Chapter 1298: Advancing to Engage in Chess Game

Chapter 1298: Escalating Gambit

This boundless, enigmatic starfield began its heart-stopping collapse.

Each instant unfolded as a shattering crescendo of annihilation, a vision that assaulted every conceivable sense.

Slowed, one might discern a faint golden thread emerging at the starfield’s immeasurable edge.

Like a careless tear upon a canvas of darkness.

Inconspicuous, yet radiating an ineffable menace.

It was the Old Divine Lord’s concept.

The beacon for Shanghuang’s gaze.

In a breath, the threads multiplied, spreading with frenzied greed like a vast net devouring the void.

Where they passed, the tranquil starfield rippled like stone-struck water, warping reality itself.

Starlight bent and twisted in their wake.

Then the celestial gems embedded in the cosmic shroud began their violent disintegration.

Gigantic suns—once furnaces of infinite radiance—

now struck by invisible hammers.

Their shells erupted first. Crimson flames, like enraged dragons, surged outward.

A red so searing it threatened to consume all creation.

Nearby planets vaporized instantly, leaving only distorted phantoms in the chaotic energy streams.

Solar cores then shattered under irresistible force, scattering into shards of eerie luminescence.

Hurtling farther, each fragment carried the sun’s final defiance.

They carved long, warped trails through the dark—

razor-sharp swords slicing the starfield into fragments,

as if rending the void itself,

scribing an epic of cosmic ruin.

The once-vast starfield, a black silk tapestry studded with diamond stars,

now convulsed in violent spasms.

Clusters of stars detonated in sequence,

their brilliance weaving a blinding curtain that scorched space into chaos.

All stellar contours, all galactic forms, drowned in this hellish weave of light and shadow.

Each flare seemed the universe’s despairing cry,

a final, radiant stand against encroaching nothingness.

Galaxies did not escape.

Countless stellar islands, once harmoniously scattered across the dark sea,

crumbled like sandcastles beneath tidal fury.

Spiral arms snapped; stars scattered; structures imploded.

In moments, the infinite starfield became a chaotic wasteland.

All stars shattered. Light dimmed. Endless darkness spread,

devouring every trace of what had been.

Faint, defiant glimmers flickered briefly—

the last echoes of collapse.

Fleeting as a night-blooming cereus.

Soon swallowed by thickening void, leaving only silence.

Nothing remained.

All this transpired within mere heartbeats.

The starfield lived and died.

Along with its Old Divine Lord, reduced to nothing beneath Shanghuang’s gaze.

Every cosmos, every star, every living thing—

like the fallen Peerless City—

dissolved into nonexistence.

Only the Old Divine Lord’s final thought lingered,

echoing coldly amid the Fifth Stellar Ring’s mourning mandate:

“Immortal Lord, I cannot defeat you—but neither shall you triumph!”

This thought branded the Ring’s mandate, an indelible law trembling through the fabric of reality.

Eternal.

The Divine Lord had fallen.

At that moment, the highest echelons of all Upper Stellar Rings trembled in their souls.

Nowhere more violently than the Ninth.

In its east, the slumbering leviathan opened golden eyes.

In its north, the Golden Mother River churned, lotus blossoms trembling with countless figures.

In its south, the towering black spire flickered with candlelight.

In its west, the terrifying paper doll seated cross-legged traced his lips with his tongue, gazing toward Wanggu.

Above Wanggu Continent, Shanghuang’s opened eyes slowly closed.

Long after.

Within the Fifth Stellar Ring, a figure stepped from the void.

An old man in straw sandals, broad-shouldered, a golden mouse perched upon him.

The Fifth Ring’s Immortal Lord.

He walked silently to the edge of the Divine Lord’s death—a vast expanse of nothingness.

Gazing into that endless void, he sensed Shanghuang’s pervasive aura.

The elder remained silent.

He knew the Fifth Ring would forever lack three-tenths of its essence, its circle incomplete.

And Shanghuang’s very presence would now cast its gaze upon this scar.

The Ring was irrevocably entangled in karmic chains.

“This is the price of borrowing Shanghuang’s power. You need not have led Xu Qing there.”

Master Bai materialized beside him, voice soft.

The Immortal Lord said nothing.

After a long pause, his aged voice resonated through the void—

to himself, to Master Bai, to every Divine Lord across the Upper Rings.

“Recall the words that echoed through the Upper Rings when Shanghuang’s ascension failed?”

“Fate may be shattered, but ordained law must be obeyed—”

“So tell me: might it not be failure at all, but merely the process of ascension?”

Having spoken, the Immortal Lord’s form dissolved into nothingness.

Across the stellar rings, all the Highest Ones fell utterly silent.

Master Bai remained thus, too; after a long silence, he sighed softly, gazing toward the inner Fourth Ring where Xu Qing had vanished.

Time drifted on, slow and unrelenting.

In the blink of an eye, five years had passed.

Only three remained until the return Xu Qing had promised himself.

Yet he had not come back.

As for the Fourth Ring, it had changed greatly in these five years.

The divine territories were now confined to a narrow sphere, while beyond this sphere—

as supply stars released their aura of immortal essence, as the Fifth Ring’s fortune spread—

more and more cultivators had migrated to dwell within the Fourth Ring.

Seeking Light Immortal Lord had returned to the Fifth Ring, presiding over his watch.

Most other Immortal Lords had likewise come back.

Only Master Bai, throughout these five years, had remained seated where Xu Qing disappeared, waiting in quiet vigil.

And the multitudes, too, had changed much in this span.

In their cultivation, they often found their minds haunted by the Immortal Lord’s final cry, echoing from five years past:

“I may not best you, Immortal Lord—but neither shall you claim victory!”