After leaving the temple, the Human Skin Lantern said, “Do you think the Jade Spirit God will compromise?”
The Big-headed Cloth Doll laughed in a shrill voice, “The Jade Spirit God was gravely wounded long ago. Her lifespan has drained away severely. She very likely will not survive the next Yuan Hui tribulation. If it were only her own life at stake, she would probably fight us to mutual destruction.”
“But she did not strike at us just now. That shows she is not a completely heartless deity. In the end, she cares about the survival of her race.”
“The Yasha Clan is her shackle. Once we grasp that point, no matter how high her cultivation, she cannot raise any waves. She can only submit obediently.”
The Human Skin Lantern said, “That was close earlier. Both of us sustained serious injuries. With the Jade Spirit God’s cultivation, if she had attacked without restraint, we might not have escaped unscathed.”
The Big-headed Cloth Doll said smugly, “No need to worry. Now that Zhang Ruochen has provoked universal outrage, and we are riding the momentum of the Heavenly Venerates and the Void Heaven, things we previously could not do or dared not do, we can now push through directly. The City of Hundred Clans should have been taken long ago.”
“Moreover, the Yasha Clan acted recklessly and gave us a handle to seize. Naturally, we must bleed them dry.”
The Human Skin Lantern laughed loudly, “This blow against the Yasha Clan must be ruthless. Only then will the various minor clans in the City of Hundred Clans tremble in fear, come to surrender, and voluntarily submit to the Darkness Temple. In future years, the divine stones and tributes we receive will increase substantially. We will no longer need to worry about finding cultivation resources.”
As the Human Skin Lantern and the Big-headed Cloth Doll sped away, just as they were about to break through the atmosphere of the Yasha Clan’s ancestral realm, they crashed into a layer of light curtain and fell into a spatial bubble enveloped by array inscriptions.
The Human Skin Lantern thought the Yasha Clan had activated a divine array to detain them. Dark divine light flickered in his hand, and a supreme sacred weapon battle axe appeared. The axe was immensely heavy, capable of splitting heaven and earth.
His hair dishevelled, he roared in fury, “How dare you, Jade Spirit God. If you touch us, the Temple Lord will raze the Yasha ancestral realm today. He will demote you to the lowliest plaything of the gods, the eternal shame of the entire Yasha Clan.”
Whoosh.
A beam of light, dazzling to the extreme, slashed down from the divine array above.
The Human Skin Lantern howled, mobilising the dark divine power within his body. Dense divine patterns soared around him. He swung the black metal axe towards the incoming light.
Two terrifying divine forces collided.
Only then did the Human Skin Lantern realise that the light falling from above came from a stone axe.
His face changed dramatically. “Huang… Tian…”
Bang.
The battle axe in his hand shattered. Even his human-skin divine body exploded.
Around the fragments of skin, divine flames blazed, and thick black divine qi surged.
The Human Skin Lantern’s cultivation was profound and powerful. In the Dark Triangle Star Domain, his human skin had been shattered many times, yet he had always escaped and preserved his life. Even if only a fingernail-sized piece of skin fled, he could recondense his body.
The shattered skin, the blazing divine flames, and the river-like streams of regulative divine patterns immediately tried to escape, slamming against the array inscriptions that sealed the surrounding space.
“Human Skin Lantern, do you still think you can escape in front of this god?”
Huang Tian revealed his true form. His palm pressed forward, forming a massive vortex that sucked in all the skin, divine flames, and regulative divine patterns.
Huang Tian’s palm was shrouded in deathly qi, like a five-fingered world. In an instant, it refined the screaming Human Skin Lantern until both form and spirit were destroyed.
Great gods are indeed extremely difficult to kill completely.
Yet Huang Tian controlled vast death profound meanings; he was truly the killer among killers.
Having absorbed the death profound meanings mastered by the Human Skin Lantern, death divine light flared brightly on Huang Tian’s body. The entire heaven and earth turned pitch black. He said, “Excellent. That is enough. From this moment, I, Huang Tian, am the Lord God of Death.”
If Fisher Rumour had not arranged a divine array to seal this region, the instant he became Lord God of Death, all the death rules across the entire star domain would have surged towards him like a mighty army.
The Big-headed Cloth Doll had tried several times to break the array, all in vain.
Only when Fisher Rumour’s figure appeared at the centre of a circular divine array disc did it realise something terrible had happened.
In terms of spiritual power, Fisher Rumour surpassed it.
In terms of array attainment, the gap was far more than one level.
The Big-headed Cloth Doll panicked. Dense threads of spiritual power appeared around it. It said coldly, “Huang Tian, if you dare oppose the Darkness Temple, there will be no place for you in the entire Hell Realm. The Temple Lord must already have sensed the Human Skin Lantern’s fall. He will descend here at once.”
Huang Tian said calmly, “Wubian? This is not the territory of the Darkness Temple. This is the border region of the Hell Realm. Who holds sway here, do you not know in your heart? Do you think, with Wubian’s spiritual power, he can discern who killed you?”
The Big-headed Cloth Doll’s heart pounded in fear. It immediately tried to collide its spirit against Fisher Rumour’s.
Huang Tian’s stone axe spun out from his hand. All the spiritual power threads snapped. One strike shattered the spiritual force domain and heavily cleaved the Big-headed Cloth Doll, sending its body crashing into the centre of a divine array.
Plop.
The divine array world was a jade-green lake. The Big-headed Cloth Doll plunged into the water.
Huang Tian charged into the lake, lifted the Big-headed Cloth Doll, and refined it to death with death profound meanings.
A powerhouse whose spiritual power had reached the eightieth order perished just like that. Even the spiritual storm it unleashed in its dying moments could not breach Huang Tian’s Great Evolution Universe protective light shield, failing to harm him in the slightest.
…
Inside the temple.
Lord Ailian said, “Master, even if we fight to the death, we absolutely cannot agree to the Darkness Temple’s insolent demands. Otherwise, from now on, the Yasha clansmen will never again be able to hold their heads high in the universe.”
The Ancestral Realm Venerable’s expression was grim. “We can issue the Death Decree, summoning every Yasha cultivator to launch attacks on the Darkness Temple’s territories. Whether the gods in the ancestral realm or those outside, mobilise them all. Act in dispersed groups. Destroy a realm if we can, annihilate a star if we can. If the Darkness Temple truly wants to exterminate our Yasha Clan, they will pay a terrible price.”
A single Saint Realm cultivator self-detonating their saint source already causes extraordinary destruction.
The Yasha Clan has countless tens of thousands of Saint Realm cultivators. If they truly fight to mutual destruction, they could ruin half the Darkness Temple’s mundane worlds and sever its foundations.
Moreover, such calamity could not be resolved in a few centuries or even millennia.
As long as the Yasha Clan survives one more day, the Darkness Temple will suffer eternal backlash.
An upper god named Yun Shangxu said, “If we really do this, the Yasha Clan will perish. The urgent priority is to awaken the two old ancestors. Let them negotiate with the Darkness Temple. Perhaps the price we pay can be smaller.”
…
The Jade Spirit God watched coldly as the gods in the temple argued. She saw that some among them resented her and the Ancestral Realm Venerable, believing they had brought disaster upon the Yasha Clan, and were inclined to submit to the Darkness Temple.
If Lord Night Sky had not submitted to Wubian, the Jade Spirit God would truly have issued the Death Decree and fought the Darkness Temple to mutual destruction.
She believed that, in such a case, the Darkness Temple would very likely yield and not press so harshly.
But beneath the old ancestors, though she was the strongest, Lord Night Sky also possessed Taixu Realm cultivation and held extraordinary prestige in the Yasha Clan. He could completely overturn her Death Decree.
At that moment, the Jade Spirit God’s expression changed. She flew out of the temple.
The gods inside sensed it too and immediately followed.
They saw two masses of flame falling from the sky.
When they hit the ground, the human skin of the Human Skin Lantern and the cloth body of Devouring Earth both burned to black ash.
Two great gods of exalted status in the Darkness Temple…
Had fallen.
“How could this happen? How could this happen…”
“The Human Skin Lantern’s cultivation had reached the peak of the Tai Bai Realm. Devouring Earth’s spiritual power was at the eightieth order. Who could kill them silently?”
“Could it have been the old ancestors?”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
The Jade Spirit God’s delicate, snow-white face shifted through many expressions. She gazed towards the direction of Xing Huan Tian, her eyes icy cold.
To kill two great gods within the Yasha ancestral realm without her sensing anything, and without the Darkness Temple Lord arriving to rescue them, there must undoubtedly have been an existence with extraordinarily powerful spiritual force concealing the heavenly secrets.
In the border region of the Hell Realm, who possessed such ability?
Besides the two in Xing Huan Tian and Xing Tian Ya, who else could it be?
But would the Darkness Temple think that way? They would only believe that the Yasha Clan, relying on ancient arrays, had killed the Human Skin Lantern and the Big-headed Cloth Doll.
This was no different from declaring war.
The Jade Spirit God’s divine voice spread throughout the ancestral realm. “Immediately activate all defensive arrays and protective realm divine patterns in the ancestral realm. Start the war fortresses. The moment of life and death for the Yasha Clan has arrived.”
…
One day later.
Zhang Ruochen was stopped a billion li from the Yasha ancestral realm. Without needing to calculate, he knew the relationship between the Yasha Clan and the Darkness Temple must have deteriorated sharply. War was imminent.
Thus, he released the Yasha Clan Leader from the bead.
“It is the Clan Leader.”
“The Clan Leader has returned.”
Seeing the Yasha Clan Leader, the assembled soldiers grew excited and kowtowed towards the void.
Soon after, Lord Ailian flew out from a war fortress, invited the Clan Leader into the array, and headed straight for the ancestral realm. Zhang Ruochen had naturally concealed himself long before and did not appear.
The Yasha Clan Leader asked, “What exactly happened? Is war truly unavoidable?”
Lord Ailian’s expression was grave. “The Darkness Temple’s Lord Wubian sent the Human Skin Lantern and Devouring Earth to the ancestral realm to demand accountability and enormous compensation. Yet they died within the ancestral realm.”
The Yasha Clan Leader’s face changed. Although previously the Yasha Clan and Zhang Ruochen had jointly schemed to kill large numbers of Darkness Temple cultivators, that matter had not spread.
If there were sufficient benefits, the Darkness Temple could completely suppress the affair.
Moreover, in the Dark Triangle Star Domain, no great god-level powerhouse had died at the hands of the Yasha Clan, so there was still room for manoeuvre.
The Darkness Temple could hardly intend to exterminate the entire Yasha Clan over such losses, could they?
The Yasha Clan was no ordinary minor clan. Once it truly lashed back, it could even affect the overall war situation between Heaven Court and Hell Realm. Moreover, even if they destroyed the Yasha Clan, countless adverse consequences would follow.
Would the various large and small clans in the City of Hundred Clans not feel the sorrow of the rabbit dying in place of the fox?
Though they lacked the strength to resist the Darkness Temple, they could still choose to attach themselves to the Ten Great Clans or the Temple of Destiny. In that case, would the Darkness Temple not end up drawing water with a bamboo basket, gaining nothing?
