The expressions of the gathered multitude were grim beyond measure. When they looked upon Tian Xie again, their gazes were piercingly cold, filled with a desire to grind him to dust.

Zi Yao sat regally upon a throne carved from seven-colored, radiant crystal, looking down upon them with chilling disdain. Her demeanor was utterly arrogant, showing no regard for anyone present, as if allowing Tian Xie to negotiate with them was an act of immense benevolence on her part.

“Xuan He, is this creature truly so formidable?” Adela, new to this place, possessed only a shallow understanding of the Primordial Beings. She arched a delicate brow, a look of cold dismissal crossing her face. “Can she truly slaughter all of us? She’s just a bit larger in volume; what else is so impressive about her?”

“Mother,” Audrey breathed softly, her exquisitely pure face etched with terror. “She… she is truly terrifying.”

Audrey, having merged with the very essence of the Profound River Continent, harbored a deep, ingrained fear of Hui within her soul imprint. She knew intimately the life-rank of this Primordial Being, surmising it far surpassed their own. With a bitter explanation, she continued, “Compared to us, she is like us compared to the Human Race or the Barbarian Race. There is an insurmountable gulf in life-level.”

Adela’s expression finally shifted, showing alarm.

“Our lineage serves only one Master,” a white-bearded elder from the Divine Clan’s Council of Elders sneered from the distance. He mocked, “To suggest we serve such a monster—whatever it is—as our lord? Tian Xie, you are too naïve. Has that thing somehow corroded your mind, rendering your judgment incoherent?”

This individual was a second-heaven realm Initial God, a master of Gale Force cultivation, always possessing an inherently arrogant nature.

For ten millennia, the Divine Clan had been the undisputed sovereign of the Vast Star Sea. The Bloodthirsty, Sky Demon, and Nether Emperor races all lay low, daring not to confront the Divine Clan head-on. Having conquered one star domain after another, they had long cultivated a temperament of supreme arrogance; how could they tolerate anyone else reigning over them?

In this elder’s eyes, Tian Xie was nothing more than a lackey using the prestige of the Primordial Being to attempt to supplant the Divine Clan’s hegemony with the Vast Current Merchant Guild.

This was something they could never permit.

Zi Yao glanced indifferently towards the elder from afar, her brow knitting slightly.

Tian Xie smiled calmly, weaving an esoteric change in his aura. A malevolent light suddenly shot from his eyes.

That ray of light was a vibrant crimson, like a meteor suddenly launched, instantly flying toward the elder.

Shi Yan’s heart plummeted. A look of horror bloomed on his face as he sharply turned towards the meteor.

Within that streak of light resided a terrifying power comparable to that of the God Lord or Ming Hao. Though the force was not entirely the new power he currently wielded, it was profoundly bizarre and potent, seeming to traverse spatial distance effortlessly.

Xiaoyao and Shenwu, two Celestial Kings of the Divine Clan, were extremely close to the provoking elder. Seeing Tian Xie make his move, they both coldly activated their respective esoteric arts.

However, before they could fully unleash their arts, the elder let out a piercing scream.

Across his chest, a horrific, bloody passage had appeared. His intestines, heart, lungs, and stomach were churned into a bloody pulp, and blood erupted like a fountain. As his life essence poured out, his vital signs rapidly weakened.

That crimson meteor had inexplicably materialized behind his heart, impossibly bypassing spatial barriers to strike him mortally in an instant.

“Pfft!”

He spewed out clots of bloody paste. His life-field decayed swiftly, and his Altar of Consciousness collapsed with a booming sound.

In his final moments, he looked toward Xiaoyao and Shenwu with utter confusion, seemingly wondering why those two Celestial Kings of his clan had not extended aid.

He did not know that Shenwu and Xiaoyao had indeed been mobilizing their esoteric arts, but the meteor was simply too fast; it had mortally wounded him before their arts could even reach the condensation stage.

A stream of light shot from Tian Xie’s eyes. Killing one of their clan elders in plain view of Xiaoyao and Shenwu instantly enraged the Four Great Celestial Kings.

In the next breath, the Four Celestial Kings—Xiaoyao, Shenwu, Zizai, and Guangming—moved toward Tian Xie without a word, flashing like four dazzling bolts of lightning.

“Hush! Hush! Hush!”

Rows of cold, grim martial corpse bodies rose like a flesh wall before Tian Xie. These corpses wore blank expressions and vacant eyes. Suddenly, they all spewed forth a sinister, chilling airflow saturated with the chaotic energy fields of the Outer Void, drawing in various unknown residual energies from the turbulent space.

The aura fluctuations within several of these corpses reached the level of the Immortal Realm. As if possessing lingering life consciousness, they could each deploy their own esoteric arts.

Ice walls, cold blades, scorching seas of fire, and violent lightning erupted, transforming the area into a purgatory of annihilation, breeding boundless, ferocious might. Even the Four Great Celestial Kings, caught within the onslaught, struggled to defend themselves, rendering them incapable of posing a threat to Tian Xie.

Tian Xie’s smile did not fade. Standing reverently beneath Zi Yao’s throne, he addressed the crowd, “The opportunity is yours. Whether you can seize it depends on yourselves.”

“If you cannot contend, withdraw quickly,” Dicalo said, his expression heavy, sighing internally as he spoke.

The others looked at him, puzzled.

“There is no time; her eleven avatars will arrive shortly,” Dicalo explained, his eyes dull with helplessness. “She is too powerful. She was previously dispersed across various corners of the turbulent void, sleeping and recovering energy by absorbing unwitting martial artists who fell in. She is still in recovery and far from her peak state. That’s why she reined in her power when Widsen erupted and why she moved the God Lord and Ming Hao away. But even without being at full strength, she is beyond our capacity to challenge. Once her eleven avatars are gathered, even if the God Lord and Ming Hao return, they likely could not shake her.”

“Is she truly that terrifying?” Adela’s exquisite face pal slightly.

As the Patriarch of the Nether Emperor Clan, she seldom experienced true fear. Even when dealing with the God Lord, she remained composed and rarely showed undue apprehension.

But now, hearing Dicalo describe the horrors of Hui, she realized for the first time in this boundless cosmos that the God Lord and Ming Hao were not the apex of existence; the true Primordial Beings were the ones perched atop the pyramid of life.

In the eyes of a Primordial Being, they were all nothing more than fragile ants!

“Very well! You open the spatial passage!” Xuan He pondered for several seconds before making a decisive commitment.

Dicalo said no more. Gripped by regret, he began to circulate his esoteric arts, attempting to forcibly tear open a passage.

At that exact moment, Shi Yan caught Zi Yao’s projected gaze and felt a sudden chill pierce his heart.

In Zi Yao’s eyes was a flicker of mockery—the nonchalance of someone certain of victory, the serene arrogance of one whose every outcome was controlled.

“Do not disturb the spatial fluctuations!” He sensed danger instinctively and shouted urgently, trying to stop the action.

Unfortunately, it was too late.

Dicalo channeled his esoteric art, linking his divine sense to the Space Profundity. But just as he used his own art to manipulate the subtleties of space, he found the space as if being forcibly interfered with, injected with unknown energy.

His manipulation of his divine sense happened to create a pathway for those mysterious energies to invade his Sea of Consciousness, which instantly felt as if pierced by ten thousand swords, leaving it riddled with holes.

Even his Altar of the Soul cracked in that instant, and his soul suffered immediate, grievous injury.

“Pfft!”

A gout of blood sprayed out. Dicalo’s face turned ashen, his eyes wide with horror as he looked at the indifferent, ruthless Zi Yao. Clutching his chest, he cried out in despair, “She influenced space with that energy! I cannot rupture space, and my soul has been severely damaged!”

His body cracked like shattered glass, crisscrossed with fine fissures, and blood began to seep out as if his flesh was being wrung like a wet cloth, dripping crimson drops.

Dicalo, a power cultivator of the second-heaven realm Space Profundity, was unable even to flee, having been covertly undermined within the very fabric of space and struck down instantly.

Dicalo was widely acknowledged as the hardest to kill—the multitude suspected even the escape capabilities of the God Lord and Ming Hao might not surpass his. He was once considered the most intractable opponent, yet today he lay gravely wounded, and those two figures who could rival him had already been spirited away by Zi Yao to an unknown location.

His injury struck the gathered crowd like a heavy punch, suspending everyone’s hearts in dread.

At that moment, the first giant insect avatar surged through the waves, powerfully merging into Hui’s main body amidst layers of spatial ripples.

Amidst the screams of the crowd, one by one, the giant insect avatars manifested and fused with the main insect soul. When all eleven insect bodies had integrated, the observers gasped. The giant insect’s volume had naturally swelled more than tenfold.

Its form also changed: it was no longer a giant insect but a colossal serpent with twelve heads.

Hui’s true primary form was a terrifying, twelve-headed serpent. Its body was a strange, deep azure, covered in intricate, hard-to-decipher textures that contained the mysteries of heaven and earth. These twelve heads on the serpentine body imparted a sense of exquisite, perfect beauty, resembling an artistic masterpiece painstakingly crafted by the Creator—stunningly gorgeous and beautiful.

Of Hui’s twelve heads, only the central one bore a magnificent crown—this was her primary brain.

Now, sitting directly atop that beautiful, seven-colored crown was Zi Yao. Zi Yao appeared even more enchanting and alluring, embodying the perfection of seduction, beauty, sexiness, and bewitchment, radiating a charisma that powerfully swayed the soul fields of everyone present.

Even the Four Great Celestial Kings, Xuan He, the Sacred Beast Azure Dragon, and other supreme existences—even females like Adela—were mesmerized, their minds clouded as if enchanted, revealing expressions of utter infatuation.

Her power of seduction was indiscriminate, affecting both sexes to an impossibly wondrous degree.

As for Tian Xie, he had already bowed low, his posture becoming more humble, his reverence deepening. Yet, the more beautiful Zi Yao became, the colder Tian Xie felt in his heart.

He knew that Zi Yao at this moment was at her most terrifying. Her sheer imposing aura instinctively shook his very soul, causing his entire body to tremble until he dared not even stand straight.

Under the gaze of numerous supreme entities, Zi Yao’s beautiful eyes shimmered with a soul-stirring radiance, like a pink halo capable of capturing hearts and minds. Her gaze swept over the crowd, falling far upon Shi Yan. Her jade lips moved slightly, and a soft, honeyed voice echoed in Shi Yan’s mind: “Come over to me…”

Shi Yan, standing near Audrey, first showed a blank look. He took steps toward her direction.

However, halfway there, Shi Yan suddenly shook as if snapping awake, his face flashing with horror. He immediately halted his advance, abruptly turned around, and withdrew without a word, leaving with absolute decisiveness.