Chapter 1922: The Dark Manifestation of the Divine Will
The evil air of death poured out of the Blackflame General’s body into the Shadow of Death, which became more and more solidified as if the actual god of death was coming to this cave.
The Shadow of Death reached out a hand, triggering a massive Will of Death to clash with the Azuresky Pagoda head-on.
The Azuresky Pagoda rapidly spun to release beams of Supreme Power. There were vague signs of the dimension being ripped open.
However, it did not annihilate the Shadow of Death’s hand, just blocked its advancement.
The Shadow of Death reached out another hand, and a bracelet glowing in a mysterious light flew out.
This bracelet had twelve beads on it. Each bead was engraved in complex patterns as if it possessed some mysterious power.
However, only three beads were solid while the others were in an insubstantial state as if they had not formed completely.
The three solid beads were giving out a mysterious glow, and the complex pattern of engravings had appeared.
“Halt!”
The Blackflame General shouted and propelled the bracelet to come above the Azuresky Pagoda.
The mighty mystic power of the bracelet seemed to lock everyone in place.
The Azuresky Pagoda stopped spinning and had a hard time releasing its Supreme Power. Apparently, it had been suppressed completely.
A surprised look flashed in Zhang Ruochen’s eyes.
The Will of Death is extraordinary indeed. With the implement spirit’s consciousness still in a dormant state, the Azuresky Pagoda couldn’t do anything about the Blackflame General. Zhang Ruochen thought to himself.
The strength of a Heaven’s Reach elite must not be underestimated.
After the Sword Vault Palace battle, the Azuresky Pagoda had exhausted too much of its original power. As the implement spirit’s consciousness was still in hibernation, it was not expected to recover any time soon.
Without the help of the implement spirit’s consciousness, the power of the Azuresky Pagoda was much lower than what it was supposed to be.
As the Azuresky Pagoda was suppressed by the bracelet, the Shadow of Death bent over and reached out a hand to grab Zhang Ruochen and three others.
Jin Fanxin raised a hand and the petal surrounding her flew out and formed into a stream of flowers, blocking the hand of the Shadow of Death.
“Go to hell, you Deathkin! Eat this!” Xiang Chunan roared as he stepped out.
While speaking, he took out a Metal Demonic Crown and infused a massive amount of demonic Qi into it. Hundreds of thousands of inscriptions appeared and intertwined to produce potent Supreme Power.
“Yet another Supreme Artifact?” The Blackflame General’s heart missed a beat.
Who are these people? Supreme artifacts seem to be common among them!
With no time to think, the Blackflame General offered more vitality so the Shadow of Death could become more solid in form.
Countless Precepts of Death appeared with the Shadow of Death at the center. The Precepts of Death formed a massive Precept Domain, attracting the free Precepts in heaven and earth to circle around it.
Bang!
The Metal Demonic Crown hit the Precept Domain. A violent energy surged, but it did not destroy the Percept Domain. Instead, the Precept Domain was pulling it over as if it had fallen into a quagmire.
“You three, go finish off Pei Yutian and take back the Yuanhui Tribulation sacred herb.”
The Blackflame General told the three Doomlords through telepathy.
“Aye!”
The three Doomlords immediately made their moves.
With the Blackflame General bogging down Zhang Ruochen and three others while Ziyang Saint King and another Saint King from the Celestial Court had stood aside, it was the best time to take back the Yuanhui Tribulation sacred herb.
So as soon as they had the things in their hands, they could leave immediately, no need to mess with Zhang Ruochen and others anymore. Even if Pei Yutian had swallowed the Yuanhui Tribulation sacred herb, they had a way to extract the essence from him.
Meanwhile, Ziyang Saint King and another Saint King from the Celestial Court were standing on the side, becoming spectators.
At first, they said they wanted to help the Fairy of a Thousand Flowers. But when Zhang Ruochen cast out his Azuresky Pagoda, they quickly stepped aside lest they got implicated.
The eyes of the Celestial Court Heaven’s Reach Saint King lit up. “Two Supreme artifacts! Ziyang Saint King, these things are more precious than the Yuanhui Tribulation sacred herb!” he whispered.
Ziyang Saint King could not take his eyes off the Azuresky Pagoda and the Metal Demonic Crown. The greedy look in his eyes was plain to see.
With his cultivation base and strength, he could challenge a Path’s Anterior elite and become invincible below the realm of Supreme Saint if he could get his hand on any of these Supreme artifacts.
“Treasure should belong to the elites.” Ziyang Saint King whispered.
A beam of purple Qi flew out of Ziyang Saint King’s body. It turned into a bolt of silk and swept toward the Azuresky Pagoda.
At the same time, another Celestial Court Saint King elite was also making his move. He struck out his red dragon claws to grab the Metal Demonic Crown.
Their moves were carefully calculated. While Zhang Ruochen and three others were tied up with the Blackflame General, they could snatch away the two Supreme Artifacts.
Despite knowing how dangerous it was to mess with Zhang Ruochen and three others, the two Supreme Artifacts were worth the risk. As the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“How dare you!” Zhang Ruochen shouted with a bitter expression in his eyes.
With the flip of his hand, the Ancient Abyssal Blade appeared together with countless Marks of Time. It was as if the scene of countless stars, beautiful and mysterious.
The Ancient Abyssal Blade came so quickly that it struck out two beams of sword Qi of Time at once.
The purple silk and the red dragon claws, appearing fragile, were cut off instantly.
Just then, Ziyang Saint King and another Saint King from the Celestial Court shuddered. They sensed their strength leaving their bodies.
“What is going on?”
The two elites were shocked, not knowing what was happening.
Zhang Ruochen performed a Dimensional Shift and appeared beside the two elites instantaneously.
A sword was swung horizontally, cutting the two elites in half at their waists with purple and red bloods splattering instantly.
As apex Heaven’s Reach elites, the two were tough enough that the sword did not kill them instantly.
Zhang Ruochen lunged up at once and aimed the Ancient Abyssal Blade at the forehead of a Heaven’s Reach Saint King elite.
This elite had been wounded badly before. With two hundred years of his lifespan cut by the Mark of Time, and his body severed, he was too powerless to fight back now.
As the Ancient Abyssal Blade penetrated his forehead, the sword Qi shredded his saint soul instantly.
Zhang Ruochen pulled out the Ancient Abyssal blade, his expression grim as he turned to Ziyang Saint King.
“You must not kill me! I am from the Fane of Purple Sky. You will be in great trouble if you kill me!” Ziyang Saint King was in fear.
“I see. You are from the school of Heavenly Realm,” said Zhang Ruochen.
Ziyang Saint King thought he now had a chance. “That’s right. The Fane of Purple Sky is the most influential force in Hongyang Macroworld, a direct lineage of the Heavenly Realm. There is nothing but only a misunderstanding between us. We don’t have to kill each other. I guess you don’t want to mess with the Heavenly Realm, do you?”
“Are you trying to intimidate me with the Heavenly Realm? I guess you don’t know who I am.” Zhang Ruochen sneered.
Ziyang Saint King had a bad feeling upon hearing that. “Who are you?”
“Zhang Ruochen.”
Ziyang Saint King’s heart skipped a beat, fear overwhelming him.
He had never met Zhang Ruochen before, but he had heard about him and knew his long-standing animosities with the different schools in Heavenly Realm.
By using Heavenly Realm to threaten Zhang Ruochen, he was shooting himself in the foot.
“I—”
Just when Ziyang Saint King wanted to say something, Zhang Ruochen had raised his Ancient Abyssal Blade and thrust it into his forehead.
Zhang Ruochen would never think twice about killing those from the schools of the Heavenly Realms. More so, these people were the sneaky backstabbers while he was fighting the Deathkin elites.
They deserved to die.
From the moment Yanshen wanted to kill Zhang Ruochen, or rather, when Zhang Ruochen became the Scion of Time and Space, his conflict with the Heavenly Realm had become unamendable.
Ziyang Saint King looked at him with his eyes wide open. Indignation filled his eyes until he collapsed in his own pool of blood.
Just then, in the pond of divine blood’s direction, a terrifying energy burst out with a blood-red saber light shot up into the air.
The three Doomlords, who had come to the edge of the divine blood pond, stopped dead in their tracks. Their expression collapsed. They quickly summoned their Will of Death to form a shield around them.
The protective shield formed by the Will of Death shook violently before it shattered at once.
The blood-red saber light penetrated the protective shield. With its momentum unaffected, the saber light struck the three Doomlords.
They were sent flying out backward, each puking a mouthful of blood. They were badly wounded.
Pei Yutian emerged from the pond of divine blood. The rock saber had become blood-red in his hand.
When he first plunged into the pond, the divine blood almost devoured him. It was a dangerous situation.
Lucky for him; the rock saber resisted the power of the divine blood, protecting him from harm. Not only that, the rock saber had given him a strange power that had healed half of his injury in just a moment.
The rock saber seemed to be a living thing. It had absorbed a vast amount of divine blood and its blade had turned blood-red.
As Zhang Ruochen appeared behind the three Doomlords, he performed a Moonlight Melody and decapitated them effortlessly.
Next, using his fist, he crushed the skulls of the three Doomlords, so they would have no chance of survival.
The three dead Doomlords were not princes or shenzis but ordinary Precept Domain cultivators. They could not fight a cross-border battle. With Zhang Ruochen’s cultivation base now, coupled with the wonder of the Path of the Ancients, killing them was a piece of cake.
The Path of the Ancients was the ultimate way.
“Are you all right?” Zhang Ruochen looked at Pei Yutian.
“I am all right. I will live. I am surprised you come. I appreciate it,” said Pei Yutian.
Zhang Ruochen nodded. “Think nothing of it. Let’s leave this for another time. We have got to finish off the Blackflame General.”
A stern look flashed in Pei Yutian’s eyes as he clenched his rock saber in his right hand. “Okay.”
He waved the rock saber and struck out a flash of blood-red saber light with all his strength.
Perhaps the rock saber had absorbed the divine blood in the pond; it became a little different, and the energy it emitted was ten times more powerful than Pei Yutian’s.
The patterns on the blood-red blade were perfectly aligned with the terrains of Northern Region. the energy between heaven and earth converged and became one with the saber.
It was as if all the energy in Northern Region had gathered in Pei Yutian.
When he struck out the saber, thunder and lightning rumbled in the entire Northern Region. There was a great change in the sky and the stars shivered.
Just then, a vague shadow lunged out of Zhang Ruochen’s body. With the Ancient Abyssal Blade in hands, the shadow charged at the Shadow of Death at incredible speed.
It was the sword soul.
With a sword in hands, the sword soul could perform any sword technique with the most incredible power.
The Ancient Abyssal Blade cut the Shadow of Death in half, and a massive amount of Will of Death pouring out of it.
Without protecting the Shadow of Death, the blood-red saber of Pei Yutian hit the Blackflame General directly on his body.
The Blackflame General puked a mouthful of blood as he was sent flying out backward.
“Suppress!”
As Zhang Ruochen shouted quietly, the Azuresky Pagoda spun and came above the Blackflame General.
“No!”
The Blackflame General roared, not wanting to admit defeat. But he was powerless to stop the Azuresky Pagoda.
Amid a flash of green light, the Azuresky Pagoda caught the Blackflame General within itself and confined it inside. There was no more resistance.
With the wave of a hand, the Azuresky Pagoda rapidly shrank and flew into Zhang Ruochen’s hand.
Silence returned to the cave at once as the battle ended—for now.
“Since Ziyang Saint King has come to Northern Region, his senior brother Zifeng Saint King should have been here!” Ji Fanxin warned.
“Are Zifeng Saint King and Ziyang Saint King close?” asked Zhang Ruochen.
“They are twin brothers, well-known across Hongyang Macroworld. Zifeng Saint King far surpasses Ziyang Saint King in terms of cultivation base. He is the most powerful person below the Supreme Saint realm in Hongyang Macroworld.”
“Then we will be in trouble!”
Although Zifeng Saint King did not see who killed Ziyang Saint King, since they were twins, they surely had some psychic connection. So it was not so difficult at all for Zifeng Saint King to know who was the killer.
Besides, an elite like Zifeng Saint King must have mastered some inference secret technique. So they couldn’t be more careful.
“Ziyang Saint King deserved it. Even if Zifeng Saint King were here, he still had to die,” said Zhang Ruochen.
“Ji Fanxin said nothing more upon hearing that. She just wanted to warn him. She believed that even when Zifeng Saint King arrived, Zhang Ruochen could handle him.
No ordinary cultivators could fathom the power of Time and Space.
“Maybe we should collect the Godstones and divine blood first.” Luo Yi chimed in.
Involuntarily, Zhang Ruochen and three others looked up at the strange ‘starry sky’ above the divine blood pond, their eyes brightening up.
The ‘stars’ in the ‘starry sky’ were the Godstones. There were twelve of them in total.
Zhang Ruochen looked excited. The Godstones were important to him because he could use them to activate the Sundial and rapidly increase his strength.
With the flick of his hand, he cast out the Ancient Abyssal Blade toward the cave dome.
The Ancient Abyssal Blade pried a Godstone out from the dome. There was no resistance.
As Zhang Ruochen reached to grab with his hand, the Godstone flew toward him.
Boom!
Just then, a horrible air emerged from the deeper part of the cave.
Zhang Ruochen caught the Godstone while his eyes staring into the deeper part of the cave.
He could vaguely see the shadow of a snake, the mouth of which was wide open, looking extremely hideous.
Not only that, the snake exuded a terrifyingly suffocating energy. He felt he could not breathe.
He had never felt such an oppressive energy since he last attained Nine-Step Saint Kinghood. Even Xuetu did not give him such great pressure.
Not only him, but others had also sensed what he sensed. They were almost on their knees.
“We need to get out of here!”
Zhang Ruochen’s expression changed. He took out a Dimensional Scroll at once.
A strange dimensional power emerged to engulf the five of them and teleported them out of the cave instantaneously.
The shadow of a snake came at speed and almost got them all.
The snake’s shadow roared. As the cave trembled, rocks fell from the dome and revealed the glistening divine bones.
The situation in the cave had changed in a split second. The massive white skull of a snake was gleaming with divine light and expelled the evil energy from the cave.
As if it had lost its target, the snake shadow retreated into the deep part of the cave. Silence returned as if nothing had ever happened before.
Zhang Ruochen and four others appeared out of thin air on the Cliff of Doom.
As soon as they emerged from the teleportation, fear rose within them as they heard the angry roar at the bottom of the Cliff of Doom.
“What is that thing? It was freaking scary!” Xiang Chunan couldn’t hide his frightful expression.
They would have died if they fled a second later.
“If I am not mistaken, that should be the Dark Manifestation of Divine Will. It is formed by the undying divine will of gods. This type of power isn’t something we could handle with our levels of cultivation.”
“The Dark Manifestation of Divine Will? How did it come about?” Xiang Chunan was none the wiser.
“Didn’t you see the divine bones with the rocks fell off? Not forgetting the Godstones and the divine blood. My guess is that during the ancient times, there used to be a god buried at the bottom of the Cliff of Doom. The god must have been dead, but the divine will it left behind is unannihilable. The body of the god must not be violated.,” said Zhang Ruochen.
Back then, he used to have an encounter with Blackheart Demonlord’s divine will at Mount Yueshen. So he knew about the Dark Manifestation of Divine Will.
“With the presence of the Dark Manifestation of Divine Will, how could we collect the Godstones and the divine blood?” Xiang Chunan looked worried.
After tasting the goodness brought about by the Sundial, he was eager to get his hands on the Godstones.
Now that he had found the Godstones, but there was no way to get them. How could he not be anxious?
“The Dark Manifestation of Divine Will isn’t entirely undefeatable,” said Ji Fanxin.
“You have an idea, Fairy?” Zhang Ruochen looked at Ji Fanxin.
“For far as I know, a treasure could counterbalance the Dark Manifestation of Divine Will. It is called the Five-Element Soil, and it is extremely rare,” said Ji Fanxin.
Zhang Ruochen’s heart missed a beat upon hearing that. He recalled the time in Divinity Bestowment Altar, he and Awesome, the Little Taoist, accidently entered an old manor, the Garden of Tao, which was a Taoist sacred land of a civilization in Celestial Court.
There was a vast amount of Five-Element Soil in the Garden of Tao.
Those vicious evil beings outside the Garden of Tao had never dared to enter. So at the time, they had speculated that some forces inside the garden could counter those vicious evil beings.
Now when he heard what Ji Fanxin said, it all came back to him. Those vicious evil beings were afraid of the Five-Element Soil.
Speaking of the sacred land of the Garden of Tao, Zhang Ruochen could not help but think of Zheng Yuan, the leader of a school of Taoism.
Perhaps the new sacred land of Taoism, the Five-Element Temple, had Five-Element Soil, too.
No matter what, he had to get his hands on some Five-Element Soil to defeat the Dark Manifestation of Divine Will. He was determined to get the remaining eleven Godstones inside the cave.
It was said that Cheng Yuan was in Northern Region.