Chapter 426 - 425: The Barrier Realm’s Last Hope, Bai Qingyue’s Fortune Defies the Heavens

Ku Ming stood amidst the pulverized jade, his golden Buddhist aura reduced to a faint, flickering halo. He looked from the battered faces of the three Emperors to Lin Yuan and Bai Qingyue, observing the exhaustion in their eyes.

A grim silence had settled over the ruined Grand Court. Above them, the fractured heavens continued to tremble, and every distant rumble reminded them that the destruction of the Nine Provinces was still unfolding.

"We cannot remain here, waiting for the sky to fall entirely," Ku Ming stated, his voice cutting through the despair-laden air. The monk clasped his prayer beads, his golden eyes burning with sudden clarity.

Although his aura had weakened considerably, his expression was unusually resolute, as if the catastrophe before them had finally forced him to abandon every remaining doubt. "The Nine Provinces are crippled, and the dimensional walls have flattened. We must enter the Barrier Realm!"

Emperor Beiming slowly turned his heavy head toward the monk. His massive Black Tortoise armor was cracked across the chest, its once magnificent patterns obscured by soot and dried blood.

The sovereign’s eyes were bloodshot, and his breathing remained uneven after the battle. Yet his pride still resisted the idea of abandoning what remained of his territory.

"The Barrier Realm?" Beiming repeated, his voice a cynical, exhausted rasp. He coughed harshly, and the movement made several broken pieces of armor shift against one another.

"Let me understand this, monk of the West. You suggest that we abandon the last defensible position in the Nine Provinces and walk into a chaotic dimension that is actively merging with both the Hollow Beyond and our own world. What exactly do you expect us to accomplish there?"

"Find a treasure capable of turning the tides," Ku Ming answered without hesitation. His gaze shifted briefly toward Bai Qingyue before returning to the three sovereigns. "At this point, we must rely on Lady Bai’s fortune."

For a moment, none of the Emperors spoke. Their expressions revealed a mixture of disbelief and exhaustion.

The proposal sounded less like a military strategy and more like a desperate prayer offered by someone who had run out of reasonable choices. Yet the monk’s calmness made it difficult to dismiss him outright.

Emperor Nanheng leaned heavily on her scorched Vermilion Bird fan, staring at Ku Ming as though he had finally lost his mind to the demonic miasma. The fan’s feathers had once carried the blazing authority of an ancient divine bird.

Several were now broken, and the remaining flames barely flickered along its damaged edges.

"Are you joking?" Nanheng demanded, her voice sharp with incredulous frustration. "You want us to wander into a dimensional graveyard spanning millions of miles, a place now flooding with demons, and simply hope to stumble upon a mythical treasure? One that might not even exist, let alone possess enough power to help us fight a Quasi Demon Emperor?"

She gestured toward the bleeding rift that scarred the sky. Through the enormous fracture, strange lights flashed against the bruised-purple darkness, while distant spatial currents dragged fragments of shattered structures toward the Hollow Beyond.

Nanheng had spent countless years protecting the Nine Provinces. The sight of their foundations being torn apart filled her with a fury that her injuries could not suppress.

"We are facing a being who can pluck oceans from the Nine Provinces!" she continued. "His power has already exceeded everything we believed possible. And your grand strategy is to go scavenging because you think this girl’s luck might lead us to a miracle?"

Ku Ming did not flinch beneath the Emperor’s furious glare. He stood straight, his red skin radiating a calm conviction that seemed almost out of place amid the destruction.

His prayer beads moved slowly between his fingers, each bead carrying a faint golden glimmer as he gathered his thoughts.

"It is not an off chance, Emperor Nanheng," he replied. "I have witnessed what her fortune can accomplish. It is not ordinary probability, nor is it merely a favorable coincidence. Her fortune responds to the needs of the moment in ways that ordinary cultivators cannot comprehend."

He continued, "When the Exotic Realm ruptured, the rarest Dao Fish in the sky was drawn straight toward her without any deliberate search on her part. A thief snatched it away at the last instant, but the heavens had still chosen her."

Nanheng’s expression tightened, but she did not immediately interrupt. She had witnessed the extraordinary events surrounding Bai Qingyue.

Even in her current condition, she could not deny that the woman’s fortune had repeatedly produced results that seemed impossible to predict.

Ku Ming continued, "If we remain here, we are simply waiting for the next blow to arrive. The Grand Court has fallen, and the Nine Provinces can no longer support our full cultivation. The Demon Emperor who just emerged is already taking control of the foundational Wonders."

"We cannot defeat him by relying on the strength we possessed before this catastrophe. We need an opportunity he has not anticipated."

He turned toward Emperor Tianxu, who had remained silent throughout the exchange. Unlike Nanheng, Tianxu did not appear offended by the proposal.

His gaze rested on Bai Qingyue, and the complicated expression in his eyes suggested that he was considering something far more important than the immediate danger.

"The Cultivation Council’s elders have already sacrificed themselves to create an opportunity for your Supreme Grand Elder," Ku Ming said. "If the elder succeeds in breaking through, you three Emperors will need to protect him and activate the Supreme Ancestor’s Array. That leaves Benefactor Lin, Lady Bai, and me to search for another means of resisting the invasion."

He paused, allowing the three sovereigns to consider the division of responsibility. "We should not all gamble our remaining strength on the same plan. You three hold the line and prepare the array. Benefactor Lin, Lady Bai, and I will enter the Barrier Realm, search for a suitable treasure, and return as soon as we discover something that can be used against the Demon Emperor."

Beiming frowned deeply. "You speak as though the Barrier Realm is a peaceful treasure vault. Even before the dimensional walls collapsed, its spatial turbulence was dangerous enough to destroy ordinary Soul Transformation cultivators."

"Now its boundaries have become unstable, and the Hollow Beyond is connected to it. How can three people hope to search such a place without being swallowed by the chaos?"

"Because the rules have changed," Ku Ming answered. "The same collapse that makes the Barrier Realm dangerous has also removed the restrictions that once separated its laws from those of the Nine Provinces."

The monk lifted his hand and pointed toward the fractured heavens. Thin strands of golden light emerged from his fingertips, spreading into a simple diagram that depicted three overlapping dimensions.

The image trembled as he guided the strands into alignment. It illustrated how the former boundaries had been torn apart and compressed into a single, unstable continuum.

"The Nine Provinces, the Barrier Realm, and the Hollow Beyond were once separated by dimensional walls," Ku Ming explained. "Those walls were not ordinary barriers. They maintained the distinction between different layers of existence, preventing the laws of one dimension from freely influencing another."

"The Nine Heavens Ward once reinforced that separation, but its destruction and the uprooting of the Nine Wonders have caused the entire structure to collapse."

The golden diagram shifted, and the three separate layers merged into a single image. Their boundaries remained visible as faint scars, but the barriers that had once made passage difficult were gone.

"The Barrier Realm is a transitional dimension," Ku Ming continued. "Its Dao laws were preserved independently of the terrestrial anchors that governed the Nine Provinces. Although its spatial structure has become unstable, its laws remain far more complete than those currently sustaining the Nine Provinces."

"Once we cross the threshold, the restrictions imposed by the broken laws will no longer bind our cultivation in the same way."

Lin Yuan had been examining the dimensional overlay through the residual perception of his suppressed Dao Fruit. He nodded slowly.

He had already reached a similar conclusion, but hearing Ku Ming explain it helped him identify the most important tactical advantage. Their present weakness was not simply the result of injuries. The Nine Provinces themselves had become incapable of supporting the power they possessed.

"The monk’s reasoning is sound," Lin Yuan declared, his deep purple eyes meeting Tianxu’s gaze. "Our cultivation has been forcibly compressed because the laws of the Nine Provinces can no longer sustain our full strength."

"If we remain here, even our most powerful techniques will be limited by the damaged structure of the world. We cannot fight a war against the Demon Emperor with our meridians and Dao laws constrained."

He glanced toward the distant rift, where a pulse of black light briefly illuminated the broken sky. His expression remained calm, but his thoughts were already moving through several possible outcomes.

If the dimensional collapse continued, the Demon Emperor would gain access to more of the Nine Provinces’ foundational resources. The human cultivators would lose the very conditions required to oppose him.

"We need our full strength, and we need variables the Demon Emperor has not accounted for," Lin Yuan concluded. "We will enter the Barrier Realm."

Bai Qingyue stepped gracefully to his side. Her black hair moved gently in the turbulent wind, and the dormant Sun Shooting Bow rested in her grasp like a piece of dark star-iron.

Although the artifact had been suppressed during the earlier catastrophe, she could still feel its faint connection to the laws that had once governed it.

"If my fortune can buy this world even a sliver of hope, I will walk into the abyss itself," she said. Her voice was gentle, but there was no hesitation in it. "We have already seen what happens when everyone waits for a miracle to come to them. If there is a chance to find one, we should go and search for it."