230: Chapter 230 The Heavenly Dao Descends! She's actually a woman?!

[Kid! Charge toward the sky! That aura is right in the center of the rift!]

The strange mouth on the cover of the sacrifice notebook had gone mad, its fangs clattering together.

Chen Du did not hesitate.

His Shadow Wings snapped open!

The ten-meter wingspan shattered the deck beneath his feet, catapulting him into the sky!

At the same instant, he reached out his hand.

Xia Mo grabbed it firmly.

Their fingers locked tight!

Swiftwind Wings blossomed behind the girl's back!

The translucent wind wings and the pitch-black Shadow Wings unfolded together, one black and one white, tearing through the airflow once more.

A sonic boom exploded!

The two were like two reverse-shooting meteors, plunging straight toward the hole in the sky above that had been torn open by the golden pillar of light.

On the deck of No. 0819.

Everyone looked up.

The gale poured down like crazy; Lin Keke gripped the railing, her hair plastered all over her face.

She opened her mouth and shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Captain, go for it—!"

Tang Ran gripped the scythe of calamity, gritting her teeth in silence.

She only stared at the two spots of light in the sky that were getting smaller and smaller, her fists tightening and loosening, loosening and tightening again.

An Nuonuo squatted beneath the mast, her hands pressed together and her eyes closed.

It was impossible to tell if she was praying or muttering to herself.

...

The rift was close.

A heatwave from the edge of the golden pillar of light hit him in the face, and Chen Du narrowed his eyes.

His Shadow Wings sizzled and smoked in the high temperature.

He gritted his teeth and endured, pulling Xia Mo in front of him and using his wings to block the fiercest wave of the scorching heat.

"Hold on tight."

Xia Mo didn't waste words, wrapping her arms around his waist.

The two plunged headfirst into the rift.

Blinding golden light swept over them, and Chen Du instinctively closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them again,

He was stunned.

Above the rift, it wasn't the void.

It was a boundless golden ocean.

Densely packed, overlapping golden characters surged like ocean waves.

It stretched from beneath his feet to the end of his vision; there was no sky, no ground, no reference points at all.

Every direction was a flowing stream of golden data.

The sensation of stepping on it was cold and hard, like stepping on sheets of frozen glass.

With every step, a faint hum resonated from beneath his feet.

Xia Mo's hand tightened around her sword hilt, her voice very low.

"Is this... the interior of the Heavenly Dao?"

Chen Du didn't answer.

Because his gaze was already fixed on the thing ahead.

In the very center of the ocean of code,

A humanoid figure dozens of meters tall was slowly opening its eyes.

Its entire body was composed of flowing golden runes.

A slender waistline, a long neck, and long hair that fell to the knees.

Every strand of hair was a chain of rules currently in calculation, with miniature gears and points of light moving through the tresses.

The facial features were refined to an unrealistic degree.

But there was no warmth.

No breath.

This was the Heavenly Dao?!

It actually took the form of a woman.

In Chen Du's mind, Li Yaozhi's voice from before his departure suddenly rang out—

"You will encounter a woman. The cards show that the entanglement between you and her is more complex than that of enemies."

He bit the tip of his tongue.

"...The divination was really damn accurate."

The Avatar of the Heavenly Dao lowered her gaze.

Those pupils, condensed from pure data, fell upon Chen Du.

There was no curiosity, no anger.

Only the absolute indifference of a rule-executor confirming the coordinates of its prey.

She spoke.

Tens of millions of data streams read aloud simultaneously, layered together, emotionless yet carrying a weight that crushed everything.

"Usurper, Captain of No. 0819... carrying the residual authority of the Primal God."

"Judgment... immediate erasure!"

As the words fell,

The entire golden ocean rose in a monstrous wave!

Countless golden chains shot out from the tide of code!

Each one was as thick as an adult's arm, with dense 'Judgment' inscriptions carved on the links, trailing blinding flames at their ends.

Ten, thirty...

Hundreds of them!

They surged from all directions at once!

Chen Du's Shadow Wings flapped violently, his body diving rapidly to dodge the first wave.

But the chains were too many and too dense.

Three golden chains hit him simultaneously!

Left arm! Right leg! Waist!

The golden power of rules was like boiling water poured onto his skin; his Shadow Armor emitted a piercing hiss at the points of contact.

Pieces began to peel off.

Pain.

It wasn't ordinary physical pain.

It was the rules forcibly negating his existence.

Every chain was telling him the same thing—'You should not be alive.'

"Chen Du!"

Xia Mo drew her blade.

The [Famous Blade · Kanzé Masamune] drew an ice-blue arc of light, severing the chain wrapped around Chen Du's waist.

Chen Du gritted his teeth and tore off the chain on his left arm.

Shadow Power and golden rules collided head-on, splashing a sky full of interlaced black and gold sparks.

He took a breath.

"Xia Mo! If we can win, we fight; if we can't... then we fight anyway!"

At that very moment,

The sacrifice notebook went completely out of control.

The strange mouth on the cover opened to its limit, and between its fangs, a black hole half a meter in diameter opened up.

The power of devouring began to gush out from the depths of the notebook!

The fragments of golden chains severed by Xia Mo, the rule debris torn off by Chen Du, and even the code characters scattered during the battle,

Everything was sucked in by an irresistible gravitational force!

The strange mouth let out a roar of extreme satisfaction.

[Jie jie jie jie jie!! Delicious!! This is food at the level of the Primal God!!]

Swallow one piece.

A layer of dark-gold light armor condensed on Chen Du's body.

Swallow another piece.

A second layer stacked on top.

The moment the third fragment entered the mouth, the armor formed over his chest, perfectly merging with the Shadow Power inside him!

Chen Du looked down at himself.

Three layers of Dark-Gold Armor covered his torso and limbs, with eerie blue residual rule light flowing at the seams.

His strength was skyrocketing.

Not just a little, it was a leap across stages.

A change appeared on the face of the Avatar of the Heavenly Dao.

It wasn't fear.

It was confusion.

Those pupils made of data narrowed slightly, and her gaze moved from Chen Du to the position of his mind.

It was as if she could see that ancient notebook!

"The parasite on you..."

A hint of uncertainty entered her synthesized voice.

"It's the Tyrant's thing... No! It doesn't belong to the Tyrant..."

Chen Du's lips curled into a grin.

"Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about!"

Shadow Power converged in his right fist, the strength surging after devouring the code fragments making his knuckles crackle.

"The things on me are none of your business!"

Step.

A giant shadow fist formed!

Carrying a terrifying wave of interlaced black and gold, he threw a punch at the Avatar of the Heavenly Dao!

Where the fist wind passed, the ocean of code was forcibly plowed open, creating a deep trench!

Golden data fragments splashed like spray and were all swallowed by the wide-open mouth of the notebook.

The Avatar of the Heavenly Dao sidestepped.

The fist wind grazed her side, tearing a corner of her long code dress that hung down like a skirt.

Golden fragments drifted in the void like shredded starlight.

She glanced down at her damaged hem.

Then she looked up and focused on Chen Du once more.

Below on the deck of No. 0819,

Someone had used some kind of detection item to synchronize the image of the sky rift to the world channel.

The image quality was coarse and shook violently.

The channel crashed.

Restarted.

Crashed again.

After the third restart, the message stream poured in like a flood.

[Am I fucking dreaming? Look at the clouds in the sky, is someone actually fighting the Heavenly Dao?!]

[For real? ...Regardless, I can brag about these images for a lifetime.]

[Quick, look below! It's No. 0819!]

[Holy shit! The limit of humanity is right here... God Du is no longer human!]

God Du.

These two words blew up the channel for the fourth time.

But this time, no one used a joking tone anymore.

Everyone was forwarding the same sentence in silence—[Someone is throwing a punch at the Heavenly Dao for us.]

...

In the center of the ocean of code.

The Avatar of the Heavenly Dao withdrew her attack.

The golden chains receded like a tide, and the ocean of code returned to tranquility.

Chen Du stood where he was, two of his three layers of Dark-Gold Armor shattered, and his left Shadow Wing broken in half.

His breathing was heavy and ragged.

But he was standing.

Xia Mo landed half a step behind him, her famous blade held horizontally in front of her, ice-blue energy spreading along the blade to her fingertips.

The Avatar of the Heavenly Dao floated above the ocean of code, her dozens-of-meters-tall golden body slowly drawing inward.

She did not pursue.

She just stood there quietly.

Then she lowered her head.

For the first time, she looked directly at Chen Du.

In those eyes made of pure data, a very subtle light suddenly emerged.

She spoke again.

This time, the voice had changed.

It was no longer the cold synthesized voice of millions of data streams layered together.

It was the voice of a woman.

"You... are just as foolish as that person."

Chen Du's heart skipped a beat.

This tone?

It didn't sound like she was talking about an enemy she had personally strangled.

It sounded more like—

Someone she had once deeply loved.

The ocean of code came to a sudden standstill.

Chen Du stared into the eyes of the Avatar of the Heavenly Dao, his mouth opening slightly and then closing again.

He suddenly remembered the image at the very end of the mural.

The chains of the golden giant serpent piercing through the body of the shadow giant.

The Tyrant's body was crumbling.

But there was a detail on the mural he had overlooked at the moment the serpent pierced the Tyrant.

In the serpent's eyes, what flowed was not golden code.

It was tears!!!