The sheer might of the Purgatory Demon King—that was the power of a high-tier Nascent Soul stage cultivator. That desperate, all-out strike was magnitudes stronger than what Lei Dong could muster. The blow shattered Lord Liuyue’s protective barriers, fractured her meridians, pulverized her Nascent Soul, sending her flying back to violently collide with Lord Shengyao.

Bang! Lord Shengyao shattered the solidified space. His maniacal expression paused as he hastily caught Lord Liuyue, shoving the Water of Life into her mouth. Perhaps it was the Water of Life, or perhaps it was the final, brilliant flare of a dying flame. Lord Liuyue, blood trickling from her lips, saw the color gradually return to her pale face, her eyes fixing upon Lord Shengyao with deep affection.

But before she could utter a word, the searing flame the Purgatory Demon King had driven into her Nascent Soul flared to life. In an instant, Lord Liuyue’s shattered spirit dissolved in the blaze, leaving behind only a lifeless husk.

Lord Caijue’s face turned ghastly white. He had initially assumed Lord Shengyao controlled Lord Liuyue’s emotions through some dark sorcery. However, witnessing this scene, Lord Caijue could no longer hold that conviction. Dark sorcery, after all, was just that—it could command the body, perhaps even the thoughts, but it could never truly master emotion. Though Lord Liuyue hadn't managed to speak her final words, Lord Caijue could infer the essence from her gaze.

“Old Demon Purgatory.” Lord Shengyao roared, his face contorted in fury. “This Lord will see you dead.” He slowly retracted Liuyue’s body into his spatial storage—a lifeless shell could indeed be contained.

“Heh heh. Old Shengyao, you’re lucky. You had a woman block my fatal strike,” the Purgatory Demon King commented coldly, feeling a twinge of regret after dispatching Liuyue. “I wonder how many more women you have lined up to take my blows for you.”

Lord Shengyao offered no further words. He drew the Shengyao Sword, which he kept hidden within his Nascent Soul, and charged forward. Although the Purgatory Demon King had been fighting continuously and unleashing powerful ultimate attacks, leaving him near his limit, he showed no fear, conjuring a flaming battle saber to meet the charge.

“Caijue. War is war,” Lei Dong stated calmly after supplementing himself with several elixirs. “Mercy toward the enemy is cruelty to oneself. If Shengyao isn't destroyed, many of us will perish.”

Lord Caijue let out a deep sigh, nodding heavily. “I understand.” With that, he firmly grasped the Sword of Judgment and joined the Purgatory Demon King in assaulting Lord Shengyao, burying the grief of Liuyue’s death deep within his core.

Simultaneously, Lei Dong’s six Nascent Soul stage (Qianlong/Hidden Dragon) soldiers arrived, descending upon Lord Shengyao with a chilling mix of anger and professionalism. Lei Dong positioned himself to support them; that Shengyao fellow was too formidable, possessing too many hidden trump cards. Killing him would surely bring forth myriad complications.

As expected, even pushed to his extreme limit, Lord Shengyao displayed ferocious dominance. Fighting for his life, he unleashed an astonishing array of bizarre talismans and elixirs, revealing a wealth that defied belief.

But no matter how many tricks he employed, under the leadership of a supreme powerhouse like the Purgatory Demon King, he was ruthlessly suppressed and cornered.

Meanwhile, Lei Dong kept observing the aura that was growing increasingly powerful—the radiant King, a figure wreathed in the swirling interplay of golden light and black miasma. No. I can’t wait for Lord Shengyao to fall before making my move. Once that Demon King absorbed the Heart-Stealing Demon and the Radiant King, it would certainly slip beyond Shengyao’s control.

It seemed the Demon King undergoing the possession was slowly gaining the upper hand. Lei Dong could wait no longer and reopened the connecting channel to the Grotto-Heaven. Squadrons of Ghost Warriors, already arrayed and waiting, materialized in perfect formation.

“Attack with maximum force. Kill,” Lei Dong’s spiritual projection transmitted the command.

The powerful Ghost King army responded swiftly, surging toward the Radiant King enveloped in the golden light and black fog. Suddenly, hundreds of bizarre, unique Netherworld spells blasted forth. The Ghost Warriors, unlike the Qianlong Soldiers, were well-drilled but lacked the superior coordination needed for effective combined attacks; many were not proficient in long-range magic.

Boom, boom, boom! Amidst a chain of explosions, Lord Shengyao seemed to suffer harm, rapidly retreating to evade the majority of the spell attacks, letting out a monstrous roar that chilled the bone: “Brat, you seek death.”

The golden light and black mist around the Radiant King retracted into his wings. Though his armor remained damaged, his face appeared normal now. However, his expression was one of absolute coldness; one eye was gold, the other black.

Furthermore, even his wings mirrored this duality—one golden, one black. The once handsome and noble Radiant King now possessed an eerie, alien beauty. With a sweep of his wings, his body dissolved into a blur that even Lei Dong struggled to track, plunging into the elite ranks of the Ghost Warriors. He slaughtered Lei Dong’s elite Ghost Kings like a tiger among sheep, claws and swords flying indiscriminately, their movements too fast for the Ghost Kings to anticipate.

Watching over a dozen Ghost Kings fall in mere heartbeats, suffering heavy losses, Lei Dong’s eyes burned red. Whether Qianlong Soldiers or Ghost Warriors, they were his subordinates, his troops. To see them butchered so easily, like slicing vegetables, was agonizing for Lei Dong, and terrifying as well. The combat prowess displayed by the Radiant King now surpassed Lei Dong’s comprehension.

His gaze swept across the field and spotted Ajiana slumped on the ground, her expression somewhat vacant. His heart hardened instantly. He fired several successive Netherworld Fingers—hiss, hiss, hiss—straight at her. Lei Dong felt some measure of sympathy for Ajiana’s plight.

But sympathy did not equate to restraint or mercy. Even if this move was despicable, Lei Dong accepted it. As long as it could reduce, even slightly, the death toll among his own people, Lei Dong would execute it without hesitation.

“Brat, you are shameless!” The Radiant King, seemingly driven by a mixture of sorrow and rage from whichever will was currently dominant, roared. His body flashed rapidly, moving to intercept Ajiana, swatting aside Lei Dong’s initial, standard Netherworld Fingers.

Seeing this, the other Ghost Kings unleashed various spells, barraging the Radiant King. Like Lei Dong, having seen their comrades slaughtered, they showed no mercy. Many ants can crush an elephant, and the Ghost Kings’ attacks were formidable enough to flatten small hills.

A shield interwoven with gold and black flared around the Radiant King as he desperately blocked the torrential storm of attacks. Within a few breaths, he couldn't hold firm. Roaring repeatedly, he dared not abandon Ajiana, forced instead to envelop her and use his powerful movement techniques to evade the onslaught.

By now, the Ghost Kings Lei Dong continuously summoned had surpassed a thousand, filling the sky with shadowy figures exuding formidable auras. A war of this scale had not been seen in the Six Domains and Nine Continents for many years.

An uninformed observer might mistake it for a continuation of an ancient war.

Even though the Radiant King was currently as powerful as a vengeful deity, he was hampered by holding another person. His speed was inevitably slowed, and his attacks could no longer be executed with fluid efficiency. The Ghost Kings, adopting Lei Dong’s cunning, relentlessly targeted Ajiana, who was cradled in his arms, rather than the Radiant King himself, once they locked onto his position.

As this deadlock persisted, the battle involving the Lord of the Abyss reached a conclusion first. The Netherworld Ghost Emperor, a high-tier Nascent Soul cultivator, supported by the elusive, peak mid-tier Shadow Demon King, and several thousand Nascent Soul level combatants, shattered the Abyss Lord’s thousand-plus Nascent Soul forces and his totem staff with relative ease.

Faced with absolute superiority, Udis, the Abyss Lord, chose surrender to avoid annihilation. His power was sealed by the Netherworld Ghost Emperor. Among his generals, two newly ascended Nascent Soul cultivators were beaten half to death by Xiao You and Wanyan. Meanwhile, Biris and Cyclops, though clearly at a disadvantage, held their ground steadfastly.

Ultimately, following Udis’s surrender, under the calls for capitulation from Tianmo and Dongfang Fu, the Four-Armed Naga and Cyclops cast aside their weapons and yielded.

On the Sanctuary side, relying on powerful generals like Evil Phoenix and Thunder Dragon, augmented by over twenty Nascent Soul Qianlong cultivators and numerous Nascent Soul Qianlong Soldiers, they finally managed to dismantle the commander-less Sanctuary Spirits. Though these Spirits possessed impressive auras, they were inherently weaker than corporeal experts of comparable might due to their lack of physical bodies.

Even so, the assault on the Sanctuary proved grueling, costing two Nascent Soul Qianlong Soldiers and over a hundred Nascent Soul Qianlong Soldiers their lives. Nevertheless, they succeeded in scattering all eighteen Spirits, forcing them back into the Sanctuary, where they would likely need several years to recover enough to be deployed again.

The most difficult adversaries proved to be the Radiant Twin Lords. Lord Shengyao, though near the end of his tether, repeatedly managed to withstand the siege of numerous masters through various unique artifacts. Though caught in a violent tempest, he remained inexplicably alive for the moment. The Purgatory Demon King was growing impatient. He had assumed that having ascended to high-tier Nascent Soul, defeating the peak mid-tier Lord Shengyao would be a simple matter.

He hadn't anticipated that Shengyao could sustain such a desperate defense against so many adversaries. Of course, victory was certain, so the Purgatory Demon King hadn't resorted to expending his precious trump cards in a reckless finale. But this still proved that Lord Shengyao was indeed one of the foremost beings in the Six Domains and Nine Continents, validating his earlier assertion that the deep heritage of the Winged God Clan was not something common folk could fathom.

However, the most challenging opponent was the Radiant King. Early on, Lei Dong had never considered the puppet-controlled Radiant King a true threat. Now, that initial underestimation had cost him dearly. Although he appeared to be winning the surface battle, Lei Dong felt the sting of watching his painstakingly cultivated Ghost Kings fall one after another.

...(To be continued)RQ

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