「Bluestone Town. Inside the temple.」
As the one-thousandth Cyan Nether Pearl, glowing with a faint Spiritual Light, rolled into the deep stone trough, the very air in the great hall seemed to be sucked away in an instant.
The boisterous cheers that had filled the hall came to an abrupt halt, replaced by a deathly silence cold enough to freeze one’s Divine Soul.
"HUMMM—!"
The ten-meter-tall black iron statue suddenly let out a low rumble. The rust covering its surface peeled off in large flakes like cracked dragon scales, revealing the Profound Iron Divine Body beneath—impossibly deep and dark, shimmering with a cold, sinister light like distant stars.
In the previously unlit lamps, ghastly white flames suddenly ignited.
Where the firelight fell, shadows stretched impossibly long and twisted into grotesque shapes, making the entire hall look like the Underworld.
The eyes of the Black Iron Divine Statue, closed for ten thousand years, slowly opened.
They were not the eyes of a living being, but two swirling vortexes of black fire, flickering with absolute order and merciless Decrees.
"The Divine Venerable... has awakened!"
The fan-wielding young man in the lead had a fanatical look on his face. Without even wiping the sweat from his brow, he dropped to his knees with a THUD, raised his hands high, and shouted, "Scholar Zhao Li, leading my colleagues, offers a thousand pearls! We beseech the Divine Venerable to reveal your divine presence, grant us your protection, and purify this realm of its Evil Demons!"
"We beseech the Divine Venerable to reveal your divine presence!"
Behind him, dozens of Qi Cultivation Perfect Cultivators fell to their knees in unison, their voices thundering through the hall.
In their minds, once this Foundation Establishment Tier Divine Spirit awakened, they would become the "chosen ones" for a hundred miles around.
However, the Black Iron Divine Statue did not bestow a divine oracle.
It mechanically turned its neck, producing a grating screech of metal on metal that set one’s teeth on edge.
The ghastly white flame slowly swept over the crowd kneeling on the floor. Every Cultivator the light touched felt a chill seep into their bones, their Magical Power cowering within them as if it had encountered a natural predator.
The statue slowly raised the incredibly heavy, bamboo-jointed Black Iron Mace in its right hand. Its voice was hoarse and vast, tinged with a corrupted paranoia:
"...The night is deep."
"...The living shall halt. The strange shall not stir."
The voice held not a trace of emotion, as if it were a program etched into its very bones ten thousand years ago.
"Purify the Demons, protect the home!"
The instant that Decree of Purification left its lips, the Black Iron Mace swung down with casual ease.
A pitch-black gale, shaped like a crescent moon, swept out horizontally.
PFFT!
A Qi Cultivation Perfect Cultivator at the very front didn’t even have time to scream. His physically tempered body was as fragile as rice paper before the pitch-black gale.
As the gale swept past, the Cultivator disintegrated in an instant. His Divine Soul was erased directly by the Divine Dao Authority, and his physical body turned to a cloud of gray dust, not even leaving behind a single drop of blood.
An instant kill!
"What?!"
The fan-wielding young man was terrified beyond belief. The paper fan he had been holding fell from his grasp.
"Divine Venerable, see clearly! See clearly, I beg you!"
The other Cultivators were scared out of their wits. A few of the quicker-witted ones hastily pulled out the pearls they hadn’t yet offered and kowtowed frantically. "We are your Tributors! We are the Messengers who awakened you, My Lord, not those Demons from outside! My Lord, please see the truth!"
But the Night Patrol God paid them no heed.
In the logic of its Divine Soul—corrupted by Evil Qi, with only obsession remaining—Bluestone Town was now the residence it was sworn to protect.
And this group gathered in the temple, reeking of the vital Qi of the living and making a clamor within its domain, were simply unruly intruders—Alien Species that needed to be Purified.
It had no reason, only a twisted sense of duty: all who walked before the residence at night were wicked spirits.
And in the Cyan Netherworld, there was no longer a difference between day and night.
THUD! THUD!
Heavy footsteps echoed through the hall.
The Night Patrol God moved like lightning. In that moment, its massive Divine Body displayed an agility that completely defied its size.
With every fall of the Iron Mace, another Qi Cultivation Perfect Cultivator perished.
These examination candidates, considered geniuses in the outside world, were now like cornered animals, scrambling madly for the temple exit.
"It’s unstoppable..."
A Cultivator watched in despair as the Upper Grade Defense Shield he had summoned was shattered into powder like colored glass under the strike of the Black Iron Mace.
In the face of such authority, Magical Power was nothing.
No matter how they tried to resist together, the hierarchical suppression unique to the Divine Dao made it impossible for them to utilize their Cultivation.
"It’s insane! This isn’t a True God! It’s a demon!"
"Run—!"
The once-sacred and solemn temple had now become a slaughterhouse they had opened with their own hands.
The Black Iron Divine Statue advanced, lamp in hand, killing with every step. The ghastly white firelight illuminated the floor covered in ashes, a sight both ironic and desolate.
On the verge of this collapsing Secret Realm, this Ancient God, which existed to protect the home, was now clearing out the "unwelcome guests" in its eyes in the most brutal way imaginable.
「Cyan Nether Secret Realm, the Far East Land.」
There were no ruins here, only a deep pool whose bottom could not be seen.
The pool’s water was a heart-stopping ink-green, heavy as mercury and utterly still, as if even sound itself would be instantly swallowed if it fell in.
At the very moment the Secret Realm’s Earth Veins began to tremble violently and streams of void turbulence started to pour in, two eerie blue lights, each the size of a millstone, suddenly lit up at the bottom of the perennially frozen pool.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG—!
The grating of immense, heavy Lock Chains echoed up from a thousand fathoms deep, making the very ground of the wasteland tremble and jump.
These were several Black Gold Lock Chains, each as thick as a water bucket, their entire lengths inscribed with ancient suppression Spirit Talismans.
The other end of the Lock Chains was sunk deep into the body of an enormous stone statue coiled at the bottom of the pool.
It was the [Prison-Suppressing Evil Flood Dragon].
During the golden age of the Cyan Nether Realm, it had been a guardian of the Dragon Gate, responsible for blocking any of the Aquatic Race from swimming upstream. Its Slaughter Qi was second to none among the five gods.

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