Divinity Yanxu immediately attacked Tianyi. He didn’t know the principle behind Tianyi’s many incarnations or his teleportation, but killing the incarnation in front of him and making it more difficult for Tianyi to teleport to his location was definitely not a wrong choice.

The Immortal Slaying Sword slashed toward Tianyi. Because he had thrown the Immortal Slaughtering Sword at Tianyi, he only had one divine sword in hand. However, he did not harbor any hopes of retrieving it—at least for now—because he still had to escape.

Tianyi didn’t hide or dodge. With a flip of his hand, the Immortal Confining Sword appeared, and he slashed out in return.

The Immortal Slaying Sword and the Immortal Confining Sword locked blades.

Divinity Yanxu frowned when he saw the Immortal Confining Sword. He had not forgotten the humiliation of losing it. Back then, he was still an Immortal Emperor and had fought Xi Mengfei, who had become an Immortal Sovereign. Mengfei had given up the Immortal Slaughtering Sword in her possession and grabbed his Immortal Confining Sword.

Still, now was not the time to settle grudges. Although he wanted to, Divinity Yanxu did not think Tianyi had revealed the Immortal Confining Sword for no reason. As he expected, he discovered that he could not gain the upper hand in a contest of strength.

Cracks still filled Tianyi’s body, as the aftereffects of being pierced by one of the Immortal Extermination Swords weren’t easy to resolve. However, Divinity Yanxu had already planned to flee. He released a domain to hinder teleportation, but he still felt uneasy. The longer he stayed, the more uneasy he became.

Although he had said he would kill Tianyi, he knew it was something he could only accomplish much later. He had already discovered that it was difficult to erase Tianyi’s mind, and destroying an incarnation would only make it more difficult for the Immortal Court to discover him. It wouldn’t harm Tianyi much, if at all.

Divinity Yanxu increased his output and launched Tianyi into the distance. Then he turned and soared away. Although he could not teleport, his speed gave him confidence that Tianyi would lose his trail. His domain was still in effect, hindering Tianyi’s teleportation.

But he never expected an unknown force to act on his domain. Divinity Yanxu retaliated and strengthened it, but the pressure did not decrease—nor did it increase. The pressure just remained the same. As a test, Divinity Yanxu weakened his domain, and the pressure still remained the same.

“Who?!” Divinity Yanxu yelled. He was not a fool. He suspected the Concealed Emperor or Perfected Huanglong, but he could not find any trace of them—nor did he think the two would deign to hide themselves.

Although he didn’t know who was targeting him, he could guess their purpose. Even if he reduced the power of the domain, he could still feel his divine essence draining the longer he kept it up. More than that, Divinity Yanxu discovered he could not restore it at all. Even in the Vast Void, he could restore his essence. Only in the True Nothingness would the restoration of divine essence slow to a crawl, to the point of being almost negligible.

Was he teleported to the Vast Void? After a moment, Divinity Yanxu didn’t find it too strange. The immortals that had appeared in the Herakles System had already reported Tianyi’s suspected cross-universe teleportation ability—suspected because the Numinous Sword Sect had not joined the devil hunt and had not confirmed his ability.

After some resistance, Divinity Yanxu released his domain. He prepared himself for the unknown force to continue targeting him, but the force disappeared. This did not make him happy—it made him feel like a bug trapped in a spider’s web.

At this time, Tianyi appeared in front of him again with the Immortal Confining Sword. Divinity Yanxu knew this was not the same incarnation or clone because the Tianyi before him did not have cracks all over his body.

“What’s your relationship with that being?” Divinity Yanxu asked.

“Defeat me and find out,” Tianyi said. Then he released his aura.

Divinity Yanxu’s eyes widened. “No wonder. The whole world was fooled by you and still thinks you are an Immortal Sovereign—but you already reached the Divine Realm!”

It was no wonder he would think so, because Tianyi exuded an aura of pure essence. Not essence qi, but divine essence, only possessed by divinities.

If Tianyi was a divinity, it would explain many of his strange points. How could an immortal have so many incarnations and possess the ability to teleport across the universe? In fact, many divinities would not be able to teleport through the True Nothingness as far as Tianyi.

Divinity Yanxu gave a bitter smile. Upon recalling his earlier words, he wanted to slap himself. Perhaps he could kill Tianyi if he could still use the Immortal Exterminating Sword Formation—but now? It was impossible. Although he was a divinity, Yanxu had no delusions about his own strength. Had it not been for the number-one killing sword formation, he likely would have had trouble saving his own life against the Concealed Emperor or Perfected Huanglong.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Still, that did not mean he would give up. Divinity Yanxu brandished his sword at Tianyi, who returned the gesture.

Sparks flashed between their eyes, and they charged at each other. Tianyi did not use any special abilities or spells and relied on pure swordsmanship to compete with Divinity Yanxu. Even if his swordsmanship had improved after clashing with Bao Ling, how could it compare to Divinity Yanxu’s? Even his mother was not the Sword God’s foe in terms of swordplay.

As time passed, more and more injuries appeared on his body. They manifested as cracks or cuts, revealing the inner void. Once his body sustained enough damage, it would collapse, but Divinity Yanxu was not happy.

Immediately afterward, another Tianyi would appear, grasp the sword, and reengage him in mortal combat. The longer they fought, the more exquisite Tianyi’s swordsmanship became. At first, Tianyi could only rely on his strength and speed to clash with Divinity Yanxu, but as time passed, he no longer relied on those two points. Instead, he used skill to fight.

When Tianyi reached this point, months had passed. Divinity Yanxu would have to be a fool not to realize something was off. Rather than a nemesis, he was more like a whetstone for Tianyi. The biggest proof was that the Concealed Emperor or Perfected Huanglong never appeared.

It wasn’t that Divinity Yanxu hadn’t attempted to break the impasse—nothing he did worked. Everything would eventually result in him dueling Tianyi again and again. With each failure, the amount of essence he stored decreased.

Eventually, Divinity Yanxu could no longer use any flashy moves and relied solely on pure swordsmanship. He was now caught in a dilemma. The road he thought led to escape only brought more despair. Several times, he released his domain, but that mysterious force would always reappear and hinder him. No matter how far he fled or how much he resisted, the force was omnipresent.

He felt like Sun Wukong trapped in the Buddha’s palm. No matter what he did, he would never escape it.

Divinity Yanxu considered using his life as a sacrifice to perform a powerful move. Although he didn’t know if it could harm Tianyi, it was better than slowly dying. Even if Tianyi did not kill him and gave him time to recover his essence, he did not want to bear the shame. Rather than being left alive at his opponent’s mercy, he would rather kill himself.

Before dying, he wanted to minimize Tianyi’s and the Immortal Court’s gains. If he could, he would have destroyed the Immortal Slaying Sword and Immortal Exterminating Sword Formation Diagram. Although he had destroyed the Immortal Ending Sword, that was only because of the special process of apotheosis. Now that he had become a divinity, he couldn’t use the method again, even if he had the time.

Torn between two choices, Divinity Yanxu didn’t know what to do. Long story short, it was only a matter of choosing his manner of death. He held no illusions that Tianyi or the Immortal Court would keep him alive after his worth disappeared.

In the following confrontation, Divinity Yanxu attempted to conserve as much essence as possible. Several years passed, and because he only used pure swordsmanship, his essence reserves actually increased instead of decreasing. But when he reached a certain point, Tianyi would suddenly use powerful spells and attack, forcing him to expend his essence.

Only after his reserves dropped did Tianyi return to pure swordsmanship. His low reserves and the injuries he had sustained kept him weak. Divinity Yanxu understood that he could only restore his essence to a low limit before Tianyi would force him to expend it again.

Upon confirming this, Divinity Yanxu steeled his heart. Rather than a slow death, he would go out in a bang!

He knew that no matter how he tried to hide his essence reserves, Tianyi or the unknown existence would sense how much he had stored. So when he was only one percent away from the threshold where Tianyi would begin suppressing him, he exploded with all his might.

His vitality dwindled. His hair turned completely white and thin, as if it would fall out at any moment. The flesh beneath his skin disappeared, causing his skin to cling to his skeleton and giving him a gaunt, terrifying visage.

“Die!” In complete contrast, the Immortal Slaughtering Sword in his grasp exuded a terrifying aura. Its aura alone rivaled—and even exceeded—that of the Immortal Exterminating Sword Formation he had used against the Concealed Emperor and Perfected Huanglong.

Although Tianyi wanted to raise the Immortal Confining Sword to block Divinity Yanxu’s slash, his mind had slowed. It was filled with visions of destruction, which caused his body to react even slower.

The Immortal Slaughtering Sword grazed past the Immortal Confining Sword and bisected Tianyi’s torso horizontally. Even as his two halves drifted apart, the shocked expression remained plastered on his face. He didn’t even retrieve the Immortal Confining Sword as his hand disintegrated. In fact, there was no action even after his entire body vanished.

Divinity Yanxu did not move after unleashing that strike. He didn’t even pay attention to the floating divine sword Tianyi had left behind. His final attack wasn’t just to destroy Tianyi’s conduit, but another attempt to destroy his mind. He didn’t know if he had succeeded, but it was all he could do.

So, with a mind full of regrets, Divinity Yanxu closed his eyes, and his aura plummeted to zero. His body glowed softly as it turned translucent before disappearing entirely. Even in death, he did not want to leave a corpse for the Immortal Court to desecrate.

What was left behind was the Immortal Slaughtering Sword and the Immortal Exterminating Sword Formation Diagram. He had destroyed everything else on his body, not wanting the Immortal Court or Tianyi to repurpose anything for their own use.

Not long after, a humanoid figure flew toward the battlefield between Tianyi and Divinity Yanxu. The figure had the upper half of a human and the lower half of a snake. She was the Nine Heavens Universe’s goddess of death, Nuyi.

Nuyi looked around and saw the two divine swords and the formation diagram. She waved her hand and retrieved the three items before investigating the surroundings for more clues. Upon finding nothing, she returned to the Nine Heavens System.

Once there, she landed on the Fourth Heaven and glanced at the sky. For some time, she had sensed that the Heavenly Dao had entered a slumbering state—or rather, Tianyi’s consciousness had fallen asleep. This was the first time it had happened. Without the Heavenly Dao, the rules of the Nine Heavens Universe became chaotic. It wasn’t to the point of causing the universe to enter a self-destructive state, but many bugs appeared.

“Hurry up and wake up,” Nuyi muttered. The Xiyinet also experienced some problems, but they were minor compared to everything else. The most important aspect was that the connection between the outer world and the Nine Heavens Universe was severed.

So, try as she might, Nuyi couldn’t contact her main body, and the reverse was likely just as true.