224: Chapter 224 Defying the Gods

They wanted to rush forward, wanted to block that world-destroying, fatal blow for their emperor!

However, their bodies seemed to be tightly restrained in place by an invisible force, unable to move even a fraction!

They could only watch helplessly as that black star, representing death and destruction, drew closer and closer to their great Emperor, who was like a god!

However, just when everyone thought that the legendary Eastern Emperor, who had created countless miracles, was about to fall under this irresistible divine punishment, the small figure who had been walking forward slowly suddenly stopped.

He slowly raised his head. On that handsome face, which had always been as calm as an ancient well, there was not a trace of fear or panic; there was only a cold Battle Intent filled with endless disdain and arrogance!

"Finally willing to come out?"

Gao Feng slowly raised his three-pointed, double-edged blade, the tip pointing obliquely at the rapidly falling star of death.

"I have been waiting for you for a long time."

The next moment, Gao Feng's black eyes, deep as the endless starry sky, suddenly opened wide!

Two rays of substantial golden divine light, so brilliant that they could make the sun and moon pale, erupted from his eyes and shot straight into the Nine Heavens!

"BOOM—!!!"

A terrifying Aura, vast enough to make the entire world tremble, rose into the sky from his seemingly not particularly burly body, as if an ancient primordial giant beast that had been sleeping for hundreds of millions of years had awakened!

The terrifying strength of a Martial Saint Peak erupted completely at this moment, without any reservation!

His waterfall-like long black hair danced wildly without wind!

His black Dragon robe was whipped by the violent airflow, snapping loudly!

His entire body began to emit a mysterious luster like black glaze, filled with immortality and indestructibility!

Myriad Tribulations Indestructible Body! Full power activation!

The blood in his body began to roar and surge like a rushing Yangtze River, emitting terrifying thundering sounds!

A terrifying force of Qi and blood, vast beyond imagination, shot up from the top of his head, condensing behind him into a strange black sun with a diameter of over a hundred zhang, radiating endless light and heat, and filled with the Aura of destruction and death!

Three Elephant Technique! Dragon Elephant! Divine Elephant! Sacred Elephant!!!

Three Elephants as One!!!!!!!

In his Dantian and Qi Sea, the Myriad Dao Unity Art True Qi, which he had already Cultivated to the extreme, rushed like a breached flood into the three-pointed, double-edged blade in his hand!

"HUM—!!!"

After bearing this unimaginably vast and terrifying injection of energy, the entire body of the three-pointed, double-edged blade began to tremble violently, emitting high-pitched blade hums filled with endless excitement and desire!

Visible, tiny black spatial cracks filled with the Aura of destruction began to spread wildly in all directions, centered on that great blade!

Facing the world-destroying, terrifying meteorite falling from the sky, Gao Feng did not choose to clash with it head-on!

Because he knew very well that this was not a pure force attack!

It was the power of Law!

It was a dimension-reduction strike from a higher dimension!

With his current strength of only Martial Saint Peak, he was still far from being able to confront this level of power head-on!

However, being unable to confront it did not mean it could not be broken!

Every Spell must have its core and source!

And the core of this so-called "Divine Punishment Heavenly Star Array" before him was that huge blood-red magic array floating in the sky!

As long as it could be completely destroyed!

Then this seemingly irresistible star of death would be defeated without a fight!

Gao Feng's brilliant eyes, burning with golden flames, locked tightly onto the very center of the huge blood-red magic array in the sky, at the core node where the energy fluctuations were most intense!

Then, he moved!

The three-pointed, double-edged blade in his hand, which had already accumulated his life's power and will, slashed slowly towards the core of the blood-red magic array in the sky, following a trajectory that seemed extremely slow but was actually fast to the extreme and filled with an indescribable mystery!

This slash had no earth-shattering, brilliant blade light.

Nor did it have any terrifying, world-destroying power.

It only had the most pure manifestation of the Dao, returning to simplicity!

This was the most Peak and extreme slash that Gao Feng had unleashed after completely merging and mastering his life's learning, the three top-tier divine arts from different worlds: the Myriad Tribulations Indestructible Body, Myriad Dao Unity Art, and Three Elephant Technique!

This was the Peak of his martial arts!

This was the ultimate manifestation of his supreme imperial will—never yielding, never retreating, daring to swing his blade at the heavens and earth, and daring to draw his sword against the gods!

Wherever the blade passed, the Void Realm seemed unable to bear its extreme sharpness and will, and tiny, visible black cracks appeared!

Time seemed to freeze once again at this moment.

Everyone's gaze converged simultaneously on that blade, which seemed plain and ordinary yet appeared to contain the most mysterious truths between heaven and earth!

"CRACK—!!!"

An incredibly crisp sound, as if glass was shattering, rang out without warning from the Nine Heavens!

Immediately after, under the dull gaze of hundreds of thousands of troops on and off the city walls, filled with endless shock and disbelief, the core of the huge blood-red magic array floating in the sky—which had always been regarded by everyone in the Taixi Empire as an invincible miracle—was abruptly slashed open with a hideous, huge crack by that black blade!

With the appearance of this crack, the entire magic array's originally stable energy circulation instantly fell into an out-of-control, violent state!

And the terrifying star of death, which had already fallen to less than a thousand zhang from the ground, lost its most precise Law guidance, causing its originally straight downward trajectory to deviate significantly in an instant!

It grazed the edge of the Wu Dynasty camp, carrying a terrifying screeching sound that could tear human eardrums apart, and crashed heavily onto the endless wasteland in the distance!

"RUMBLE—!!!"

The next moment, a super earthquake, even more terrifying and intense than the last, erupted!

The entire earth seemed to have been violently flipped up by an invisible giant hand!

Terrifying, huge cracks in the earth, dozens of zhang wide and bottomless, spread wildly in all directions like hideous black giant pythons!

And in mid-air, Gao Feng, who had already lost all his strength, saw his tall body suffer a terrifying backlash from unleashing that earth-shattering slash that exceeded his own limits!

"PUFF—!!!"

He suddenly spat out a mouthful of scalding golden blood!

His originally upright body couldn't help but sway violently, nearly falling from mid-air.

However, he used the three-pointed, double-edged blade in his hand to prop himself up against the ground, forcibly stabilizing his figure!

Then, he slowly raised his head, looking at the azure sky that had quickly cleared up due to the shattering of the magic array, and the St. John City garrison, who were already frightened to the point of Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering and pale as sheets from witnessing this incredible, god-like scene.

On his handsome face, which was slightly pale but filled with endless dominance and arrogance, a brilliant smile full of heroic spirit suddenly bloomed!

"HAHAHAHAHA—!!!"

"So-called Divine Punishment! Nothing more than this!"

That heroic laughter, filled with endless disdain and contempt, rang through the entire world like rolling thunder, striking hard at the hearts of the hundreds of thousands of troops on and off the city walls, who had already fallen into a deathly silence!

That scene would be forever engraved in the deepest part of the Souls of everyone who witnessed it, never to be forgotten!

The heroic laughter echoing between the deathly silent heaven and earth, inside and outside St. John City, filled with endless disdain and arrogance, was like an invisible hammer of judgment forged from the sharpest of Sharp Weapons, striking hard at the fragile hearts of every Taixi Empire soldier, which were already completely filled with extreme fear and disbelief!

"The... Divine... Punishment... was... by him... with one slash... broken?!"

On the city wall, a respected white-robed priest in charge of controlling the "Divine Punishment Heavenly Star Array" had his murky eyes, which were widened in excessive horror, covered with hideous bloodshot veins like spider webs.

He stared blankly at the great black figure who, although golden blood was still overflowing from the corner of his mouth and his overall Aura had become much weaker, still held his back straight like an unyielding divine spear capable of piercing the entire firmament. His lips trembled as he muttered in a daze, filled with endless despair and disbelief.

"This... how is this possible?! This is the Divine Punishment personally sent down by my Lord! It is the power of Law capable of destroying everything in the world! A mere Mortal... a mere humble Eastern heretic... how could he... how could he possibly shake the supreme dignity of the gods with his own tiny flesh and blood body?!"

His faith, that absolute, pious faith in the god of light that had been instilled in him since childhood and had long been deep-rooted and indestructible, was at this moment, along with the shattering of the huge blood-red magic array in the sky, abruptly slashed into complete nothingness by that domineering black blade!

And he was merely a small microcosm of the tens of thousands of garrison troops and believers in St. John City at this moment.

When they witnessed with their own eyes the invincible Divine Punishment, which they regarded as their last hope and reliance, being abruptly broken with a single slash by the Eastern Mortal emperor, whom they viewed as small as an ant, in the most direct and shocking way, their fragile spiritual world, already completely paralyzed by fanatical religious belief, collapsed like a huge, hollowed-out dam under the impact of the monstrous flood named "fear" and "despair," disintegrating into chaos!

Even the gods have been defeated!

Even the supreme Divine Punishment could not deal with that terrifying Eastern man who was like a demon god!

Then, what could they, these humble Mortals, use to contend with him?!

What could they use to protect this isolated city that had long since lost the protection of the gods?!

"Thump!"

I do not know who was the first to be unable to withstand the immense mental pressure that felt like Mount Tai pressing down on them. The weapon in his hand fell onto the cold city bricks with a "clang," and then his whole body collapsed like a pile of mud, his eyes left with nothing but endless emptiness and despair.

Immediately after, it was just like toppling the first domino.

"Clang!"

"Clang!"

"Clang!"

The sound of weapons hitting the ground began to echo continuously on the deathly silent city wall, and more and more Western soldiers gave up their resistance.

Their eyes, which had originally been filled with fanaticism and a fearlessness of death, became dull and lifeless at this moment, like a pool of stagnant water that could not raise the slightest ripple.

Their will to resist, their belief in battle, and their so-called Holy Light glory that they were so proud of were all completely destroyed and crushed to pieces under the heaven-shaking, earth-shattering, and invincible Divine Might of Gao Feng's one blade that broke the Law!

St. John City, this indestructible holy city that had once cost the Wu Dynasty's central army thirty thousand elite soldiers' lives without even shaking it in the slightest, surrendered without a fight!

When Gao Feng dragged his slightly exhausted body and walked step by step to the foot of St. John City, which had already opened its huge gates to him, all the surviving garrison and clerics inside the city had already, like a group of pathetic prisoners waiting for their final judgment, knelt trembling on both sides of the road, burying their heads deep into the cold ground, not daring to even take a deep breath.

They were expressing their most thorough submission in the humblest posture to this terrifying Eastern conqueror who had defied the gods with a Mortal body.

Meanwhile, in the Wu Dynasty's camp in the distance, the hundreds of thousands of central army soldiers who had witnessed this mythical and epic scene, after experiencing a brief, deathly silence, finally reacted from the extreme shock and disbelief!

The next moment, a cheer that was more fanatical and louder than ever before, like a landslide or a tsunami, erupted like a terrifying volcano that had been accumulating for billions of years!

"Long live my Emperor! Long live! Long live! Long live for ten thousand years!"

"Your Majesty is mighty!"

"One blade breaks the Law! Defying the gods! My Emperor is the greatest emperor of all time!"

Those cheers, filled with endless worship and fanaticism, converged into a terrifying torrent of sound waves capable of dispersing all the gloom between heaven and earth, shooting straight into the clouds and lingering for a long time!

All the soldiers of the central army, their withered hearts, which had long been completely shrouded in the shadow of Divine Punishment, seemed at this moment to have been injected with a steady stream of hot magma filled with endless hope and courage!

Their morale, their Battle Intent, and their belief in the final victory of this war all climbed to an unprecedented Peak at this moment!

With such a god-like, great emperor leading them personally!

Then, what is there in this world that they cannot overcome?!

Gao Feng's miracle of "one blade breaking the Law" was like a magnitude 12 super hurricane, swiftly sweeping across the entire Western continent, which had already fallen into a quagmire of blood and fire, with an invincible and terrifying posture!

For the Wu Dynasty's three armies, which had long been low in morale and scattered in spirit, this news was undoubtedly the most powerful shot in the arm!

And for those remnants of the Western Empire who were still putting up a desperate struggle and resisting at every turn, it was a fatal death knell that was enough to completely shatter their last shred of will to resist!

Even the gods could no longer protect them!

Even the supreme Divine Punishment had been slashed and broken by that terrifying Eastern emperor with one blade!

Then, what meaning was there in the resistance carried out by these humble Mortals?

In an instant, the entire war situation of the Western expedition underwent an earth-shattering and dramatic reversal!

The siege warfare and street fighting, which had originally been full of hardship and blood like a quagmire, became exceptionally smooth.

The Wu Dynasty's three armies were like three red-hot, sharp blades, fiercely plunging into the deepest parts of the Western Empire's already riddled and decaying body with an unstoppable and invincible posture!

Under the leadership of Du Wei and Xue Biao, the northern army marched south all the way, sweeping away everything, and almost without encountering any decent resistance, completely cleared the central province of the Western Empire.

Under the leadership of the "Overlord" Xiang Hao, whose invincible personal martial strength had already broken through to the Martial Saint realm, the southern army was like a humanoid Vicious Beast that had walked out of the primordial wilderness, charging and crashing, tearing all enemies who dared to block their path into the bloodiest fragments!

The central army, under the personal command of Gao Feng, fought steadily and entrenched themselves at every step, like a cold and precise war machine, crushing one solid military stronghold after another, which had once cost them blood and lives to fail to capture, into flat ground!

The war had reached its ninth year, which was the late autumn of the 19th year of Qiyuan.

The Wu Dynasty's three steel torrents, which had long been baptized by the flames of war and had become increasingly elite and powerful, finally, after paying an unimaginably huge price, successfully met at the foot of a huge golden city that was even more magnificent, more splendid, and more filled with a sacred and solemn atmosphere than St. John City!

That city was built entirely from a strange, unknown giant stone that emitted a faint golden halo.

The entire city was like a work of art crafted by nature, as if cast from pure gold, and under the shining of the warm autumn sun, it emitted a dazzling and resplendent golden light that made people feel dizzy and fascinated.

In the very center of the city, a huge golden cathedral, like a towering mountain, was like a true god of light descending into the Mortal world, looking down at the common people below with his eyes filled with endless majesty and compassion.

That was the political, economic, cultural, and religious center of the entire Western Empire!

That was the location of the highest authority of the Church of Light—the Papal Hall!

That was the final goal of this epic national war that had lasted for nine whole years!

— "Fanting Holy Capital"!

When the millions of Wu Dynasty iron-blooded troops, wearing black, ferocious armor, slowly surrounded that golden holy city from all directions like a black ocean of death, the whole world seemed to fall into a deathly silence.

The air was filled with a suffocating, terrifying, and oppressive atmosphere, like the wind before a storm.

Everyone's eyes converged, without exception, on that last golden holy city that seemed to be within easy reach but also as if it were far away at the ends of the earth.

Everyone's heart was filled with an unspeakable, complex, and excited emotion.

Nine years!

Nine whole years!

They had finally fought their way here!

As long as they could capture this last city before them!

Then this damned war would be completely over!

They would be able to return to that warm homeland they had missed day and night and had been away from for nine long years!

However, in Gao Feng's black eyes, which were as deep as the endless starry sky, there was not the slightest joy of impending final victory.

There was only an unprecedented gravity!

Because he could clearly see that on the periphery of that golden Fanting Holy Capital, a layer of visible, milky-white, huge Holy Light shield, emitting a soft and sacred Aura, was shrouded!

That shield was so thick, so solid!

It was like a huge, inverted white jade bowl, protecting the entire huge golden holy city tightly inside.

A vast, majestic, and terrifying energy fluctuation, filled with sacred and inviolable majesty, slowly radiated from that huge milky-white shield, making everyone who approached it feel a deep sense of awe and insignificance from the depths of their Soul.

"Your Majesty, what is that?"

Xiang Hao's burly body, like an iron tower, had somehow arrived beside Gao Feng, and his tiger eyes, filled with endless dominance and Battle Intent, also revealed a look of gravity.

With his terrifying strength, which had already broken through to the ninth-stage Martial Saint realm, he actually felt a breath of terrifying danger from that seemingly ordinary milky-white shield that was enough to make him feel palpitations!

"That should be the last barrier of the Western Empire."

Gao Feng's voice sounded a bit low. He raised his three-pointed, double-edged blade and poured all his Myriad Dao Unity True Qi, which had already recovered to its Peak state, into it without reservation!

"Hum——!!!"

That three-pointed, double-edged blade instantly erupted with a high-pitched blade hum!

A black, terrifying blade Aura, a hundred zhang long and filled with endless destruction and a domineering Aura, instantly formed!

"Break for me!"

Gao Feng let out a heaven-shaking roar!

The battle blade in his hand slashed fiercely towards the huge, milky-white Holy Light shield in the distance!

That terrifying black blade Aura, which was enough to easily split a towering mountain in half with a single strike, carrying a terrifying momentum capable of tearing the sky apart, instantly crossed the long distance of thousands of zhang and slashed fiercely onto the huge, milky-white Holy Light shield!

However, the scene that followed made all the Wu Dynasty soldiers present widen their eyes in unison, with expressions of shock and disbelief on their faces!

They saw that the domineering black blade Aura, the moment it touched the milky-white Holy Light shield, was completely swallowed and absorbed by the seemingly soft shield silently, like a clay ox entering the sea, without even raising the slightest ripple!