The Activated Planet shuddered gently.
An endless, boundless tide of Abominations of Abundance came sweeping toward him like a plague of locusts blotting out the sky.
On the twisted, leering faces of the abominations hung looks of open derision.
A single aged Xianzhou native—even if he was the Sword Champion—still had limits to his strength.
In their eyes, his actions were no different from a mantis raising its forelegs against an oncoming chariot.
An Activated Planet formed from the fusion of nine Abundance worlds could, in certain respects, already rival those divine miracles of Abundance!
How could it possibly be cut down by a single old man of a mortal race?
The Sword Champion did not speak.
He merely assumed the opening stance of the sword draw.
The totality of his essence, spirit, and soul converged into a single strike.
His life force plummeted precipitously as the viridian flames blazed ever higher.
Perhaps it was the final flash of a life’s memories passing before one’s eyes in the moment before death.
He seemed to see the hopeful, expectant gazes of his disciples, to recall the years of drinking and debating the Dao with old friends, to remember the face of his younger self—so full of fire and pride…
“As I thought…” he murmured to himself.
“When a man grows old, he can’t help but dwell on the past.
You can refuse to accept age, but it catches up to you all the same…”
“But at the very least…
I can still protect something, can’t I?”
His blood seemed to ignite.
From the bloodstained blade burst forth a radiance that stretched a billion zhang across the void!
The traceries upon the sword’s body blazed to life, transforming into a river of stars that spanned heaven and earth!
(T/N: 1 zhang = 0.33 km = 0.2 mi)
The blood-red Activated Planet shrieked in agony!
A crimson line was carved clean through the green ocean in the sky!
The sword’s momentum did not wane—that world-piercing, heaven-spanning sharpness smashed brutally into the blood-red Activated Planet!
For a single instant, the entire cosmos seemed to freeze.
“Crack—crack—”
Sound cannot travel through vacuum.
But at this very moment, the crisp, clean sound of shattering rang out in the ears of every living soul!
A white line split across the blood-red face of the Activated Planet!
In virtually the span of a breath, the very planet that had brought death upon the Xianzhou was cleaved into two halves!
“Huummmmmm—”
It was howling!
It was wailing!
That single sword stroke had divided yin from yang, had severed the boundary between life and death!
The Sword Champion raised his head and gazed in the direction of Starskiff Haven.
In his clouded, lightless eyes, there flickered a final ember of hope.
But moments later, his body dissolved into a sky full of drifting ash.
He scattered into nothingness between heaven and earth…
“Mom, Dad… Find the original chapter at g.com.
please don’t go, okay?”
Jingliu’s eyes brimmed with welling tears.
She looked up at her parents with desperate hope, like a tiny beast about to be abandoned.
“Liuliu, be good.
Listen to me.” Aunt Liu tenderly stroked her hair.
“Be a good girl and go with the Cloud Knight uncles first, alright?”
“But what about you and Dad?
Do you not want Liuliu anymore?”
“Of course not, silly!
Liuliu is the best, most wonderful child in the whole world!
How could I ever not want you?” Aunt Liu’s voice brimmed with doting affection.
“Besides, we still have to go find your Bai Qiong gege for you.
Once we do, we’ll all come find you together.
You have to be a good girl and promise not to run around, okay?”
“…You have to pinky swear!” After a moment of silence, Jingliu’s eyes filled with stubborn earnestness.
“Alright.
Pinky swear, hanging promise—one hundred years, no take-backs!”
“Not one hundred years!
One thousand years!” What good was a mere hundred years?
A thousand years—that was long enough!
“Fine, then—one thousand years!” Aunt Liu gently tweaked her little nose, her voice warm and generous.
After coaxing her for a long while, they finally managed to get her aboard a Starskiff about to launch.
The husband and wife stood in the relative safety of the Starskiff Haven hub, watching the departing Starskiff in silence for a long, long time.
Not long ago, their family of three had been out enjoying the day when the abominations had suddenly erupted.
It was only because Cloud Knights had been stationed nearby that their family had survived.
“Let’s go.”
“Mm.”
The two of them said nothing more.
They simply turned and ran in the direction of their home.
That child Bai Qiong…
he was practically raised by the two of them since infancy.
Even now, his little bed still sat in a corner of their home.
In every way that mattered, they had long since come to see him as their own flesh and blood.
And besides…
in certain places on their bodies, golden ginkgo leaves had already begun to sprout…
At the very least…
at the very least, before they died, if they could bring him to the Starskiff Haven hub, there might still be a thread of hope for survival…
right?
After a brief silence, the Activated Planet looming above the Xianzhou began to churn once more.
The two halves began to draw closer together.
In mere moments, the planet that had been split apart not long before was seamlessly fused back into a single whole.
“Thump—thump—thump—”
That planet pulsed like a heart.
The shock of its throbbing seemed to bore straight through the eardrums of all who heard it!
But this phenomenon—rather than a heartbeat, it would be more accurate to say it was…
hungering?!
[When this thought surfaced in your mind, your heart seemed to skip a beat.
You pulled your sword free from the skull of an Abomination of Abundance and stared, half-stupefied, at the blood-red planet in the sky.]
[As though confirming your terrible suspicion, the very Realm you stood upon began to crumble.
Space itself started to fracture.
Nearly half of the entire Xianzhou ship was sucked toward the Activated Planet by its gravitational pull.]
[The Realm beneath your feet was, naturally, no exception.]
[Your mind grew hazy.
For the first time in your life, you felt—truly felt—how utterly minuscule and powerless you were before such supernatural, world-rending forces.]
[Against that immense gravitational pull, your body began to rise uncontrollably toward the blood-red planet in the sky.
The buildings beneath your feet began to splinter and crack.]
[The final moment of your memory—you were struck unconscious by a sky full of falling rubble.]
The destruction of the Cangcheng was absolute.
Half of the Xianzhou was devoured by the Activated Planet hanging in the starry void—the entity that would come to be known in later ages as the Devourer of Worlds, Rahu.
The General of the Xianzhou Cangcheng, an Emanator of the Hunt, slew the Abundance envoy Shuhu three times in succession before being cut down himself.
But at that very moment, alarm flared through Shuhu!
The Devourer of Worlds, Rahu, too, seemed to sense something—something unspeakably terrifying!
It hesitated no longer.
The planet shuddered violently, so intensely that the fabric of space before it tore open.
Rahu plunged straight into the chaotic, disordered storm of distorted spacetime and fled in an unknown direction.
Shuhu’s face twisted into a mocking sneer.
The thousand-eyed colossal tree, vast as an entire world, swayed faintly—and then vanished from that region of space entirely and without a trace.
One day later, the news of this world-shattering slaughter spread across the entire cosmos as though it had sprouted legs and gone mad.
All the living beings of the universe marveled at the terrifying power of the Emanator of Abundance and at the horror and chaos of the Abominations of Abundance.
The three Xianzhou ships—the Luofu, the Zhuming, and the Yuque—dispatched Cloud Knight legions to rescue the survivors.
Of the Xianzhou Cangcheng, whose population had once been counted in the hundreds of billions, a mere twenty million remained.
Among them, nearly forty percent had grown emotionally deranged, teetering on the very brink of Mara.
The injury and maiming rate had reached a terrifying seventy percent!
As for this horrifying Activated Planet—this entity capable of inducing the Xianzhou natives to prematurely succumb to Mara—the Xianzhou Alliance bestowed upon it an official designation: the Devourer of Worlds, Rahu!
The name Rahu, in the ancient lore of the Xianzhou, symbolized vengeance, destruction, and insatiable desire.
From the choice of this name alone, one could see the depth of the Xianzhou people’s hatred for this abomination.
From this, it was clear—henceforth, the Xianzhou’s Hunt against the Abominations of Abundance would only grow swifter and ever more relentless!