Chapter 1539 The Emperor

• Soon, the two worlds drew close. Damon King sat above the Life-and-Death Realm, gently tapping the realm’s crown, a quiet nudge to the realm itself. “Whoosh.” His figure vanished in an instant, plunging into the shattered world. Desolate. Dead still. This broken world held no breath of life. “Brutal.” After a brief probe, Damon sighed. The world had only recently fallen silent; faint echoes of annihilation still lingered. Whoosh. Damon stepped into the ruined world. The chill of loneliness wrapped the entire realm; everywhere he looked lay corpses. And yet… every corpse kept the posture of life, eyes free of fear or panic, as if death had taken them without a sound. This world was vast, even larger than the Life-and-Death Realm. Someone had wiped out an entire world. Damon kept his face blank and slipped through the dead realm. “Sss.” A pulse of life-and-death flared—so familiar. “City Lord.” He saw the newcomer. Deimos King’s brows lifted. “Damn. Silently erased a whole world. Ruthless.” They exchanged a look and moved on. Inside the broken world, life was gone. “Huh?” Suddenly, the long river of life and death swept wide and caught a faint spark of life. Damon hadn’t sensed it, but he caught the City Lord’s quick flash of surprise. “Move.” The two vanished from where they stood. When they reappeared, they were high above the dead world. “Hit.” The City Lord spoke, and Damon didn’t hesitate. Boom. He raised a fist and struck. Overhead, a hollowed-out Dao King was blasted apart in one punch. They dove into the powerless web of the Dao and pressed deeper. At the deepest point of the web, a star dim as ash appeared. Inside that star, a figure slept. The instant Deimos saw the person within, his scalp prickled. “Hiss.” Damon fared worse; cold sweat slid down his face on the spot. Horror. Yes—one look at that figure and terror unfurled without end. It felt… like a half-emperor stumbling into a Heavenly Emperor. “Go.” The long river of life and death surfaced, stretching beyond the web. Deimos grabbed Damon and bolted. This was bad. “This one might be the one who erased the entire world,” Deimos thought, heavy as stone. Even Emperor Yu at sixth rank had never pressed Deimos with fear like this. Could it be… He didn’t dare finish the thought. Chaos had no rules. If there were any, they were strength. Strength is the rule. If this person was who he feared, and he reached for the Life-and-Death Realm, it’d be the end of heaven itself. They moved fast, bursting from the water realm’s Dao web in a blink. And then… Just as they escaped, a chill crawled over them, like Death’s gaze fixed on their backs. “Life and death?” Out of nowhere, a voice sounded in Deimos’s ear. A voice alone, yet it seemed to forbid the sky. Their bodies trembled on instinct. Damon froze where he stood, mind blanked by fear. Deimos fought the urge to run and slowly turned. He stood on the edge of the web, and when he looked back, he met a pair of dead, empty eyes. The being within the Dao-star had opened his eyes without anyone noticing. In that instant, the star-river churned. Every great star and every river lay in a dead hush. “Come.” The figure spoke. It wasn’t an order, but it carried a will that was hard to resist. Both men shivered. “Senior.” Deimos forced himself to speak and bowed. “We trespassed by mistake and disturbed your cultivation. Please forgive us.” “Cultivation?” The voice carried a playful lilt. “No, no. This isn’t my place of quiet cultivation. This is a place of annihilation. Wherever I am, all falls silent.” “…” Deimos. He didn’t understand what the man meant. But his gut screamed bad news. “Hand over your realm, and I’ll spare your lives,” the man said. He stepped out of the star, one stride, and he stood before them. Damon didn’t dare lift his eyes. Deimos’s face went tight. “Senior, we only stumbled in and caused offense. We’re willing to compensate—” “Noisy.” The words weren’t finished. Annihilation washed down in a wave. Deimos and Damon’s faces twisted in shock. “War Demon.” “Life and death.” They refused to lie down and die. But under the crushing power of annihilation, life and death, demon-flame—every spark went out at once. As if they had never existed. The annihilation sank into their bodies, snuffing their breath in an instant. Silence without sound. Deimos and Damon stood quiet, aura gone cold. Not dead—emptied out. … Annihilation can be reversed. Death cannot. The man’s face stayed calm. A fourth-rank Heavenly Emperor, erased with a flick of the wrist. “The life-and-death Dao… interesting,” he murmured. That was what he wanted—their life-and-death Dao. He reached out and closed his hand. “Hum.” The power of the Dao swept wide. The two annihilated bodies drifted toward him. Boom. Just as their bodies neared— The flesh, steeped in the life-and-death Dao, exploded. The twin Dao of life and death shattered into pieces. It happened too fast—so fast the man didn’t react. The storm of ruin swallowed him whole. Deimos grabbed Damon and ran, burning his blood. The life-and-death Dao—severed. “Whoosh.” He snapped open a jump. In the blink of an eye, they were gone. “Impudent.” The man walked out of the ruin-storm, calm as stone. He snatched, and two fourth-rank Dao strands clung to his hand. Cold eyes brimmed with fire. Who was he? He was an Emperor of a realm—a seventh-rank Emperor. One of the apex beings across the vast Chaos, and he’d been tricked by a mere fourth rank. Boom. A massive star blossomed above his head. A star forged of annihilation, radiating endless Dao, surging in every direction. An Emperor’s power has no end. Far away— Deimos and Damon fled, suddenly smothered by a sky of black cloud. “Found you.” The man’s voice filled their ears again. Deimos and Damon’s faces twisted into grim lines. Ahead, the Life-and-Death Realm came into view. “Get back.” Deimos hurled Damon away, seized the world, and fled at full speed. “City Lord, what about you?” “I’ll draw the whole world’s power and light a firework,” Deimos said, face grimmer than ever. Not even Emperor Yu at sixth rank had forced this look out of him. Damon had an awful guess about the man’s rank. Kill-or-be-killed. No other path. “Remember.” Deimos warned again. “Run as far as you can. As long as the world doesn’t collapse, I won’t die.” “Got it.” This wasn’t the time for pride.