by <unknown>
The voice from the clouds, the mysterious Cultivator who claimed to be 'Li Yao', might not be as simple and casual as he sounded.
He intentionally talked to Elder Scorching Sun unreasonably in order to ease Elder Scorching Sun's wariness and raise his fury so that Elder Scorching Sun would focus the full attention on him and loosen the control over the 'hostages'.
By setting up a 'no-fly zone', he was hoping to rescue the hostages. Killing the rogues to establish his authority was only a secondary purpose!
As it turned out, Elder Scorching Sun was certainly also smart enough to figure out what Fang Chengzhi had. Right when the ideas popped into his head, a deafening roar already burst out from the altar in the front. Elder Scorching Sun rose into the sky under the support of almost ten streams of magma and lunged at the many hostages!
With his Cultivation close to the Divinity Transformation Stage, it was more than simple to kill the hostages who were inferior to ordinary people under the suppression of the barriers.
However, the moment he rose into the sky, all the hostages began to ascend at a much higher speed, as if they had been pulled hard by invisible ropes.
At the same time, thunder rumbled in the sky. Giant flying swords with dazzling exhaust flames behind them showed up out of nowhere and pierced Elder Scorching Sun from all directions.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The moment the weird flying swords touched Elder Scorching Sun's spiritual shield, they exploded abruptly into many small, dazzling suns. Despite the unparalleled Cultivation of Elder Scorching Sun, he was still smashed into the gate of his own sect by the dozens of small suns from midair. The enormous gate was entirely ruined, and even the houses and pavilions around suffered collateral damage.
Together with the damage caused by the crash of the five flying boats previously, almost half of the Red Sun Sect was gone now.
"Fellow Cultivator Scorching Sun, you must regret not listening to my kind suggestion and surrendering nicely. But regret is useless right now."
To this moment, the people in the valley still did not see the real face of the mysterious enemy. They could only hear the same casual voice coming from the clouds. "Right now, there is only one way that you can save your sorry life, which is to submit the 'Cloud Qin Gold Statue' that is in your hands in one piece. If you do that, I will only deprive you of your Cultivation, and you will live in prison for no more than a hundred years. How does that sound?"
"Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!"
How could Elder Scorching Sun, the best expert of the Ancient Sages Sector who had broken out of seclusion with the heritage of the 'Saint Fire Dynasty' after a hundred years of hard training, bear being insulted in front of more than a hundred thousand Cultivators and his own disciples like that?
In crazy roars, more than ten furious dragons of magma dashed out around his body again and interweaved into a crimson Colossus more than thirty meters tall that seemed to be entirely made of magma!
The Colossus only had its right arm left, and cracks covered its body. But under the support of Elder Scorching Sun's soul, it still unleashed overwhelming fiery auras that enshrouded the entire valley in redness.
"This—This is the legendary Cloud Qin Gold Statue!"
"However tough the mysterious Cultivator who claimed to be 'Master Spiritual Vulture' is, he can't defeat a Cloud Qin Gold Statue, can he?"
"That is a primeval treasure that can help anyone claim the world!"
A lot of the Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector who were still shocked gained some confidence in Elder Scorching Sun again after witnessing the magnificence of the Cloud Qin Gold Statue.
However, even the most pious soldiers of the Angry Fire Army and disciples of the Red Sun Sect were not as confident as before.
"After all this, you are still scared of the might of my Gold Statue." Elder Scorching Sun's eyes were bloodshot, like a gambler who had wagered everything. "Then, let me teach you a lesson with my 'Thunderous Fire'!"
Hiu!
The Colossus turned into a red pillar of smoke as it darted into the clouds!
Chapter 1894: This Is Destiny's Son! |
Furious clouds were rolling in the sky. An enormous hole was left behind when the one-armed Gold Statue broke through the clouds. Everyone was almost able to see the profound, boundless starry sky and the torrents of light made of exhaust flames a hundred times more brilliant than the stars through the dark hold.
However, before the Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector figured out what they were exactly, the hole had already been blocked again by the moving clouds.
They were anticipating an extraordinary battle where Elder Scorching Sun went on a rampage to crush the uncanny and powerful 'Star Glory Federation' and 'Li Yao', but after a long wait with their eyes bulged and their ears pricked, the only thing that they could see was the fiery clouds that were surging violently like an ocean in the sky.
Elder Scorching Sun seemed to have vanished in the sky. Not only was the magnificent shadow of the Cloud Qin Gold Statue no longer visible, even his voice could not be heard anymore.
"What's going on? Is there something wrong beyond the sky?"
"Will anything happen to Elder?"
"He—He has a Cloud Qin Gold Statue under his control. He can't fail, can he?"
The white-haired elders looked at each other in bewilderment. The clever leaders of sects whispered to each other. The sophisticated advisors of the sects were gulping, and they were as panicked as the young people like 'Green Willow' Fang Chengzhi.
The valley was filled with hums. It did not sound like more than a hundred thousand influential men had gathered there, but more like more than a hundred thousand flies and mosquitoes were caged in the place.
Suddenly, somebody pointed at the sky and exclaimed, "Look. Something is coming down!"
The item was falling extremely fast while releasing dazzling brilliance. It smashed into the valley precisely almost like a shooting star.
Greatly shocked, the people in the valley hurried to disperse, but remembering the terrible 'no-fly zone', they did not dare ride their flying swords and were frightened even when they jumped higher than usual. They could only shove each other with all their strength. For a moment, almost everybody was stumbling and falling.
Boom!
The thing crashed heavily, creating a colossal crater at the edge of the valley and raising an overwhelming blast. About a hundred Cultivators were thrown back by the blast because they failed to dodge in time. Their bones were broken, their internal organs relocated, and they vomited blood hard.
Having no time to check the condition of the injured, people in the valley looked at the item that had just crashed. They were confused at first, but after they finally recognized what it was, they were so shocked that they could barely stand on their feet!
It was the right leg of a Cloud Qin Gold Statue!
Judging from the shape, the stripes, and the runes carved on it, it was a leg of the 'Thunderous Fire', the one-armed Gold Statue with which Elder Scorching Sun was going to fight for control of the world!
Just several moments after Elder Scorching Sun charged into the sky, the right leg of his Cloud Qin Gold Statue had been broken from the knee and thrown down!
While everybody was dumbfounded and tried to calm themselves down, another two 'shooting stars' crashed down from the sky. One of them hit a floating mountain precisely and blew half of it into smithereens, sending the broken rocks toward the heads of the people in the valley like a storm. The other bombarded the Red Sun Temple, the most splendid building in the Red Sun Sect, and penetrated straight through the roof. After an ear-splitting explosion, the Red Sun Temple, where countless secret treasures from the Saint Fire Dynasty were enshrined, was blown to the ground!
After all the smoke dispersed, everybody was even more horrified. The first 'shooting star' was the one arm that the Cloud Qin Gold Statue had, and the second 'shooting star' was the head of the Cloud Qin Gold Statue!
The awe-inspiring enormous face made of fiery stripes was twisted. It could not have looked more ridiculous and painful.
Looking at the expression, nobody was willing to imagine what kind of pain Elder Scorching Sun must be in.
It was almost equivalent to the torture that Elder Scorching Sun was going to perform on 'Heaven Sweeping King' Zhao Changlie, where the arms, the legs, and the head would directly be torn apart from the torso. It was truly miserable!
Roars finally echoed from the clouds, but they were entirely different from the previously gentle, submissive voice and shocked the hearts of the almost million people around Angry Fire Mountain like the most violent thunder.
"Elder Scorching Sun, you disregarded the 'Deity Slaying Order' that we issued first by recruiting soldiers and expanding your territory on a large scale. You attacked the sects and forces that stayed in their own territory for no good reason, casting the entire Ancient Sages Sector into chaos!
"Just now, you further abandoned the last opportunity I gave you and considered my genuine kindness as bullsh*t!
"Do you have any idea how precious a Colossus is? Do you know how much time and how many resources it will take to repair such a Colossus that has been blown up by me personally?
"You don't know the first thing about it, yet you were bold enough to swagger around in front of Vulture Li Yao. Let me tell you, even a merciful pacifist such as myself has boundaries. You can go to hell now!"
Hiu!
Accompanied by the roar of the 'pacifist', the fourth shooting star tore apart the sky!
Not only was the burning light ten times more glamorous than the previous three shooting stars, hundreds of ripples that looked like petals spread out in the blink of an eye, too. Even its speed was much higher than before.
Those in the valley all felt as if the crags on the two sides of the valley had collapsed or that the world had been overturned and they were all buried.
The airwaves and the dust rushed above their head like a river and did not stop until almost five minutes later. They finally looked at the end of the valley, not entirely recovered from their shock, only to discover that someone was floating in midair.
It was Elder Scorching Sun, who had been beaten from the sky into the ground and torn out of the Cloud Qin Gold Statue.
Elder Scorching Sun did not look half as awesome as a few minutes prior. His hair was messy, his clothes were ragged, his face was swollen, his limbs were twisted, and a piece of weird magical equipment that looked like a crimson crystal was stabbed between his eyebrows.
His twisted limbs seemed to have been bound by invisible shackles, and his spiritual root had been completely wrecked by the crimson crystal. The massive spiritual energy of the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage was all flooding out, transforming into glamorous exotic fire in midair!
After the spiritual root was destroyed and the spiritual energy inside the body was vaporized, the great Cultivator who was only half a step away from the Divinity Transformation Stage would become a useless man.
For a great Cultivator who had walked this far after hundreds of years of hard training, it was indeed a form of torture even more insufferable than death.
No wonder Elder Scorching Sun was cramping and screaming like a pig being butchered.
Right below Elder Scorching Sun, a brand-new black fiend slowly surfaced under the contrast of airwaves, dust, and smoke.
"This is—"
The Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector and the soldiers of the Angry Fire Army all looked at the black fiend in disbelief.
The enormous skeleton almost forty meters tall seemed to be forged out of black iron. The long, slender bones were covered in armor that looked like black feathers. There was nothing on its face except for a cross-shaped dent that divided the facial cover into four parts. Inside the dent was a crystal camera that was a deep red color resembling dried blood!
Around the limbs and the torso, quite a few long whips made of red crystals were bound. They looked both like vines and boas and like the veins and nerves of the black skeleton that had been exposed to the air!
One could only know what was good by comparison. When Thunderous Fire, Elder Scorching Sun's one-armed Gold Statue, showed up, it was already magnificent enough. But it was a pile of worthless garbage compared with the black skeleton.
Elegant, mysterious, cruel, brutal… The Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector were too awed by the devastating aura to even more their legs. In their daze, they suddenly had the same thought, which was that the black skeleton bound by red snakes and its user was in fact the real 'son of destiny' here!
Hu!
The black Cloud Qin Gold Statue seemed to feel that it was not intimidating enough. It unleashed a pair of black wings of light hundreds of meters long, which were so overwhelming that they almost covered the entire valley. Right above the pair of enormous wings, the furious flames of spiritual energy condensed into the image of what appeared to be a falcon or a vulture, which looked down upon the people in the valley with sharp claws and glittering eyes.
Those in the valley were already half terrified after they were glanced at by the creature. The elders and leaders were all slapping their faces hard in their hearts. Had they known that Elder Scorching Sun was so lame, would they have bothered to join the meeting? They had essentially pushed themselves into their own pyre!
The black Cloud Qin Gold Statue simply floated in midair. Since the guy in the Gold Statue was silent, none of the locals of the Ancient Sages Sector dared to open their mouths. Nothing could be heard inside the vast valley except for the collapses of the remains of the 'Red Sun Sect' and Elder Scorching Sun's screams that were becoming more and more feeble.
Right then, even greater changes took place in the higher sky above the black Cloud Qin Gold Statue and Elder Scorching Sun.
The image of Elder Scorching Sun's fiery fiend that was riddled with holes did not disperse in the moment. It seemed to have been drawn into a giant swirl that blurred and contorted it. It looked like a mirage that was about to disperse.
But right then, it was clear again, except that it was no longer a three-headed and six-armed fiery fiend but a weird pattern where a raging dragon hovered above nine stars.
The pattern covered the entire sky, in a size ten times larger than the image of the fiery fiend.
With that as the background, the deep red clouds in the sky suddenly protruded downward and spread out ripples that looked like giant tides. A hundred starships that were even larger than the floating mountains and completely beyond the comprehension of the Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector slowly barged into the atmosphere.
It was almost like…
The sky of the Ancient Sages Sector had collapsed!
"…"
The hundred thousand Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector were all dumbfounded. Most of them had lost the ability to think. Some had even lost control over their urethra and sphincter.
"Greetings, everyone. I am Li Yao. What you are seeing right now is a fleet from the Star Glory Federation." The soft and gentle voice finally came from the black Cloud Qin Gold Statue again. "As you have seen, the federation is a country that loves peace. We have come with the most genuine friendliness and sincerity. Now, let's abandon violence and build a better tomorrow together through earnest communication!"
Chapter 1895: A New Chapter of the Ancient Sages Sector |
That day, the common folk and the Cultivators within thousands of kilometers all saw the arrival of the hundred starships that were even larger than floating mountains from the surging clouds.
When the clouds slid past their solid shells, ripples that looked like foam were raised, as if they were projections of blue whales in the sky when they leapt out of the ocean.
They also saw the emblem of Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars announcing its presence to the entire planet of the Ancient Sages Sector. The Cloud Qin Gold Statue that extended the black wings of light to thousands of meters long b
elow the Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars emblem did not escape their attention, either.
The black Gold Statue unleashed terrifying tides blatantly and suppressed all the Cultivators and soldiers of the Angry Fire Army in the valley. None of them even dared to cough lightly.
Although the people tens of thousands of kilometers away could not quite catch what happened on Angry Fire Mountain, they could at least see the great changes in nature and hear the thunderous sound from the depths of the Cloud Qin Gold Statue.
"Don't be scared, everyone. The federation loves peace. We are here to win you over with our integrity and build a better tomorrow together. That fellow Cultivator over there—don't run away!"
Compared to the standard of communication of the universal era, the Ancient Sages Sector was rather undeveloped. Even the news of the change of dynasties often needed a couple of years before it spread across the entire continent. There were even cases when the tribes and forces in the desolate areas were ignorant enough to mistake the previous dynasty as the new master decades after a shift of dynasties.
However, this time, except for the six major sects, almost all the sects and forces in the Ancient Sages Sector had sent representatives to the 'Rising Sun Ceremony'. After Li Yao intentionally set some of them free to deliver the message, the news of the arrival of the Star Glory Federation spread out at an unprecedented speed.
Three days after the Battle of Angry Fire…
In every mountain and every prosperous city along the Sorcerers' River, countless panicked Cultivators of the Ancient Sages Sector were riding their flying swords and screaming at the top of their voice, "The federation is here!"
Letters that vividly depicted the hundred starships, the Rising Dragon of the Nine Stars emblem, and the Tartarean Skeleton were sent to every corner of the Ancient Sages Sector.
Five days after the Battle of Angry Fire…
The capital of the Great Qian Dynasty, the ancient, super metropolis and the heart that had governed the Ancient Sages Sector for almost a hundred years, was witnessing the quakes of the jampacked towers and pavilions. The floating mountains were moving up and down, too, as if they were ragged canoes on a surging ocean that would be thrown to the bottom of the ocean at any point.
