With their available space drastically compressed, the thousand or so people, once scattered, were now practically on top of each other. The most primal survival instinct burned in everyone’s eyes.
However, before the gate of the Underground Palace, the battle between the two Ancient Gods still raged on.
The fierce winds stirred up by the Black Iron Mace and the divine radiance from the Bone Whip constantly clashed and exploded in the air.
The Cultivators at the very front were shattered by the aftershocks of the two Deities’ clash before they could even touch the stone steps. In the hyper-compressed air, the mists of blood didn’t even have time to disperse before being crushed into dark red crystals.
Atop the altar, the Clay Soil Land God gazed down at the desperate, twisted faces below the stone steps and listened to their shrill pleas. His aged face, which had regained its clarity with the revival of his divinity, was now etched with pity.
"Lord Envoy... back in the day, the Commanding Officer protected all living things in a hundred-mile radius."
He looked at Chu Bai, who was still seated cross-legged with his eyes closed. His voice trembled with a hint of a plea. "Now that this realm is about to shatter, if the Underground Palace doesn’t open, I fear these thousand-plus lives will all be reduced to dust in the void."
Chu Bai slowly opened his eyes.
In that instant, a deep, earthy-yellow Divine Light faintly flashed through his pupils. It was a phenomenon resulting from the complete refinement of the Spiritual Qi produced by the Profound Yellow Earth Essence.
The flow of Spiritual Power within him had reached an unprecedented state of Perfection. Every move he made seemed to faintly resonate with the qi of the Earth Veins in a hundred-zhang radius.
"I have completed my seclusion, and I intend to do just that."
Chu Bai’s voice was even, yet it carried an undeniable authority.
He slowly rose to his feet and gently waved his right hand.
"Open."
With a great RUMBLE, the main gate to the Underground Palace—which had remained silent for so long, slaying several of the greedy in its time—slid open to both sides.
Huddled in a blind spot outside the entrance, nearly overcome with despair, Xia Xing jerked his head up. From within the abyss-like maw of the palace, a Dark Gold Light Shield suddenly expanded, forcibly carving out a passage ten zhang wide through the chaotic Divine Power and turbulent void.
"That’s... Daoist Chu!"
Xia Xing’s eyes were sharp; he immediately spotted the figure in green robes standing within the gateway.
Chu Bai looked outside the gate. His gaze swept past Xia Xing, and he gave a slight nod.
"Are you not coming inside, Fellow Daoist?"
"Thank you, Fellow Daoist! Thank you, Daoist Chu!"
As if jolted from a dream, Xia Xing’s eyes instantly reddened. He had no time for more words. Calling to his five exhausted companions, he dashed like a madman across the stone steps protected by the Dark Gold Light Shield, and they poured inside.
"The gate is open! The Stone Palace has opened!"
This wild shout was like pouring cold water into boiling oil.
The nearly one thousand Cultivators, who had been scattered in various dead ends while enduring the crushing pressure of both the divine might and the void, all exploded forward with the greatest speed they had ever mustered.
Some spurred on their shattered Magic Swords; others, not hesitating to burn their own lifeforce, even performed a Blood Escape as they all surged madly toward the dark gold portal.
In an instant, the entrance to the Underground Palace was a chaotic blur of figures.
"Stop pushing! Push me again and I’ll fucking kill you!"
"Move aside, Fellow Daoist! I’ll give you an Upper Grade Spirit Stone!"
Curses, cries, and the crackle of Spiritual Power all mingled together.
However, the line between life and death is often crossed in an instant.
The sudden tide of people triggered the Night Patrol God’s obsession once more. An enraged roar rumbled in its throat as the Black Iron Mace in its hand came crashing down with cataclysmic force.
The Beastkeeping Commissioner, sensing its blood-prey escaping, whipped its Bone Whip through the air, stirring up a sky-blotting green mist in an attempt to forcibly reap the crowd before they could enter the Underground Palace.
Dozens of slower Cultivators at the back of the line were struck by the aftershocks of the Iron Mace and the green mist before they could even scream. Some were pulverized into dust; others were instantly enslaved, twisted into monsters crawling on all fours.
The stench of blood filled the air before the gate, but most of the crowd, sheltered by Chu Bai’s mountain-steady Dark Gold Light Shield, stumbled and scrambled into the magnificent underground Stone Palace.
In the blink of an eye, the once-empty corridors of the Underground Palace were filled with over a thousand dust-covered, shell-shocked Cultivators.
As the last few Cultivators scrambled over the threshold, a sharp glint flashed in Chu Bai’s eyes, and he thrust his hands out into the empty air.
"Seal!"
The heavy, Dark Gold gates slammed shut, sealing away the rain of blood, the raging divine might, and the all-devouring void outside.
Inside the Underground Palace, a brief, deathly silence fell.
There was only the sound of ragged breathing and the low sobs of those who had survived the ordeal.
The echoes from the great gates slamming shut still resounded through the corridors. The thousand-odd survivors had not yet had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief when a sense of crisis so profound it threatened to shatter their very souls descended upon them!
The supposedly indestructible Dark Gold gates trembled violently. The entire Stone Palace, formed from the physical shell of the Lingma Mountain God, let out an overburdened creak.
Outside, the Night Patrol God was utterly enraged.
In its twisted Divine Dao logic, these noisy Evil Demons hiding in the Stone Palace were tantamount to brazenly barging into its main hall during a night curfew.
Atop its three-zhang-tall black iron body, the once-pale lantern light suddenly turned a ghastly green. A sinister, cold divine radiance crawled madly up the arm that held the mace.
The Wandering God’s pitch-black, double-pupiled eyes locked onto the gate as it slowly raised the zhang-long Black Iron Mace with both arms.
The movement was incredibly light and slow, yet it seemed to stir the very laws of slaughter throughout the collapsing Secret Realm.
The next instant, the Hard Mace fell.
This was no simple clash of metal; it was the absolute, overwhelming authority of the Foundation Establishment Level!
When the mace fell, it carried not just simple force, but the crushing weight of its Divine Dao authority.
Inside the Underground Palace, the dozens of Cultivators standing behind the gate didn’t even have time to understand what was happening before they all spurted mouthfuls of blood at the muffled THUD.
The terrifying pressure passed right through the heavy stone gate, completely ignoring their Spiritual Power Shields and buckling their spines.
CRACK... CRACK...
On the ceiling of the Underground Palace, the bluestone tiles that had stood unshaken for millennia splintered under the force of that single blow, several jagged cracks spiderwebbing across their surface.
"This... This is the might of Foundation Establishment?"
Xia Xing gripped the cold wall, his fingernails cracking from the force. He stared in terror at the slightly warping Dark Gold gate, feeling as if it wasn’t dust falling from above, but the collapsing heavens themselves.
That was a power that Qi Cultivation Stage Cultivators simply could not comprehend.
Before that immeasurable pressure, their so-called "Perfection" Spiritual Power was like a sheet of paper trying to stop a flood—despairingly fragile.
"Lord Envoy! Hold on!"
The Clay Soil Land God shrieked, curling into a ball as he frantically poured what little Divine Power he had left into the Earth Vein nodes of the Underground Palace.
Atop the altar, the moment the pressure fell, Chu Bai’s face instantly went from red to white, then from white to a sickly blue.
THUD!
Inch-deep footprints instantly appeared beneath Chu Bai’s feet, shattering the White Jade Altar in a web of cracks.
He felt as if three towering mountains had been instantly pressed down upon his shoulders.
The bones throughout his body emitted a grating, grinding sound. If his Iron Bone Casting Body Technique had not already reached Perfection, and if he hadn’t stabilized his qi and blood, that single blow would have been enough to shatter all his meridians.
’Truly relentless.’
’I can’t fight this head-on...’
Chu Bai clenched his jaw tightly, a trickle of scarlet blood seeping from between his teeth.
He could feel that the mace strike had not only hit the gate, but it felt more like it had struck his Divine Soul.
The chasm-like gap between the Qi Cultivation Stage and Foundation Establishment was on full display. It was a qualitative leap, an absolute suppression of one’s very level of existence.
Outside, the Night Patrol God, seeing that its attack had failed, once again slowly raised its Iron Mace.
The ghastly green light of its lantern shone through the cracks in the gate, and a deathly stillness, clinging like a shadow, once again enveloped every living being inside the Underground Palace.
"One more hit... and I’m afraid this whole palace is going to collapse."
A Cultivator slumped to the ground, his eyes vacant, as he let out a near-broken mutter.
Chu Bai looked up at the teetering gate, a ruthless glint flashing in his eyes.
He knew that if they simply tried to endure the attacks, this thousand-strong crowd would sooner or later be shaken to death within the Underground Palace by this Mad God.
’I have to find a way out of this...’

Comments

Loading...