Chapter 890: The Display of True Spirit Power (I)
The sudden action taken by the Heavenly Feathered Race caught Heavenly King Zhenwu and the others completely off guard.
According to the original plan, they were supposed to have Xiao Tianyi unleash a principle-based secret art to momentarily restrain Zuo Mo. After that, Zhenwu would step in and deliver the killing blow. The role of the Heavenly Feathered Race was to guard against any possible intervention from demon gods, and to prepare for the high likelihood of a full-scale war breaking out.
Boom!
On the tenth plane, where time and space had been frozen, the sky suddenly shattered, creating a void thousands of kilometers wide. A flood of white light poured down, radiating sacred brilliance and divine majesty.
From a distance, it looked like a massive pillar of light, thousands of kilometers wide, had descended from the heavens, as if to purify the world below that lay shrouded in the dark abyss. Within that massive white pillar of light that stretched from earth to sky, a pure white radiance swirled, shaped like a spear. It gave off an ancient aura, as if it were the very first ray of light from the beginning of time. This was the Primordial Light.
The moment it appeared, all of the demon gods watching from outside the Eternal Realm felt a surge of overwhelming danger.
The Lord of Holy Light embodied the origin principle of the Heavenly Feathered Race. Born as an innate lifeform from the Pool of Radiance, he was formed through the fusion of that origin principle with the power of the Eternal Divine Tree.
This Primordial Light was an divine artifact that accompanied him from the beginning. It contained the power of the first light that emerged when the Eternal Divine Tree opened a new realm, and was equivalent to a half-complete world-level weapon.
With the Primordial Spear in hand, the Lord of Holy Light had the power to rival ordinary Demon Gods, just like Zhenwu. Among the Heavenly Feathered Race, he stood as one of the mightiest beings. For years, he had been the one to hold off Zuo Mo, whose combat power defied reason, on the battlefields between the Heavenly Feathered Race and the Purgatory Empire.
Just as the entire plane had been sealed by the ultimate power summoned through the sacrifice of three peak chief gods, and the Lord of Holy Light was preparing to unleash the full power of the Primordial Light to purify Zuo Mo, a terrifying force suddenly descended.
Boom!
The entire plane shook violently as a pair of colossal demonic claws, vast and boundless with black scales covering their surface, tore through the heavens and reached into the realm, obscuring half of the sky.
It was only a single pair of claws, yet the invisible force they released shattered the power that had frozen time and space. Black shockwaves rippled through the world, and their aura shook the very fabric of reality.
Ack! Ack! Ack!
The three chief gods of the Heavenly Feathered Race, who had been burning their souls and true forms, coughed up mouthfuls of vital blood essence. Their massive phantoms of light were instantly dispersed.
"Great Demon God Tyretis!" At the edge of the shattered azure sky's hollow, the Lord of Holy Light, holding the Primordial Spear, revealed a trace of astonishment in his eyes. The spear in his hand, which was about to strike, came to a sudden halt.
No one had expected that Tyretis, the strongest of the three Purgatory great empires' demon gods, would make a move the very moment Zuo Mo was ambushed. Wasn't someone of his level supposed to appear only at the final moment?
Boom!
The demonic claws gripping both sides of the plane's sky suddenly tore outward. They ripped the entire sky in half, leaving behind a pitch-black rift stretching tens of thousands of kilometers. Beyond stood a towering figure radiating a tyrannical aura. Its body rose to over a hundred thousand meters in height, surrounded by endless surging demonic qi that churned and twisted into countless distorted worlds.
These worlds were the nine planes that had already been seized and corrupted by the Purgatory Empire. Under the pull of the abyssal power wielded by the great demon god, the time and space they occupied had begun to merge.
Most alarming of all, within the nine planes, countless battle legions of true demons and their demonized forces were scattered throughout. At a glance, their numbers easily exceeded two hundred million.
Each possessed strength at least at the Fifth Demonic Mark. There were tens of thousands of high-level elites with the Eighth and even the Ninth Demonic Mark. They also had massive, demonized beasts and colossal flying creatures circling overhead, their auras overwhelming and terrifying.
However, what weighed most heavily on the hearts of Zhenwu and the Heavenly Feathered Race was the sight of numerous castles floating above the legions. Surrounded by swirling dark qi, they blotted out the sky and sun.
At that moment, above each of those castles, the demon kings had already revealed their true forms. They stood hundreds to over a thousand meters tall, each with three heads and either six or eight arms.
There were nearly two hundred of them in total. Among them were more than one hundred and fifty demon kings, along with thirty-seven great demon kings. A quarter of them had already reached the peak of the demon king and great demon king levels. The sheer number of high-level combatants displayed by the three great empires left the Heavenly Feathered Race and the human cultivators visibly shaken.
They all knew that over the past few centuries, the three great Purgatory Empires had been training and expanding their armies. Relying on their overwhelming numbers, they rotated demon kings and great demon kings in and out of battle to wear down the Heavenly Feathered warriors. Even so, no one had expected that after so many years of fighting, they still held such a large reserve of fighters above the mythical level.
What was even more concerning was that, even though the three great empires had launched an all-out war of extermination, there were still demon kings and great demon kings left behind to guard their territories at home.
Just as that terrifying figure tore through the tenth plane, summoning the abyss and forcibly merging the nine dark planes, four Heavenly Feathered divine kings stood at the edge of the Eternal Divine Region, still locked in a standoff with nine demon gods.
Behind them, twelve radiant white wings of light unfurled, glowing with an angelic brilliance. One figure stepped forward and spoke. In that moment, a voice ancient and commanding echoed through time and space. "So, it's you in your true abyssal demon god form, Tyretis. It seems you can no longer hold back and are finally ready to go all out against our race. But tell me, are you prepared to lose a few demon gods in the process?"
Beyond the realm, seated upon an ancient throne, Tyretis was shrouded in darkness. Only a pair of dark red eyes shone through as his deep and resonant voice rumbled. "It's useless, Metast. When I decide to wipe out the Heavenly Feathered Race, no power can defy my will."
As he spoke, Tyretis slowly rose from his ancient throne. In that moment, a pressure powerful enough to shake the entire Eternal Realm erupted from him, releasing an oppressive force that seemed to surpass even the demon gods themselves.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The void around Tyretis collapsed in a burst of Void Annihilation. Time and space shook, forming layer upon layer of twisted abyssal projections; or rather, these weren't projections at all, but real abysses, each one encircling Tyretis.
The moment he rose, the eight demon gods surrounding the outer boundary of the realm also unleashed terrifying auras, each revealing their true demon god forms, towering ten thousand meters tall.
Among them, two late-stage ancient demon gods radiated the most ominous auras. Each of them had three heads and sixteen arms, and they were surrounded by endless demonic qi, like world-ending demon kings summoned from the depths of the abyss.
Most concerning of all were the weapons in their hands. Both of them each held a pitch-black demonic spear and a blood-dripping battle spear, and both these weapons radiated a force powerful enough to destroy the world and suppress the principles of heaven and earth.
These were world-level weapons.
The moment the decision was made to begin the war of extermination, neither side wasted another breath. Outside the realm, Tyretis casually raised a hand and pressed forward. Instantly, the golden divine region ahead of it trembled violently. Strands of pure golden principle power emerged, intertwining to form a thick golden barrier.
Bang!
Under his overwhelming force, the golden barrier collapsed, leaving behind a massive palm imprint spanning ten thousand kilometers wide and plunging several thousand kilometers deep.
The immense pressure annihilated time and space itself, shattering the figure of the Divine King of Light.
This was the power of the strongest great demon god from the three Purgatory Empires. His power was on a completely different level; the moment he took action, no one could stand against him.
Just as the Divine King of Light's figure was shattered, it turned into countless points of light and disappeared.
Hum!
At the center of the Eternal Divine Region, a golden divine tree towering over a hundred thousand kilometers radiated a brilliant light. Waves of dazzling brilliance, almost tangible, spread outward in rings, enveloping the entire region and all of its planes.
At the same time, endless white light gathered above the tree canopy, forming a white ring tens of millions of meters wide. It looked like a wheel of creation[1].
Within the light wheel, an angelic figure slowly emerged, standing ten million meters tall with fourteen white wings of light spreading out behind it.
In that instant, an ancient aura belonging to the true spirit level surged into the sky. It carried the essence of immortality, piercing through past and present, making all living beings instinctively feel fear and reverence.
Just the blink of an eye had passed from the moment the Lord of Holy Light made a move to this very instant. At that moment, tens of millions of Heavenly Feathered members gazed with fervent reverence toward the center of the Eternal Divine Region. One by one, they dropped to their knees in worship before that supreme existence.
1. In the fantasy context, the wheel of creation typically refers to a divine or cosmic mechanism that governs the cycle of creation, sometimes including life, death, and rebirth. ☜