An Earth-Shattering Upheaval

The stone disc was like the gaping maw of an abyss, frantically seizing and devouring the spiritual power of wind and lightning. Within the Lightning Pool, the spiritual power diminished at terrifying speed, while the scepter in Boreas's hand gave a sharp crack, splintering into countless spiderweb-like fractures. The Crimson Sun Executioner stared blankly at the scene, his expression frozen in stunned disbelief. Even though he had braced himself somewhat after the Lightning Pool was corrupted, the way things were unfolding still caught him completely off guard, beyond anything he could believe. Wind and thunder shared the same origin? The true mastermind behind the assassination attempt on the Thunder God ten years ago was Boreas? And today, ten years later, Boreas had struck at the Thunder God once again... The Crimson Sun Executioner immediately bit his fingertip and tapped it against his forehead. The sun mark flared with blazing radiance, erupting into a scalding, magmatic beam aimed straight at the contemporary King of the Skies. Yet the moment the magmatic beam struck the gale barrier set up around the Lightning Pool, it recoiled violently. The Crimson Sun Executioner immediately dispersed the beam. A blazing golden sun emerged behind his head, rising slowly into the air. This was the core skill of a level-7 Day Wanderer: Sunrise! An upgraded version of Purification—when the blazing sun rose, all power not belonging to the sun would be cleansed, including the spiritual energy of other classes. Golden radiance illuminated the entire Spirit Realm dungeon, bathing everything, from the sky to the white clouds, in brilliant gold. Yet the gale barrier blanketing the Lightning Pool remained completely intact, utterly unaffected. The disparity in their tiers was too vast, far exceeding the limits of the blazing sun's purification. The Crimson Sun Executioner tried numerous other attack methods, but none bore fruit. If physical attacks were useless, he would target the primordial spirit! The Crimson Sun Executioner retrieved a brass mirror with a black handle from his inventory. Yin energy swirled around the mirror, and the ambient temperature plummeted, causing white frost to form over the flagstone ground. The sun mark on his forehead vanished, replaced by a pitch-black crescent moon, while thick, viscous dark energy welled from his eye sockets. He aimed the mirror at Boreas, the King of the Skies, and bellowed, "Boreas!" The blonde woman standing on the stone disc stiffened. Her spirit body was instantly yanked outward, but only halfway before the mirror's power was exhausted, snapping Boreas's spirit body back into her flesh. A feeling of helplessness washed over the Crimson Sun Executioner. Though he did not specialize in the Lunar path, he was still a peak Dominator, and the mirror in his hand was a rule-based item. As long as someone was reflected in the mirror and their name—or Spirit Realm ID—was called accurately, their soul was guaranteed to be reaped. Yet even the combination of a peak Dominator and a rule-based item could not truly threaten the King of the Skies. By now, the power of the Lightning Pool had been drained dry. The plasma and dark clouds merged into the interior of the stone disc, sinking into the lightning runes, while the Wind God's scepter in Boreas's grasp weathered away into dust, assimilating into the gale incantations. Seeing the demigod-level artifact that had accompanied her for years shatter to pieces, she showed not the slightest hint of regret. Instead, she was consumed by the ecstatic joy of ultimate triumph. Looking down into the Lightning Pool, she cried out at the top of her lungs: "Thunder God, let us become one! "Let us restore the glory of the God Lord! Let us... become the strongest beings in the Spirit Realm world!" From the depths of the Lightning Pool, a blinding orb of light rose sinuously into the air, plunging straight into the vortex. The Crimson Sun Executioner squinted, faintly making out a burly man within the lightning orb. The man's eyes burned with yearning, yet his expression twisted in fierce resistance. The yearning stemmed from the innate mutual attraction between wind and lightning, while the resistance came from the fact that, in his weakened state, the Thunder God would hardly be able to dominate the fusion—he would almost certainly become a stepping stone for the King of the Skies. The orb of lightning flowed into the vortex and vanished without a trace. In the next instant, Boreas's body also collapsed, dissolving into a core wrapped in cyan-blue currents that merged into the vortex. As the two demigods fused into the stone disc's array in energy form, both vortexes dispersed. The wind died down, the thunder silenced, and heaven and earth fell completely still, leaving only the floating stone disc. The Crimson Sun Executioner watched with a grave expression. The fusion of the two demigods was now a foregone conclusion. His only hope was that the orthodox faction would truly gain a dual-class demigod; otherwise, after today, the global landscape would undergo an earth-shattering upheaval. He felt an uneasy premonition. He did not believe Ling Tuo and the evil faction would ever help Heaven's Punishment birth a God Lord of Wind and Thunder. Yet wind and thunder had indeed fused. That was an established fact. As thoughts raced through his mind, he saw a miniature tornado rise from the surface of the stone disc, whirling with rising fury and swelling larger and larger. Simultaneously, bolts of lightning struck the center of the hurricane. Amid the lashing lightning and the embrace of the hurricane, a figure emerged. She was completely nude, her skin translucent as jade, the curves of her waist, hips, and thighs sleek and graceful. Two miniature whirlwinds swirled beneath her feet. A bright-blue lightning mark adorned her forehead, and strands of platinum-blonde hair floated in the air, crackling with electric arcs. Her eyes were closed, chin tilted slightly up, as if savoring her new life and newfound authority. The moment this God Lord was born, dark clouds churned across the heavens, violent gales howled, and streak after streak of lightning tore through the clouds, painting an apocalyptic backdrop. The Crimson Sun Executioner's body trembled slightly, his hands shaking and spasming like a patient with Parkinson's syndrome. He felt an overwhelming terror—a terror rooted deep within his soul, within his very heart, like a mortal encountering a ferocious tiger in the barren wilderness, or scaling a sheer precipice with zero protection. The God Lord had not even opened her eyes, yet the colossal pressure already filled this peak Dominator with visceral dread. The Crimson Sun Executioner lacked even the courage to summon his sun. This aura had already surpassed that of ordinary demigods. Even when facing the Taiyi Sect Master, the Crimson Sun Executioner had never felt such dread, unless the Sect Master deliberately radiated high-tier power to suppress him. Amid the howling gales and crashing thunder, the God Lord of Wind and Thunder standing atop the stone disc opened her eyes. Her left eye was bright blue, while her right was clear like glass. Those heterochromatic eyes rolled slightly, locking onto the sole living being in the dungeon—the Crimson Sun Executioner. *** Capital City, a siheyuan courtyard. In a clean, tidy courtyard planted with a scholar tree and flower beds, the clear sky suddenly cracked open with a deep, dark passage, and brilliant golden light shot out from the spatial rift. It was none other than the tall, burly, silver-haired Crimson Sun Executioner. "Whoosh, whoosh..." A shrill screech rang from the spatial rift as fierce winds poured into the courtyard. The Crimson Sun Executioner, who had only just touched the ground, was abruptly torn to pieces. Severed at the waist, dismembered, decapitated... Flesh, blood, and warm viscera slapped onto the ground, steaming in the late-November chill. "Boom! Boom! Boom!" Deafening thunders echoed above the courtyard as twisted, jagged branches of lightning struck down onto the Crimson Sun Executioner's remains, charring flesh and bone to carbon and vaporizing the blood. The spatial rift shrank rapidly and vanished. The gale and lightning subsided. The courtyard returned to silence, leaving behind only the Crimson Sun Executioner's charred remains and the blazing scholar tree. Beams of starlight rose in the courtyard, resolving into Elder Sun, Elder Hongying, Elder Zhao, and others—the elders of the Taiyi Sect arriving in an instant. Seeing the charred chunks of flesh on the ground, the Dominators' pupils shrank violently, their composure nearly breaking. "F-First Elder?" Elder Sun's eyes went wide. He rushed over to the charred remains and cried out, his emotions slipping, "How could this happen? How could this happen...?" Elder Zhao, the most powerful and highest in status among them, channeled thick, pitch-black energy into his eye sockets as he scrutinized the Crimson Sun Executioner's body. A few seconds later, his face darkened. "Both form and spirit extinguished!" Both form and spirit extinguished... Elder Hongying and the others exchanged glances in stunned silence. The courtyard was dead silent. A peak Dominator, the strongest Day Wanderer in the modern world, had returned to the Spirit Realm just like that? Even these Dominators, who had weathered countless storms, were at a total loss, not knowing what to do. After a brief silence, Elder Hongying murmured, "...I recall that Heaven's Punishment invited the First Elder to their Washington headquarters to purify a corrupted member for them." Elder Zhao narrowed his eyes. "That thunder just now..." A terrifying, unfathomable suspicion rose in everyone's minds, plunging the courtyard into dead silence once more. "Did the Thunder God do this? Why would he kill the First Elder?" Elder Sun gritted his teeth. "Old Zhao, go notify the Sect Master. If he's in the Spirit Realm, notify the Five Elements Alliance and have the five Alliance Chiefs demand answers from Heaven's Punishment! We must demand an explanation from them!" If the Crimson Sun Executioner had indeed died at the hands of the Thunder God, the local orthodox organizations would inevitably go to war with Heaven's Punishment. But Elder Sun couldn't make sense of it. With the bloody battle between the orthodox and evil factions raging in New York, how could the Thunder God kill the Crimson Sun Executioner at a juncture like this? It made no sense. There had to be something more to it. Elder Zhao nodded with a grim face. Just as he was about to ride golden light toward the Sect Master's seclusion grounds, Elder Hongying suddenly called out: "Wait!" Under everyone's curious gazes, she hurried around the charred remains toward the flower bed in the corner of the yard, bending down to pick up a bronze mirror with a pitch-black wooden handle. The Crimson Sun Executioner's Soul Reaping Mirror! In the hazy mirror, the figure of the Crimson Sun Executioner was reflected, his eyes hollow, standing in a daze like a newly departed, wandering wraith. "The First Elder's primordial spirit is still here!" Elder Hongying said with delight. The elders of the Taiyi Sect gathered round. Seeing the First Elder inside the mirror, the tension in their faces and hearts finally relaxed, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief. Though they didn't know the exact circumstances, they could imagine that when faced with a lethal crisis, First Elder Crimson Sun Executioner had used a rule-based item to reap his own primordial spirit. Preserving himself in this manner. To a Night Walker, as long as the primordial spirit remained intact, revival was possible. The physical body mattered little—after all, demigods of the Musician class could reconstruct a physical body, and even if it couldn't be rebuilt, a Night Walker could endure in the world indefinitely. Elder Hongying opened her inventory, stored the wooden-handled bronze mirror to claim ownership, and then retrieved it again, gently shaking out the primordial spirit trapped inside. Wisps of cyan smoke drifted down to the ground, taking the shape of the Crimson Sun Executioner. Having left the mirror, the vacant light in his eyes returned to life. "First Elder, what did you encounter at Heaven's Punishment?" Elder Sun, impatient by nature, pressed eagerly. All the elders looked toward the First Elder. The Crimson Sun Executioner's solemn gaze swept over them, and he said in a heavy voice, "The Twin Gods of Wind and Thunder have gone mad! Heaven's Punishment is finished! "Issue a red alert to all orthodox organizations immediately—prepare for a demigod-level disaster." A bolt from the blue!