bookbashuk 538 Silhouette of Terror
538 Silhouette of Terror
The Greater Universe was divided into Six Greater Realms that revolved around a single terrible center in a counterclockwise direction.
The Abyss.
It was not merely darkness, nor was it simply a void. The Abyss was an endless black hole vast enough to swallow worlds, restrained only by the authority of the Six Supremes whose powers bound reality together. Even then, the Abyss continuously expanded, devouring broken stars, ruined timelines, wandering souls, and forgotten fragments of existence. It groaned endlessly beneath creation like a starving beast chained beneath the floorboards of the cosmos.
Directly connected to the Abyss was the First Layer of the Underworld, where an enormous continent of corpses had become lodged halfway through the black hole itself. Mountains of dead gods, oceans of rotten blood, and continents made from fossilized remains had fused into a grotesque landmass that resisted complete annihilation.
And from that land of corpses, something moved.
With horrifying effort, the Great Beast dragged itself upward from the Abyss.
Its massive body resembled a leopard distorted beyond reason, covered in black fur that constantly sloughed away into ash before regrowing again. Its paws resembled those of a monstrous bear capable of crushing continents beneath a single step. Each movement caused spatial fractures to spread throughout the Underworld like shattered glass.
Its jaws resembled those of a lion, though far too large and malformed, lined with spiraling teeth that rotated inward like grinders of flesh. When it roared, the sound did not travel through air.
It traveled through souls.
The beast possessed seven heads, each representing one of the sins propagated by Hell itself. One wept molten hatred. Another laughed endlessly with greed-filled delight. One whispered temptation into the minds of all living things. Another devoured the others whenever they grew too loud. Ten enormous horns curved backward from its body, each adorned with ancient diadems radiating authority stolen from forgotten heavens.
The Great Beast raised its heads toward existence itself and spoke.
“I AM THE END OF SALVATION.
“I SHALL DEVOUR THE THRONES OF HEAVEN.
“LET THE HOLY EMPEROR COME FORTH!
“I WILL TEAR OPEN HIS REALM AND FEAST UPON HIS BONES!
“LET SIN BECOME LAW!
“LET DESPAIR BECOME TRUTH!
“LET ALL THINGS RETURN TO THE ABYSS!”
Though incomplete, its mere existence reverberated throughout the Greater Universe.
Every realm saw it.
Every living being felt it.
Across the countless layers of the Underworld, the souls of the dead watched in horror as the silhouette of the Great Beast became visible through the blood-red skies.
In the Second Layer, sinners collapsed to their knees screaming.
“The Beast has awakened!”
“We’re doomed!”
“Holy Emperor save us!”
In the Third Layer, tortured souls began laughing hysterically through their tears.
“Finally!”
“Finally someone will destroy this place!”
“Let it all burn!”
Within the vast emptiness of every layer, ancient ghosts stared upward with expressions filled with remorse.
“So this is the end we feared…”
“We should’ve listened…”
“The Goddess of Oblivion had warned us…”
“And we didn’t listen.”
On the many layers, countless monstrous spirits roared in furious worship.
“DEVOUR HEAVEN!”
“TEAR DOWN THE SIX REALMS!”
“LONG LIVE THE GREAT BEAST!”
Yet above all else, a single name echoed throughout every layer of the Underworld.
“HOLY EMPEROR!”
“PLEASE SAVE US!”
“YOUR FOLLOWERS STILL BELIEVE!”
“HOLY EMPEROR!”
Their cries surged endlessly like waves crashing against a dying shore.
The neighboring realms witnessed the shadow as well.
Within the Greater Human Realm, also known as the Mortal Plane, the skies dimmed as the enormous silhouette eclipsed entire continents. Oceans churned violently while countless beasts fled into hiding.
Every sect, empire, and immortal land fell into chaos.
Inside a mysterious pavilion, thousands of astronomers and cultivators peered into massive golden observatories designed to view distant realms.
An old diviner suddenly vomited blood across his astrolabe.
“Don’t look at it!” he screamed. “Close the formation immediately!”
However, it was too late. Several disciples stared into the distorted silhouette of the Great Beast through the heavenly lens. Their minds shattered instantly.
One clawed his own eyes out while shrieking, “The sky is alive! THE SKY IS ALIVE!”
Another began smashing his head against the floor repeatedly.
“I can hear it breathing! I can hear the Abyss breathing!”
In a sacred sect known for there divination, elders activated forbidden divination arts to uncover the origin of the creature. The mirror they used as a medium exploded violently. An immortal ancestor staggered backward with half his face melted away.
“That thing…” he whispered in horror. “That thing shouldn’t exist.”
Across countless kingdoms, mortals collapsed in prayer.
“Supreme Heart save us!”
“Heavenly immortals protect us!”
“Monster! Monster!”
“It’s the end! It’s the end!”
Some worshiped, despaired, or completely lost their minds.
A wandering cultivator laughed while dancing naked through a burning village.
“The world is false!” he shrieked joyfully. “The Beast showed me the truth!”
Meanwhile, on a distant planet isolated from the chaos, a man laughed so hard tears streamed down his face.
“Ha ha ha ha ha~!”
The Supreme Heart leaned back atop a floating throne of crystal while clutching his stomach in amusement.
“Such a marvelous show! INTERESTING! INTERESTING! SOMEONE’S SCHEMING, AND IT’S DEFINITELY NOT ME!”
His eyes sparkled with delight rather than fear.
The mutation fascinated him.
Supreme Death had once embodied the inevitable end of all things, cold and absolute. Yet now, something had twisted that existence into a grotesque mockery overflowing with corruption and madness.
The Supreme Heart grinned wider.
“Oh, this is wonderful,” he muttered. “Who managed to corrupt Death itself?”
Far away from the cosmic chaos, hidden within a small kingdom on the Mortal Plane, a blue-haired woman quietly stared upward from the balcony of a humble inn.
The ominous silhouette filled the heavens above her.
Ding Cai’s expression turned pale.
Unlike ordinary cultivators, her enlightened perception surpassed the understanding of the current universe. Her gaze pierced beyond flesh and form, allowing her to perceive fragments of truth hidden beneath existence itself.
And what she saw horrified her.
The Great Beast was wrong.
Not merely evil.
Wrong!
It resembled a sacred law twisted backward into blasphemy. Its existence contained countless foreign alterations stitched into it by impossible means. Concepts overlapped incorrectly. Fate lines bled into one another. Entire sections of reality around the beast had become malformed.
It was as though something had forcibly rewritten Supreme Death into a different creature entirely.
Ding Cai trembled slightly.
“Master…” she whispered weakly. “Please, be safe.”
Her fingers tightened against the railing.
The further she looked, the more blood trickled from her nose.
Within fleeting glimpses hidden beneath the corruption, she saw fragments of a familiar presence buried deep inside the monstrous form. That realization terrified her even more.
Ding Cai lowered her head while wiping the blood beneath her nose.
“I’m worried…” she murmured softly. “About Master… about Senior Brother and the others…”
Her voice shook faintly.
“And the Hollowed World…”
Memories surfaced within her mind. The peaceful days beneath the trees. Her fellow disciples arguing endlessly. The laughter of her mother-figure. Home. Now, she remained stranded in a foreign realm while the universe itself spiraled toward catastrophe.
Above her, the shadow of the Great Beast continued clawing its way out of the Abyss.
On the opposite stretch of the Mortal Plane stood the Greater Hell Realm. Simply known as Hell. Unlike the Underworld, Hell did not mourn the appearance of the Great Beast.
Instead, they celebrated.
Hell was an endless realm of crimson skies, rivers of molten iron, black fortresses forged from screaming souls, and battlefields that had never known peace. Countless demons roamed its lands, thriving through slaughter, schemes, and endless conflict. Entire civilizations rose and collapsed within centuries, consumed by infernal wars that never truly ended.
Yet even among demons, ancient memories persisted.
There had once been an age when Hell and the Underworld shared the same plane of existence.
Some ancient demons still remembered it.
They remembered warring against ghost kings for territories rich in death qi. They remembered forming temporary alliances with spectral emperors before betraying them moments later. Back then, demons and ghosts had coexisted within the same cosmic ecosystem beneath the shadow of primordial chaos.
Then the universe changed.
The realms separated.
But legends remained.
And among those legends, none stood higher than the Great Beast.
As the monstrous silhouette spread across the skies of Hell, countless demons fell to their knees in fanatical worship.
“THE GREAT BEAST HAS RETURNED!”
“THE HARBINGER OF THE END!”
“LET THE SIX REALMS BURN!”
Entire cities erupted into chaos and celebration.
Demons slaughtered one another in joy.
Cathedrals of bone rang with infernal laughter while sacrificial fires stretched toward the heavens. The appearance of the Great Beast stimulated the wicked nature rooted within every demon soul.
Some wept.
Some roared.
Some tore out their own hearts as offerings.
“This is the age we were promised!”
“Blood! Slaughter! Ruin!”
“Let Heaven collapse!”
Even before the existence of the Supreme Beings, the concept of an apocalyptic destroyer had long existed among demonkind. Stories of a beast that would consume creation had spread throughout Hell since ancient times.
During the Age of Supremacy, however, those stories gained shape.
A name.
A form.
Perhaps inspired by myths from another world.
Yet the essence remained true to Hell itself.
The seven heads represented the seven sins.
Pride.
Envy.
Greed.
Gluttony.
Wrath.
Sloth.
Lust.
And those sins corresponded directly to the Seven Princes of Hell.
At the heart of Hell, within a colossal palace floating above an ocean of lava, the Seven Princes gathered around an enormous banquet table crafted from divine skeletons.
They drank molten wine while laughing at the shadow stretching across the sky.
“What odds do we have on the Four Horsemen surviving this catastrophe?” asked the Prince of Greed while casually chewing gemstones between his teeth.
The Prince of Wrath barked out a savage laugh.
“Those bastards always acted like they were invincible!”
“I give War three days before someone tears his arms off,” remarked the Prince of Sloth lazily from atop a pile of cushions.
“Three days?” scoffed the Prince of Pride. “That’s generous.”
The Prince of Lust smirked while swirling crimson liquid inside her goblet.
“Death might survive. He’s the strongest among them, after all.”
“Not if the Great Beast devours him first,” replied the Prince of Gluttony before devouring an entire roasted dragon whole. “Facsinating, isn’t it? I wonder how that Great Beast was created? I’d love to raise one for myself. Might be a good source of sustenance.”
Laughter erupted throughout the banquet hall.
One prince leaned back thoughtfully.
“Do you think our creator will intervene?”
At those words, the room quieted slightly.
The Prince of Envy clicked his tongue.
“The Supreme Taboo?” he said dismissively. “Probably not interested.”
“True enough.”
“That old monster only cares about entertaining himself.”
The conversation quickly shifted again.
“I heard rumors about that rising powerhouse,” one prince remarked. “The one connected to the Hollowed World.”
Another snorted.
“The Holy Emperor’s faction?”
“Mm.”
The Prince of Wrath grinned viciously.
“So, who’s taking bets on whether they survive?”
“Not me.”
“They already fought one impossible war… against War himself. There forces should’ve been wildly unprepared for the calamity that roused from the Abyss. They’re done for. I say they got a few decades, tops, if they ran away.”
“Yes, I agree,” muttered the Prince of Pride while staring at the Great Beast overhead. “But this is different. After all, we might end up the next feed for that calamitous monster. We can’t have that now, can’t we?”
Far away from the infernal banquet halls, deep within a wasteland littered with corpses, a lone man quietly sat atop a mound of dead demons.
Purple flames crackled around him.
The fires consumed flesh, bone, and soul alike, reducing the demon carcasses into drifting ash. The man calmly cleaned his sword while the silhouette of the Great Beast loomed overhead.
His beard had grown longer over the years.
His expression carried exhaustion that could not easily be hidden.
Lu Gao.
One of the Six Disciples of the Holy Emperor.
Like the others, he had been displaced into the Greater Universe after the Hollowed World War. Unlike Ding Cai, however, Lu Gao had ended up in Hell itself.
And Hell had hunted him relentlessly ever since.
The reason was simple.
He was human.
Or at least, that was what the demons believed.
A loud roar echoed across the wasteland.
Moments later, countless demons descended from the skies and surrounded him from every direction.
“We found him!”
“Hahaha! The bounty’s finally ours!”
“Celebrate the Great Beast with human blood!”
The demons cackled greedily while surrounding the corpse pile.
One particularly massive demon pointed at Lu Gao’s body.
“I’m taking his head!”
“Bullshit! I want the heart!”
“Can I have the liver?”
“The wings are mine if he grows any!”
“I heard human bones sell for fortunes!”
Another demon sneered.
“We should turn him over alive. The reward triples if he’s screaming.”
The surrounding demons burst into laughter.
One stepped forward while resting a cleaver across his shoulder.
“Human,” he mocked, “any last words?”
Lu Gao slowly lifted his gaze.
“I think you are mistaken about something,” he said calmly. “I’m not really human.”
Purple flames suddenly exploded around him.
“In fact,” Lu Gao continued softly, “I stopped being one a long time ago.”
Black horns burst upward through his hair.
At the same time, six enormous black feathered wings erupted from his back, unfurling through the infernal flames like manifestations of darkness itself. The surrounding demons froze. Lu Gao’s eyes glowed faintly purple. He rose from the pile of corpses while purple fire wrapped around his sword.
“I’m as much a demon as the rest of you.”
The demons stared in shock.
“A fallen demon?!”
“No—that aura—”
“What the hell is he?!”
Before they could react further, Lu Gao vanished.
A demon suddenly felt something cold brush against his neck, and then his head slid from his shoulders. Purple flames instantly cauterized the stump to hinder any form of regeneration, before consuming the corpse entirely.
The others recoiled in horror.
“When did he—?!”
“Behind you!”
“MOVE!”
Lu Gao blurred through the battlefield like a streak of violet lightning.
One slash.
Two.
Ten.
Heads flew into the air almost simultaneously. Purple infernal flames erupted across the wasteland, incinerating bodies before they even touched the ground. The massacre ended within seconds. Ash drifted silently through the burning landscape.
Lu Gao stood alone amidst the remains.
Slowly, he raised his eyes toward the monstrous silhouette clawing its way out of the Abyss.
For the first time since the chaos began, uncertainty appeared within his expression.
“I hope Master’s doing okay…” he muttered quietly.
The Greater Hell Realm and the Greater Human Realm stood closest to the disturbance surrounding the Abyss and the Underworld. Because of that proximity, their inhabitants had directly witnessed the horrifying silhouette of the Great Beast stretching across reality itself.
The remaining realms, however, did not see the creature clearly.
What they saw instead was far worse in another way.
An omen.
Across the Greater Animal Realm, enormous black clouds spread across the horizon despite the absence of storms. Entire forests fell silent as ancient beasts retreated into hiding. Rivers stopped flowing naturally, while countless lesser creatures instinctively prostrated themselves toward the distant darkness.
A colossal serpent coiled around a mountain peak slowly opened its eyes.
The ancient beast had lived since before the Age of Supremacy.
Its pupils narrowed toward the black horizon.
“A turbulent age is coming,” it hissed quietly. “One unlike any this universe has endured before.”
Nearby, a golden-winged avian descended from the heavens and landed atop a cliff.
“The bloodlines are restless,” the avian remarked solemnly. “Even the ancient ancestors sleeping beneath the earth have begun stirring.”
Far beneath the oceans of the Animal Realm, an enormous turtle carrying an island upon its back released a deep sigh.
“The heavens are unstable,” it rumbled. “The laws themselves tremble.”
Elsewhere, within the Greater Asura Realm, endless battlefields stretched beneath crimson skies. The Asuras were a race born for warfare. Conflict was their culture. Slaughter was their language. Yet even they felt unease.
Countless armies paused their battles as the dark clouds gathered above distant horizons. Weapons hummed violently while blood-soaked earth cracked beneath unstable spiritual pressure.
Inside a fortress built from the bones of ancient gods, an Asura warlord stared toward the sky while gripping his spear tightly.
“This pressure…” he muttered. “Something has changed.”
Beside him, a scarred woman covered in crimson armor frowned deeply.
“I’ve lived through twelve realm wars,” she said. “I’ve seen heavenly tribulations capable of shattering entire star systems.”
Her expression darkened.
“But this…?”
She slowly shook her head.
“This feels like the beginning of extinction.”
In the central battle coliseum of the realm, countless Asura cultivators gathered while tensions spread like wildfire.
One battle maniac grinned excitedly despite the ominous atmosphere.
“Hah! Good!”
He slammed his fist against his chest.
“A peaceful era breeds weakness! Let chaos come!”
Another Asura cultivator stared at the distant darkness with narrowed eyes.
“You fool,” he said coldly. “This isn’t ordinary chaos.”
His voice lowered slightly.
“This is the kind of calamity that wipes entire realms from existence.”
Even the war-loving Asuras gradually fell silent after hearing those words.
High above the lower realms stood the Greater Heaven Realm.
The land of immortals.
The realm closest to the heavenly laws themselves.
Massive immortal palaces floated among endless clouds while rivers of spiritual essence flowed across the skies like streams of light. Divine beasts soared through celestial gardens, and stars rotated peacefully around ancient immortal sects.
Or at least, they once had.
Now, black clouds stained the farthest horizons of Heaven.
Immortal bells rang endlessly throughout countless sects.
Warning formations activated one after another. Within an incredible palace of grandeur and opulence, immortals gathered before a gigantic mirror capable of observing the universe itself. Yet the mirror only showed darkness.
An old immortal slowly stroked his beard.
“The heavenly calculations have become distorted.”
Another elder frowned deeply.
“Can you determine the source?”
“No.”
The old immortal’s expression grew solemn.
“Every divination path ends in corruption.”
At those words, the surrounding immortals exchanged uneasy glances.
One young heavenly genius clenched his fists.
“Could this be another Supreme entering the stage?”
“No,” replied an ancient immortal quietly.
His gaze remained fixed upon the distant storm clouds.
“Even the birth of a Supreme would not cause the heavenly laws themselves to recoil.”
Silence followed.
Far away, atop a lonely heavenly mountain, a blond swordsman sat beneath a tree overlooking the darkened horizon. Sword intent flowed around him like invisible tides. After a long moment, he opened his eyes.
“A new era begins,” he murmured.
Then his expression hardened slightly.
“And it will drown countless lives.”
Throughout the Greater Universe, countless experts arrived at the same conclusion.
Something catastrophic had awakened.
And whether they saw the Great Beast directly or merely witnessed the ominous clouds spreading across reality, every powerful existence understood one thing clearly.
The age of peace had ended.