53: Chapter 53: With my background music, even gods have to kneel.

[Warning! High-dimensional space folding detected!]

[Warning! You have been pulled into an independent spiritual subspace!]

As Night Owl snapped his fingers, the surrounding desert ruins vanished instantly.

Xiang Lie, Su Xiaoxiao, and the dust filling the sky, all disappeared without a trace.

In their place was a bizarre space where the ground was made of writhing flesh.

Countless pale bone pillars stood all around, with a wailing soul nailed to each one.

[Spiritual Arena (Pseudo-Divine Domain)]

This was a trump card bestowed upon the Divine Child by the Pantheon Cult, a forbidden altar capable of forcibly dragging an enemy's consciousness into an independent space for a duel.

Here, all external interference was isolated.

"Welcome to... my world."

Night Owl hovered in mid-air. Behind him, that originally illusory shadow began to expand and twist violently, finally transforming into a terrifying Dharma Image standing thirty meters tall!

It was a three-headed, six-armed evil god!

It had no facial features; on its three heads, there were only countless rotating eyeballs.

Its arms held evil artifacts such as a bone blade, a human-skin drum, and a skull bowl.

A wave of filth, chaos, and spiritual pollution—enough to drive an ordinary person insane with just a single glance—surged toward Lin Yuan like a tide.

Night Owl's voice became layered and grandiose, as if thousands of people were roaring simultaneously:

"This is the power bestowed by my God! In this spiritual dimension, I am the rule! I am the master!"

Boom!

The evil god's Dharma Image swung its six arms in unison, whipping up a storm of blood and gore.

The immense spiritual pressure caused Lin Yuan's brain to feel intensely dizzy, and red alerts flashed frantically on the system panel.

[Warning! Spiritual pollution index rising... 30%... 50%...]

[Heretical divine power intrusion detected!]

However, Lin Yuan, standing on the flesh-covered ground, merely shook his head and steadied himself.

He looked up at the arrogant evil god's Dharma Image. In his deep blue eyes, there was none of the fear Night Owl had expected.

Instead, they held a hint of... contempt.

"God?"

"Slapping on a few eyeballs, growing a few extra arms, and making yourself look like a radiation-mutated monster, and you dare to call yourself a god?"

"The aesthetic of your Pantheon Cult is truly as rotten as ever."

"Insolent!!"

Night Owl was furious. The evil god's Dharma Image let out a roar, and countless eyes simultaneously shot out gray death rays: "Those who blaspheme against the gods shall die!!"

Facing the overwhelming, destructive attack, Lin Yuan slowly closed his eyes.

"Since you like playing with spiritual visualization so much..."

"Then I will let you witness what a true... God-level visualization is."

Humm—!!!

A dull roar, as if from the primordial era, suddenly exploded in this bloody space.

Lin Yuan suddenly opened his eyes.

[Chaos God Grinder Visualization Technique · Visualization!]

Rumble—!

The originally stable blood-colored sky suddenly cracked open with a huge fissure.

An aura that was vast, ancient, and boundlessly domineering instantly descended!

Behind Lin Yuan, the void shattered.

A giant grinding mill, chaotic in color, with countless Dao runes inscribed on its surface, and seemingly capable of covering the entire firmament, slowly emerged!

It was too big.

It was so large that Night Owl's thirty-meter-tall evil god Dharma Image looked like an exquisite toy figurine in front of it.

It turned very slowly, as if time and space were being drawn into it and ground into powder.

[Chaos God Grinder · Manifest!]

The moment this divine grinder appeared, the filthy blood light that filled the space instantly melted away like snow under the sun!

"What... what is this?!"

Night Owl, who was originally high and mighty and claimed to be a god, let out a scream of extreme terror at this moment.

His evil god Dharma Image was trembling!

That was absolute suppression from a higher status!

It was like an ant on the ground encountering a true dragon from the heavens!

"Impossible! How could your spiritual power visualize such a primordial object?!"

Night Owl went mad. He couldn't understand how a human's sea of consciousness could contain such a terrifying existence! This was simply not something humans could imagine!

"In my BGM..."

He slowly raised his right hand and made a downward pressing gesture toward the evil god's Dharma Image:

"Never mind you, this fake god."

"Even if a true god came..."

"They would still have to kneel for me!"

"Suppress!"

Rumble—!!!

As Lin Yuan's palm fell.

That sky-covering Chaos God Grinder, carrying the terrifying momentum to crush the heavens, crashed down!

"No!! My God, save me!!"

Night Owl let out a desperate roar, desperately pushing the evil god's Dharma Image to resist.

But in the face of absolute power, all struggle was futile.

The six arms raised by the evil god's Dharma Image shattered into black light spots filling the sky the moment they touched the bottom of the grinder.

Followed by the head, the torso...

"Ahhhhh—!!!"

Following the destruction of the Dharma Image, Night Owl's spiritual origin suffered devastating damage.

His soul was repeatedly crushed, torn, and reconstructed within the grinder, enduring torture ten thousand times more painful than the eighteen levels of hell.

[System Notification: Successfully crushed heretical divinity!]

[Devour mode activated, spiritual power being purified...]

A vast, unimaginably pure energy fed back into Lin Yuan's body along the grinder.

Lin Yuan felt his brain become clear. His spiritual power, which had just broken through to the third rank, surged again at this moment, instantly breaking through the initial stage barrier and approaching the mid-third rank!

Awesome!

Unprecedentedly awesome!

A few seconds later, the blood-colored space collapsed.

Everything around returned to the appearance of the desert ruins.

Lin Yuan was still standing in the same spot, not having moved even an inch.

And in front of him.

That arrogant Divine Child Night Owl was now slumped on the ground like a pile of mud.

"Grinder... such a huge grinder... don't crush me... don't crush me..."

He was crazy.

Completely, thoroughly crazy.

"Be more careful in your next life."

Bang!

Lin Yuan applied force to his feet.

In the virtual world, Night Owl's head exploded, and his body turned into white light, forced offline.

[Real World · Shadow Academy Rest Area]

"Beep—!!!"

A piercing alarm suddenly rang through the entire preparation area.

The connection pod in the very center, which belonged to Night Owl, suddenly began to emit billows of black smoke.

"Bang!"

The pod lid was blown open by the emergency program.

"Save him! Quickly, save him!"

The team's medical instructor rushed up to check, but a few seconds later, he shook his head with a pale face:

"There's no saving him... his spiritual origin is completely shattered, and his cerebral cortex is burned out."

"Even if he is saved... he will just be a vegetable who can only drool."

The whole arena was in an uproar!

"He died? He really died?"

"Serves him right! Didn't you hear the broadcast just now? This person is a Divine Child of the Pantheon Cult! He's a terrorist!"

Just then, the leaderboard on the big screen froze.

With the total annihilation of Shadow Academy, the final suspense of Group A was completely ended.

[System Announcement: Group A Survival Match Ended!]

[Congratulations to the Modu Martial Arts University Adjudication Team for advancing to the national top 16 with first place on the leaderboard (by a wide margin)!]

On the screen, Lin Yuan stood on the desert ruins, with his cheering teammates behind him.

He looked up at the drone camera in the sky, his eyes calm and deep.

This battle.

He didn't just win the match.

He was also officially recognized by the authorities as an "Anti-Cult Hero" through this globally broadcast "God-Slaying" battle.