The Grand Pantheon was suffused with a strange, black radiance—a light that was sharp as crystal yet yielding as jelly.

This black light defied normal human perception, yet it was undeniably black. Illuminated by this dark glow, the vast, empty hall revealed every mote of dust suspended in the air.

Gu Xiechen and his companions rushed forward in the main hall for a time before Ducat suddenly halted. "Where did the Roman Pantheon go?"

The former Roman Pantheon had been packed, from the main entrance all the way to the innermost sanctuary, with statues of grotesque shapes of all sizes. But the Pantheon now stood utterly vacant, as if ransacked by a thousand 'Hua's—not a single hair left behind. The sheer size and emptiness of the hall, coupled with the black light seeming to seep from the very air, instilled a deep disquiet in everyone present.

After a moment of silence, Gu Xiechen summoned twelve Guardian Puppets with a wave of his hand, a cold smile playing on his lips. "I suppose they moved. No matter. Xiao, lead the way. Let's press on. I want to see who dares to stop us!"

With a flicker of thought, Gu Xiechen controlled the puppets’ movements through the sliver of divine sense he had woven into them. For an instant, Gu Xiechen felt as if he possessed thirteen bodies, twelve of which contained immense power that gave him the sensation that a light punch could shatter everything.

"Move!" one of the Guardian Puppets rumbled, grabbing Gu Xiechen and the others and cradling them close to its chest. The twelve puppets strode forward at a furious pace. Red clouds flashed beneath their feet, and despite their towering height of ten zhang, they moved with absolute silence. Vast halls flashed past them in the blink of an eye. The twelve Guardian Puppets charged toward the Lingpu Hall at the far end of the Pantheon. Only then did a dozen panicked Roman Priests rush out.

"Great Gods! You are..." The Roman Priests cried out in surprise, only to see clearly what monstrous things were charging toward them! Golden armored giants, thirty meters high, approached with an aura that felt like a mountain crashing down upon them. The Roman Priests screamed in terror and spun around to flee, their speed rivaling that of mice chased by a cat.

Bang-bang-bang-bang! The massive iron hammers in the Guardian Puppets’ hands slammed down fiercely. The dozen priests were flattened into thin sheets of meat paste. Blood and pulp splattered dozens of meters across the polished floor, blossoming into a dozen huge flowers of gore.

"They are just ordinary, low-level priests!" Ducat frowned.

Gu Xiechen, controlling the Guardian Puppets, lifted the hammer. He sneered, "Oh? No matter. We advance!"

Following Ducat’s directions, one Guardian Puppet stomped forward to the entrance of the Lingpu Hall and kicked the hundred-meter-tall, meter-thick door into dust. The twelve massive Guardian Puppets poured inside, following an extremely tall and wide passageway toward the subterranean mausoleum of the Roman people.

The customs of the Roman people were peculiar: every family maintained its own ancestral graveyard. However, when the direct lineage of a family died, their corpses were sent to the Lingpu Hall within the Grand Pantheon. After one Roman Calendar year of storage there, the bodies were transported back to the family grave plot to rest alongside their ancestors. This one year in the Lingpu Hall symbolized the dedication of one's body and soul to the gods, offering one year of service to the divine. In the Roman view, deceased family members would also become deities, so after serving the gods for a year, they were returned to the family grave to allow the souls of the clansmen to merge with the souls of their ancestors, thereby becoming the protective gods of their lineage.

But for Ducat's mother—this 'concubine' from an outside race—and members of the Spirit Clan, Phantom Clan, and other vassal servant races, their corpses were permanently stored in the Grand Pantheon’s Lingpu Hall upon death. They were slaves to the Roman people in life, and they would serve the Roman gods eternally in death, never to be released.

Over thirty high-ranking Roman warriors shouted in alarm and rushed in from all directions, but in the blink of an eye, they turned tail and scattered. Faced with the colossal Guardian Puppets, they lost all courage to resist.

This place was a massive cavern, surrounded by countless entrances to passages, each one a hundred meters high and a hundred meters wide. Above the entrance to one passage, a purple crystal plaque was embedded, inscribed in the Roman script: ▲Horsam—the family name.

Without Ducat needing to say anything, Gu Xiechen left six Guardian Puppets to guard the massive cavern. The remaining six puppets protected the four men as they stormed into the passage.

The passage was choked with countless small chambers, each just large enough to hold a single coffin, filled with the bones of the Spirit Clan and other vassal corpses of the Roman subjects. These were the remains of vassal races that had been under the wing of the Horsam family for hundreds of years. At the end was a sanctuary. This sanctuary should have housed a statue representing the unified ancestor spirit of the entire Horsam lineage—the Horsam Ancestral Spirit God—but today, that statue was also missing. In the spacious hall, only a dozen coffins were neatly arranged. Beckett Horsam, the current head of the Horsam family, stood before one of the coffins, and a cluster of ‘Great Heaven Bird’ flowers, brilliant crimson—a specialty of Mars—rested quietly atop the coffin’s transparent crystal lid.

The Guardian Puppets had moved without making a sound until Gu Xiechen and his group burst into the hall. Only then did Nanket Horsam snap awake. His first reaction was to smash the large bouquet of Great Heaven Bird flowers with a palm strike, before spinning around and roaring, "I said, do not disturb me!"

The pollen from the crimson flowers still drifted in the air. Nanket stared blankly at the six colossal golden armored puppets before him.

Ducat stared blankly at the mass of crimson pollen on the coffin, rubbing his eyes in disbelief. He remembered clearly the placement of the coffins in that hall and who lay within them. The other dozen coffins held the foreign concubines of some of the family's important elders. The coffin that had just held the flowers belonged to Ducat's mother—an Earth woman who had left no name, only her surname.

"What are you doing here?" Ducat and Nanket roared at each other simultaneously.

Nanket’s face contorted with fury as he advanced a few steps, pointing at Ducat and roaring, "How dare you question me? You dare question me? You despicable wretch, you dare question me? Who are these three little stinkers beside you? How dare you bring outsiders into the Horsam family's Lingpu Hall?"

A black shadow flashed. Hua, like a wisp of wraith drifting from the underworld, shot straight toward Nanket and delivered a heavy uppercut to his abdomen. The punch exploded like a bomb; Nanket grunted, soaring backward until he slammed heavily against the far wall.

Hua pointed at Nanket and shook his head. "Hey, little Roman brat, your uncle doesn't like your attitude!"

Gu Xiechen descended, shooting Nanket a glare. He sneered, "Xiao, who is this?"

Ducat’s expression was grim. Looking at the patch of pollen on his mother’s coffin, he said darkly, "Based on genetic lineage, he should be my father."

"I see!" Gu Xiechen nodded. He bowed to the staggering, struggling Nanket Horsam. "So this is the Grand Director of the Roman Kingdom, Nanket Horsam. My apologies, sir, but we are pressed for time. Frankly, we are here to take Xiao’s mother home. Please do not do anything that might cause us to misunderstand, or I won't mind wiping out the Horsam family along the way."

Nanket staggered to his feet, shaking his head to clear the dizziness from the intense pain. He spat out a mouthful of blood-laced saliva. He looked at Ducat with utter horror and hissed in a low voice, "Ducat, you’ve found yourself quite the helper. Is this the backing you use to challenge your own father?"

Gu Xiechen threw a punch across the space toward Nanket. The force erupted; Nanket cried out in pain as his exquisite armor shattered, and his magnificent robes were torn with countless holes, large and small. His body stiffened as the sustained force of the punch pinned him against the rear wall, embedding him nearly a foot deep into the stone before the endless pressure quietly dissipated.

"Just like Hua said, I dislike your attitude!" Gu Xiechen stated coldly. "Nanket, my friends, my brothers, are not yours to command. I have the power to easily destroy the Horsam family—do not test me!" Gu Xiechen glared, and countless icy, bone-chilling beams of white light shot out, pitting the walls surrounding Nanket with countless small holes, dense as a honeycomb and unfathomably deep. Nanket froze, then wisely shut his mouth.

Glaring coldly at the disheveled Nanket Horsam, Ducat walked with a grim expression to his mother’s coffin. He knelt and knocked his head heavily against the coffin several times, muttering in a low voice, "Mom, I’m taking you home. Not to this cold, dreary place where you served as a slave to others, but to the home where your ancestors, our ancestors, lived and prospered."

Putting strength into his arms, Ducat hoisted the heavy alloy coffin onto his shoulders and commanded in a low shout, "Gu, Hua, Lily, let’s go!"

Nanket stared blankly at Ducat, then suddenly roared hysterically, "Ducat, you bastard! Put her down! Put Yi Qiu down!"

Gu Xiechen remained silent. He simply stepped forward a few paces, positioning himself squarely between Nanket and Ducat.