Chapter 880: Facing death

Normally, this level of ‘Destiny’s End’ wouldn’t make someone disappear, as there are many other Destinies besides interpersonal relationships.

But with the power of the Demon of Death intervening at this moment, anything strange could happen.

Thinking these thoughts, Li Qi advanced towards the Demon of Death’s remains.

During this process, he performed countless deductions.

A truly countless number of times.

After collecting parameters once in the Desire Realm, he could simulate it in his Inner World. Within his Inner World, using the power of turning the illusory into reality, he created approximately six thousand different types and races of worlds, then forcibly deduced the outcome.

The final result was a spell to resist the Death of the Demon of Death, a spell of connection.

It was almost enough.

At this moment, Li Qi somewhat missed his old friend, Young Master of Shaman God Mountain Yan Ke’s unique Space-Time Law.

That was a Rank Three method.

Sealing a world and then creating unique space-time was something Yan Ke’s Master had asked another Great Power to create (details in Chapter 231).

By finding a world with naturally unique space-time, then sealing it, even making its mass lighter so it could be carried like a glass bead.

Then, the nature of this world would not change at all. Even while maintaining its unique space-time, consciousness could enter it for subtle manipulation.

When consciousness entered it, it would normally tear apart practitioners who lacked substantiality due to the time difference, so this was a test of skill.

A Rank Three, with a great Divine Ability, compressed this world without changing its nature, and also allowed the mind to enter it without dying due to lack of substantiality.

This was quite impressive. Li Qi himself couldn’t do it, and Yan Ke’s Master also asked someone else to do it.

It’s like, to teach a child about nuclear physics and let him practice operating a nuclear power plant, someone hand-crafted a mini nuclear power plant with real nuclear reactions, but no nuclear radiation.

Moreover, this thing could actually generate electricity, supplying power to a city without any problem, but no matter how it was abused, it wouldn’t explode. Superluminal speed was fine, and it didn’t even need fuel. It was a Class 1 perpetual motion machine with maximum safety.

Think about it, an ordinary Rank Four truly couldn’t make such a thing. Only a Rank Three could make a professional teaching tool for his own child to reach this level.

It was precisely with the help of this item that Yan Ke, at Rank Seven, was able to control space and time, twisting worlds into glass beads held in his palm.

At that time, Li Qi was already Rank Six, and he couldn’t do this, which shows that the Great Shamanes’ educational methods indeed had unique aspects.

Although Li Qi has now stepped into Rank Three, compared to these Great Shamanes, there is still a big gap.

The Great Shamanes are not ordinary Rank Threes; Li Qi still has a long way to go to catch up. He hasn’t even stabilized his cultivation.

If he had such a method, Li Qi would dare to say that he would definitely succeed in his calculations without error.

But now...

Li Qi personally estimated the efficiency to be around ninety percent.

It was enough to gamble on, and he wouldn’t die; that much was certain.

Calculating these random thoughts, Li Qi finally arrived next to that pitch-black Star Domain. He formed a hand seal, maintaining the existence of ‘Destiny’ to protect himself from being erased, and then walked into it.

As he entered the absolute darkness, a fire suddenly lit up around Li Qi.

It was a beautiful blue light, with a hint of brilliance, illuminating the surrounding darkness.

Beneath Fu Mountain, there is a large cave. In the cave, there is water, its color like fire. During the day, it is dim and unclear, but at night, it illuminates outside the cave. Even when waves crash, its light does not extinguish. This is called “Yin Fire” (details in Chapter 866).

This was the Smoldering Fire taken from Fu Mountain, a manifestation of the Fire Virtue luck of the Primordial Sage Emperor ‘Yao’.

“This?” Li Qi frowned as he watched the fire light up on its own.

Senior Martial Uncle Changqin said that he now had three treasures on him that could protect him in the Desire Realm.

These were the Smoldering Fire taken from Fu Mountain by the Sun-Moon True Lead Cauldron, the Annals given to Li Qi by Chongnian, and the Demon Probing Gu worm given to him by Yun Fang. The three combined could ensure his safety in the Desire Realm.

Li Qi naturally trusted Changqin’s judgment; if he didn’t even trust that, then there was no point in continuing.

So, Li Qi continued forward, while also paying attention to the condition of the two Spiritual Artifacts.

Soon, the Demon Probing Gu worm reacted. It seemed to have sensed a strong Demonic Qi and showed a considerable response.

That meant he hadn’t found the wrong place.

It’s just… the Demonic Qi seemed too profound, causing the Demon Probing Gu worm to feel like it was about to crack.

“Has it exceeded its endurance limit?” Li Qi placed the Demon Probing Gu worm back into his Inner World for nurturing, isolating it from external interference, and then continued to rush forward.

Accompanied by the faint wailing of the Demon Probing Gu worm, Li Qi continuously approached the Demon of Death’s remains.

But at this instant, Li Qi suddenly felt a heavy pressure gripping his throat. He immediately felt as if the world was frozen and solidified, his eyes began to blur, and things appeared hazy as if seen through a layer of mist.

He felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing, not even the touch of his clothes on his skin had disappeared.

He only felt the chill of the frozen world pouring into his body, cold and merciless, extinguishing his sense of ‘being alive’.

For a Rank Three, what constitutes being alive? What constitutes being dead?

It’s hard to describe such a thing with the feelings of a Mortal.

For a Rank Three, life and death are very blurry concepts. At this Rank, ordinary cycles of Reincarnation can no longer bind him. If it were defined by a Mortal’s standard of death, then he could die at will and be Reborn immediately, which would not cause him any substantial impact.

So, for a Rank Three, the feeling of dying is… to make them unable to interfere with the world, unable to observe, and to stop their thoughts.

This cannot be considered ‘death,’ because the Dao of a Rank Three still exists; it merely puts them into a kind of slumber.

High-Rank practitioners… are very difficult to kill, it’s even hard to define what ‘death’ is.

However, for the Demon of Death, it seems not necessarily so.

The Demon of Death has many ways to kill a Rank Three, but… isn’t the Demon of Death only a remnant now?

However, as these thoughts arose, Li Qi’s thoughts gradually slowed down.

His thinking organs seemed to be frozen, beginning to stop.

So painful… so hopeless. This…

A few vague thoughts arose in Li Qi’s mind. Under such pressure, living seemed to be a burden; death… was liberation. He wanted to actively shatter his Dao path and completely fall into peaceful sleep.

“No.”

“This isn’t what I’m thinking.”

Li Qi’s True Spirit suddenly issued a warning.

Although these thoughts were in Li Qi’s mind, they were not his own; they were caused by the Demon of Death’s Demonic Qi invasion.

If Li Qi wasn’t a Rank Three and had a certain resistance, he would have committed suicide by now.

One of the terrifying aspects of the Demonic Dao is that you don’t even know if your own thoughts are yours, or if the decisions you make were implanted by the Demonic Dao infiltrating your mind.

It implants thoughts of suicide in you, and then you will believe you want to die, and then decisively end your own life.

The surroundings were silent and cold, as if something was faintly wailing. If one’s cultivation wasn’t high enough, one would probably go mad with fear here within a minute.

In this Hell where even death itself would die, there seemed to be a slight comfort.

Still alive? No, probably not.

Then dead? No, not that either.

Li Qi didn’t know what situation he was in, only that a certain demonic thoughts began to be deeply buried within his body, keeping him in this state of neither life nor death.

At this moment, pages began to appear around Li Qi, continuously transmitting information to him.

This was like Li Qi suddenly checking his phone before going to sleep, and the phone kept beeping with messages, instantly restoring some of his consciousness from his semi-conscious state.

He immediately propped up his thinking organs and began to read the messages from the Annals.

He didn’t know until he read it, and when he did, Li Qi was startled, completely waking up.

“Seven hundred… nine hundred, no, one thousand six hundred and eighty-four!” Li Qi was astonished.

In his sleep, he had experienced a full one thousand six hundred and eighty-four worlds of the Mortal World, passed unknowingly in his sleep, and he himself had no memory of it at all.

The reason he could perceive it was because the ‘Annals’ had completely recorded all of it.

This was a Divine Ability of the Grand Diviner, recording the ‘stories’ of all insubstantial beings. Everyone’s life story, as long as they couldn’t achieve self-sustenance, would be recorded.

It turned out that, unknowingly, he had already influenced these one thousand six hundred and eighty-four worlds as a ‘sleeping deity’, and these worlds also regarded him as a sleeping deity, offering him worship.

In the Desire Realm, this subtle ‘cognition’ could truly play a role. Under the blessing of the Demon of Death’s power, Li Qi truly almost fell asleep.

Fortunately, he had treasures protecting him, so he didn’t die.

“Did my hand seal fail?” Li Qi took a deep breath and formed another hand seal, fixing ‘Destiny’s Beginning’ at this moment.

With that, the surrounding loneliness and coldness receded.

Indeed, it was because of that instant just now…

He had temporarily not formed a hand seal just now in order to place the Demon Probing Gu worm in his Inner World. However, the moment the hand seal became ineffective, the Demon of Death’s power had already penetrated his body.

And all of this, the Demon of Death might not even be conscious of it.

Li Qi had already discovered that the ability to make everything around him die automatically created these arrangements, and they were merely ‘natural phenomena’.

The Demon of Death’s remains are here, so naturally, there will be spells, Divine Abilities, and Formations that cause Li Qi to die.

For example, those worlds that Li Qi had slept through, even though those worlds had already perished, the reason they appeared out of thin air was because they were needed to make Li Qi die.

So, they appeared.

Similarly, other spells, as well as the demonic thoughts implanted in Li Qi’s mind, appeared out of nowhere.

The Demon of Death doesn’t need to do anything, it doesn’t even need to be conscious. It just exists here, and everything around it will be taken away in a natural, imperceptible way, as if by ‘natural death’.

Truly terrifying.

Perhaps the Cocoon civilization also perished this way?

Just by staying near the Demon of Death’s remains, one would die in a silent, natural, and logical manner.

In the eyes of ordinary people, it might be a sudden heart attack and sudden death.

In front of a Great Power like Li Qi, it means the sudden appearance of spells, worlds, and even Formations, directly sending him to his death.

All of this appeared out of thin air, without anyone arranging it.

If the Nascent Heavenly Demon is the nature of a Heavenly Demon, then this ability to guide the death of all things must be the nature of the Demon of Death, right?

Fortunately, it’s just a remnant. As long as he doesn’t lose his defenses like just now, he can temporarily resist.

Li Qi applied the Rank Three’s ability to make his own ‘Destiny’s Beginning’ synchronize with the surrounding space-time, thereby stabilizing his own existence and preventing the surrounding Demon of Death Qi from approaching.

Using this method, he vigilantly maintained his existence, no longer showing any carelessness.

The Destiny’s Beginning spell he researched outside was indeed able to resist the Demon of Death’s power. This was also an application of Li Qi combining it with Buddha-Dharma, although its root was still his own.

Proceeding like this, about two quarters of an hour passed.

In two quarters of an hour, at Li Qi’s current moving speed, he had walked at least a billion light-years, but there was still nothing else in front of him in the darkness.

Clearly, the spatial scale was stretched, just like the edge of the Universe’s big bang. Space was infinitely extending, so as long as the moving speed couldn’t keep up with the speed of spatial expansion, one would never reach the edge of the Universe.

Since that was the case, Li Qi chose to accelerate.

His speed suddenly increased, directly reaching the ‘unlimited’ Rank. In almost an instant, he pierced through the surrounding space-time and rushed to his destination.

“Ugh… this aura.” Li Qi formed a hand seal, avoiding all the Demon of Death Qi, and looked towards the center.

There, was a hand.

It should be a hand, like a mummy’s, with withered fingers, black and shriveled, looking completely dehydrated.

Moreover, on the opponent’s fingers, an extremely large amount of ‘Dao Resonance’ was surging.

It was no longer just Dao Resonance; this was fundamentally a fragment of the Demon of Death Dao, the supreme treasure of the Demon of Death lineage.

However, it was placed here, and no one came to take it.

This isn’t some terrifying place, is it? Although the Demon of Death itself is very dangerous, for a Rank Three, there are ways to deal with it; it’s not to the extent that a treasure would be left here unwanted.

No matter how you look at it, there’s something fishy.

Thinking this, Li Qi walked towards the Demon of Death’s remains.

He had only advanced about half the distance when suddenly… a memory appeared in Li Qi’s mind.

In his mind, an image appeared.

That was…

The symbol of the End of Dharma.

The shadow of all things.

A tide of malice.

The surging and roaring karma of the Tathagata.

The sins of immeasurable hundreds of thousands of kalpas.

Heavenly Demon of Enjoying Others’ Emanations.

The Heavenly Demon’s figure suddenly appeared in Li Qi’s mind, issuing a command in a cold tone Li Qi had never heard before:

“This thing stays here. Do not touch it.”

The Heavenly Demon didn’t state the consequences, but anyone who heard it would instinctively know what the consequences were…

Li Qi shivered.

It was… the Heavenly Demon’s lingering trace here, warning latercomers. No wonder no one touched this thing.