Desolate Era

Moments later, a willowy, silver-robed woman suddenly stepped out of the silent clouds and moved to stand next to the fallen Golden Bridge of Freedom.

“This weapon Iyerre fashioned is certainly powerful. We were able to crush and kill this native Autarch with ease.” The silver-robed woman waved her hand, collecting the fallen treasures and estate-worlds which lay strewn across the clouds, then gave the bridge a close look. “I imagine Iyerre will be interested in taking a closer look at this pseudo-Daoguard Tower.”

Whoosh. With a wave of her hand, she collected the golden bridge as well. She then scanned the surrounding area, a delighted smile on her face: “That was pretty easy.” She then stepped away into the void and vanished without a trace.

……

Within a vast sea of fire located within the Great Dark. Many spacetime rifts could be seen at the borders of this sea of fire, and Iyerre was walking through it barefooted. He was hastening towards his proudest creation, the Grassland World… but suddenly, he came to a halt.

“Eh?” An eager look appeared on his face. “It seems they have something to report.” A blurry pillar of light appeared in front of him, quickly resolving into three figures. It was the two men and the woman he had sent off earlier. The silver-robed woman was holding a miniaturized golden bridge in her hands, and she was casually flipping it up and down.

When Iyerre saw the golden bridge, he couldn’t help but smile: “You succeeded?”

“It was very easy.” The silver-robed woman raised an eyebrow. “That native Autarch named ‘Bolin’ died before we even had to go all-out against him.”

“Autarch Bolin?!” Iyerre was unspeakably delighted by this.

Although he was quite confident in the Grassland World, the most powerful weapon he had ever created, he had still been worried that something unexpected might happen. Now that he knew the results, he finally managed to relax. It made sense. The Grassland World was overwhelming powerful, and he had to come up with a way to compel those three into coming here and helping him take control over it. It really wouldn’t have made any sense if they had failed.

“Iyerre, you’ve been suppressed by this Chaosverse to such a degree that although you are a bit more powerful than the native Autarchs, you are still on their same overall level of power! In the end, the weapons you’ve created are actually stronger than you,” the silver-robed woman teased.

“It’s true.” Iyerre nodded in acknowledgment. “I might be weakened, but my artificing skills remain untouched.”

Back in his homeland, Iyerre was so overwhelmingly powerful that these complicated artifacts and treasures were useless to him. A single palm from him would have far more power than any artifact possibly could unleash. Here, however, artifacts like the Grassland World were much more dangerous than even Iyerre himself.

“What should we do next?” the red-robed man asked.

“Shall we keep ambushing the other natives?” the black-robed man said in a cold voice. “The Grassland World can hide its aura and prevent the Chaosverse from sensing and locating it. We can keep hunting them down.”

“No.” Iyerre shook his head. “Without question, the other Autarchs were notified right away once Bolin died! They’ll be extremely cautious and won’t give us another chance like this.”

He wasn’t a fool, and he didn’t treat the Autarchs as fools either. Previously, Ning and the others had been certain that they were safe. They never would’ve imagined that such an overwhelmingly powerful weapon as the Grassland World would appear without them even being able to detect it. The Grassland World had been so powerful that it had only been forced to reveal part of its true power in order to slay Autarch Bolin!

“Then what should we do next?” the silver-robed woman asked.

“Now that you’ve already revealed yourselves, we should prepare for a frontal clash,” Iyerre said with a smile. “We’ve already killed one of the native Autarchs and seized the initiative! Now, hurry up and send the Grassland World to reinforce the four trapped temples. Go rescue my Exalts and bring them into the Grassland World. They’ll be of great use to you there.”

“Fine.”

“Very well.” All three agreed to the order. They all knew that while the Sithe Exalts were individually weak, in sufficient numbers they were still able to be extremely effective in battle. Unlike those foolish Autarch-class void dwellers, the Sithe Exalts had all reached incredibly high levels of insight into the Dao and were the equals of the native Autarchs in insights.

“Let’s go. I’ll join forces with you as soon as I can,” Iyerre said.

The blurry pillar of light vanished.

Iyerre was in a superb mood. There were only seven Autarchs to begin with. Now that Bolin had died, only six were left! Several of the six had seen their original avatars destroyed, and their new avatars remained fairly weak. Another peak avatar had been tied down within the Annihilation Hive. On the Sithe side, none of their peak combatants had been lost to date!

“Given the current situation, we should definitely be able to win a head-on clash.” Iyerre smiled.

He had been preparing for this battle for many, many aeons. He had made multiple plans for victory, and as he saw it they were completely flawless.

The simplest plan had been to gain victory through the Annihilation Hive! He hadn’t expected it to be resolved that easily, but fortunately he hadn’t placed too much hope on gaining victory so easily.

……

A quiet, ordinary chaos planet. Ning was pacing around, filled with worry. Just now, he had received a message from Autarch Bolin:

“I’m under attack. An Autarch-class void dweller has appeared, and spacetime has been frozen around me!”

Ning felt rather uneasy upon hearing this. Autarch Mogg had been ambushed but had been lucky enough to survive. Now, Autarch Bolin had been ambushed as well? Did the Sithe feel confident in being able to breach the defenses of the Golden Bridge of Freedom? Had they really sent just one Autarch-class void dweller to accomplish this?

“All spacetime around me has been subsumed by a vast world of grasslands. I can’t see to the ends of this world. The skies above me are filled with a thick layer of clouds that are incredibly tough. I’m using all my power right now to break through the clouds.”

“I’ve finally broken through the clouds. There’s actually an even higher layer of clouds above me!”

“An enemy in this world has just informed me that this place has a total of nine cloud layers, each of which is harder to breach than the last. I apparently have no chance of breaking through the final layer whatsoever, and it is supposedly protected by constantly shifting spacetime which will keep me forever trapped here at the first layer.”

“I’m being attacked by a total of three Autarch-class void dwellers.”

“Haha… I’ve managed to successfully persuade them into holding back. They’ve been forced to take part in this war and don’t really want to battle to the death. It was easy to persuade them.”

Autarch Bolin continued to send one message after another to the others. Generally speaking, whenever the Autarchs were in a dangerous situation they would constantly send messages so that even if they died, the survivors would gain a better understanding of what dangers the deceased had faced and so wouldn’t repeat their mistakes.

Time continued to flow on.

“Not good. A violet-gold chain just appeared from the clouds. Another one just appeared out of nowhere.”

“These chains are incredibly powerful. They have to be on par with Darknorth’s full-force strikes! They are not only strong, they are also incredibly profound. These chains are definitely being used with Autarch-class techniques. They are very difficult to deal with.”

“Three chains… four chains… five chains! I can’t hold on much longer.”

“Six chains! I can’t hold!”

These messages came very fast, one after the other. As soon as the final message came, Ning could sense that Autarch Bolin’s aura had suddenly vanished from his message-talisman. The talisman had become an ownerless object, with Ning no longer able to sense any karma tying him to Autarch Bolin any further.

The karmic links between them had been completely severed. There was only one explanation for this.

“He d-died? Bolin died?” Ning was stunned. Not just him – all five of the other Autarchs were stunned as well.

An Autarch had died!

There had been dangerous situations in the past, such as when Autarch Ekong had been trapped within that temple or when Autarch Mogg had been hunted by Iyerre… but this was the first time in the entire long history of this Chaosverse that an Autarch had been killed. This was completely unprecedented! Autarch Bolin had just been killed? He was dead?!

Ning felt many complicated emotions. Anxiety, sorrow, pain, grief… and smoldering rage.

“This isn’t the time to grieve. Bolin’s dead. He was trapped within that world of grass, and as soon as those chains appeared he was killed. That world of grass is a hundred times more dangerous than the temples we faced prior to this. We have to be careful not to fall into the same trap.” Autarch Titanos was the first to send a message to the others.

“Agreed. We can’t make the same mistake. Don’t let them succeed with another ambush! We now have two options before us. The first is to enter the Quintessence. There’s no way they would be able to enter the Quintessence without the prime essences discovering them. The second option is for us to maintain a vast domain-type sea of mana around us at all times. The mana will be infused with part of our truesoul, and so we would immediately notice them once they went anywhere near us no matter what type of masking technique they use,” Autarch Skyfeeder immediately sent.

“We can’t set up a sufficiently large domain with our mana. I’m worried that their world of grass is so vast that it could still encompass and trap us when used from outside that range,” Autarch Ekong rebutted.

“Our only choice is to join forces,” Autarch Titanos said.

They quickly began to discuss what their next steps should be. They had paid a high price for this lesson; there was no way they could allow themselves to be ambushed in such a manner again. As for hiding into the Quintessence? They weren’t really willing to take this option.

Just as they were negotiating in the midst of their rage and grief, suddenly… a new message was sent to the six of them from Autarch Bolin’s message-talisman, even though it no longer had Bolin’s aura and appeared to be ownerless.

“I am Bolin. I’m not dead yet!”

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