The dust of the shattered peaks did not settle. It hung in the air, suspended by the residual friction of two clashing wills.
In the center of the devastation, the Emperor-Clone stood amidst the void, his severed golden sleeve fluttering like a tattered flag.
He looked at his hand, the limb that the weight of a galaxy had just dissolved, and his lips curled into a slow, terrifying smile.
"A truly magnificent architecture," the Emperor-Clone murmured, his voice cutting through the ringing silence.
"To think the Registry had the foresight to weave the veins of the Luoshui World into the marrow of the entire Azure Star Galaxy. A mere Saint, standing upon the shoulders of a billion stars, can indeed trade blows with the peak of the Emperor Realm."
He looked at Gu Yue Xuan, his golden eyes shimmering with a renewed, predatory respect.
"However, little Saintess, you have burned the oil of a thousand years to snuff out a single candle flame. My palm is gone, but my Source is eternal. Can you say the same for your soul?"
Gu Yue Xuan did not answer. Behind her moonlight veil, her breathing was jagged, each lungful of air tasting of ozone and blood. The Golden Token in her hand was hot to the touch, vibrating with the tremors of a galaxy that had been pushed to its limit.
She knew the truth; the Emperor-Clone had barely lost a manifestation of power, but she had spent the foundation of her future.
"Huh... do you really think, just because I am only in the Holy Realm and you are at the peak of the Emperor Realm, you can do anything you want?"
Gu Yue Xuan stared at the Emperor-Clone, her mouth twitching for a second.
Then, the golden token in her hand flew upward, directly into the void above the Luoshui world, as if it were ready for something much greater.
A bright green sword appeared in her hand, and with a swift motion, she cut her finger. A drop of Saint-blood flew toward the Registry token, suspending itself in the void like a ruby catalyst.
"I, Gu Yue Xuan, Holy Lord and Protector of this galaxy, request the strength to fight against the Emperor-realm invader. I hope the Hall of Registry grants me the strength to protect the entire galaxy."
Her voice did not travel through the air; it was carried by the Grand Formation of the Azure Star Galaxy itself. Like a signal transmitted through a lossless vacuum, her decree reached every corner of the millions of planes within the sector.
Across the galaxy, from the highest spiritual peaks to the lowest industrial sectors, the workers of the Hall of Registry paused. They did not pray; they acted. In a synchronized movement of bureaucratic precision, millions of Registry officials rushed to their nearest bases.
They approached the massive, ancient stone slabs that served as the terminals of the World Grand Formations.
These were not altars for worship, but converters of raw, chaotic energy.
With practiced movements, they placed their palms upon the slabs, filling them with the specific Law-signatures required to stabilize the transmission.
The stone slabs processed the ambient chaotic energy of each world, refining it and beaming it through the interstellar ley-lines.
"The Holy Lord has signaled. Open the vents!"
"Sync the law-frequency to the Luoshui coordinates. Begin the transfer!"
Across millions of worlds, the stone slabs began to glow with a blinding brilliance. This was a technological marvel of spiritual engineering. The energy didn't dissipate as it traveled; it moved in
hyper-compressed waves, leaping from planetary formations to the central Galactic Grid, all focusing toward a single point in space: the Golden Token hovering above the Spirit Mountain.
Shen Xuan, sitting on the jagged ruins with Wang Lei, looked up.
He watched as the void above them began to hum.
He understood the mechanics barely; it was a lossless energy transfer, a "Galactic Battery" being drained to fuel a single weapon.
"So, they are using the Grid," Shen Xuan whispered, his eyes following the visible ley-lines of energy converging in the sky. "They treat the souls and stones of a million worlds as mere fuel for the furnace. She is no longer an entity; she is the focal point of a galaxy's output."
The Emperor-Clone's smile finally vanished. He felt the local laws hardening. It was no longer just the pressure of a Saint; it was the cold, mechanical weight of an entire galaxy's processed energy.
The atmosphere around Gu Yue Xuan didn't just glow; it turned into a liquid emerald fire. The Registry Token began to expand, its golden surface turning into a gateway through which the energy of millions of stone slabs was now pouring into her green sword.
"This is not your power," the Emperor-Clone hissed, his golden aura flaring in a desperate attempt to resist the sudden gravity.
"It is the Registry's power," Gu Yue Xuan replied, her voice now amplified by the resonance of a million stone slabs. "And today, it is the law that will execute you."
As the localized energy from millions of Registry terminals reached its zenith, the reality of the Luoshui World began to buckle. The emerald fire pouring into Gu Yue Xuan did not merely empower her; it reconstructed her existence on a cosmic scale.
From the shimmering atmosphere, a Dharma Body began to manifest, a colossal, transcendental form composed of pure law and galactic currents.
To the inhabitants of the Spirit Mountain below, the sky was no longer blue; it was the emerald-green silk of her robes.
Her figure grew until the Luoshui World itself seemed like a mere pebble at her feet, an ant crawling beneath the shadow of a celestial titan.
The Emperor-Clone, feeling the existential threat of a galaxy's concentrated output, did not retreat. Instead, his golden aura erupted into a pillar of solar fire.
With a roar that shattered the remaining clouds, he shot upward, a streak of golden light piercing the veil of the world to meet the Saintess in the absolute void of space.
Gu Yue Xuan's Dharma Body moved in tandem, her every gesture causing the stars to tremble as they ascended into the cold vacuum to wage a war that the mortal plane could not contain.
On the jagged, ruined peak of the Spirit Mountain, Shen Xuan remained seated.
The chaotic winds of their departure whipped his silver-gray hair, yet he did not look at the ascending titans.
His eyes were fixed on the Golden Registry Token hanging high in the void.
To any other cultivator, even those in the Divine Transformation Realm, the token would be a mere speck of light against the blackness. But Shen Xuan's gaze was different. He was not looking with physical eyes, but with the remnants of a Sovereign's vision.
He stared at the heart of the device, attempting to peel back the layers of its construction to understand the fundamental code of the Registry Hall's "Grid" technique.
For a moment, his pupils flared with a purple-gold light. He reached out with his mind, trying to grasp the thread of the energy transmission, seeking the source-code of the stone slabs.
Ugh.
A sharp, stinging pain lanced through his temples.
His current body, anchored only in the Second Realm of Chaos Seed, groaned under the metaphysical strain.
The "Registry Hall" technique was too complex, the energy frequency too high for his regressed meridians to process.
The attempt failed; his vision blurred, and the divine clarity he sought slipped through his fingers like sand.
"The vessel is too small for the sea," Shen Xuan whispered, wiping a trail of crimson from his lip.
He was surprised.
Truly surprised.
In his previous life, he had seen many civilizations attempt to harness the power of their populace, but the Hall of Registry's method of lossless energy transfer via law-synchronized stone slabs was a masterpiece of spiritual engineering.
It was a parasitic yet efficient grid that turned an entire galaxy into a single, cohesive weapon.
However, despite the surprise and the physical failure of his vision, his face remained a mask of neutral indifference.
There was no frustration, no awe, and no fear.
He simply sat there, petting Wang Lei, who whimpered softly as the mountain continued to tremble.
"A clever toy," Shen Xuan murmured, looking back toward the void where the emerald and golden lights were clashing.
"But a toy nonetheless. They play with the power of the stars, forgetting that it is the Void that allows the stars to shine."
He closed his eyes, centering his breath. He had seen enough to know how this dance would end. To him, the colossal Dharma Body and the golden Emperor were merely two flames flickering out their final embers before the inevitable darkness.
But in the freezing void above, Gu Yue Xuan was not as distracted as he had calculated. As she stood as the focal point of the emerald galactic energy, her senses were heightened to a degree that transcended the physical. She was no longer just a woman; she was a sensory organ for the entire Azure Star Galaxy.
Suddenly, she paused. The massive torrents of law-energy swirling into her emerald sword slowed.
She did not look at the Emperor-Clone. Instead, she glanced downward, her lunar-veiled gaze piercing through the clouds, through the dust, and directly onto the ruined peak.
For a split second, the resonance of the Registry Grid acted like a sonar, and she felt it, a soul force so ancient, so familiar, and so terrifyingly vast that it felt like a cold blade against her throat.
It was the same frequency that had invaded the galactic formation.
Her sapphire eyes widened behind the veil. There was no hesitation, only the primal instinct of a predator identifying a threat to its existence.
"So... you were hiding in the tall grass," her voice resonated through the void, cold and merciless.
Puff...!!!
Before Shen Xuan could even formulate a thought, the emerald sword in Gu Yue Xuan's hand twitched. She didn't even strike; she simply released a microscopic fraction of the galaxy's compressed pressure toward the peak.
The air around Shen Xuan did not just displace; it collapsed.
A massive, invisible weight, equivalent to the gravitational pull of a small moon, slammed into his chest. His second-realm Chaos Seed let out a shrill, cracking sound as his protective barrier shattered like glass.
"Master!" Wang Lei's howl was cut short as the shockwave expanded.
Shen Xuan's body was treated like a leaf in a hurricane. He was thrown from the mountain's peak, his body breaking the sound barrier as he plummeted.
He was hurled thousands of meters away, a streak of blood and broken bone trailing behind him as he soared through the air, away from the spirit range and toward the jagged, uncharted wilderness of the Luoshui World's edge.
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How are these current chapters going...can you guys tell the author..??