Chapter 401: Third Eye

Elysia Mystshroud had a wide grin as she walked the central street of Nightrose City. After the construction of the new castle in Ashfallen's name that occupied the center of the city where the Nightrose family's castle had stood for decades, and the populace accepted the change in their overlords, there had been a flood of new sign-ups to the cult of the All-Seeing Eye.

Some businessmen with good foresight had approached her with plans to construct grand places of worship for the All-Seeing Eye, and she happily approved them all despite the exorbitant proposed budgets.

She had a lot of money from selling the Ashfallen Sect's pills through the Eternal Pursuit Pavilion. While it was her money, she had dedicated her everything, including her body and soul, to the All-Seeing Eye, which included her funds.

If these places of worship helped the All-Seeing Eye even a little, she saw it worth it. After all, the more people who believed in her god, the stronger her powers became.

"Elder Elysia—"

"Don't call me that," Elysia glared over her shoulder at one of her family's Elders, who was adorning the black cloak of the All-Seeing Eye with the hood down, hiding his face. "I don't want to inherit that title. I have a greater purpose now than being one of the leaders in a mere cultivation family. Refer to me as the Vice Cult Leader."

"Understood, Vice Leader," the man gave a slight bow of apology.

"Speak. What do you seek my counsel for?"

"Around seventy percent of the city is now indoctrinated into the cult, but a large area to the north is still holding out under the leadership of a powerful mortal family."

Elysia turned to look at the man directly, "Tell me, Elder. What fate is deserved to those who refuse the loving gaze of the All-Seeing Eye."

The man gulped, "Death."

"Exactly, so kill them."

"Just the mortal family?"

"No, just killing them isn't enough. It's a shame it's come to this, but..." Elysia shook her head sadly, "Kill all of them—every last person that refuses our god's love. Slaughter them in the streets, hang up their gutted bodies for all to see."

The Elder sounded concerned. "All of them...? We are talking about millions here. Elysia, I feel like that's a bit too far."

Elysia reached forward and pulled back the Elder's hood. A tired middle-aged man she knew as her uncle met her gaze with confusion. She gently stroked the man's cheek. "Some people refuse to be dragged into the light and insist on living in the shadows of the past," her soft touch turned into a vice-like grip around the man's neck, making his eyes widen, "You wouldn't happen to be one of them, would you?"

"No El—Vice Cult Leader." The man frowned and reached up to grab her arm. "Forgive my observation, Elysia, but you have changed for the worse. His power has corrupted you."

Elysia threw her head back with manic laughter. She had never heard something so ridiculous. "Changed for the worse? Elder, he broke my mind and put me back together in his perfect image. I am his creation and live to fulfill his purpose in the nine realms."

"I just don't think slaughtering people who defy him is something he would do," the Elder foolishly protested, "He's not an evil god."

"Evil is subjective, and the victor writes history. Listen, if we slaughter the nonbelievers, do you know what that means?"

"No..."

"We will have converted everyone in the city to join the cult of the All-Seeing Eye! No soul in these walls will be a nonbeliever and spout nonsense. Wouldn't that make our god happy? To know everyone has accepted his love?"

The Elder frowned, "Killing everyone who disagrees with you doesn't mean everyone accepted our rule—"

"Quiet." Elysia put a finger on the Elder's lips. "I can feel the presence of our god. Something's wrong." She dropped to her knee and put a hand on the ground. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her Qi and listened to the roots under the city.

"What is it?"

Elysia looked up at the Elder, her face twisted with rage and disbelief. "Our god... has felt pain."

"Pain?" The Elder's face turned serious, "How? Who would dare?!"

"I don't know," Elysia rose to her feet, "But I will summon everyone. If someone dares to hurt our god, it's time for a holy war in his name. Even if we can't reach the realm of the gods to fight his battle, we can slaughter another god's believers and burn this realm to the ground."

"Right..." The Elder slowly nodded, "I guess we could do that. Or we could be more reasonable and—"

Elysia ignored his ramblings as she rose into the sky on a sword, leaving the Elder behind. Tendrils of purple mist spread out as she relayed the pain she had felt from her god, along with a simple message: "Gather at the castle and prepare for a fight."

Across the city, members of the Mystshroud family jumped into the air and ran across rooftops to converge in the courtyard before the entrance to the castle.

While waiting for them, Elysia was busy trying to gain more information by conversing with the cosmic affinity tree she knew her god had created as her family members took a respectful knee in rows behind her.

A murmur of agreement spread throughout the others.

The Elder bowed slightly, "I will agree you are right if you can show me proof that our god would do such a thing. I refuse to believe he would kill mortals simply because they defy him."

"Fine," Elysia had no doubts that she understood her god wholeheartedly.

"Thank you—" the man paused as a presence they all knew blanketed the island. He dropped to one knee alongside everyone, including Elysia, who was trembling in excitement.

Below them, the thin golden roots of the tree, like a tapestry spreading throughout the expansive courtyard that was now floating, glowed with divine energy. The beautiful tree of twisted black wood, with branches sprouting off at unnatural angles as if reaching for distant stars, ending in transparent leaves that radiated celestial radiance, became a beacon of power. Their god had arrived and was using the tree as their avatar.

Cracks appeared along the edge of the island as giant flowers that looked like a star-filled night sky sprouted and swiveled to aim at the maelstrom of illusion Qi. At the same time, a dome of celestial energy covered the island, and cosmic dust began to spread out from the island like a celestial storm.

Elysia glanced over her shoulder to check on the other islands and saw the same process happening to them. There was a spatial, abyssal tide, ink, and what appeared to be a void island. Every one of them was gearing up for war, with shields of differing affinities manifesting alongside flowers gathering power.

Portals opened on each island, and monstrosities made of wood in eternal servitude to their god and the Ashfallen Sect lumbered through.

That is when Elysia noticed something truly massive moving in the distance. It looked like a walking mountain in the shape of a turtle. On its back was a fortress, and as it opened its massive mouth, the silver gleam of an emerging cannon caught the late evening sunlight.

All were aimed at a single location. But something else caught Elysia's notice. There was a familiar gaze looking at the scene from afar. Channeling everything she had into her new spiritual eye, she barely managed to briefly peer past what appeared to be an illusion array surrounding Red Vine Peak, and she met the gaze... of a tree.

Not her god, but a giant spirit tree that seemed to share the same eye as the All-Seeing Eye. She strained her eyes to try and get a better look, but it backfired; a pounding headache forced her to relax, and the mountain peak returned to normal with nothing more than a slightly big tree growing on it.

***

"This might be enough," Ashlock mused as he looked at his gathered army. While some would hardly make a dent, such as Willow, Quill, and Serena, as their cultivation realm was below the Nascent Soul Realm, he did have some heavy hitters.

Erebus was a void bastion at the peak of the Star Core Realm, as was Orion with cosmic affinity. Both bastions had been made from the Grand Elders of their respective families and possessed destructive affinities with incredible damage output.

Anubis, his mid-stage Nascent Soul Realm shadow lich, was also present. Unfortunately, he couldn't get Nox's attention. The shadow tree was busy trying to keep her consciousness together due to Nyxalia. Larry was also missing as he was undergoing an evolution to SS grade. Maple was around but, as usual, showed no interest in acting unless something threatened Stella.

Without Nox and Larry, he was lacking in Nascent Soul Realm-level fighting capabilities. But he had an opportunity. While Vincent was busy wrestling back control of his mind from the anguish he had sent his way, he was vulnerable.

The gravity rings were still active, and there was a storm of chaotic illusion Qi all around him, but now was a great opportunity.

"Even if I don't manage to kill him here, the amount of Qi he's wasting is ridiculous. He has to be expanding around a year's worth of Qi per second." Ashlock mused as he continued to monitor Vincent through his Evil Eye from Red Vine Peak. "I'll move Orion closer and try to siphon as much Qi as possible through my vines."

When he had upgraded Abyssal Devourer to A grade, it came with a new feature where his vines could drain someone of their Qi and life force.

"I hope this will be enough to kill him, though," Ashlock grumbled. All of his bastions were linked to him through ethereal roots, and while they were far below him in cultivation level, the pull on his already strained Star Core was less than ideal. As it turned out, fueling a full-on multiy-affinity bombardment was quite intensive.

Luckily, he could pull Qi from his offspring instead of paying the steep conversion cost for some of the affinities, such as spatial.

"Erebus is by far the worst," Ashlock cast his eye to the tree that had a hole to the void in its trunk, "Powering up all of his flowers is comparable to a dozen lightning strikes from my Voidstorm Aegis skill."

While none of his gathered forces compared to Vincent individually, he hoped combining them would be enough to take him down.

"Bastions close in and pump out those storms," Ashlock commanded, and he watched as they all slowly inched closer to Vincent's outer gravity rings. One of the Bastions' capabilities was to release a storm around them of their affinity, which has various uses. In this case, Ashlock was using them to probe the gravity rings to see what he was working against.

Sure enough, once they got close enough, the gravity rings sucked in the affinity storms, and other than the void storm coming out of Erebus that ate away at the ring it encountered, the rest were simply absorbed and crushed.

"It feels like sprinkling dust on a collapsing star. Just how strong is gravity Qi?" While he could replicate the effect to an extent, he had taken the path of desolation rather than having his spatial Qi specialize in gravity Qi. He could unmake things with desolation, while gravity could crush them out of existence if the gap in cultivation was large enough.

"Time to go all in. Bastions, get ready to fire on the count of three."

Ashlock switched his view to Orion, who he had overtaken with {Progeny Dominion} to get a front-seat view of his bastions releasing their all at Vincent.

What the hell was Elysia doing here?

"Elysia?" He asked.

The woman staggered to her feet and looked at Orion with two empty eyes and a slit-open head. She grinned wildly as a red eye peered through the slit in her head. As the world went white due to the immense unleashing of Qi from the gathered bastions toward Vincent, Elysia remained unfazed as she continued to stare at him and mouthed.

"My god, I have finally gazed upon your true form."