Chapter 52: Enemy from the Heavens (Patreon)

During this time, Gusttave had also mastered the Power of Heaven and Earth of this planet, and could mobilize ninety percent of it.

As for the remaining tenth, it wasn't that he couldn't mobilize it. The moment he did, it would damage the planet's ecosystem.

Generally speaking, a Yao Emperor could only mobilize thirty percent of the Power of Heaven and Earth in a single region. Any more, and the strain of using it would damage the environment of that stretch of land.

And Heaven and Earth would not allow a Yao Emperor to do so.

A Great Yao Emperor could mobilize at most fifty percent. Beyond that, the harm done to Heaven and Earth would be irreversible.

An Immortal could mobilize seventy percent.

A Sage could mobilize ninety percent, but would have to keep it under control at every moment. Otherwise, that whole stretch of Heaven and Earth would be reduced to wasteland.

As for Gusttave's ninety percent, he could mobilize it, but he couldn't use it.

Gusttave could use it to strengthen himself, but not to strike at enemies.

The instant he did, this entire world would be utterly destroyed.

Especially since what he had mastered was the Power of Heaven and Earth of an entire planet.

Turning that power on an enemy would be like hurling the planet itself at them.

It would crush the other side to death, sure, but the impact on the planet would be incalculable.

Fortunately, although he couldn't wield the Power of Heaven and Earth, Gusttave could use it to raise his own cultivation realm.

In that state, Gusttave began searching for a cultivation method. His goal was to have this level of cultivation and combat power even without the Power of Heaven and Earth.

To his delight, he succeeded.

The superb intellect granted by the Ultimate Life Form let Gusttave discover a way to advance further without borrowing the Power of Heaven and Earth.

So he soon set the Power of Heaven and Earth aside and returned to cultivation, something he hadn't done in a long time.

It took a hundred years, but Gusttave broke through to a higher realm, and his strength grew even greater.

Now, even without the boost from his Traits, he could shatter a star with a single blow.

Communist Interastral's steps outward began to extend to the other planets within the Circle, and even cast their gaze toward the rift Beyond the Heavens.

And the creatures on the far side of that rift were coordinating with their moves.

They had long wanted to pry open Gusttave's seal, and even tear that spatial passage wide open.

But as Gusttave's strength grew, the seal only grew firmer, leaving them with no means to act.

Now, Communist Interastral's probing had given them an opening.

They intended to borrow Communist Interastral's hands to open the seal for them.

Communist Interastral had taken precautions as well, and every experiment was designed to avoid disturbing Gusttave's seal as much as possible.

But, unfortunately, they fell into the trap anyway.

The Black Fox on the other side of the passage used methods even harder to understand than before to secretly take control of many of the experimenters.

Without alerting Gusttave, they tried to pry open the spatial passage.

Ripples of an eerie purple-black spread in rings along the edge of the spatial rift, as if something were churning beneath the surface of the water.

The duty officer at Communist Interastral's deep-space observation station was the first to notice the anomaly.

The monitoring data showed that the seal Gusttave had set long ago was decaying at an irreversible rate. The decay curve fit no known physical model. It looked more like something was gnawing at it from the inside.

"Report this immediately!" The duty officer snatched up the communicator, his voice trembling. "The seal's decay rate has broken through the critical threshold. At this rate—"

Before he could finish, all the lights outside the observation station went out at once.

It wasn't a power failure, and it wasn't a equipment crash. What had gone dark was the canopy of the heavens that covered the entire planet.

Ever since Gusttave had mastered ninety percent of the Power of Heaven and Earth, that canopy had steadily sustained a sense of safety for every living being within the Circle. It was like air, like sunlight, like something that simply had to be there.

And now, it was gone!

In Tushan, beneath the Bitter Love Tree, Feixiao's eyes snapped open, the pupils of her ice-blue fox eyes contracting to needle points.

She sensed that familiar, nauseating aura.

It was exactly like the annihilating beam that had fallen from the sky a hundred years ago. Only this time it wasn't blasting in from outside. It was seeping out from within, like filthy water soaking into soil, inch by inch, drenching every part of the planet.

"Tingyun! Activate the Mountain-Guarding Grand Formation at once and notify every Yao King—" Her order stuck in her throat, because out of the corner of her eye she saw something that made her scalp prickle.

The leaves of the great Bitter Love Tree were turning black.

One leaf, then two… starting from the veins, like threads of blood stained with ink, the blackness crept slowly along the patterns of the leaf veins. Each blackened leaf, as it drifted down, turned into a twisted, grotesque face. It let out a shriek that was half laughter and half sobbing, then crumbled to ash and scattered into the air.

"Big Sister." Tingyun's voice had lost its usual composure, a rare thing. Her folding fan had fallen to the ground at some point, and her peach-blossom eyes were fixed on the black spots spreading across the crown. "What is that?"

Feixiao didn't answer. She simply raised her hand, and ice-blue yao power surged out like a tide, trying to freeze the black spots and strip them away.

But the instant her power touched them, a backlash surged back against her. The web of her hand split open, and blood ran down between her fingers and dripped onto the roots of the Bitter Love Tree.

"It's no use." Gusttave's voice came from behind them.

He had appeared there without a sound, his plain Daoist robe stirred by the night wind. His face was expressionless as he looked up at the giant tree being corroded.

[March 7th: Oh my god oh my god oh my god!!! They're already attacking?! One second we're building things, the next it's a full apocalypse opening?!]

[Kiana Kaslana: Holy crap! What the hell is that black mist? Is this the doing of those aliens from Beyond the Heavens?]

The livestream went on.

Gusttave looked at the great Bitter Love Tree before him. He knew its influence came from Beyond the Heavens, or rather, from Phantylia.

Phantylia had once tried to remake the Bitter Love Tree. She failed, but in doing so she had created the Dark Bitter Love Tree.

Now that Phantylia had gone Beyond the Heavens, she had probably obtained even greater power, and it had reached the great Bitter Love Tree directly.

The disappearance of the light curtain was likely tied to her, too.

In all the years since he unified the world, Gusttave had never found any trace of Phantylia.

So he had guessed that she had entered the realm Beyond the Heavens.

Hou Da had once opened a spatial passage with his own spatial ability, and Phantylia could also travel between spaces.

So it wasn't impossible for her to have gone Beyond the Heavens.

She might even have gained tremendous power there, enough to destroy this world.

Without enough power, she wouldn't dare to come.

The purple-black ripples at the edge of the spatial rift kept spreading, like a festering wound being torn open.

Gusttave withdrew his gaze and turned to look at Feixiao's hand, still dripping blood. He frowned. "Stop forcing it. This thing can't be suppressed with yao power."