Chapter 130: Mortal Peril

However, when the blood-colored light barrier rose, none of the cultivators, including Han Yi, fled.

Within the Cave Heaven World, they possessed immortality. Why retreat and abandon their chance to seize the Jade Capital Grand Void Token?

The thirty-odd Legendary cultivators in the ruins scattered the instant they heard the heartbeat.

Though fearless, they had no intention of becoming stepping stones for others. With the Jade Capital Grand Void Token about to materialize, being eliminated at this crucial moment would be a bitter regret.

Boom!

The ruins beneath the Demon Emperor's corpse suddenly exploded upward, creating a vertical passage. The steady heartbeat grew deafeningly clear.

Thud... thud... thud!

A member of the Demon Race emerged from the collapsing rubble.

The demon's face was ancient and weathered, yet his towering height dwarfed any Han Yi had ever seen—a staggering ten meters tall. Standing upright, he loomed over the cultivators like a colossal Demon God whose head touched the heavens and feet anchored the land.

Upon emerging, the demon didn't glance at the crowd. Instead, he tilted his head skyward, grinned widely, and began to chuckle softly. The chuckle escalated into a full-throated laugh, then into a maniacal roar.

At first, the cultivators paid little attention. But as the demon's laughter grew more violent, a terrifying aura surged forth. The cultivators froze in horror, even the Legendary Qi Refining experts who had retreated hundreds of meters paled.

"Critical State?"

"Impossible! There shouldn't be any Foreign Races in the True Dawn Grand Void Heaven that have reached the Critical State."

A young cultivator stood in the void, seemingly without wielding any magic artifacts. Upon recognizing the Demon Race entity, he gasped in shock, his face not merely pale but visibly frightened.

"Senior Brother, what exactly do you mean by Critical State?" The Holy Maiden of Jade Capital Mountain, dragging her sword behind her, asked from six meters away.

The young man, addressed as Senior Brother, took a deep breath and swiftly explained in a grave tone: "The Critical State represents the pinnacle of power allowed by this world's laws. It's just one step away from breaking through those very laws. If a Foreign Race manages to breach this limit, it can shatter the barrier between worlds and escape this realm."

"Theoretically, the Critical State still exists. But three thousand years ago, our Ancestral Master further suppressed it. Now, the maximum height for a Demon Race's Demonic Body in this world isn't the ten meters of the Critical State, but nine."

"That's because the Critical State is too dangerous. A Foreign Race might suddenly use external means to bypass the rule restrictions and exceed ten meters. Once they do, the world's laws would no longer restrain them, plunging the True Dawn Grand Void Heaven into extreme peril. As for the specific nature of that danger, Ancestral Master never elaborated."

Though the young cultivator's voice wasn't loud, everyone in the plaza heard him clearly. Their initial awe at the ten-meter-tall demon gave way to grim resolve, but no fear.

"Little whelp, you actually know about the critical state?"

"But no matter what you know, all of you... must die!"

Before the word "die" could fully escape the demon's lips, the terrifying ten-meter-tall being vanished from its spot and reappeared instantly before the young cultivator, its fist already hurtling forward.

Its aged visage belied its peerless power.

Time seemed to freeze. Han Yi, standing at the far end of the plaza, found no words to describe the punch.

Less than a tenth of a kshana had passed.

He merely saw the newly materialized ten-meter demon move—no, its speed was so great that it seemed to teleport before his eyes. The demon instantly materialized before the senior brother of Jade Capital Mountain's Qi Refining Stage and unleashed its fist.

The space across the entire plaza shuddered violently.

Power compressed to its absolute limit erupted from the demon's fist, radiating outward in a fan-shaped blast.

The young cultivator's body erupted in frantic light, but the violent force engulfed, devoured, and extinguished it.

Boom! Only the swordswoman, slightly farther away, was sent flying by the shockwave. The three Legendary Qi Refining cultivators, positioned even farther away, were struck dumb with horror.

Behind the young cultivator from Jade Capital Mountain, over a thousand meters away, stood more than seventy Peak Qi Refining Stage cultivators along the edge of the plaza. They watched in stunned silence as the berserk force instantly traversed the distance, sweeping past them with terrifying speed.

Han Yi, positioned at the plaza's edge behind the Demon Race, suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of dread surge into his heart, instantly reaching its peak.

He had experienced this terror once before, during his time with the Cang Tribe of the Black Demon Race. But this time was different. Back then, the dread had struck only at the brink of death, limiting its intensity.

Now, he was witnessing the Demon God personally unleash a single punch that carved a kilometer-wide swath of emptiness. Just a fraction of a kshana earlier, three Legendary Qi Refining cultivators and over seventy Peak Qi Refining Stage experts had stood within that very space.

Han Yi struggled to find words to describe it. "Terrifying" simply fell short of capturing the full horror of that single punch.

"Hahaha, you're all going to die!"

"Let me show you how to truly fear!"

"This burial shroud comes from the dawn of time, a primordial Innate Spiritual Treasure forged by an Innate Sacred being when this Cave Heaven World was first born. It can sever the connection between heaven and earth—truly isolate heaven and earth!"

"The so-called 'isolation of heaven and earth' means that the space within this shroud is governed by entirely different cosmic laws than the outside world. Here, when I kill you, your Divine Souls will belong to me."

"They won't return to that so-called Grand Void Illusionary Realm you speak of."

"Fear... yes, precisely! I can smell your terror."

"But it's not enough. The more deathly terror you feel, the better. Only through your Divine Souls and flesh can I forge my path to becoming a Demon God."

"By slaughtering you and breaking through the critical state you imposed, I can escape this realm and ascend to the myriad worlds. Then, unbound by restrictions, the Demonic Path will flow unobstructed."

"I have waited over a thousand years for this moment."

As if to truly instill the terror of death in the human cultivators trapped in the cages, the demon revealed the truth of this place—the elaborate conspiracy he had meticulously planned for countless years.

Having spoken, the ten-meter-tall, ancient demon ceased his maniacal laughter and regained his composure. His earlier outburst had been the release of millennia of suppressed emotion.

Now that this useless sentimentality was purged, it was time to sit back and crush these insects, paving his path to becoming a Demon God.

At that moment, after the Demon Race warrior finished speaking, the surviving cultivators turned to look at the fan-shaped area devastated by his punch. It was thickly stained with blood, and some corpses near the edges remained partially intact, having avoided complete annihilation.

Normally, when cultivators died in the Cave Heaven World, their True Ascension Marks would activate, their Grand Void Bodies would return to the Grand Void Illusionary Realm, and no corpses would remain.

The presence of these corpses confirmed the demon's claim: death here was final. The realization that they would not be resurrected in the Grand Void Illusionary Realm sent the cultivators into a panic.

Hundreds of Peak Qi Refining cultivators turned to flee, only to be blocked by a blood-colored barrier. No matter how fiercely they attacked, even by detonating their magic artifacts, the barrier remained unshaken.

Legendary Qi Refining cultivators fared no better, hurling their top-grade magic artifacts against the barrier with the same futile result. The blood-colored screen remained flawless, not even a scratch marking its surface.

The aged demon who had unleashed the punch, now standing where the young cultivator had been, showed no haste in finishing them off. He savored the thickening atmosphere of terror, believing it would increase his chances of breaking through.

"Join forces! Kill him!" one of the four surviving cultivators from Jade Capital Mountain hissed, murderous intent burning in his eyes.