Chapter 56

  The Myrthan fleet began to panic. Their countless vessels scattered across the skies, their formations twisting into defensive patterns as orders blared through alien frequencies.

  Moments later, the void above darkened as the main dreadnoughts adjusted their colossal cannons — each one a weapon capable of unmaking continents.

  A deep hum resonated through the heavens.

  Then came the Antimatter Planet-Buster Cannons.

  Beams of pure annihilation converged on a single target — Mr. Turtle.

  The Saint raised his gaze to the descending rays of black and white light, their edges warping space itself. Rather than flee, his eyes gleamed with interest.

  “To think they could harness pure destruction,” he murmured. “Perhaps through this, I might glimpse the nature of its laws…”

  The beams struck.

  One of his three colossal heads was instantly disintegrated, the antimatter gnawing through his divine flesh, unraveling matter and energy alike. The spreading tide of dissolution crept toward his body like a devouring tide of oblivion.

  Yet within that destruction, the Saint contemplated.

  “So this power unravels all that it touches — matter, form, even essence — and converts it into free energy. Yet it does not touch the soul.

  Destruction releases… while Creation consumes. Two sides of the same coin.”

  He closed his eyes briefly.

  “Still… incomplete. Not true destruction, merely conversion. Its law has not reached its peak.”

  The disintegration slowed. Then stopped.

  The waves of nothingness reversed, flowing backward as though time itself recoiled in his presence. The energy released by the beam condensed, reshaping into divine light — restoring his head, scale by shining scale.

  Mr. Turtle tilted his now-whole head slightly and smiled.

  “Thank you for the demonstration.”

  The Umbral Sovereign and the Verdant Arbiter—the two other Saints—watched Mr. Turtle’s effortless recovery with clear disdain.

  The Umbral Sovereign, the elder of the two, let out a gravelly chuckle.

  “To show off against insects… how undignified.”

  The Verdant Arbiter, her green eyes glowing faintly with life force, smirked.

  “Let him have his moment. I’m curious what they’ll throw next.”

  Meanwhile, the Roc circling above ignored them entirely, its wings blotting out the sun as it continued tearing through the fleet like a beast possessed.

  Below, panic spread through the Myrthan fleet. Officers screamed alien commands, the language distorted through comms. Tactical minds raced for solutions. Their scans revealed something terrifying — their energy-based weaponry was useless.

  One strategist shouted,

  “If click! they can manipulate energy… target what click! no mortal should touch — space itself!”

  The command was given.

  From the flagship’s dorsal cannon, a weapon unlike any other powered up — the Space Dissector, a device meant to slice through dimensions themselves. The barrel glowed with distorted light as spatial layers began to fold and crack around it.

  Then it fired.

  Reality screamed.

  A blade of refracted void tore through the sky, aiming straight for the Umbral Sovereign.

  The elder Saint extended one hand lazily, catching the invisible tear between two fingers.

  Crack.

  The spatial rupture shattered like fragile glass. Shards of distorted light dissolved into harmless motes.

  The Umbral Sovereign flicked his hand dismissively.

  “Pathetic.”

  The Verdant Arbiter tilted her head with mock curiosity.

  “Hmm… I wonder what they’ll try against me.”

  The Myrthan command decks fell into pure chaos. Panic evolved into desperation. Their last rational choice was gone.

  “All batteries—FIRE EVERYTHING!”

  Thousands of ships turned their guns downward.

  The heavens themselves lit up — beams, missiles, and rays of every imaginable color converging on the Saints and the Roc below.

  The battle between gods and mortals truly began.

  The Myrthan fleet, now cornered and desperate, unleashed their last abomination.

  From the heart of a warship the size of a city, a containment field cracked open.

  What emerged made even the Saints pause.

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  It was a space beast, a colossal, translucent creature resembling a tardigrade—its body dark as the void, its surface rippling with waves of prismatic distortion. Within its transparent flesh swirled luminous currents of galactic gas, like entire star systems trapped inside its form.

  The moment it appeared, the heavens trembled. Every Saint could feel it —

  the creature pulsed with immeasurable Aether, denser than a hundred worlds combined.

  The Umbral Sovereign and Verdant Arbiter exchanged sharp glances and immediately rushed forward, divine energy rippling behind them.

  But before they could approach—

  A piercing cry shattered the air.

  The Roc spread its golden wings wide, releasing an overwhelming Will that rippled through every living being below.

  That single roar declared ownership.

  “This prey is mine.”

  The Saints halted, visibly irritated.

  “Tch…”

  Even they wouldn’t recklessly challenge another Saint-level being’s Will.

  Yet the space beast didn’t so much as flinch.

  It hovered in the sky, massive eyes glowing with alien intellect, seemingly amused by the challenge.

  ---

  Down below, the mortals suffered.

  Adam and the rest of the cultivators felt the pressure descend like the weight of an ocean. Qi currents reversed, meridians screamed in pain.

  Many disciples fell unconscious; others struggled to stay on their knees, faces pale.

  Adam gritted his teeth.

  “What…what is that I am feeling? What is this pressure!?”

  ---

  Then the battle of titans began.

  The Roc dove first, talons tearing through the void, while the space beast lunged upward with jaws that could swallow mountains.

  Each collision twisted space itself — waves of pressure radiated outward, causing even the Myrthen fleet’s shields to ripple and fail.

  Claws, beaks, and fangs collided again and again.

  Every strike shattered the sky, every deflection cracked the air like thunder.

  The Roc soon noticed something wrong — its divine lightning was being drawn into the beast.

  It was absorbing its energy, feeding off the Roc’s attacks and growing even stronger.

  The bird’s eyes blazed with fury.

  [So that’s how it is.]

  It soared higher, lightning crackling through every feather, forming a storm that split the heavens.

  Below, Myrthan ships began charging a monstrous cannon — a Black Hole Launcher, capable of collapsing entire regions of space.

  But the Roc didn’t care.

  Its body shimmered gold, then blinding white, as it condensed its Intent — shaping every atom of itself into a weapon sharper than any blade.

  In a flash, it vanished.

  A single streak of golden lightning split the sky, slicing through clouds, through energy barriers, through reality itself.

  The space beast was cut clean in half.

  Its internal galaxies flickered, then burst apart, dissolving into radiant threads of Aether.

  The Roc hovered in the aftermath, wings wide and radiant, as it drew in the released Aether like a vortex — its body swelling with divine brilliance.

  The Roc hovered high above the carnage, its feathers still burning with golden lightning. Below, the corpse of the space beast—a mountain of translucent flesh filled with dying stars—floated amidst the collapsing Myrthan fleet.

  Before the Aether could fully disperse, a shadow streaked across the heavens.

  The Umbral Sovereign reached out a single hand, his fingers stretching across miles, aiming to seize half the fallen beast.

  But before he could touch it, the air screamed.

  The Roc’s Will exploded outward—an ocean of golden force that crushed the sky itself.

  The Umbral Sovereign froze mid-reach, his own Will rising in retaliation.

  For an instant, the world itself seemed to stop breathing.

  Two Saint-level Wills collided—one sharp and divine like lightning, the other heavy and suffocating like a black tide.

  Reality bent under the clash.

  ---

  Down below, cultivators collapsed to their knees.

  Every soul felt the pressure as their spirits trembled under the weight of cosmic domination.

  Zhou Yanyue and Han Wuqing reacted instantly, releasing their Intent to form shields that blanketed the arena.

  The other Soul Transformation elders joined in, merging their Intents to keep the mortals from being crushed while still maintaining the defensive array.

  Even with their combined might, their knees quivered.

  It was like trying to hold back the heavens themselves.

  ---

  While the two Saints locked in their standoff, a ripple passed through the void.

  Space itself twisted—folding in on a single point.

  From that distortion stepped Mr Turtle, his presence faint, almost imperceptible.

  His Intent flickered through dimensions—space, time, and shadow—until even the Roc’s divine perception couldn’t trace it.

  A faint shimmer passed behind the two locked Saints.

  And in that instant, half of the beast’s corpse vanished—swallowed into a rift of refracted light.

  ---

  The Roc’s eyes flared with fury.

  Its Will erupted again—so immense that the air around it detonated.

  The pressure smashed through the arena’s barrier like a storm, and only the coordinated Intent of the sect masters kept it from annihilating the crowd.

  Adam felt his blood boil from the sheer strain.

  “This is insane… this isn’t even a battle, it’s the sky itself collapsing…”

  ---

  Meanwhile, far above them, the Verdant Arbiter quietly floated apart from the chaos.

  The Myrthan fleet, in their blind desperation, had fired their Black Hole Launcher.

  A sphere of annihilation, a thousand meters wide, spiraled toward the planet.

  The young Saint sighed softly.

  She extended a single hand. The black hole froze midair—then shrank rapidly until it was the size of a pearl.

  She popped it into her mouth and swallowed it whole.

  “I can’t let you interrupt this,” she murmured, watching the Saints below.

  “Perhaps one of them will accidentally kill the other—and then there will be one less fool to share Aether with.”

  ---

  The Roc’s fury intensified.

  “You dare steal from me, turtle!?”

  Mr Turtle emerged from folded space, holding his prize half-corpse within a shimmering pocket dimension. His tone was mockingly calm.

  “You want to have a go at me, you damn bird?”

  Then, he shifted his Intent—vast and boundless.

  Space rippled around the Roc as invisible waves folded in, trying to swallow it whole.

  Reality fractured; the sky twisted like liquid glass.

  The Roc screeched, its feathers flaring with divine gold.

  It unleashed its own Intent, piercing through the distortions and shattering the binding pull. With a single flap of its wings, it backed off, glaring daggers.

  ---

  Mr Turtle gave a dry laugh and turned his gaze to the Umbral Sovereign.

  “Your greed is blinding you, fellow Daoist. Though I suppose I’m not much better.”

  The Umbral Sovereign scoffed, his aura flickering like a dying star.

  “Hmph. At least I don’t steal scraps like a scavenger.”

  “Scraps?” the turtle smirked. “Even scraps are worth lifetimes of your patience.”

  The tension remained—Saints poised on the edge of their unspoken truce, the Roc’s golden aura still sparking, the heavens themselves creaking under their collective power.

  The heavens still trembled.

  What had once been a serene, cloudless sky was now fractured by the echoes of divine combat. The Myrthan fleet—millions strong just moments ago—was breaking apart in chaos.

  Colossal ships flickered and tore open wormholes, retreating in broken formations. The sky burned with streaks of light as they vanished back into the void, leaving behind drifting wreckage and distorted pockets of warped space.

  From below, the Saints’ silhouettes hung vast and unmoving.

  Their auras blanketed the world—three presences of impossible scale, each greedily siphoning the residual Aether that leaked into reality like mist.

  They didn’t strike at each other, but their invisible domains overlapped and rippled with quiet hostility. Even their restraint warped the air.

  ---

  Below, in the arena, silence ruled.

  Those who remained conscious trembled, still kneeling under the phantom weight of what they had felt—a pressure that had shaken their souls.

  Zhou Yanyue floated down slowly, her composure perfect despite the faint strain in her eyes. She looked over the students, disciples, and even the injured cultivators who were blinking in confusion.

  “All of you felt it,” she said, her voice calm but carrying effortlessly across the crowd.

  “That… suffocating presence that pressed against your very soul. You have all survived witnessing something that most cultivators never do in their lifetime.”

  Adam looked up, still catching his breath.

  “That was… their power?”

  Zhou Yanyue nodded.

  “In part. What you just experienced was their Divine Consciousness—or rather, the collision of it.”

  ---

  She spread her hand outward, and a faint silvery mist appeared around her. It wasn’t Qi—it was deeper, more refined.

  “Divine Consciousness,” she explained, “is not merely seeing with your mind. It is awareness made manifest—an extension of one’s soul. When one reaches the higher realms of cultivation, your perception leaves the limits of flesh and enters the spatial field itself.”

  Her mist expanded, revealing fragments of what it represented—threads of light wrapping through the air, folding around people, objects, even the ground beneath them.

  “With it, one perceives all directions at once. You see behind, within, and beyond. To a Saint, it stretches across continents or even worlds.”

  Some gasped softly.

  “And when two Divine Consciousnesses meet,” she continued, “they do not clash physically. They contest through what is known as the Trinity of Mastery—the Dao, the Will, and the Intent.”

  She raised three fingers.

  “Dao represents understanding—the laws and truths of the universe. To have a higher Dao is to see through falsehoods and strip reality bare.”

  “Will is domination—the sheer force of spirit that imposes your existence upon others. It suppresses, crushes, and bends weaker minds to retreat.”

  “And Intent is precision—the directed purpose that shapes and focuses your every action, like an arrow piercing through chaos.”

  ---

  She turned to the sky, where faint ripples still shimmered from the Saints’ domains.

  “You witnessed how these forces interact. The Roc’s Will overwhelmed the heavens—its sheer existence pressing upon everything beneath it. The Turtle Saint used Intent, slipping through the folds of space unseen, while the Umbral Sovereign’s Dao tried to dissect truth itself.”

  “When Divine Consciousnesses overlap, they fight a war of influence. Dao overwhelms Intent by understanding its path. Will suppresses Dao by drowning reason with force. Intent pierces Will by focusing on a single purpose. It is an eternal cycle.”

  The disciples listened in awe, many of them subconsciously reaching inward—feeling for that faint flicker of spiritual awareness within themselves.

  ---

  Zhou Yanyue continued, her tone softening.

  “For those of you who survived this experience with your minds intact, take pride. You have brushed against the threshold of the sacred. What you felt crushing your soul was not malice, but scale—like an ant glimpsing the ocean for the first time.”

  “If you wish to reach that height someday, remember: cultivation is not merely about power. It is about perception. Expanding your consciousness until it can hold the world without breaking.”

  She paused, gazing up at the sky where the Saints’ domains were still faintly visible.

  “As for the Aether being released above… that, too, is part of the world’s law. When outsiders from another realm enter ours, the world adjusts to reconcile the difference in laws. That change releases pure Aether—a formless energy that Saints need to ascend beyond their current limit. It is no wonder they compete for every trace.”

  ---

  Adam whispered under his breath.

  “So that’s what I felt earlier… Like my soul was being peeled apart and rebuilt…”

  Zhou Yanyue nodded slightly, overhearing him.

  “Exactly. And that feeling will never leave you. Once your consciousness has touched that vastness, it will never shrink again.”

  She smiled faintly.

  “Consider this day your first true lesson in what lies beyond mortality.”