The golden glare of the Taiyi Divine Thunder had barely dissolved into the blue stratosphere before the entire eastern sky collapsed into a choking, unnatural gloom.
It didn’t dim gradually like an autumn dusk. Rather, the heavens slammed shut like the lid of a black glass sarcophagus, cutting off the golden sunbeams in a single heartbeat. Across three full provinces—spanning ten thousand li of craggy mountain ranges, winding river basins, and mortal agricultural valleys—the azure canopy was wiped clean of sunlight, replaced by a waving ceiling of deep-sea violet cloud-flesh.
This was not a standard thunderstorm gathering moisture from the sea. It was the full, total gathering of the Ninth-Tier Purple Total ruin Sky-trial. The total apex of heavenly judgment recorded in ancient scriptures.
High above the Grand Defile, the swirling vortex didn’t merely drift. It tightened.
Having seen its twin solar lances swallowed and transmuted into what felt suspiciously like warm caramel, the Heavenly Dao seemed to abandon all ordinary restraint. The outer edges of the ten-thousand-li cloud mantle, which had stretched past distant sect borders, began to fold inward at faster-than-sound speed. Billions of tons of sky moisture and cosmic Yang-star-fire were pulled toward the center of the eastern sky. It was drawn by a terrifying sky gravity well that caused mountain peaks eighty leagues away to groan under sudden sky squeezing.
