The Sky City stationed above the Fascia Empire served one primary function: to oversee the entire operation of the empire, maintain order, and thoroughly safeguard the interests of the Winged God Clan.

Currently, the Fascia Empire was perfectly compliant; its royal family was incompetent and worshipped the Winged God Clan as deities, never daring to defy them.

Consequently, within the Winged God Clan’s strategy, the Fascia Empire was categorized as an entity to be protected and courted.

In principle, the Winged God Clan did not wish for the Fascia Empire to suffer a major blow.

The City Lord of the Fascia Sky City was a powerhouse at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, named Xirus, who was the full-blooded brother of the King of Dawn.

The King of Dawn trusted his younger brother deeply and greatly hoped he would achieve the Spirit Transformation stage.

Because the Winged God Clan possessed exceptionally high levels of life evolution, their genetic factors were incredibly complex, resulting in low fertility.

As such, in the world of the Winged God Clan, a couple managing to bear three or four children in their entire long lifespan was considered remarkably prolific.

Due to this, the bonds between siblings were usually very close, and great importance was placed on blood relations.

The King of Dawn was not worried that his full brother achieving Spirit Transformation would pose a threat to him; rather, it would elevate both their statuses within the entire Bright Winged God Clan.

It was just like the most formidable, top-tier beings in the Winged God Clan currently: the Twin Kings of Radiance—King Guanghui and King Shengyao—who were themselves full brothers, possessing deep affection, capable of living and dying together.

If one were bullied, the other would certainly fight alongside him.

This very fact deterred their peers from harassing the two brothers, who, supporting each other, hacked through thorns and brambles all the way to the top, reaching the pinnacle status across the Six Realms and Nine Continents, achieving a legendary tale.

Even beings of the same caliber, such as the Demon King of Purgatory and the Ghost Emperor of the Underworld, held a degree of admiration for these two brothers, amazed that they both managed to reach the peak.

Simultaneously, they were deeply cautious; whether it was the Demon King of Purgatory or the Ghost Emperor of the Underworld, they were only one entity, whereas the other side possessed two brothers.

Provoking one meant provoking a pair.

The King of Dawn was intensely envious of this; if his own brother could also reach Spirit Transformation, it would be absolutely perfect.

The only slight regret was that brothers possessing the top-tier aptitude, like the Twin Kings of Radiance, were exceedingly rare.

Even with the powerful bloodline of the Winged God Clan, it was hard to alter the immense difficulty of breaking through to Spirit Transformation.

The King of Dawn’s younger brother, Xirus, possessed only mediocre aptitude.

Yet, the King of Dawn never abandoned his ambition, pouring all his effort into helping his brother, forcefully driving his cultivation and strength up to the late Nascent Soul stage.

However, progress beyond that point became increasingly difficult, though the King of Dawn continued to shower him with resources regardless.

This policy of ambiguous reward and punishment greatly dissatisfied and shamed many of the subordinates following the King of Dawn.

They felt that if the vast resources expended cultivating his brother were instead supplied to the most gifted and promising subordinates under the King of Dawn, perhaps there would already be a chance of achieving Spirit Transformation.

Resources were finite; if some used too much, others were inevitably left with too little.

However, the King of Dawn was harsh in nature and maintained very strict control over speech, ensuring that even though discontent simmered and complaints arose, they never escalated to an unmanageable level.

Xirus was appointed as the City Lord of the Sky City under these exact circumstances.

Seizing the opportunity to control a domain, Xirus also learned to hoard resources for himself, relying less on his brother to avoid further gossip.

The Fascia Empire showed Xirus extreme reverence, granting almost anything he requested.

Apart from the mandated tribute to the Winged God Clan, the personal deference shown to him was extraordinarily generous.

At this moment, upon receiving the plea for aid from the Fascia Imperial Family, he had initially intended to dispatch troops to the rescue.

However, the problem arose when, just as Xirus finished mobilizing his forces and was about to march to aid the Fascia Empire, he was stunned to hear intelligence from the front lines suggesting the enemy forces possessed at least one Spirit Transformation stage expert.

This development terrified Xirus; he hastily recalled the troops who hadn't even left the gate and urgently transmitted the matter via the communication array to his brother, the King of Dawn, preparing to hold the city and await reinforcements.

Xirus’s actions were not inherently wrong; the mistake was that he grossly underestimated the strength of the sudden rebels.

Before the thunderous assault, the reason Lei Dong hesitated to forcefully attack the Sky City was simply to avoid incurring excessive self-damage.

But now that the plan to lure the snake out of its hole had failed, Lei Dong immediately launched a lightning operation.

The army of hundreds of thousands of Swift Insects began relentlessly assaulting the morale-stricken Imperial Guards of the Fascia Empire.

Lei Dong himself had experienced the brutality and cold-blooded nature of the Swift Insects; in Zhaozhou, they were something spoken of with dread.

The otherwise powerful Imperial Guards instantly collapsed like mountains.

Simultaneously, Lei Dong’s relatively small forces, the Hidden Dragon Army and the Fierce Ghost Army, were deployed, capturing a large number of prisoners.

And that so-called "Fascia Sage" was captured red-handed under Lei Dong's special attention.

Lei Dong did not have time to integrate these humans immediately and simply threw them all into confinement, waiting for Mei Ji to return so they could begin the slow process of recruitment.

Meanwhile, the main army completely encircled the Sky City of the Fascia Empire from afar.

At Lei Dong’s distant command, dozens of flying ship fleets, along with their mounted Great Light Cannons, unleashed their power first.

Amidst a series of booming roars, brilliant white columns of light struck out toward the distant Sky City, which floated in mid-air like a fortress of war.

Over the Sky City, a faint white light shield flickered into existence, absorbing the impact of the light beams and rippling outward.

Even though it wasn't a main capital city, the defensive capabilities of this Sky City were formidable to a certain degree.

Despite bombardment from hundreds of Great Light Cannons, the light shield refused to break, merely undulating with each strike.

Simultaneously, bright sparks of light began to emanate from the Sky City, which were also columns of light, raining down with fierce speed like a meteor shower, striking toward Lei Dong’s fleet.

Lei Dong’s flying ships immediately began maneuvering and engaging, dodging while fighting back.

If they couldn't evade, they merely endured a few blasts.

Relying on the ships' own excellent defensive shields, a few direct hits would not cause irreparable damage.

The fleet of flying ships began a guerrilla dance, darting up and down, drawing away a large portion of the Sky City’s firepower.

Soon, the flying ships began to suffer losses; several vessels had their shields breached, and before they could retreat for repairs, they were shattered by concentrated blasts from the Great Light Cannons.

Judging purely by firepower, the Sky City far outmatched Lei Dong’s fleet.

However, Lei Dong possessed strategic means that the enemy could not match.

The heavily armed Belly Cannons, which had been prepared long in advance, began tearing through the Ghostly Underworld Qi Lei Dong had used to conceal his movements, revealing their hideous fangs.

Ordinary Belly Cannons had slow firing rates and less power than the Great Light Cannons; however, the greatest advantage of the Belly Cannons lay in their sheer numbers and the low resources they consumed.

The number of Belly Cannons Lei Dong deployed this time reached thirty thousand, densely packed, stretching for several miles.

Under the guidance of Lei Dong’s divine sense, they unleashed an overwhelming barrage of Nether Fire shells.

The sight of tens of thousands of shells trailing long green flames across the sky was truly magnificent in scale, resembling the end of the world.

The Sky City was instantly thrown into alarm and attempted to flee, but the Sky City was a mobile war fortress, not a flying ship capable of nimble leaps.

Although its maximum speed was fast and not inferior to most flying ships, with such a colossal volume, accelerating from a standstill to full speed would take at least half an hour.

Colossal objects usually have another synonym: a sitting target.

They were simply too large and easy to hit.

Despite its efforts to move, under the simultaneous fire of thirty thousand Nether Fire shells, over twenty thousand rounds directly impacted the Sky City's light shield, erupting in countless explosions where white and green light intertwined.

The immense instantaneous impact force instantly tore apart the Sky City’s incomparably sturdy light shield, exposing its naked, almost snow-white “delicate body.” At this point, the City Lord Xirus inside the Sky City could no longer remain restrained.

He hurriedly deployed hundreds of flying ships, which swarmed out like a swarm of bees from a hive, aggressively charging toward them.

The dense Light Cannons fired mercilessly into the mass of Belly Cannons.

At this moment, the weakness of the Belly Cannons manifested: superior offense, inferior defense.

Upon being struck by those Great Light Cannons, the Belly Cannons were instantly obliterated, thousands vanishing in the blink of an eye.

However, before the Light Cannons could celebrate their success, they suddenly felt an overwhelming gravitational force violently yanking the fleet downward.

Thousands of Golden Core stage Earth Giants had emerged from the soil at some unknown time, all simultaneously using their innate Gravity Technique.

A whole group of flying ships, as if seized by a magnet, were hurled down onto the ground, one after another.

Fortunately, the construction materials were excellent and supplemented by the light shields, preventing total wreckage and loss of life...

At the very height of this fierce battle, within the distant and glorious Radiant Continent, which also belonged to the Bright Holy Domain, the most supreme Holy Yao Palace in the Holy Yao Capital City welcomed an uninvited guest.

She was a woman of graceful bearing, her silhouette slender and elegant, her face veiled in white gauze, possessing an ethereal aura like an immortal.

Normally, it would have been impossible for her to gain an audience with the King of Shengyao, but at this moment, the King of Shengyao, hailed as the pinnacle among the pinnacle and one of the Twin Kings of Radiance, had set aside his airs to entertain the mysterious veiled woman in the main hall.

This was because the mysterious woman’s companion and introducer was the current Ninth King of the Bright Domain, King of Guangming, Ajiana—a figure who had ascended to Spirit Transformation and yet earned the title of "King of Guangming," clearly indicating profound background and power.

The King of Shengyao, known for his benevolence, was currently smiling kindly, greeting the mysterious woman while exchanging pleasantries with Ajiana: “Ajiana, have you been comfortable staying on the Radiant Continent these past few months? And how is the construction of the Sky City progressing?” ...(To be continued)