Bailuo perished, his sacrificial altar swallowed whole by the black hole carved from the stone, his life imprint utterly dissipated.
The stone-body, the moment the spatial fluctuations stabilized, had already made its escape, vanishing from the Demon Dragon Star and darting toward another asteroid belt near the Demon Blood Star.
His ten fingers glowed brilliantly, constantly forming intricate seals, condensing gates of void light for successive instantaneous shifts.
Portals of spatial light bloomed like concentric rings; once he passed through one, he instantly covered billions of miles, leaving the Demon Dragon Star far behind.
A look of intense delight spread across his face.
Bailuo, a powerhouse in the Second Heaven of the Primordial God realm, possessed spatial profundities that were exquisitely deep and far-reaching. Many spatial shifts were now integrated into his own profundity layer, allowing him to manipulate the fabric of the void as if it were second nature, twisting the gaps of space into travel gates perfectly suited for his passage.
If the surrounding spatial nodes were numerous, he could even open multiple spatial gates in a single breath, threading his way through several spatial fissures. This was an ability utterly beyond his prior reach.
The black hole continued to slowly dissolve Bailuo’s sacrificial altar, releasing torrents of memory-currents detailing the intricacies of spatial mastery, further fusing into his profundity layer.
His comprehension of spatial profundities improved with every passing second. When he condensed the light gates, he instinctively applied his newest insights, often resulting in flashes of inspiration that brought him profound joy.
Bailuo’s soul altar had brought him immense benefits.
With time to slowly digest and comprehend, his understanding of spatial profundity was set to approach Bailuo’s own level. If he integrated these lessons skillfully and built upon his existing comprehension, he might even surpass Bailuo.
Currently, his profundity layer held three strands: Space, Stars, and Life-and-Death. The Star Profundity, nurtured in the barren lands, had already made astounding progress, incorporating the profundities of his divine ancestors and the essence of that miraculous fruit. His understanding of Star Profundity had already reached a state of profound, inscrutable mystery.
Now, having integrated Bailuo’s Space Profundity, it could be said that in both Star and Space aspects, he had already far exceeded his current cultivation realm.
If he could only achieve a breakthrough in the Life-and-Death Profundity, provided his soul altar remained pure and untainted, he stood a very real chance of breaking through to the Primordial God realm in a short span, ascending to an entirely new plane of existence!
Whoosh!
Shi Yan abruptly materialized on a conical asteroid, his expression stern as he surveyed his surroundings, releasing his divine sense.
His sense, imbued with spatial vibrations, shot out like an arrow, piercing billions of miles toward the Demon Blood Star.
Scenes unfolded within his mind.
Thousands of colossal warships, vast as mountain ranges, were anchored in the sea of clouds surrounding the Demon Blood Star. Numerous members of the Divine Race zoomed between mountains and lakes on battle chariots, engaging the forces native to the Demon Blood Star.
The Divine Race warriors, clad in gleaming silver armor and wielding divine weapons, manifested sharp, cutting profundities. They moved with flawless coordination in battle; every small squad possessed formidable combat power. Conversely, the warriors of the Demon Blood Star factions failed to weave their profundities together, utterly lacking any sense of teamwork.
The outcome was evident: the Divine Race held a decisive advantage, gradually achieving a state of complete domination.
Warships clashed in the cloud-sea, spewing firelight that rained down like shooting stars, blasting the surface of the Demon Blood Star into giant craters. Many vessels exploded during the engagements, their debris falling like meteors, causing countless structures on the planet to collapse.
Thunder roared deafeningly, lightning ripped across the sky like rainbows, and frost and ice were whipped into ravaging hurricanes, slicing the planet like colossal blades.
The doomsday of the Demon Blood Star had arrived.
Fike, Lannote, and Bai Can stood proudly amidst the clouds, each focused on exerting profundity suppression against Blood Demon, Yan Chi, and Shang Chen, respectively. Where these three world-shaking energies collided, mountains crumbled and fractured, rivers boiled and exploded, and vast swathes of terrain were leveled.
The collisions of warships, the duels of Primordial Gods, the shockwaves of Power Profundities—all inflicted devastating scars upon the Demon Blood Star.
The celestial bodies that had survived the Divine Punishment were now on the verge of collapse due to this bloody war, threatening to fracture at any moment into countless pieces of rubble.
Shi Yan abruptly withdrew his soul consciousness, his face darkening.
The combatants on the Demon Blood Star—Blood Demon, Shang Chen, Yan Chi, and all the others—were much like Bailuo before him. They actually had a choice: they could have submitted to the Divine Race, avoiding battle and death. As long as they accepted a shackle around their necks, they could have continued to live comfortably.
But they refused.
They preferred to die fighting, preferred their soul altars to shatter into dust, rather than surrender.
Their choice mirrored Bailuo’s. If Bailuo had simply nodded, if he had accepted the Shadow’s condition, he would have lived. He could have remained the chieftain of the Shadow Race, and perhaps the race would have flourished even more splendidly when the Bloodthirsty Lineage reclaimed dominion.
But he had not agreed.
In his view, his fate would not have changed; he would merely have traded one master for another, remaining enslaved. He had ultimately chosen death.
Just like the people on the Demon Blood Star now, many burning their lives away in battle, devoid of fear, fueled only by unyielding indignation.
Shi Yan felt a stirring of emotion.
He was moved by the choice these people made between life and death. He understood that some spirits remained unbroken even in death, while others lived on, already dead in spirit…
He suddenly gained a new layer of insight into the Life-and-Death Profundity.
He reopened a spatial fissure and stepped across, as if crossing the very distance between life and death. He materialized directly above the Demon Blood Star, appearing between the duels of Fike, Bai Can, and Lannote against Blood Demon, Yan Chi, and Shang Chen. He stood atop a mountain peak, looking up at the three Divine Race leaders, his eyes devoid of fear or unease, his expression strangely tranquil.
Pfft!
He spat out a mouthful of blood. Each drop was as translucent as a ruby. As the crimson droplets struck the scarlet eye embedded in the Blood Sword’s hilt, the sword erupted with violent energy that shot toward the heavens.
A pillar of crimson light shot out like a meteor into the stellar river, charging toward a patch of darkness, toward a mysterious corner of the cosmos.
His body, still possessing the trait of immortality, rapidly withered and grew thin. His eyes burned scarlet like blood, and all his strength poured into the Blood Sword like a bursting river dam. Eyes opened across his form, wisps of bloody aura emerging from his pupils, condensing and shifting in the void to form a colossal, sky-scraping phantom of a Blood God.
The phantom roared silently toward the firmament, its blood-red hands frantically batting and tearing. The Divine Race warriors, who had been calmly slaughtering their foes, shattered like cheap ceramics at a touch.
Shi Yan gasped, roaring, blood weeping from the corners of his eyes. He flickered erratically through the clouds like a stroke of bloody light, possessed and manic. Wherever that light passed, a Divine Race warrior would emit a shrill scream before being decapitated, bisected, or dismembered, exploding into chunks of flesh and dissipating into clouds of gore.
It seemed as if a rain of blood was falling from the sky; every drop carried the boundless intensity of slaughter and violence, containing Shi Yan’s reflections on life and death. The drizzling blood-rain continued unabated; Shi Yan had gone mad, transformed into a pure killing machine.
A gigantic Blood God phantom and a streak of blood light swept and flashed across the cloud-sea above the Demon Blood Star, reaping the lives of Divine Race members one by one.
Fike, Bai Can, and Lannote’s expressions turned ashen. They shouted furiously, demanding that the Primordial Gods intervene to intercept him.
But the streak of blood light that Shi Yan had become was untraceable, seeming to flicker continuously through the cracks between spaces, impossible for their soul consciousness to lock onto. The Primordial Gods could only watch as he massacred their kin. When they finally managed to coalesce their Power Profundities, they found Shi Yan already tens of thousands of miles away.
The terrifying strangeness of a Spatial Profundity master was now undeniable; they were helpless.
Those Shi Yan struck down were generally those at or below the Virtual God level, striking instantly. By the time the target realized the danger—a flash of bloody light—they were separated by flesh and blood, their sacrificial altars ripped away into the turbulent void.
He never wasted energy targeting the Primordial Gods. He wasted not a single moment, instead hammering at the Divine Race’s intricate formations, causing their collective Profundity arrays to instantly lose their anchor, thereby preventing their exquisitely coordinated powers from manifesting effectively.
He slaughtered the Divine Race Primordial Gods like a meat grinder; wherever the blood-light passed, a storm of gore and death followed.
Gradually, clusters of blood-seas began to form above the Demon Blood Star. These seas churned as if alive, resembling some kind of living cloud or tidal surge, quietly spreading toward the Divine Race warships…
“Get out of that blood-sea! Leave immediately!” Fike shrieked in horror, unable to control himself.
He recognized the origin of the blood-sea and knew what changes it would induce; his heart burned with anxiety.
Unfortunately, the speed of these seas was erratic and swift. By the time he called out, the seas had already engulfed dozens of Divine Race warships, and an atmosphere of frenzied destruction quietly began to fester within those vessels.
Subsequently, every Divine Race member inside the warships seemed to have their souls and minds stolen, erupting into hysterical frenzy and turning their fangs upon their own comrades.
The overall battle tide hadn't shifted, but in localized areas… the Divine Race suffered grievous losses.
During the peak of the fighting, the distant roar of warships sounded. Numerous dense fleets, like primordial beasts, slowly materialized from the clouds. These ships were bizarrely configured, topped with numerous powerful experts exuding fierce auras—these were the reinforcements led by Sha Ai, arriving from other star systems at the crucial moment. Their arrival signaled the coming of utter ruin for the Divine Race.
“Lannote, tell the Elder Council to activate the Sky Bridge!” Fike roared, ignoring the rolling bombardment of thousands of fire-rocks from Yan Chi. He gripped a golden dragon spear and thrust it fiercely toward the constantly shifting streak of blood light.
The golden spear transformed into a golden dragon, its scales sharp, its inherent golden sharpness utterly piercing. The golden dragon expelled a breath of stale air that spawned countless golden spheres—billions of tiny orbs, dense as hedgehogs, packed the space, filling and solidifying the area.
As the myriad golden hedgehogs filled the void, the golden dragon’s body gradually dissolved, apparently becoming part of those countless small spheres.
Fike morphed into a beam of golden light, suddenly appearing within the region occupied by the billions of tiny golden hedgehogs. He formed intricate seals with both hands.
The billion fist-sized golden hedgehogs instantly began to roll. A crisp cracking sound echoed through space as they adopted a crushing formation, obliterating the space along their path, rapidly rolling toward the streak of blood light that Shi Yan had become.
“Oh?”
Shi Yan let out a soft sound, reforming within the bloody light. He realized the space he occupied had been utterly ruined, crumbling and shattering inch by inch.
Spatial Profundity had lost its foundation; it instantly lost its utility, and he could no longer maneuver and flash about at will.
And Fike was now horrifyingly close. He possessed the cultivation of the Third Heaven of the Primordial God realm, a hegemon of the Divine Race whose fame echoed in every corner of existence.