164: Chapter 164: The End of the Divine Realm Time

Deep within the New Continent, wild winds howled.

Millions of surviving Mutated Magic Vultures and Magic Blade Bats huddled inside the cliff crevices.

They folded their wings, buried their heads in their feathers, and trembled uncontrollably.

At the bottom of the River Styx, the stagnant water was freezing.

The Mutated Bone Fish and Liquid Metal Crabs abandoned their carefully constructed underwater fortresses, desperately burrowing into the deepest silt.

They squeezed tightly together, not even daring to breathe.

Fear, like a materialized haze, gripped the hearts of the Sea and Sky Races.

This sudden, massive rout awakened the nightmares deep within their genes.

Those were the desperate years a century ago, when they were hunted at will by the Insect Race and toyed with relentlessly by the Violent Demon Clan.

Back then, they could only huddle at the edges of the Divine Domain, wandering around and barely clinging to life.

Later, a hundred thousand mutated creatures flowed back.

They grew stronger, multiplied, ruled the sky and ocean, and even produced several hundred Diamond Tier leaders.

They thought they had stood up and could rival the Insect Race.

Today, the Insect Race slapped them hard with a sky-spanning Hellfire.

Deep underground, within the Main Hive.

The Insect King stood on a towering rock wall, its compound eyes peering through the geological layers to take in the miserable state of the Sea and Sky Races.

The kingly antennae atop its head swayed slightly; a total victory was only natural.

Of course, the Insect King had not let this go to its head.

Because in its calculations, this was just the beginning.

Currently, the direction of everything was entirely within its expectations.

Back then, it had given those one thousand mutated creatures to the Tyrant.

Using the resources of the Violent Demon Clan and the power of the Central Divine Tree, it had forcibly stabilized the genes of these monsters.

As it turned out, this move had been correct.

The Tyrant had successfully enabled this group of genetically highly unstable mutated creatures to survive and integrate into the broader environment of the Divine Domain.

The overall strength of the Sea and Sky Races skyrocketed as a result, giving them the capital to confront the Insect Race head-on.

It was precisely this capital that forced the Insect Race to break out of its original evolutionary framework, ultimately giving rise to the Heaven-Defying branch of the [Wuxiang Calamity Bug].

Now, the goal of the first phase had been achieved.

The Wuxiang Calamity Bug was born, successfully stealing the Hellfire of the Fire Spirit Clan.

On the battlefield, a large number of mutated branches that had completed their second adaptation had also emerged.

As long as the Insect Race proceeded steadily and continued to deeply develop the Wuxiang Calamity Bug branch,

pushing their life levels to the second, third, or even fourth adaptation,

let alone that group of Fire Spirits in the Extreme North who were just waiting to die,

if they truly reached the fourth adaptation stage, the Insect King would dare to flip the table and go straight to the Central Basin to clash with the Violent Demon Clan.

Of course, those were all matters for the future.

The Insect King turned around and issued the latest directive to the Insect Mother.

Resources were redistributed.

Eighty percent of the entire Insect Race's resources would be poured into the Wuxiang Calamity Bug branch.

The remaining conventional branches, such as the Blade Insects, Heavy Armor Beetles, and Plasma Bugs, would only receive twenty percent of the resources.

This twenty percent was solely used to maintain the basic foundation and safeguard the strength leap of the Wuxiang Calamity Bugs.

With the order issued, the massive Insect Race machine once again operated at high speed.

Time became cheap in the Wasteland Divine Domain.

Ten years, fifty years, a hundred years.

Centuries of time howled past.

During these long years, the Insect King exhibited extreme restraint.

It did not order the complete annihilation of the Sea and Sky Races, nor did it frequently launch large-scale wars.

Crops needed time to grow.

It deliberately left intervals to give races like the Demon Vultures, Magic Blade Bats, Bone Fish, and Liquid Metal Crabs a chance to multiply and thrive.

Whenever the population of the Sea and Sky Races recovered to a critical point, the Insect Race would launch a harvesting war.

They would beat them painfully, cripple them, plunder high-tier flesh and blood, and then retreat.

With the passage of a vast amount of time and the accumulation of massive resources,

the evolutionary speed of the Wuxiang Calamity Bugs reached an atrocious level.

Wuxiang Calamity Bugs that had completed their second adaptation were already a common sight within the swarm.

Even more terrifyingly, ultimate individuals with three adaptations had begun to appear.

These monsters, having undergone three life-and-death metamorphoses, directly broke the ironclad law of the Insect Race.

The Diamond Tier was no longer exclusive to the Dominator Bugs.

Above the New Continent, thunderclouds gathered densely.

Three Diamond Tier Mutated Magic Vulture commanders were leading hundreds of thousands of their kin to seize a mountain rich in high-grade mineral veins.

Just as they arrived above the mountain, the space below warped.

A bug only five meters long appeared in mid-air.

Its entire body was covered in dark crimson carapace, with deep blue water-ripple patterns flowing across its surface.

On its back grew a pair of Void Wings burning with ash-black Hellfire.

Third adaptation, Diamond Tier [Formless Source Insects].

It had fused the Fire Spirit, Bone Fish, and Demon Vulture.

Sensing the threat, the three Demon Vulture commanders shrieked simultaneously.

The Law of Thunder was triggered.

Three purple thunderbolts, as thick as barrels, tore through the clouds and struck toward the Formless Source Insects in a triangular formation.

The Formless Source Insects did not dodge.

The Void Wings on its back flapped.

The lightning struck its body.

On its dark crimson carapace, the deep blue water ripples shone brilliantly.

The Extremely Heavy Water formed a defense, dispersing the destructive power of the lightning layer by layer.

The Formless Source Insects withstood the three Diamond Tier lightning strikes head-on without its body shaking even once.

In the past, the individual combat strength of the Insect Race was extremely low.

Even if a Dominator Bug broke through to the Diamond Tier, it would still require four or five of them working together to hold down a single Diamond Tier leader of the Sea and Sky Races.

If they were slightly careless, their defensive line would be shredded by the opponent.

But now, times had changed.

Having completed its third adaptation, the Formless Source Insects's foundation was terrifyingly profound.

Its life level already crushed other creatures of the same rank.

It raised its forelimb and pointed at the Demon Vulture commander directly in front of it.

A gap split open in its dark crimson carapace, and a High-pressure Water Jet shot out.

Inside the water stream was highly compressed ash-black Hellfire.

Water and fire complemented each other, capable of destroying heaven and earth.

The Demon Vulture commander folded its wings, attempting to block it with Titan Fluid.

*Chii!*

The High-pressure Water Jet easily sliced through the metallic fluid, and the Hellfire poured into the Demon Vulture commander's body along the cut.

"Screeech—"

A shrill, miserable cry rang out.

The Demon Vulture commander's Soul was directly ignited by the Hellfire, its body rolling in mid-air, struggling for a mere three seconds.

Then, it turned into a burning fireball and plunged to the earth.

An instant kill.

The other two Demon Vulture commanders were scared out of their wits, activating Void Shadow Lurk in an attempt to escape into the shadows.

A trace of mockery flashed in the compound eyes of the Formless Source Insects.

It back's Void Wings flapped.

Within the spatial layer.

Just as the two Demon Vulture commanders escaped into the void, the Formless Source Insects was already waiting in front of them.

It opened its mouthparts and took a deep breath.

Space collapsed.

The Extremely Heavy Water, combined with the Void Oscillation, directly squeezed the two Demon Vulture commanders out of the spatial layer.

The Formless Source Insects closed in.

Its forelimbs transformed into two bone scythes burning with Hellfire, slashing down in a cross.

*Puchi.*

Two massive Demon Vulture heads soared into the sky.

Dark red blood sprayed out, but before it could hit the ground, it was evaporated into nothingness by the Hellfire.

A one-versus-three fight, yet it was like slaughtering chickens.

Seeing this, the remaining army of millions of Demon Vultures lost all will to fight and fled frantically in all directions.

The Formless Source Insects did not pursue them.

It hovered in mid-air, opened its mouthparts, swallowed the remains of the three Diamond Tier Demon Vultures, and then turned to vanish into the void.

Over hundreds of years, such slaughter constantly played out in the sky and ocean.

The Sea and Sky Races also ushered in a new level of transformation.

After the return of the mutated creatures and hundreds of years of high-pressure evolution under life-and-death stakes,

they were no longer slaughtered at will by the Insect Race like brainless beasts as they had been in the past.

They became smarter and more united.

The increase in intelligence led them to reflect.

When they first encountered the Hellfire, they tried to use their instinct of "imitation" to replicate the Hellfire into their own system.

The result was too painful to look at.

A three-headed Magic Blade Bat went to great lengths to grow a crater-like organ inside its body.

It mustered all its strength and spat out a mouthful of fire.

As a result, what came out was not the Soul-burning Hellfire, but just an ordinary orange-red flame.

Not only did it have no lethality, but it was instead swallowed in one gulp by the Hellfire Source Bug opposite it, treated as an after-dinner dessert.

It was a cheap imitation, a poor attempt that only made them look foolish.

They discovered that something like Hellfire was truly difficult to imitate perfectly.

Forcibly replicating it would only result in an awkward, half-baked mess, causing their combat power to plummet.

In the past, when they imitated the Insect Race, they could at least copy about seventy to eighty percent.

This time, they simply could not find the knack of it.

Thus, the Sea and Sky Races decisively changed their strategy.

Since they couldn't imitate it properly, they would stack resistance to the absolute limit.

Over hundreds of years, the Demon Vultures evolved feathers that resisted Hellfire, and the Bone Fish secreted deep-sea mucus that could neutralize high temperatures.

The Liquid Metal Crabs even modified the metallic fluid on their body surfaces into high-temperature-resistant liquid metal.

After being burned by fire for decades, they finally developed an effective fireproof system.

On the battlefield, when the fire of the Hellfire Source Bugs sprayed over,

the Sea and Sky Races, relying on their resistance, could barely hold out for a few rounds of attacks instead of collapsing at the first touch.

But an embarrassing thing happened.

Just as they stacked up their resistance, the Wuxiang Calamity Bugs of the Insect Race completed their second adaptation.

Your fire resistance is high? I'll shoot a high-pressure fire blade infused with Extremely Heavy Water at you.

Your physical defense is strong? I'll use Void Leap to shove venom directly into your mouth.

The Sea and Sky Races despairingly discovered that they still couldn't defeat their opponents.

No matter how desperately they evolved, in terms of the speed of "version updates,"

they were always half a version or even a full major version behind the Insect Race.

The Insect Race always walked at the absolute forefront of evolution.

Fortunately, the Insect Race did not completely annihilate them.

Whenever the Sea and Sky Races were beaten halfway, the Insect Race army would withdraw.

They left behind a devastated battlefield and survivors shivering in the corners.

The Sea and Sky Races could only rely on these brief moments of respite to multiply desperately, barely scraping by as they awaited the next opportunity to change their fate.

...

The real world.

Starry Sky University's villa district.

About two days had passed.

On the Meditation Cushion, Lin Yuan sat cross-legged.

The dark gold Divine Fire on his body's surface had completely receded, and his skin returned to a jade-like luster.

Deep within his Dantian,

the gaseous Divine Power, washed and compressed countless times by the Law Force Field, had completely liquefied.

Drops of dark gold Divine Power gathered into puddles beneath the Divine Fire.

The foundation of a Fifth-turn Demigod had been squeezed to its absolute limit by him.

The Internal Law Circulation operated smoothly, with no further signs of losing control.

Lin Yuan seemed to sense something.

His Mental Energy trembled slightly.

The feedback of the Origin within his body suddenly grew gentle, like a surging river returning to a peaceful riverbed.

The frequency of slaughter within the Divine Domain decreased drastically.

The flow rate of the River of Time began to synchronize with its previous pace.

Lin Yuan slowly opened his eyes...

The Time Acceleration Card had ended.