Consuming Earths, Devouring Skies

"He’s...definitely not dead," The grey-robed figure muttered. Its eyes beneath the hood started to glow with a brilliant light of grey. Its eyes and the light seemed to contain a pure essence of time, capable of seeing through all time itself.

"He’s in the Yaoguai?" As those words were said, the old man’s eyes turned bright. The words spoken may have been soft, but with his cultivation base, he could hear the quietest of sounds accurately and clearly for an inconceivable distance.

"Halt," the old man ordered. The crew immediately ceased their actions as if they were machines. One could easily see their experience in their response times. Even their actions were quite interesting, as they simply froze and halted all operations.

The grey-robed figure didn’t mind the old man. Instead, it reached out with its left hand. This hand was incredibly pure and white, soft and dazzling, naturally belonging to a female. A surge of time energy seemed to flow out of the palm like a sonic wave. This energy was invisible but all that it touched was affected.

"Stop."

The air molecules, the moisture, light waves, and even life itself seemed to freeze in time.

The wave of energy hit the Yaoguai faster than it could react. It transformed into a statue. In truth, it hadn’t been modified in any way, but the movement of time around it had been affected, forced to cease. It entered the Yaoguai in a state of stasis.

The old man’s eyebrows twitched. Celestials possessed celestial energy, from their own celestial laws, and do things absolutely impossible for heavenly cultivators. For example, this time energy wasn’t connected to any law of the heavens, but it was a law formed by the celestial itself.

If heavenly cultivators harness the heavens essence to cultivate and gleam into its inner workings, then celestials create their own heavenly essence which they can harness and develop in ways unimaginable. It was this ability to defy the restriction of the heavens that made Celestials fearsome beyond belief!

The only way for heavenly cultivators to devise their own laws, their own paths, was to rival the heavens! However, their laws couldn’t naturally be a part of the heavens and its growth was much like Yan Zaizen’s dao heart, requiring power and direction.

As for Celestials, they start their path with an essence of the multiverse and give birth to countless variations!

Therefore, the old man had no intent to offend a celestial and waited patiently. He wasn’t in a hurry, and he was curious about Yan Zaizen’s fate, so he silently stayed.

The grey-robed woman didn’t mind the old man as she took a step forward. It was as if her body was time. She vanished and appeared before the Yaoguai like a shadow. "You’re..." The eyes behind the hood narrowed. This Yaoguai was odd...

She could feel like, every so often, her celestial energy of time was being consumed bit by bit. However, it wasn’t enough to affect the stasis state it was in. Touching the Yaoguai, the confusion beneath the hood intensified.

She couldn’t feel anything or anyone outside of the Yaoguai’s aura! She used a few more unique celestial arts, but nothing was revealed.

While she was trying to gleam into Yan Zaizen’s location, he was frozen in the Yaoguai’s body! No, that would be incorrect. At his glabella, the black hole still silently absorbed the heavenly essence of the Yaoguai like a parasite.

His physical body, however, had entered a stasis state. As for his soul, it was affected for a blink before he regained his ability to think and use his soul energy. However, he was shocked to discover that his body had been completely sealed!

It was like he was in a cage. This cage was his own physical body!

"What the hell is happening?" He didn’t try to send his soul sense outwards. If there was danger, he could put himself in a bad position. In truth, he already felt uneasy. This uneasiness wasn’t due to his prophetic intuition, but his normal intuition!

This was because he found that...his prophetic intuition no longer worked! He only had one clue of this, but he felt absolutely certain! It was like someone had taken away his sense of taste. He may not notice it immediately, but after eating something once, how could he not notice?!

After experiencing danger once, how could he not notice?!

This Yaoguai was capable of sneaking up and attacking him without a hair of warning. He recalled when he first felt his intuition, when the Meteor that was Ezekiel struck him. At that time, he felt a profound sensation of danger. It was so intense that death was a certainty if not for his black hole!

In other times, he’d always had a nagging feeling. Early on, there were many times he didn’t act on it. Like at the Ying Clan or Xuanwu City. However, he slowly learned to trust this feeling deeply.

There were even times where the intuition was vague and far-reaching! This was like when Pinaka was traveling through the Heavenly Spatial Formation, or when he had the choice to rush to Ezekiel’s aid. There were consequences to every choice. Then there was the subtle clues, like knowing that Eshe and Iceborn were scheming perfectly from the get-go as if they were originally allies!

However, he didn’t feel a single thing since exiting his cultivation. It was as if...

Something was hindering it!

This was only a theory, but it felt beyond true.

This was why he had doubled his efforts to conceal himself. He hoped to silently hide! Yes, hide!

Whatever could snatch away his intuition was beyond his understanding and likely far beyond his abilities. The only possible way he would feel safe was to consume this Yaoguai’s insights and breakthrough!

Not breakthrough into the sixth-floor, but breakthrough into the sovereign-level of laws! The difference between domain and sovereign can not be described easily as it wasn’t like the difference between mud and the sky, but more like the difference between a mortal and a god!

In the Sirius Titan Realm, there were about ten Heavenly Monarchs, all of which were in the seventh-floor! That meant that they just barely entered the sovereign-level! The population, however, was so vast that it was unimaginable!

Yet, only about ten!

Even in the Canis Major Realm, only one Eighth-Floor Heavenly Genesis expert out of...an even greater amount than the Sirius Titan Realm. To add, the Canis Major Realm had a very linear legacy for its experts!

The difficulty was immense, because that difference of domain vs sovereign is like the difference between attracting lightning with a rod and controlling lightning with your will!

The only issue between that gap was surviving...

"Heavenly tribulation..." Yan Zaizen’s suffused with anticipation as he licked his lips. If he wasn’t frozen, he’d look up at the sky with a smirk.