At the base of the cliff, two portals opened—each leading to a different world, each with its own wary guardian.
This was not their first encounter, nor their first clash; years ago, they had already fought—back when the Supreme Sovereign Era was on the verge of burial.
Afterward, they crossed swords several more times—by then, the Pioneer Era had already begun.
Just at this cliff alone, they had already fought several times from across the divide.
Now, both had long since departed this barren, lifeless world; what appeared here were only their projections. Their realms were too lofty, their power too fierce—without special opportunity, their true bodies could not enter this dead world.
This world no longer held any living creatures; nothing could survive here.
This was the Great Ruins of the Supreme Sovereign Era.
A place even more hostile than the Great Ruins of the Pioneer Era.
At least in the Great Ruins, the stone statues formed by gods could shelter a region, allowing life to persist. Here, there was nothing but desert—when night fell and darkness swept in, there was nowhere to hide.
As early as thirty or forty thousand years ago, all life here had vanished, leaving only gods behind.
In the early Pioneer Era, even the gods here departed one after another for other worlds. These two were the last to leave.
"White family woman from forty thousand years ago, are you also here seeking the one who left the inscription?"
The one-armed god-demon standing in the stone gate was tall and imposing, a long sabre clanging on his back. Its blade-intent seemed to pierce time and space, slicing into another world. He sneered, "So you received news of his emergence and came looking for him. I've long sensed something strange in your sword technique—it surpasses the Supreme Sovereign Era and even the Pioneer Era. I didn't expect you really were connected to the Heavenly Demon Cult Master!"
The woman in the divine light of the cliff wall trembled slightly, a surge of joy rising from her heart. She paid his hostility no mind at all. "Has he truly come? Has he crossed time and space to appear here?"
"You cannot stop me!"
The one-armed god-demon in the stone gate stood proud and solitary, declaring, "I will kill him. If you try to block me, we will fight as we have for years—an endless account, with neither able to defeat the other. I kept my broken arm for the day I could find him and avenge my loss, my shattered dao-heart. Unless I use my sabre to break his sword, my heart will never be at peace, and my sabre-dao will never advance! For this day, I've waited almost forty thousand years!"
The woman in the divine radiance stepped out onto the desert—just a phantom, her voice faint. "You cannot enter this world, so your words mean nothing."
The one-armed god-demon in the stone gate turned, his blood-red cloak billowing and shrouding the portal. Suddenly, from the swirling cloak, a blade of sabre-light split the barrier between two worlds!
The sabre-intent surged, terrifying and immense—his strike actually sliced through the wall separating two worlds!
Sabre-light hissed and roared, erupting from the stone gate. The desert ahead was instantly split into twin waves of sand, with a sheer cliff rising between them—hundreds of zhang tall and stretching for miles!