151: Fanatical Sacrifice

Seeing Li Dong moving through the battlefield as if no one were there, devouring the so-called Divine Grace like a supplement, Qiankun Zi's face showed no fear, but instead twisted into a morbid ecstasy.

"Haha... Hahahaha!"

His laughter was sharp and piercing, filled with an abnormal excitement, echoing over the bloody battlefield.

"Very good! Extremely good! Li Dong, you are even more perfect than I imagined! Only such a powerful vessel is qualified to carry the glory of my Lord!"

Wei Zheng, hearing this on the city wall, spat out a mouthful of blood: "Bah! You old madman, still talking tough when death is near!"

"Talking tough?" Qiankun Zi stood in mid-air, spreading his arms like a madman ready to embrace the world. "No, I have simply decided... to wait no longer! Let this grand welcoming ceremony begin ahead of schedule!"

Before the words fell, he fiercely slapped his Storage Pouch, and several blood-colored crystals the size of an infant's fist appeared in his palm. The crystals emitted a nauseating stench of blood, and countless grievances seemed to be wailing inside them.

"Go! Use your flesh and blood as a guide to awaken the sleeping nodes and welcome the descent of the God Lord!"

With a roar, Qiankun Zi swung his arm, and those few blood-colored crystals turned into several streaks of blood light, shooting toward various parts of the capital at an incredible speed. They did not shoot toward the city walls, but landed precisely in seemingly ordinary streets, residences, and even corners of the Demon Suppression Division headquarters.

Wei Zheng’s pupils constricted: "Not good! It's the evil energy dark stakes we failed to completely clear earlier!"

Before he could finish, the ground of the capital trembled violently!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Where the blood-colored crystals struck, pillars of black light shot into the sky, like giant black nails driven into heaven and earth. The evil energy fluctuations released by these pillars carried a strange frequency, resonating with the wails of the Dragon veins deep underground.

"Crack... Crackle..."

The core of the Dragon veins, already covered in cracks, emitted a sound of unbearable shattering under this resonance of internal and external forces. The sound was not loud, but it clearly entered the ears of every Cultivator, like an invisible blade cutting at everyone's heart.

Immediately after, in the center of the capital, above the ruins of the imperial palace that had been razed to the ground, space began to twist violently, and the earth was torn apart as if by an invisible giant hand!

A pitch-black rift appeared out of thin air and rapidly expanded, bottomless, as if leading directly to the nine netherworlds.

This was not a physical crack, but a wound in the rules and reality.

From deep within that rift, an indescribable pressure slowly rose. Merely the slight leakage of its aura caused countless low-level soldiers and Cultivators to go weak and kneel on the ground.

A huge, blurry, twisted phantom, impossible to describe in any language, was slowly... emerging upward from that pitch-black abyss.

It was not a physical entity, yet it possessed more oppression than any physical entity.

The God Lord projection!

"My Lord... Supreme..."

"Divine power... descending..."

More terrifying than physical attacks was the pollution on the spiritual level. With the appearance of that abyss rift, an invisible evil intent, like a breached flood, instantly swept across the entire capital.

The ordinary people who were still hesitating and wavering, as well as some Cultivators with weak wills, had the last trace of clarity in their eyes instantly erased. Replacing it was a kind of hollow and fanatical piety.

"The God Lord... is the only truth..."

"Destroy the old world, welcome the new order!"

The chaos in the city reached its peak at this moment. Those completely converted fanatics no longer attacked the defending troops, but instead turned around and began to frantically destroy the buildings around them. They smashed houses, pushed over archways, ignited streets, and muttered words, as if performing a grand sacrifice.

The entire capital was collapsing from within, turning into a sacrifice to welcome the "God Lord".

"Damn it!" Li Qingxuan gritted her teeth; she could feel that her connection to the Imperial Guard formation was being severely interfered with by this sacrificial act.

On the city wall, a more dangerous battle broke out in silence.

The Second Elder Ying Mei's strange eyes were locked onto Wei Zheng and Li Qingxuan on the city wall.

"You two, give up; your resistance is meaningless."

Her voice did not travel through the air, but rang directly in their minds, carrying a bewitching magic.

Wei Zheng felt as if a red-hot iron rod had been shoved into his head; countless chaotic thoughts and desperate emotions appeared out of thin air, impacting his will.

"Get out of my head!" he roared, and the Evil Qi of the Demon Suppression Division erupted from his body, temporarily resisting this mental infiltration.

Li Qingxuan's situation was worse; her cultivation was slightly inferior, and she was pale, her forehead covered in cold sweat, with a raging storm seemingly rising in her Sea of Consciousness.

Ying Mei chuckled, her voice full of disdain: "Useless. In the face of Divine Grace, the will of a Mortal is as fragile as thin paper..."

She increased the intensity of her mental infiltration, attempting to crush the mental defenses of these two in one fell swoop and completely dismantle the capital's command center.

But just then, an unexpected change occurred.

In the deepest part of Wei Zheng and Li Qingxuan's Sea of Consciousness, as Ying Mei's Mental Energy flooded in, some ancient and majestic existence was touched.

It was not a simple defensive barrier, but a sleeping phantom of a golden Dragon soul, closely connected to the national destiny of the Great Tang!

This "Dragon soul of the nation" was not the external manifestation driven by the Royal Ancestor, but the final heritage passed down in the Bloodline of core members of the Great Tang royal family.

After it was triggered, it did not collide violently with Ying Mei's Mental Energy as expected.

Instead, like an ancient and thick sponge, it began to "absorb" the invading evil intent in an extremely slow, yet incredibly firm manner.

Those overbearing and chaotic Mental Energy, upon touching this thread of Dragon soul, were like refined steel meeting ten-thousand-year-old jade; all their sharpness was lost. A trace of energy was slowly ground, filtered, and converted by the Dragon soul, eventually turning into a tiny but extremely pure nourishment that settled into the depths of Wei Zheng and Li Qingxuan's Sea of Consciousness.

This feeling... was too strange.

"Hmm?" The smile on Ying Mei's face froze.

She felt that her Mental Energy had stabbed into some kind of quagmire; not only did it fail to destroy the opponent, but it was stuck, dragged, and even... digested by an incomprehensible force?

What was this? Luring the enemy into a trap?

She tried to withdraw her Mental Energy, but discovered that those forces were like stones sinking into the sea; although she could withdraw most of it, a small portion was forcibly "deducted" by the opponent.

The loss was not great, but the insult was extremely high!

"You royal family... what kind of ghost things are you hiding?" There was suspicion in Ying Mei's voice for the first time.

She discovered that her mental techniques, which she prided herself on, were greatly reduced in efficiency when facing these high-ranking members of the Great Tang royal family, and she simply could not achieve a one-hit kill.

However, the most shocked person on the battlefield at this moment was not Ying Mei, but Li Dong.

Just at the moment when the abyss rift connecting to the God Lord projection was torn open, Li Dong was immersed in the joy of "eating a buffet".

But in the next second, his whole body stiffened.

Through the super-perception of the Spiritual Domain, he "heard" it.

He heard the roar of the will of that so-called "God Lord"; it was a grand noise filled with greed, desire for control, and cold order, like countless program codes screaming.

But beneath this piercing noise, in the deepest part of this abyss rift, Li Dong also sensed something else.

It was a... completely different intent.

If the "God Lord's" will was noisy, expansive, and eager to show itself.

Then this intent was silent, introverted, and eternal. It had no emotions, no malice, and did not even have the concept of "existence".

It was "nothingness".

It was the Void Realm itself.

A more ancient and silent "Void Realm intent" seemed to have been disturbed by the arrival ceremony of this uninvited guest, the "God Lord".

The moment Li Dong sensed this "Void Realm intent", the black crystal he had obtained from the Bone Scythe in his Sea of Consciousness, as well as that mysterious ancient stone slab, simultaneously emitted a slight, almost imperceptible hum.

They were not vibrating because of the power of the "God Lord"; on the contrary, they disdained the so-called "divinity" of the "God Lord".

At this moment, the objects they were resonating with were... the endless Void Realm beneath that abyss.