Old Man Extermination
Old Man Extermination is an ancient cultivator who survives the destruction of worlds by turning their strongest lives into offerings. He first exists in the narrative as a legend: at each aeon's end, he is said to reopen reincarnation, write selected beings into an undying ballad, and carry them beyond destruction on a Heavenly Ship. The promise is real enough that ancient beings surrender treasures and bodies for a place in it, yet its hidden purpose is bound to his bargain with Xuan Zang. He cultivates candidates from each Harmonious Morus Alba, then designates one as the offering through which he hopes to advance and eventually take revenge. (Chapters 929–930, 1318–1319, 1331, 1336, 1371–1376)
His conflict with Su Ming turns a remote myth into one of the final aeon's central antagonists. Both men are willing to oppose the universe's appointed fate, but their answers are opposites: Extermination preserves himself by sacrificing one world after another, while Su Ming finally sacrifices his own future to restore other lives. Old Man Extermination loses their direct confrontation and later their contest of Dao, yet survives into the remade universe. Bound by the promise that follows his defeat, he ends the novel crossing the vastness to find Bald Crane and return it home. (Chapters 1374–1376, 1461, 1480–1481)
Biography
Divine Essence and Ecang
Old Man Extermination is introduced through the fear and hope attached to his ballad. A giant in Divine Essence Star Ocean recognizes both Ecang and the presence of the Seed of Life Extermination within Su Ming. He has offered treasures to Extermination tens of thousands of times without being selected, so the reactivated Seed makes him kneel to Su Ming as the apparent herald of a new composition. According to this inherited account, nine lives and four races received places in an earlier ballad, gaining passage through the aeon's destruction rather than ordinary immortality within it. (Chapters 929–930)
Ecang's history demonstrates the system's material cost. It ambushed the Malicious Eye at its weakest and offered the creature's original body so that Extermination would write Ecang into the ballad. The Bald Crane was also counted among the named lives. From these fragments Su Ming initially concludes that Extermination came as Dark Dawn's emissary and that the Bald Crane's betrayal may have caused his death. These are Su Ming's early inferences, not the final truth: Extermination is alive, and his origin lies beyond the local conflict between Dark Dawn and Saint Defier. (Chapters 936–937, 985)
The Seed makes Su Ming appear to be Extermination's successor or substitute. Visions carried within it show an old man on an immense ship receiving offerings and recognizing the structural flaw in each life with a gesture. When Su Ming's Ecang power and Seed interact, he begins reproducing that capacity to disassemble living structures. Thus Extermination influences Su Ming long before meeting him, both as a feared predecessor and as a model of analytical power that Su Ming will eventually turn against its source. (Chapters 930, 1011, 1032)
The Fifth Furnace and Morning Dao
Information surrounding the Fifth Furnace and Morning Dao expands the legend without yet revealing its architect. Abyss Builder tradition forbids Possessing any of the nine great lives in the ballad, making Su Ming's Possession of part of Ecang an apparent violation. Under pressure, the Seed projects the form of a white-robed Old Man Extermination around Su Ming and lets him dismantle a mask that had forced him into the role of Envoy of Cessation. The opposing presence recognizes him as “the Extermination of this generation,” but this is borrowed inheritance expressed through the Seed, not proof that Su Ming permanently becomes Old Man Extermination. (Chapters 1008–1011, 1032)
Su Ming later speculates that the ballad imitates the All Spirits Hall: Extermination may be using the hope of survival to gather offerings, qualify as an Ancestral Spirit, or destroy the third era. The narrative explicitly leaves that theory uncertain at this stage. What the speculation correctly exposes is the moral structure of Extermination's method. He offers a narrow route through extinction while converting the fear of every other life into resources for his own design. His apparent gift of eternal life therefore cannot be separated from selection, payment, and the abandonment of those left outside the song. (Chapters 1185–1186)
Arid Triad and the dying aeon
Murals and traces from previous eras lead Su Ming to the wider truth. Extermination arrived during the third era aboard a lone ship from the Vast Expanse, having come from another butterfly's world. He remains beside a gap in the fourth universe, concealed on that ship, while four so-called tombs associated with him function as layered passages rather than ordinary graves. One contains imitations of heaven, earth, and man, then a connecting region carrying the Vast Expanse's presence; beyond it lies a flesh tunnel built from the bodies and souls of inhabitants of the Yin Death Vortex. These works show that his apparent death and tombs are part of concealment and trans-universal preparation. (Chapters 1201, 1318–1325)
Extermination finally states his motive while observing the conflict between Su Ming and Arid Triad. His homeland was destroyed, and he intends to restore or avenge it even if doing so requires sacrificing every Harmonious Morus Alba. He had interfered with Tian Xie Zi's destined change of heart and cultivated servants among the Abyss Builders. Three Apostles use clones bearing Su Ming's appearance to massacre Dark Dawn and Saint Defier, gathering a universe's resentment against the innocent original. Extermination needs resentment born from the same universe as its strongest life so that the resulting curse can seal that life and prepare it as Xuan Zang's offering. (Chapters 1331–1336, 1345, 1348–1350, 1371–1372)
Su Ming's growth threatens this long design. Their gazes meet across space; Su Ming leaves a palm print on the hidden ship as a warning, and Extermination instead treats its lines as the key for locating his sacrifice. When Su Ming begins comprehending Boundless Dao, Extermination's projected attack is repelled and makes him cough blood. He grows increasingly anxious over 120 years, orders Ninth Summit attacked to break the epiphany, and clashes with Su Ming's newly formed Dao Divinity. Neither projection can defeat the other, but Extermination now knows that his intended offering may advance beyond his control. (Chapters 1333, 1341, 1344–1346)
His control of the Abyss Builders creates the flaw that ruins him. Extermination engineered the race and the Seed from his own soul and blood so that their strongest member could be offered to Xuan Zang; his chosen candidate was Lei Chen. Su Xuan Yi, seeking revenge for the Fifth True World's destruction and his people's exploitation, turns himself into a medium. Extermination tries to Possess him and thereby connects himself to Lei Chen, who has fused with the Seed. Because the Seed shares Extermination's origin, he has effectively Possessed himself, an act whose equal halves cannot devour one another. Lei Chen becomes an indestructible second will inside him. Extermination destroys Su Xuan Yi but cannot remove the consequence. (Chapters 1368, 1371–1372)
When the aeon collapses, Extermination uses the accumulated curse and Su Ming's apparent palm lines to seal him. Su Ming had already severed his true connection to the arm that made the print, causing the seal to lose its target. In their ensuing battle, Extermination repeatedly calls Xuan Zang's finger through a Locating Rune. Su Ming endures the attacks long enough to copy both the Rune and the technique that makes a Dao Divinity unrecognizable as an offering. Lei Chen then disrupts Extermination's control at the critical moment. Xuan Zang's finger destroys Extermination's body and extracts his two-headed Nascent Divinity, but Extermination insists that becoming an offering is reincarnation rather than death and promises to continue their fight. (Chapters 1372, 1374–1376)
Ancient Zang and the final truth
In Ancient Zang's world, the eldest prince resembles a younger Extermination and carries Lei Chen's presence. The composite later separates into expressions including Lei Chen, Lin Dong Dong, and Old Man Extermination, reflecting the joined Nascent Divinity taken by Xuan Zang rather than a simple return in the same body. Su Ming ultimately finds Extermination again on a lone ship moving through a sea of sand. Extermination is once more dressed as the old traveler Su Ming remembers, meditating as though neither world's destruction had interrupted his journey. (Chapters 1389, 1411, 1458–1461)
Their meeting replaces combat with an argument about Dao. Extermination admits two defeats—one in Harmonious Morus Alba and another in Ancient Zang—but refuses to call his path wrong. He plans to sacrifice whatever is necessary until he can kill Xuan Zang, even if he becomes the only person left. Su Ming counters that such survival is itself a loss; Extermination observes that Su Ming's alternative will make Su Ming the one person who disappears. They agree that a third contest will be decided by which path reaches its end, with Extermination asking Su Ming to preserve his Dao if Su Ming loses and Su Ming reserving a promise if he wins. (Chapter 1461)
After Su Ming successfully Possesses Xuan Zang and recreates the universe, Extermination acknowledges that he has lost the decisive part of that contest. Su Ming uses the owed promise not for himself but to ask Extermination to find the missing Bald Crane. Extermination questions whether Su Ming's self-erasure was worth its cost, yet follows the combined pearl and Feng Shui compass beyond the remade universe. After searching for countless years, he reaches the Celestial Immortal Continent, identifies himself to the awakened Bald Crane, and declares that he has come to bring it home. His latest action therefore fulfills a debt born from the very Dao he rejected. (Chapters 1480–1481)
Appearance and personality
Old Man Extermination normally appears as an ancient man with long hair, dressed in a long robe and seated in meditation aboard his ship. The inherited projection that surrounds Su Ming is specifically white-robed and stands above other lives. After Lei Chen becomes inseparable from him, roughly a tenth of his hair turns black and a corresponding portion of his face becomes younger; his presence is likewise divided. In Ancient Zang, his younger aspect appears through the eldest prince and related forms, including a red-haired, crack-faced man who resembles both Extermination and Lei Chen. (Chapters 1032, 1374, 1389, 1411, 1461)
He is patient on an aeonic scale, intellectually formidable, and convinced that his purpose justifies any sacrifice. The destruction of his homeland produces grief and resolve, but those feelings harden into possessiveness: he cannot tolerate Su Ming reaching the goal ahead of him, even when Su Ming's insight inspires genuine fear and admiration. He uses hope, loyalty, and terror with equal calculation, and his calm turns into ferocity when a hidden assumption fails. Yet he is not incapable of honoring an agreement. His final search for the Bald Crane lasts countless years, showing that pride and ruthlessness coexist with a strict willingness to repay the debt he accepts. (Chapters 1331, 1333–1336, 1341, 1371–1376, 1461, 1481)
Abilities and cultivation
Cultivation and Dao Divinity. Extermination is an ancient cultivator capable of surviving travel through the Vast Expanse and the endings of multiple butterflies. He possesses a Dao Divinity, can project it independently, and can fuse it back into himself. His shadow clashes evenly with Su Ming's early Dao Divinity, and he can withstand Xuan Zang's finger at close range when his protective method is intact. He knows Boundless Dao and has spent ages approaching it, but his own words and reactions show that he has only discovered an inkling of a higher level rather than completed Boundless Dao. Xuan Zang can still terrify, injure, and ultimately extract him. (Chapters 1318–1319, 1336, 1344–1346, 1371, 1374–1376)
Art of Time and change of heart. Extermination has studied time deeply enough to recognize its successive levels, interfere with Tian Xie Zi's ninth change of heart, and judge Su Ming's understanding. He says that time-control appears in the last aeon of each butterfly he has witnessed and that he himself only found an inkling of its fourth level after long contemplation. The art supports observation, manipulation, and the recruitment of Apostles, but it is not absolute: Su Ming's change of heart produces something Extermination did not predict, and his servants retain motives that can diverge from his task. (Chapters 1333, 1335–1336, 1350)
Life analysis and disassembly. Memories within the Seed show Extermination determining the flaws in offered life forms with a sweep of his hand and dismantling them through those deficiencies. This is a learned analytical power refined across endless study, not a universal instant-kill effect. It requires a structure he can understand or a trace he can analyze, and related applications can be copied: Su Ming reproduces the principle through the Seed and later learns Extermination's Locating Rune by deliberately observing it. (Chapters 1011, 1032, 1374–1375)
Ballad, reincarnation, and offerings. Extermination can select lives for his ballad and arrange passage aboard the Heavenly Ship across an aeon's destruction. The selected survive in some form, as Ecang's continued existence attests, but inclusion depends on Extermination's acknowledgment and an offering; it is not unconditional eternal life. At a deeper level, the cycle cultivates a strongest candidate to present to Xuan Zang. The method lets Extermination continue seeking another world and another opportunity, but binds his advance to repeated destruction and to Xuan Zang's response. (Chapters 929–930, 936–937, 1336, 1371, 1376)
Abyss Builder engineering and the Seed. Extermination modifies a bloodline and directs the emergence of the Abyss Builders so that he can search among them for a suitable offering. The Seed of Life Extermination carries creations of his soul through his blood, grants its acknowledged host access to aspects of his legacy, and cannot simply be seized or destroyed after activation. This is constructed, transmitted power rather than an innate trait of every host. Its shared origin is also a fatal limit: when Lei Chen fully fuses with the Seed, Extermination's attempt to Possess him becomes self-Possession, forcing coexistence with a hostile will he cannot erase. (Chapters 930, 1032, 1333, 1368, 1371–1372)
Resentment curse and Locating Rune. Through three Apostles and their Su Ming-shaped clones, Extermination gathers hatred from 360 Expanse Cosmoses. Resentment born from the same universe as the intended strongest person becomes a curse capable of sealing that person's will, while copied palm lines guide it to the target. His octagonal Locating Rune then designates an offering for Xuan Zang's otherwise blind attack. Both techniques depend on preparation and accurate identity. Su Ming's severed connection to his printed arm invalidates the curse, and copying the Rune causes Xuan Zang to strike Extermination as a second candidate. (Chapters 1341, 1345, 1348, 1368, 1371–1375)
Remote action and concealment. From the hidden ship Extermination observes events across Expanse Cosmoses, dispatches servants, communicates through captured soul-orbs, and sends a projected body to attack. He can conceal the ship even from great cultivators, though Su Ming's palm print proves that the concealment can be penetrated. His direct offensive expressions include a black wind shaped into a skull beneath his Dao Divinity, spatial pressure, and command of the offering mechanism; against peers, however, he relies more on layered arrangements than overwhelming force. (Chapters 1331–1341, 1345, 1371, 1374–1375)
Relationships
Su Ming. Extermination first reaches Su Ming indirectly through the Seed and the title of a possible successor. He later chooses him as the best offering produced by the aeon, while Su Ming treats Extermination as both a warning and a rival seeker. Their battle is decided by opposing kinds of insight: Extermination prepares across centuries, but Su Ming anticipates the palm-line trap and copies the offering Arts during combat. Their final relationship is philosophical rather than reconciled. Extermination still rejects Su Ming's Dao, yet admits defeat and honors the promise that sends him after the Bald Crane. (Chapters 929–930, 985, 1032, 1333–1346, 1372–1376, 1461, 1481)
Xuan Zang. Xuan Zang is both Extermination's terror and the object of his revenge. Extermination studies how to hide from his fingers and feeds him offerings in the hope of eventually reaching the power needed to kill him. The relationship remains unequal: Xuan Zang can seize Extermination when the protective Dao Divinity falters. Extermination's entire sacrificial path is therefore an attempt to turn subordination into eventual victory. (Chapters 1336, 1371–1376, 1461)
Lei Chen and Su Xuan Yi. Extermination selects Lei Chen as the Abyss Builder offering and regards Su Xuan Yi as a subordinate bound by ancestral promise. Su Xuan Yi converts those assumptions into revenge, using himself and the Seed to lodge Lei Chen inside Extermination. Extermination kills Su Xuan Yi but cannot destroy Lei Chen, whose resistance later causes Xuan Zang to take them both. (Chapters 1368, 1371–1375)
The Abyss Builders and their Progenitor. Extermination modifies and leads the race, while its Progenitor serves him out of gratitude and obligation even after the Fifth True World's ruin. This loyalty gives Extermination his Apostles and agents, but also produces generational hatred. The race he created to be examined and sacrificed eventually supplies both Su Ming, who copies his Arts, and the father-son trap that defeats him. (Chapters 1333–1336, 1368, 1371–1375)
Bald Crane. The Bald Crane is one of the lives associated with the old ballad, and early evidence casts it as a possible traitor. The ending supersedes that suspicion with obligation: at Su Ming's request, Extermination follows its trace for countless years and announces that he has come to take it back to Morning Dao. (Chapters 985, 1481)
Items
Seed of Life Extermination. Created from Extermination's soul and blood, the Seed transmits his legacy, recognizes hosts, and prepares the strongest Abyss Builder as an offering. Once fully acknowledged it cannot be taken over by an unchosen person. Its identity with its creator also allows Su Xuan Yi to turn Lei Chen into an inseparable second self within Extermination. (Chapters 929–930, 1011, 1032, 1371–1372)
Heavenly Ship. The ancient lone ship carries Extermination through the Vast Expanse and is linked to the ballad's promise of surviving an aeon's end. He hides it beside the gap in the fourth universe and uses it as his seat of observation. Xuan Zang's finger destroys it during the battle with Su Ming, but the ship appears again in Ancient Zang and the remade universe, where it carries Extermination on his search for the Bald Crane. (Chapters 929–930, 1201, 1318–1319, 1331–1341, 1375, 1461, 1481)
Sacred Wood. A log in the fourth Expanse Cosmos belongs to Extermination and resists refinement by anyone without comparable power. Su Ming takes it after gaining a Dao Divinity, intending it as a possible stepping stone for future travel into the Vast Expanse. (Chapter 1347)
Apostle soul-orbs. Extermination keeps three soul-like spheres tied to his Apostles of Anger, Grief, and Resentment. He uses them to issue orders across space, including the command to intensify the massacre carried out in Su Ming's likeness. Their usefulness depends on the Apostles' obedience rather than making them independent weapons. (Chapter 1345)