed white.

BOOM!

The blast of power severed dimensions themselves and knocked the three Yama Ancestors far, far away from her. Then, she stared at Yun Che and uttered the cruelest words of her life, “Devil Master Yun Che, I will drag you to the abyss of death even if it is my fate to scatter into nothing!”

Qianye Ying’er frowned and said sternly, “She’s going to detonate her own profound veins!”

“Seal her!” Yun Che growled.

But it was already too late. The moment the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor spoke her last words, she started shining like a glaring sun until her entire body turned white.

Her skin started cracking as her body turned to dust bit by bit… at the same time, a power as vast as the sky itself surrounded over half of the Eternal Heaven God Realm and all the people beneath it.

The power born from a moment of despair was enough to annihilate countless devil people and her own descendants.

But the three Yama Ancestors were no slouches. Although they weren’t able to stop the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor from detonating her own profound veins, they reacted immediately by joining their powers and creating a gigantic Yama Devil Barrier around her.

BOOM— 

The Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor’s body exploded into a white sun, and the entire Eastern Divine Region was shaking from the tremor… but the despairing power she traded using the last vestiges of her life and willpower was completely trapped inside the Yama Devil Barrier created by the Yama Ancestors.

The three Yama Ancestors’ eyes bulged, and their faces were warped with strain. It felt like a million storms were rampaging inside the barrier even though they had pushed their dark powers to the limit… but they succeeded. Not a trace of that power managed to escape its confinement.

One breath… two breaths… three breaths… ten breaths…

The Yama Devil Barrier finally fell apart ten breaths later. However, only a storm strong enough to blow some sand into the air had escaped it, not the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor’s final power.

Yan Three was the first to fall from the sky and hit the ground next to Yun Che heavily. However, he immediately bounced back to his feet and bowed his head before his master. He asked fearfully, “Are you unhurt, Master?”

Yun Che stared at him coldly. “You were three on one against a dying old granny, and you let her detonate her profound veins right before your eyes? Did you forget your shame somewhere!?”

All three Yama Ancestors bowed their heads deeper, too scared to say even a word.

Yun Che was literally the only person in the entire world who had the gall to call the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor a “dying old granny”.

Meanwhile, the profound practitioners of the Eastern Divine Region were in shock. They had witnessed the appearance and destruction of the Eternal Heaven Great Ancestor from start to finish, and now they had also witnessed the three terrifying devil people who drove her to suicide acting like meek children before Yun Che.

Words couldn’t even begin to describe how they were feeling right now.

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