Who am I? Where am I? What just happened?
In a matter of mere seconds, there had been so many twists that everyone's brains practically crashed. Brains overloaded, people looked around in complete bewilderment, lost in a daze.
*Holy shit, how did the Tyrant get blasted away?! What is Wulou Temple doing? What the hell is going on? Holy crap, someone died!*
*And who was that guy who leaped out, shrieking and screeching?!*
*What in the actual fuck was he shouting about?!*
In that flash of lightning and flint, when everyone's gazes landed squarely on Du Luojia, understanding abruptly dawned.
*Traitor!*
Du Luojia's face warped drastically. He opened his mouth to explain, only to be met by the murderous intent and seething venom in every pair of eyes around him. *What? You're going to claim you aren't?*
*Go say that to the Tyrant you just killed!*
*His corpse is still pinned to the wall!*
*You tore up the contract and popped your ultimate right in front of everyone's faces, and now you're still fucking playing dumb?!*
"Everyone, stay calm!"
Xiuyan's spirit substance erupted. Nearly screaming at the top of his lungs, the pitch-black crystal in his hand flared with phantasmal radiance, forcibly tearing through the spatial suppression.
Something was wrong. The situation was completely unclear. It was chaotic—far too chaotic. In-fighting at a time like this was the worst possible move.
They couldn't afford any more delay...
Running was the best option!
*Boom!!!*
Under the artisan's furious surging power, the Eternal Gate's blessed creation ran into extreme overload, violently ripping through every restraint. Phantasmal brilliance burst outward, engulfing everything.
Yet an instant later, when everyone's vision cleared again, they realized the scene before them hadn't changed in the slightest!
They had been teleported right back to where they started!
A classic round of teleporting in place.
Then, the bizarre crystal in Xiuyan's hand abruptly shattered. Dazzling light erupted, and everywhere it touched, the surrounding space seemed poured from bronze and cast in iron—solid as a mountain!
The power of the Eternal Gate had rebounded onto them, turning into an absolute anchor that locked them in their tracks!
Shattering sounds rang out without end. The blessed creations worn by the Myriarch and the Calamity Lord violently trembled. The Sky-Fleeing Crystal and the Blood Wind Eye—two life-saving teleportation devices—actually cracked and burst under the crushing weight!
Xiuyan spun around in shock. Within the sealed steel chamber, a vast, majestic aura of Tianyuan manifested. Limitless, crushing pressure descended from the sky, the sheer heaviness of Tianyuan manifesting out of thin air to weigh down upon every single one of them!
This place was already inside a Tianyuan Domain.
That lofty, immaculate purity of intent; that solemn aura akin to a Supreme Good reigning over the world; that glorious, blinding majesty so overt it made no effort to hide!
Across the entire mortal world and the Vortex, this was a unique qualitative change found nowhere else—the empowerment of the Heavenly Overseer!
Golden Code and Jade Precept, Power over Life and Death, Receiving Chart and Mandate—three blessings unified into one, a blessing chain metamorphosed under the special mandate of the Heavenly Overseer...
*Arbitrary Dictate!*
The Federation!
The Federation's people were here!
Seized by terror, the Myriarch and the Calamity Lord could no longer contain themselves. Looking at Du Luojia and Xiuyan, who remained completely unaffected, their gazes turned infinitely more venomous, furious, and filled with disbelief.
"So you were in league all along..."
Wulou Temple and the Profound had sold everyone out!
Having suffered so many stabs in the back, no matter how foolish, stupid, or brainless one was, anyone would have figured it out by now!
*I fucking knew it! Where on earth do you get free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late-night snacks? They even brought out Elder Zhen's name just to bait us...*
*Longdu, Du Luojia, you two are truly ruthless bastards!*
*I'll take you down with me!*
The Calamity Lord roared, launching a maddened attack.
Even before that, the Myriarch was already beyond furious. The Army of Frenzied Slaughter that he had personally nurtured had been wiped out in a single moment, not a single one spared!
Without troops, without subordinates, without bodyguards and lackeys, his standing in Blood Eye would plummet from a regional warlord straight to the bottom rung, left at the mercy of others' beck and call.
Decades of painstaking effort down the drain in a matter of seconds.
Bankrupt!
The gaze he cast at the two had turned utterly rabid.
"—Die, you bald bastard! Die!"
His Reborn Form manifested; his domain unfurled.
The Domain of the Corpse Forest abruptly materialized. Amidst endless bleached skeletons and piles of bones, a blood-red, bull-headed demon donned a crown of bloody bone and draped itself in armor of remains. The essence of Frenzied Slaughter circulated within it, its power exploding out of nowhere—soaring, soaring, and soaring again.
In an instant, an all-out strike magnified a hundredfold!
Mechanics served stats, and stats served even more direct mechanics. Under this brutal compounding of multipliers and independent stat brackets, it tore through the suppression of the Tianyuan Domain in a blood-drenched frenzy!
*Slash!*
A bloody axe cleaved the void, piercing heaven and earth as it chopped down straight toward Du Luojia's head, who had unconsciously drawn some distance away.
Preempting the Enemy, Crushing the Ranks, Raging Wind and Fire—under a triple empowerment, the effects of Sure-Hit, Armor-Piercing, and Critical Strike stacked together. An axe strike vast enough to shake heaven and earth was entirely inescapable.
"Are you fucking out of your mind?!"
Du Luojia roared in grief and fury, eyes nearly bleeding. The dharmapalas of the Eight Legions converged, overlapping upon his body. Under the supreme empowerment of the Vajrayana, his soul chanted the mantra: *All heavenly nagas, great spirits and deities, and great devas ever protect!*
The Nagas, the Asuras, and the Devas metamorphosed under the harmonization of his self-nature.
His diminutive, maiden-like form rapidly swelled, turning into a pitch-black giant with a beard red as fire, coils of great serpents around its body, a jeweled crown on its head, and a halo unfurling behind it.
The Ucchusma Vajra Manifestation appeared!
Meeting the Myriarch's full-power strike head-on, he actually managed to take it. Yet a fissure abruptly opened across his magnificent frame, and cracks spread all over his solemn halo.
Even with the combined defense of the Nagas and Asuras, he was still gravely wounded.
Yet right after that strike, aided by the mantra, lotus flowers bloomed out of thin air all over the Myriarch, forcibly locking him down and suppressing him.
The demon roared frantically.
"Calm down, you idiot!" Du Luojia snarled. "If it were really me—"
*Bang!*
In that split second, his vision blurred as an unheralded storm of bloody light swept past!
Right before his eyes, the Myriarch was ripped apart inch by inch, sliced to ribbons as if suffering death by a thousand cuts.
A despairing shriek tore from his throat.
*Panying!*
Panying hummed. The Sacrificial Lord's Blood Wrist devoured blood and souls—a multiplier of one thousand two hundred times!
No, far more than twelve hundred times! Layered atop the Swarm's inherently absurd baseline stats, the spirits of ancestors in heaven, and killing techniques passed down from the era of the Eternal Empire, it reached a terrifying peak.
Never had there been such an exhilarating sensation!
This was absolute bliss that no member of the Swarm could ever refuse!
Tang Qian plummeted from the heavens, his face twisted in a ferocious, manic grin!
A three-headed, six-armed Asura manifestation appeared. The spears and chains of Fourth Great-Uncle and Grand-Aunt, paired with the explosive stat surge from Panying, reached a speed so frantic that even the Transmutation path's uninhibited time-dilation transcendent sight could barely track it.
What need was there for flashy moves?
Just basic attacks chained into regular hits! Within a single round, hundreds, thousands, nearly tens of thousands of strikes chopped the Myriarch—held immobilized by Du Luojia—straight into minced meat!
Without even a chance to fight back, the Myriarch felt his Domain of the Corpse Forest crumble to dust, his Reborn Form shatter into pieces. As that bizarre crimson blade cleaved downward, it continuously devoured his blood flames and soul, draining him completely dry!
It was like watching a black hole swallow him inch by inch, watching everything he was slip away...
Yet it purposely left him with a single breath of life!
With a sharp *pew~*, Tang Qian leaped out, chopped the Myriarch into mush, and then with another *pew~*, vanished in a flash.
All that remained was a deeply gratifying shout of praise echoing in the air:
"Du Luojia, outstanding work!"
Right before Du Luojia's eyes, the Myriarch—now reduced to fractured, bare bones—completely collapsed. In his final moments, all that remained was a venomous, mutually assured curse:
"I'm dead, but don't you dare think you'll have it any better!"
Offering up the remnants of his flesh, the last dregs of his life, and the entirety of his soul—every life he had slain and every fruit of destruction he had reaped across his lifetime.
With this, he offered the final burnt sacrifice to the Lord of Cruelty.
*Curse of Sworn Vengeance!*
*Boom!!!*
The mangled remains burst apart; blood and bone burned away. Viscous, scarlet blood flames consumed the Myriarch entirely, leaving nothing behind.
As the Myriarch was completely reduced to ashes and the flames dispersed, a wisp of the fire of ignorance inexplicably surged within Du Luojia's heart.
Uncontrollable rage, inextinguishable hatred, ineffable fury!
Blood flames sprouted from his soul, planting seeds of madness and butchery.
In his haste, even the True Dharma could not entirely suppress it.
The fire of Frenzied Slaughter obtained from the Myriarch's dying sacrifice had caught alight within Du Luojia's consciousness, relentless and unyielding!
Before he could even use the Mani Jewel to mitigate or sever it, his vision blurred, and he found himself plunged into a mandala. Spirits of Creation circled and turned in all directions.
Countless voices chanted in his ears:
"When Bodhisattva Machinist was coursing in the deep CNC programming, he perceived five-axis linkage and crossed beyond all machining tolerances... Code and data are the emptiness of all dharmas... Therefore, in emptiness there is no interface, no framework, no RAM, no cache, no deadlock, and even no redundant code... Thus know that the Supreme Deus Ex Machina is the method of great compassion, able to dispel all development difficulties, true and not false..."
Within the Veil Mandala, the conversion began!
The last thing he heard before being completely engulfed... was the Calamity Lord's agonized wail!
When the sudden shifts had unfolded, the Calamity Lord had decisively shattered the crystal seal in his hand, releasing the violent natural disaster imprisoned within.
Reckless, indiscriminating between friend and foe, he swept everything within sight into his attack range, endlessly pouring this freezing disaster of entropic ruin in all directions without distinction.
Allies?
Where the fuck were there any allies left?!
At this point, truth could not be told from falsehood, reality from deception. Then to hell with telling them apart! Everyone here was an old monster who'd lived for centuries—who was fooling whom?
*Die, all of you fucking die!*
From the ruptured crystal, the disaster of frostfire that had once frozen an entire city and annihilated a whole region swept outward like a raging tide, blotting out the sky and swallowing everything in its path.
It sent a collective shiver through everyone present...
From the cold.
The temperature plummeted so fast they hadn't had time to react. Time to put on some thermal underwear.
And then...
There was no "and then."
There was not even drifting snow or bone-chilling frost. The magnificent frostfire that normally consumed all things and extinguished all matter now flickered in the Calamity Lord's hand like the tiny flame of a cigarette lighter—feeble, minuscule, and pathetic.
It faintly illuminated his dumbfounded face.
*Domain: Disaster Prevention Manual!*
In the darkness beyond the iron walls, an orthodox Tianyuan wielding Chixiao's Foundation had finally met his designated opponent after an agonizingly long wait.
The Arbitrary Dictate blessing chain combined with the Heavenly Constitution of the Chixiao Banner sent the Tianyuan's suppressive might soaring again and again. Faced with such comprehensive targeting—hard-countered from fundamental nature straight to mechanics—what the hell was left to fight?!
Now, with a mere flick of his brush, nine-tenths of the frostfire disaster's scale was sliced away into nothingness!
If it had been anyone else, they might have found it tricky, but for Tong the Vegetable, whom Ji Jue had summoned all the way from the Mid-Continent, this was practically a meal delivered to his doorstep—beating up a toddler!
*You're the one they call the Calamity Lord, huh?!*
*Did you bother asking my Disaster Prevention Manual first?!*
"Petty tricks!"
Tong Shan reached out, his brush slashing down!
The stunned Calamity Lord didn't even have time to erupt or resist before suffering another crushing blow.
The moment abnormal movements were detected in the underground workshop on Luo Island, Lou Feng, who had been waiting for a long time far above on the island, activated the full workshop system and its modules strictly according to Ji Jue's instructions.
A giant tree of spirit substance rose from the ground. High above, the sky refracted countless dazzling, phantasmal beams of light like a kaleidoscope.
Using this Mirrored Star of Bethlehem as a base, the supreme technique once unveiled during the artisan exam manifested once more.
Its range covered the entirety of Luo Island, reaching from the highest heavens down to the yellow springs of the underworld.
*Domain of Spirit Extinction!*
It forcibly transmuted all spirit substance within Luo Island's bounds, pacifying it into a crystalline state and causing it to reject all change and resonance.
Unless one wore a talisman beforehand and passed verification, manipulating any spirit substance was rendered dozens of times slower and harder out of thin air.
Paired with the suppression of the Tianyuan Domain and the ravages of Mahasthamaprapta, an absurd, field-wide magic silence was achieved for these brief three seconds!
Under this silky-smooth combo, let alone the Calamity Lord, even Lou Yanyue—fully deployed with the Five Pavilions and Twelve Cities and in Reborn Form—would have suffered immensely!
No matter how terrifying the destructive power of the Entropy path was, once drained of mana and unable to cast a single spell, what good was it?!
Before he could even reveal his Reborn Form, and without enough spirit substance to support his most horrifying domain... it was over.
In that single breath of stagnation, ink slashed from the brush extended from the void, sweeping past in a flash!
Like dragons and serpents writhing across paper!
Just like an imperial rescript written in vermilion ink, he casually penned a single character across the Calamity Lord's face.
*Die!*
Under the overlap of the Path of Aether and the Path of Tianyuan, phenomena were commanded and reality rewritten.
This was the decree of life and the ordination of death.
The moment the character was completed, the Calamity Lord's pale face violently ruptured. Irresistible annihilation spread from his flesh into his soul; no matter how he transformed into lightning to divide himself, he could not escape the destined decay under the crushing weight of Tianyuan.
He didn't even have time to detonate the body that had transformed into a disaster.
Purple lightning and black flames flashed and faded. Under the Disaster Prevention Manual's practiced suppression and support, Zhanlu opened wide in gluttony, wildly devouring everything.
In the end, not even a single spark was left behind.
Only a drifting shower of ashes fluttered down from above, landing upon Du Luojia's golden body.
Trapped in the entangling mandala and the ongoing conversion, he stared wide-eyed, locking gazes with another golden body, frozen in sheer disbelief.
Badanta!
Badanta's golden body rose from the mandala.
The hollow puppet seemed alive, belting out praises to the supreme Deus Ex Machina.
Locking onto him, it unleashed wave after wave of Wulou Temple's secret technique: Six Vibrations, Mahasthamaprapta!
So what if it lacked the sanction of the True Dharma?
As long as the spirit substance techniques and muscle memory remained, that was plenty!
The entire golden body Badanta left behind had long been modified by Ji Jue into a Mahasthamaprapta launcher. Just a couple of days ago, it had been hanging on the bow of the *Prosperity* serving as a figurehead!
Since its completion, this was the first time it was being used on someone else...
Consider it your lucky day!
As if the lingering spirit possessed awareness, two trails of bloody tears slowly trickled down Badanta's golden face, which was frozen in an expression of radiant bliss and joy.
*Heresy!!!*
Du Luojia's fury was uncontrollable.
*O True Dharma, have you closed your eyes?!*
The True Dharma made no reply.
Within the inescapable web painstakingly laid out by the artisan, let alone the True Dharma, he couldn't even sense the Dharma King beneath the Vortex. His connection was utterly severed!
Immediately after, a bloody storm swept back once more.
Like a ghost, Old Tom materialized out of thin air behind him, broke into a wide grin, swung Panying aloft, and began hacking away with wild abandon!
Tong Shan, finally freeing up his hands, turned his gaze over as well.
The Chixiao Banner fluttered without wind.
The brush shook again!
When dealing with heretical scoundrels from Wulou Temple, what chivalrous honor was there to talk about? Hack him to death first, ask questions later!
Completely ignoring... the even weirder, more sinister heretic standing beside him, laughing maniacally toward the sky and cheering him on!
"Ayy, Brother Shan, great job!"
"Hurry up and use your big Tianyuan stick to stuff these Abyssal heretics full!"
"Hahaha! Let the power of the Heavenly Overseer ruthlessly humiliate the True Dharma! Our Federation is invincible, fuck yeah!"
"Ji Jue..."
Tong Shan couldn't help but sigh. He looked back at the figure who had an arm slung around his shoulders, still steadily puffing out black flames. Doing his absolute best to resist the urge to slash this greatest wanted criminal in the mortal world, he asked helplessly, "Could you please shut up for a second?"
"...Sure thing!"
Ji Jue nodded vigorously, readily yielding.
Brother Shan truly was the best; when the chips were down, he was totally reliable!
The moment he got the call, without a second thought, he had skipped out of work at the Mid-Continent Security Bureau Operations Division and rushed all the way to Luo Island to do private freelance work for him.
Ji Jue only had to play the Tyrant and collect his death ticket. Brother Shan had to do far more—staying online the whole time, keeping control rock-solid, dishing out terrifying damage with extraordinary results, all while using his own Aether creation to jam every opponent's intuition and premonitions from start to finish, and warping Defilement's prying eyes on the side.
He had even helped simulate Xu Chaoxian...
Brother Shan had earned the MVP hands down!
As for the field... amidst the chaotic slaughter, Xiuyan, who had been standing dazed as if entirely out of the loop, seemed to finally snap out of it as sudden realization struck him.
"Ji Jue!!!"
He threw his head back and bellowed in rage, "Get out here and face me! Ji Jue, I know it's you! I fucking knew it—"
No one answered.
Ji Jue looked down with a cold, indifferent gaze.
*He looks just like a dog.*
Chapter 772