89: Chapter 89 The Traitor's "Ascension"

The Central Sacred Land, once the heart and the high ground of faith in this world, was currently reduced to a living hell.

The archway of the Heavenly Law Court, which symbolized eternal order, had snapped; half of it was embedded diagonally into the earth, and the ancient legal runes inscribed upon it were being slowly eroded by a scarlet rust, emitting a teeth-aching "hissing" sound.

True Person Xuantian, the leader of the conservative faction who had recently attempted to completely expel the players using "The Wager of the Dao Heart," now stood amidst the ruins of the Heavenly Law Court, his hair disheveled.

His eyes no longer held their usual Majesty and rigidity, leaving only bloodshot exhaustion and madness.

Before him, dozens of elders from the Heavenly Law Court sat cross-legged, attempting to construct a final purification array using their own vital blood.

However, when the ubiquitous scarlet spiritual energy surged in, the array only lasted for three breaths.

"Pfft—"

An elder suddenly spat out a mouthful of black blood; as the blood hit the ground, it transformed into countless twisted, blood-colored worms that frantically burrowed into the earth.

His own body seemed to have been drained of all vitality, rapidly shriveling up, while eerie, vein-like dark red patterns emerged on the surface of his skin.

His eyes snapped open, devoid of any shred of reason, holding only an endless craving for flesh and blood.

"Hrr..."

He let out a roar that did not sound human and lunged at his former fellow disciples beside him.

This was just the beginning.

The chain reaction spread like a plague; one esteemed elder after another was corrupted and mutated. The former law enforcers of the holy land instantly turned into the most terrifying monsters, engaging in a bloody slaughter among themselves upon these ruins.

"No... No!" True Person Xuantian's eyes were splitting with rage. He wanted to strike, but the mana within his body was like a venomous snake with its throat throttled; the slightest attempt to channel it caused the foul, potent poison to instantly backfire upon his soul.

Despite possessing the cultivation of a half-step Ascension, at this moment, he was not even as capable as a Qi Refining stage disciple.

This was the apocalypse.

It brought down all the powerhouses who had lived by the old laws, casting them into the dust in the most fair and cruel manner.

Despair, like the thickest ink, splashed across the entire Central Sacred Land.

Just amidst this dead silence of despair, a piece of news, like a spark thrown into an abyss, spread frantically through various surviving communication artifacts.

— Fairy Yunshang would hold a "Purification of the World Ceremony" at the "God-Burial Platform" in the center of the Sacred Land three days later. She had found a way to survive this apocalyptic disaster!

Once the news broke, the whole world was in an uproar.

The God-Burial Platform was a sacred altar used for sacrificing to heaven and earth in ancient times, which had been abandoned for tens of thousands of years.

And Fairy Yunshang, the woman who had been adept at navigating complex situations and possessed unfathomable methods when the players were stirring up trouble, had vanished after the chaos in the Sacred Land. Everyone thought she had fallen.

Now, her return undoubtedly brought a glimmer of illusory hope to all the living beings struggling in the darkness.

Was it a scam? Or true salvation? It no longer mattered.

For those drowning, even a straw would be grasped with all their might.

Three days later, tens of thousands of survivors had gathered around the abandoned God-Burial Platform.

Most of them had low cultivation, were ragged, sallow-faced, and their eyes held an identical look of numbness and fear.

Among them, one could even see some once-lofty scions of noble families, as well as severely injured sect elders.

They were like a flock of lambs waiting for the judgment of a god, looking up at that ancient altar.

...

Meanwhile, on the player forum.

A female player with the ID [Gossip Reporter Little Trumpet] was running a post with the prefix "Live Broadcast," updating the situation at the God-Burial Platform with pictures and text.

["Guys! Guys! I've arrived! Let me tell you, the SAN value in this place is dropping super fast. It's full of weird-looking NPCs, each one looking like they're about to mutate any second. I had to pop three bottles of 'Heart-Cleansing and Desire-Reducing Power Pills' just to barely stabilize!"]

["I see her! Fairy Yunshang has appeared! Holy crap, I haven't seen this woman for a few days, and her temperament has completely changed! She used to be that kind of 'white lotus' with a knife hidden in her smile, but now... how should I put it, she feels like a cold, emotionless precision instrument, looking at everyone like they're just data. That white dress she's wearing seems to have living black patterns flowing on it—super creepy!"]

Below the post, countless players flooded in.

[Keyboard Warrior Governing the Nation: "Selling melon seeds, peanuts, and mineral water in the front row! I bet fifty cents that this broad is definitely the prologue for a boss appearance!"]

[Life-Bargaining First Person - War God Number One: "What is she doing? Is she doing a shaman dance? Any brothers want to form a party? Once she turns red-named, we'll charge her!"]

[Outlaw Zhang San: "@All Members, everyone pay close attention. This woman is not simple; the timing and location she chose are too deliberate. I have a feeling that what she is about to do might change the entire landscape of the world."]

In the live broadcast post, the camera of [Gossip Reporter Little Trumpet] was fixed tightly on Fairy Yunshang at the center of the altar.

She stood there, looking down with an indifferent expression at the tens of thousands of pleading eyes below.

She did not say any words of comfort, only slowly raising her hands.

"The old world is in ruins, wailing in agony."

Her voice was not loud, yet it clearly entered everyone's ears—a statement devoid of any emotion, cold and ethereal.

"The decaying laws are being purified. The 'apocalypse' you fear is merely a necessary surgery performed by the world for its own survival."

"Spiritual energy is the breast milk that nourished you, but also the cage that imprisoned you. Now that the cage is shattered, the vast majority of you will be cast aside by the era as waste flesh cut away during the surgery."

These words, like a basin of ice water, extinguished the last shred of lucky hope in everyone's hearts.

Below the platform, there was dead silence, followed by a huge commotion and desperate cries.

Fairy Yunshang turned a blind eye to this, the corners of her mouth even curling into a nearly cruel, mocking arc.

"However, the path of evolution has not been completely severed."

Her tone shifted as her gaze swept across the audience.

"Abandon your reliance on spiritual energy, discard your fragile flesh, embrace this brand-new order, and accept this great selection. You will attain... eternity."

The moment her words fell, the scarlet mist between heaven and earth seemed to be summoned by something, frantically converging toward the God-Burial Platform!

The sky darkened in an instant.

It was not the arrival of night, but a "shadow" from a higher dimension covering the firmament.

A pure black pillar of light tore through the viscous, blood-colored canopy and descended violently from the infinite heights!

Within that pillar of light, there was no violent energy, only a cold, absolute "Order" and "Rule," as if from the dawn of the universe's birth.

It precisely and accurately enveloped Fairy Yunshang.

["Holy crap! Holy crap! It's here, it's here! The boss fight CG has started!"] On the forum, the text from [Gossip Reporter Little Trumpet] carried uncontrollable excitement.

Within the black light, Fairy Yunshang's body was undergoing a hair-raising metamorphosis.

Her flesh, meridians, and bones were being decomposed into the most primitive particles under the radiance of that black light, and then reorganized in a more perfect, more efficient way.

Her skin became like the finest mutton-fat jade, without a single flaw.

Her long hair moved without wind, and the tip of every strand shimmered with deep, star-like points of light.

The most terrifying change came from her eyes.

Those eyes that once glimmered with vitality and hidden schemes were now having their emotions and humanity stripped away and erased bit by bit, replaced by an absolute coldness and rationality that looked down upon all living beings.

It was as if a ruthless chess player had finally sat down at their chessboard.

"She is 'Ascending'..." Below the platform, a knowledgeable Nascent Soul ancestor trembled as he uttered the word, his eyes filled with disbelief and subversive fear. "But this is not the Ascension we know at all! She... she is turning herself into another kind of life form!"

Boom!

The black light suddenly retracted, pouring entirely into Fairy Yunshang's body.

A terrifying pressure, far exceeding the cognition of all living beings in this realm, erupted from her body and swept across the entire scene!

Under this pressure, not a single one of the tens of thousands of survivors could stand; all of them prostrated on the ground, shivering, their souls trembling.

Fairy Yunshang slowly opened her eyes.

Feeling the brand-new power within her that seemed capable of prying open the laws of the world, she revealed a satisfied smile for the first time.

"From this day forth, I am the First Apostle under the Evil God."

She extended a finger and lightly tapped toward a cultivator nearby who was on the verge of collapse due to fear.

A wisp of black energy shot out from her fingertip.

The cultivator let out a scream, but his body did not mutate; instead, enveloped by the black energy, the wounds on his body eroded by the foul spiritual energy actually healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

His originally chaotic aura also quickly became stable and condensed, even becoming several times stronger than it was in his prime!

Feeling the brand-new power within him, the fear on his face was rapidly replaced by fanaticism.

He prostrated himself completely before Fairy Yunshang, kowtowing frantically.

"Praise the Apostle! Praise the New God!"

One, two, ten, hundreds...

The black energy from Fairy Yunshang's fingertip continuously dissipated outward, shrouding the cultivators below who had been the first to prostrate and the first to show "submission."

A bizarre and efficient "coronation ceremony" was underway.

The "blessed" cultivators all gained brand-new power, becoming the first batch of "God-Chosen" under her.

Their eyes became the same as Fairy Yunshang's: cold, fanatical, and filled with a sense of order.

On the forum, all the players were stunned.

[Liver Emperor V87: "... This is fucking mass-converting elite mobs! She's not a boss; she's a mobile 'barracks'!"]

[Outlaw Zhang San: "I understand now. She's not defecting to the Evil God; she's 'harnessing' the Evil God's power. She discarded her humanity in exchange for the 'authority' to wield this new power. What she intends to build is a new apocalyptic order with herself at the core, based on absolute obedience."]

[Holy Light Hunk: "Evil heretic! This woman is ten thousand times more twisted than the Demon Lord Night Radiance! She is polluting the human heart!"]

On the altar, Fairy Yunshang had formed her first "God-Chosen Legion" with a scale of a thousand people.

She did not look at the survivors below who were still hesitating or terrified; to her, those were all "waste" that needed to be eliminated.

Her gaze pierced through the endless void and chaos, as if crossing the distance of the entire world, and accurately cast toward the only black forbidden zone on the map—the Return to Ruins.

She could feel that there, there was an incongruous power that also came from "outside the heavens."

That was another group of "errors."

It was the last "virus" that must be cleared on the path to her establishing a "perfect new world."

"Convey my oracle."

Fairy Yunshang spoke indifferently, her voice resounding across heaven and earth.

"Cleanse the remnants of the old world and offer a... clean sacrifice for the arrival of the New God."