Chapter 1270: Primordial Mother Star

Chapter 1270: The Primal Mother Star

Emerald-green starlight flowed through the fissures of spacetime, becoming lunar phosphorescence that drifted across an endless expanse of black ice.

It seeped deeper still, diffusing within the glaciers until light itself formed the firmament of this subglacial world.

Beneath that luminous canopy, aside from a crumbling temple—its age unfathomable—emitting a faint, ghostly glow, all else lay in utter darkness.

In that blackness, nothing could be seen, yet chilling sounds echoed intermittently—

sounds of gnawing, of bones being crushed between teeth, and rhythmic swallows that sent shivers down one’s spine.

The eerie luminescence merely shrouded the temple itself, rendering it hazy and indistinct.

From afar, it resembled a solitary candle flickering in the night.

This was a temple sealed beneath glaciers,

undisturbed for countless eons, existing since time immemorial.

At its deepest heart stood twelve shattered divine statues, encircling a crimson altar. Upon that altar…

loomed an ancient bronze door, etched deeply with the passage of ages.

Now, silently, that bronze door began to open.

A figure emerged slowly from the pitch-black doorway.

Clad in a black robe, with long violet hair, a tall and slender frame, a face almost unnervingly beautiful, eyes sharp with wariness—and radiating an aura so terrifying it seemed to warp the very air around him.

It was none other than Xu Qing—who had vanished via the teleportation array woven from stardust grass fragments!

“Where is this…”

The moment he materialized, Xu Qing instantly unleashed his spiritual sense, bracing himself against potential danger as he scanned his surroundings.

He had no idea where the teleportation had brought him—but as his perception spread outward, the first things he sensed were antiquity… and suffocating oppression.

His cultivation, his spiritual awareness, everything about him was severely suppressed here—and flight was impossible.

This realization furrowed Xu Qing’s brow.

Yet despite the suppression, he could still perceive the twelve colossal yet broken divine statues beyond the altar.

Each statue bore grotesque yet strangely sacred features, their bodies riddled with deep gashes—as though some monstrous entity had measured their lifespans with its own claws.

Compared to them—and to this entire surrounding space—Xu Qing, standing beneath the bronze door on the altar, seemed like an insect entering a realm of giants.

Insignificant.

“Is this… a temple?”

After a long pause, Xu Qing narrowed his eyes. Sensing no immediate anomalies, he stepped down from the altar. The instant his shoe touched the blood-red tiles, dark crimson fluid oozed up from beneath his feet.

Uncannily, it rose into the air—as if the blood of this place were awakening.

A cold glint flashed in Xu Qing’s eyes, but he did not halt. He pressed onward.

He needed to leave this temple, see what lay outside, and quickly ascertain his location.

Gradually, within the vast temple, the sound of footsteps echoed—like droplets falling onto water.

Ethereal. Unsettling.

Until, after a long while, those footfalls abruptly ceased in the distant corridor leading outward.

In that immense hallway, Xu Qing stood before a decaying wall and lifted his head.

His presence may have stirred the air, sending a breeze against the wall—dislodging dust like peeling away layers of time—to reveal beneath it a primal, blood-red totem.

The totem depicted a flayed deity lying across the horizon, its ribs transformed into mountain ranges, its veins coursing with bronze-hued stars.

Surrounding it were countless pairs of greedy blue eyes.

After a moment, Xu Qing withdrew his gaze.

His confusion and sense of the unknown intensified.

“Just… where is this place?”

He pondered, then turned toward the corridor’s exit.

Soon after, the sound of footsteps—like treading upon water—resumed echoing through the silent temple… until the burning of an incense stick’s length…

Outside, in the pitch-black world, the lone temple bathed in ghostly light saw its doors slowly pushed open from within.

A thunderous roar instantly reverberated throughout the black void.

In that instant, every sound of gnawing ceased abruptly.

Then—pairs upon pairs of blue eyes suddenly appeared in the darkness encircling the temple, all turning toward it at once.

And at that very moment, the ghostly luminescence radiated outward from the temple—as if releasing its final vestige of light in a flash akin to lightning, illuminating all directions.

Thus, Xu Qing—who had just stepped through the temple doors—saw everything clearly.

Corpses everywhere!

Countless divine corpses!

From every pantheon!

From countless eras!

Most were reduced to bare bones, yet some still retained flesh and sinew.

Layer upon layer they lay, stretching endlessly—no one knew how many strata deep.

The sight made Xu Qing’s pupils contract violently.

Never before had he witnessed so many divine corpses—not even on battlefields had he seen such a multitude!

But what shook him most profoundly was this: amidst the uncountable divine remains, he saw far more living creatures than corpses!

These beings were grotesque entities.

Their bodies were gray and skeletal, with twelve pairs of ribs asymmetrically arranged. Between the left ribs clung a dark-purple membranous tissue that pulsed with each breath, revealing half-digested divine flesh within.

The right-side ribs, however, were fully crystallized, their surfaces studded with twisted faces of deities.

These faces surged like a tide, continuously flooding into a fleshy tumor atop the creature’s head, vying for dominance—replaced every few breaths,

forming ever-changing visages. The only constant among them: blue eyes.

As for their limbs, each sprouted tiny bone spurs, and their spinal columns grew inverted.

From the nape of each neck protruded larger bone spikes, glowing faintly blue, piercing through the skin in hideous fashion.

Atop each massive spike sat a shriveled finger—embedded as though fused.

Now, as they fixed their gazes upon Xu Qing, those fingers writhed, swaying together with the bone spikes.

Staring at them, Xu Qing’s eyes sharpened. A surge of intense peril flooded his mind—but alongside it rose a strange sense of familiarity.

“These grotesque beings… I feel I’ve seen them somewhere before…”

Before Xu Qing could delve deeper into his thoughts, a chorus of shrill, agonized shrieks erupted from the countless grotesque entities outside the temple.

The sound exploded outward in piercing waves—and with it, overwhelming greed surged forth.

In the next instant, wind rose upon this place.

Countless eerie entities surged from all directions, hurtling toward Xu Qing with terrifying speed.

A sense of mortal peril erupted in full force.

Without the slightest hesitation, Xu Qing summoned his nascent immortal embryo behind him. Bathed in radiant light, it burst forth into manifestation just as the endless tide of grotesque beings crashed upon him—sweeping forward with devastating might.

Wherever it passed, those abominations trembled violently, their shrieks growing ever more agonized. Even when their forms shattered into ruin, they reconstituted themselves anew in the very next breath—as though truly undying, unkillable.

Among them were some whose appearances matched the rest, yet bore patches of cerulean frost across their bodies, radiating far greater lethality than their kin.

Seeing this, Xu Qing flicked his wrist—the iron skewer whistled through the air, circling beside him as he charged ahead into slaughter.

At the same moment, his Parallel Constitution manifested instantly, layering folds of spacetime upon one another, conjuring countless phantoms of himself drawn from divergent timelines.

Mingling with his true form, each avatar unleashed its own surge of immortal power, transforming into streaks of falling stars that shot off in every direction.

Then came the clamor of battle, the thunderous roars—suddenly erupting beneath the glacial firmament.

Half an hour later, under the ghostly green moonlight beyond, a section of the pitch-black glacier abruptly cracked with a deafening snap. A fissure tore open before the eyes of any observer.

Xu Qing burst forth from within.

Blood stained the corner of his mouth; his appearance was disheveled. The moment he emerged, the myriad echoes of spacetime trailing behind him dissipated one by one. Sensing that flight was no longer restricted outside, he soared skyward at once—and thrust his palm downward.

Instantly, the ice below rumbled. It collapsed inward even as it began to heal itself.

Through the widening crevice could be seen legions of those grotesque entities—and standing foremost among them loomed a towering figure, two-tenths of whose body had already turned an unnatural blue.

One of its arms was entirely encased in cerulean frost, resembling nothing so much as a hand carved from glacial bone!

It gazed up at Xu Qing with eyes brimming with greed—but halted there, making no move to pursue.

Hovering midair, Xu Qing looked down, locking eyes with the being. His expression darkened.

The creatures beneath the glacier possessed only average combat strength overall—it was their undying nature, their inexhaustible numbers, and his own inability to fly that had made them so vexing.

Yet if that were all, Xu Qing would not have been driven to such desperation.

What truly overwhelmed him were those marked with cerulean frost—the more frost they bore, the deadlier they became. And especially that towering entity whose entire arm had transformed into a spiked, icy claw of blue…

That one filled Xu Qing with an even sharper sense of dread!

Thus, in the end, he had relied upon his spacetime avatars—one after another launching upward like a relay—to blast open the glacier and hurl himself free.

Now, seeing that his foe did not follow, Xu Qing exhaled inwardly in relief. Yet as he stared down into the fissure, a strange familiarity grew stronger within him.

“I’ve seen this before… on Senior Brother!”

His eyes snapped wide—he had found the source of that uncanny recognition!

That cerulean, bone-spiked ice hand was unmistakably similar to the very limb that always erupted from Er Niu’s chest whenever he unleashed his power!

“A divine abomination?”

As this thought rippled through Xu Qing’s mind, the fissure in the glacier sealed completely below, forming a concave surface that severed all connection to the world beneath—and cut off the gaze of that towering figure whose hand had turned to blue ice.

Xu Qing narrowed his eyes, countless thoughts swirling within. At the same time, he extended his spiritual sense outward, scanning the surroundings.

This entire region was composed of black glaciers, saturated with an intensely concentrated foreign essence—yet permeated throughout with death.

Before Xu Qing could investigate further, a sudden, inexplicable unease seized his heart, forcing him to jerk his head upward toward the distant horizon.

There, in the heavens, mist churned violently—a dark golden meteor plummeted swiftly downward, heading toward a location somewhat distant from where he stood.

“What is that…”

His spirit trembled as he fixed his gaze upon the falling star.

Soon, he saw clearly—

It was no meteor at all. It was the corpse… of a vast deity!

Though lifeless, the aura it exuded unmistakably belonged to a True God.

“This…”

Xu Qing’s eyes sharpened—just as a voice filled with shock and disbelief pierced through his spiritual awareness!

“Primordial Mother Star!!”

It was the Divine Maiden who spoke.

At that very moment, beyond the glacial realm, beyond the rift in spacetime, drifting through the boundless cosmic void, floated the cadaver of a god.

Guided by some unseen force, it sped rapidly toward the very rift where the glacial world lay hidden.

Seated cross-legged within the corpse were two figures—

None other than Young Lord Aurora and Immortal Phoenix!

“The Primordial Mother Star of the Fourth Stellar Ring draws near, husband… have you decided?”

Immortal Phoenix opened her eyes and spoke softly.

Beside her, Young Lord Aurora slowly lifted his lids.

“This plan was laid by the Immortal Sovereign—and has always been my destiny…”