Chapter 176: The Price of the Massacre: The Awakening of the Fallen Saint
The crater of the Broken Mountain Range had ceased to be a battlefield, becoming an open-air slaughterhouse. Blood formed rivulets that evaporated under the residual heat of Ignis's flames and froze at the edges of Eira's thermal void. The combined forces of the Iron Blood Alliance and the Violet Cloud Sect, tens of thousands of cultivators and their Stage 8 leaders, had been eradicated in less time than it takes an incense stick to burn.
But the silence of victory did not yet belong to the Morningstar Clan.
High in the sky, seated on a throne forged from a thousand floating silver swords, the Great Saint of the Iron Blood Alliance opened his eyes completely.
He was no simple, powerful elder. He was a Stage 4 Great Saint. In the outer continent, an entity of this level was considered a living ancestor, a pillar capable of sustaining an empire single-handedly. To a Stage 4 Great Saint, the Stage 8 Saints who had just died were nothing more than children barely learning to walk. His comprehension of the Laws of Heaven and Earth was so deep that his mere breathing altered the mountain range's climate.
Great Saint Li stood up. His golden robes fluttered violently.
"Shameless!" His voice was not a shout; it was thunder that shook the tectonic plates beneath the crater. "Profane murderers! You have massacred the foundations of our Alliance! You have defiled the earth with sorcery!"
With a single step, the Great Saint descended from the throne. He didn't fly; space itself rushed to accommodate beneath his feet. A dark scarlet gravitational and spiritual pressure erupted from his body, falling over the crater like a lead vault. The obsidian rocks cracked and turned to dust instantly. Gravity increased a hundredfold.
The few orthodox survivors who were still crawling on the periphery wept tears of blood from the pressure, but smiled with demented hope. Their God had descended! The heretics would be crushed!
In the center of the Morningstar formation, the forty-five geniuses felt the crushing weight. Their knees creaked. For a normal cultivator in the Stage 1 to 3 Saint Realm, facing the direct pressure of a Stage 4 Great Saint meant the immediate implosion of the Dantian and the vaporization of the soul.
But these were not normal cultivators. They were the demons who had survived Samael Morningstar.
Kael Morningstar, at the vanguard, drove Magma Fang into the rocky ground to anchor himself. His eyes burned with a cold fury. Through the [Soul Nexus], his voice echoed in the minds of his forty-four siblings.
"He underestimates us. He thinks we are human. Remind him why the world fears us. Release ten percent!"
There were no war cries. There were no magical chants. There was a heartbeat.
Forty-five hearts beat at exactly the same time, synchronized by the Nexus. And in the next microsecond, human biology was discarded.
The metamorphosis was instantaneous and terrifying. Horns of basalt, ice, magma, and void crystal emerged from their foreheads. Hexagonal, light-absorbing scales covered their necks and arms. Their pupils slit vertically, glowing with the colors of primordial death. The blood in their veins ceased to be red, turning into plasma, mercury, and boiling acid.
They had released 10% of their Primordial Dragon Bloodline.
The forty-five individual auras, amplified by their transformations, flowed into a single core through the Soul Nexus. The combined energy erupted upward like a pillar of black and crimson light, violently clashing against the Great Saint's scarlet pressure.
The impact of the two auras produced no sound; it produced an acoustic void that deafened everything for kilometers around. The aura of the Stage 4 Great Saint, which intended to crush them into the mud, was stopped dead. The perfect synergy of the Sequences generated a pillar of power equivalent to a Peak Stage 3 Great Saint.
Great Saint Li widened his eyes, his expression of rage transforming into pure stupefaction.
"What are you?!" he bellowed, feeling the ancient and profane draconic Qi tearing apart his own Domain Law.
"Your end," Dante replied. His voice, distorted by his now non-human vocal cords, sounded like the scraping of two knives in the dark.
Great Saint Li roared, his wounded pride overcoming his confusion. He extended his right hand and summoned the [Sword of Iron Blood Judgment]. A colossal sword, three hundred meters long, composed of pure Metal and Blood Law energy, materialized in the sky. With an arc that parted the clouds, the sword descended at hypersonic speed, aiming straight at the center of the Morningstar formation to cleave them in half.
Kael didn't move to dodge. "Kinetic Loop. Now."
From the first line of defense, Goran (Bronze Shield) stepped forward. His bronze scales shone with an unbreakable light. He drove his massive shield into the earth and activated his [Bronze Pulse Transfer].
The gigantic three-hundred-meter sword impacted directly against Goran's shield. The shockwave was so devastating that the entire crater sank another fifty meters. Goran spat blood, his arms creaking, but his boots didn't retreat a millimeter. The Great Saint's Metal Law tried to cut him, but Goran didn't retain the damage. He absorbed it.
All the immense kinetic and magical force of the Stage 4 attack flowed through Goran and was instantly transferred by the Nexus to Korg (Iron Skin), who was right behind him.
Korg was a biological reactor. Upon receiving the Great Saint's energy, his volcanic iron skin turned white from the temperature. His veins glowed like contained lava. He "boiled" that invading kinetic force, purifying it of the enemy's will and superheating it with his own Qi, and then, with a guttural scream, injected it directly into the back of the giant waiting behind him.
Magnus (Iron Titan) received the purified energy. His hypertrophied muscles swelled until they tore the air around him. With the mass of a neutron star and the borrowed power of the Great Saint's own attack multiplied by his brute strength, Magnus bent his knees and launched himself into the sky like a surface-to-air missile.
Magnus raised his right fist, enveloped in the [God's Hammer] technique.
Great Saint Li, still holding the posture of his sword attack, saw the iron colossus coming. He tried to raise an emergency Qi barrier, but Magnus was already there.
Magnus's fist impacted directly against the Great Saint's chest in mid-air.
The sound was that of an asteroid crashing into the moon. The immense three-hundred-meter sword cracked and dissolved into a rain of light shards as it lost its creator's focus. The Stage 4 barrier shattered like cheap glass. Great Saint Li felt his ribs cave in and his organs vibrate violently. He was shot backward, breaking the sound barrier five consecutive times, until he crashed into the mountain slope, creating a secondary crater and spitting out a massive mouthful of golden blood.
A Stage 4 Great Saint had just been injured and sent flying by the physical counterattack of initial Saint Realm cultivators!
On the deck of the Herald of the Void, Lilith Morningstar watched the maneuver with crossed arms, a sadistic smile curving her lips. "Excellent use of the Kinetic Loop. Vexia will be proud."
However, the Sequences knew this wasn't over. A Stage 4 Great Saint possessed overwhelming vitality and a profound connection with the laws of the world.
The mountain where Li had crashed exploded. The elder emerged, his clothes torn, his chest caved in, but his eyes bloodshot with pure murderous madness.
"You made me bleed! ME!" he roared, and this time, he held nothing back. The Great Saint expanded his [Domain of Ten Thousand Iron Pillars].
The sky darkened, and thousands of red-hot iron pillars, each as thick as a millennial oak, began to sprout from the ground, the walls, and the air, seeking to impale the Forty-Five Sequences. The gravity within the domain fluctuated violently, trying to crush their internal organs.
It was time for the War of Attrition. The biological limit of the geniuses was near, but their tactic was absolute.
Violeta opened her eyes.
Her silver hair floated. With perfect ballet movements, she began to dance. Every time she spun, space folded. When a lethal iron pillar was millimeters away from impaling Borg or Tormund, Violeta instantly teleported them to the Great Saint's blind spots. She was the conductor of a lethal orchestra, moving her heavy pieces across the board faster than the elder could react.
In the newly created blind spots by Violeta, Eris appeared. The Queen of Catastrophe didn't use normal fire. Her Catastrophe Veins injected black fire of pure ruin and destruction directly into the laws of the Great Saint's domain. She didn't burn the iron; she burned the concept of the technique, causing large sections of the domain to collapse into ash before even forming.
"There are too many of them, their synergy is monstrous!" Great Saint Li began to feel terror crawling up his spine. Every time he managed to land a collateral blow that shattered the arm or shoulder of a Sequence, the rearguard healers nullified his effort.
Lys, Elowen, and Cassius worked in a perfect frenzy. Cassius drained the life from the corpses of the Stage 8 Saints scattered on the ground; Elowen converted that life into her Universal Elixir Blood; and Lys forced the purification over any wound. Severed arms grew back in seconds. Burned organs regenerated. The Sequences fought like immortals.
But even with all this, the Stage 4 was too resilient. His Qi reserves were an ocean compared to the lakes of the Sequences.
From the rear, the eyes of Iris (Source Code Eyes) and Cedric (The Runic Architect) glowed frantically. Through the [Eye of Architectural Truth], Cedric didn't see a man; he saw a transparent blueprint filled with magical gears, Qi flows, and stress points.
"His Dantian is overloaded on the right meridian to sustain the domain," Cedric telepathically transmitted to Iris. "I need three seconds of immobility and a failure at that point to chain him."
"Calculating failure trajectory. Creating Great Saint-grade sealing matrix," Iris replied, her fingers moving at supersonic speeds, tracing confinement runes in the air that intertwined like an invisible net.
Kael caught the mental conversation. "Dante. Open the breach."
Dante merged with his shadow. His Asura Eye locked onto the right meridian Cedric had pointed out. Around him, the Imperial Sequences intensified their assault, distracting the Great Saint. Kael launched a thousand-degree magma slash; Ignis created three white suns around him; Voltar rained down a forest of lightning.
Overwhelmed by attacks from all fronts, Great Saint Li had to concentrate his defensive shield forward. His right flank was left exposed for exactly 0.2 seconds.
Dante emerged from the void right in that blind spot. His dark dagger didn't seek the neck or the heart; it traced the Line of Inevitable Death directly over the Great Saint's right meridian.
The cut didn't kill him, but it cleanly severed the connection of his Qi to his own domain. The Great Saint felt his right arm go numb and his magic falter. His eyes widened in shock.
"NOW, CEDRIC!" shouted Iris.
The immense sealing matrix Iris had prepared fell upon the Great Saint. Cedric activated it, driving his own runic steel chains into the architecturally weak points of the elder's body. Great Saint Li screamed as the Morningstar runes burned into his skin, sealing his cultivation, his blood, and his movements.
He fell to his knees in the center of the crater, chained, defeated by a pack of lower-level geniuses. The capture for Vexia's cyborg army was almost complete.
"NO!" roared Great Saint Li. His humiliation broke the last limit of his sanity. His eyes became bloodshot, and his Dantian began to swell with a destructive and unstable light. "IF I FALL TODAY, I'LL TAKE YOUR GENIUSES WITH ME! SOUL DETONATION!"
A Stage 4 Great Saint detonating his core and soul at point-blank range would generate an explosion capable of erasing the entire mountain range. The Sequences were too close; not even the Soul Nexus could absorb that amount of energy in a fraction of a second. Cedric tried to tighten the runic chains, but the brute force of a suicidal Stage 4 was breaking Iris's matrix.
"Retreat!" Kael shouted, but the space around the Great Saint had been locked by the instability of the explosion.
Then, the sky sank.
From the deck of the Herald of the Void, Lilith Morningstar took a single step and vanished. She instantly reappeared floating a meter above the head of the Great Saint about to detonate.
Lilith didn't use Samael's Avatar. She wasn't going to waste the strength of a Saint King on a Stage 4's suicidal tantrum.
The Supreme Commander of the Dead Blood Guard simply released the full aura of her Ash Phoenix. An entropic pressure, so ancient and suffocating that it turned the air itself to dust, crushed the Great Saint.
Lilith raised her armored boot and stomped on Great Saint Li's head, smashing his face against the obsidian rock.
"No one gave you permission to die, scum," Lilith whispered. Her voice lacked the adolescent rage of the Sequences; it was the pure, cold, and ruthless cruelty of a war veteran.
The temperature around Lilith's boot rose to millions of degrees, but it emitted no light. It was ash fire. The unstable energy in the Great Saint's Dantian was instantly snuffed out, absorbed by Lilith's entropic heat and reduced to nothing. His suicide attempt was blown out like tossing an ice cube on a candle.
Under the Ash Calamity's boot, Great Saint Li sobbed, his spirit finally broken, his limbs crushed, and his cultivation completely suppressed.
Lilith looked at Cedric. "Reinforce the seals. Package him. Capture confirmed for Grand Marshal Vexia. His limbs will serve to forge an excellent general."
The Forty-Five Sequences, breathing heavily, deactivated their 10% bloodline, returning to their human forms. They had achieved the impossible. They had massacred an army, shattered the elite, and brought a Great Saint to his knees. The Fallen Saint's Tomb belonged to them.
Kael Morningstar sheathed Magma Fang and walked toward the immense obsidian doors at the bottom of the crater. Red moss and dead runes covered the surface, waiting to be looted.
"Secure the perimeter," Kael ordered the Twins and Goran. "We assume the vanguard for the incursion..."
Kael's words died in his throat.
There was no warning. There was no fluctuation of orthodox Qi.
The gigantic millennial obsidian doors, which were supposed to open inward via complex seals, did not.
They exploded outward.
A silent shockwave, laden with a pressure that made even Lilith take an instinctive step back, swept the crater. The heavy obsidian slabs, hundreds of tons each, were blown away like shrapnel, shattering against the walls of the mountain range.
From the absolute darkness inside the tomb, a miasma began to pour out. It wasn't Jareth's poisonous miasma, nor Samael's dark Qi of annihilation. It was something sickly, ancient, a dense and sticky gas the color of coagulated blood. It smelled of millennia of putrefaction and unholy human sacrifices.
The Sequences, instinctively, took a step back, drawing their weapons again. The Soul Nexus howled with a critical danger alarm, one they hadn't felt since facing Samael's clone in the Pagoda.
A voice echoed from the deep darkness of the open tomb. It was a fragmented voice, sounding like a thousand people whispering at the same time inside the skull of everyone present.
"So much... fresh blood... So many geniuses... What delicious aromas..."
The soul of the Demonic Saint King had awakened. For millennia he had been in a slumber after the ancient war that shattered this place, waiting patiently. The immense massacre the Morningstar Clan had just carried out (the thousands of souls and spilled orthodox Qi) had been the perfect nourishment to wake him from his sleep. And now, he looked outward, seeking one thing only: a vessel.
On the deck of the Herald of the Void, the teacup in Sienna's hands froze. The Maiden of the Infinite Mirror stood up abruptly, her silver eyes shining with an intensity that eclipsed the runes of the ship.
"Patriarch..." Sienna murmured to the wind. "The ancient cockroaches refuse to die."
In the crater, before anyone could react to the miasma, the darkness inside the tomb came alive. Six chains made of pure black mist and screaming souls shot out from the entrance at a speed that defied the perception of Dante's Asura Eye.
The chains ignored Kael, bypassed Violeta, and dodged Aia's light spears. They had a specific target.
The black mist chains drove straight into the bloody and chained body of Great Saint Li, who still lay under Lilith's scrutiny.
The orthodox elder barely had time to let out an agonizing scream before the chains hoisted him into the air. His eyes rolled back as the black mist forced its way in through his mouth, nose, and ears, corrupting his meridians and taking over his spiritual core.
"This body... is shattered, but it will serve... as a first bite..." whispered the demonic voice, laughing.
The chains pulled violently, dragging Great Saint Li toward the abyssal darkness of the tomb. Lilith tried to stop him, throwing an ash spear that cut one of the chains, but the mist simply reformed and swallowed the elder completely.
The silence that followed was sepulchral. The miasma swirled at the entrance, forming a dense, pulsating barrier, inviting them to enter its true hell.
Lilith Morningstar lowered her hand, her face hardened like granite. Her scarlet eyes locked onto the darkness. Slowly, she slid her hand into her tunic and brushed the Crystal Avatar Samael had given her.
The cleansing on the surface had been a resounding success. But the true hunt in the Fallen Saint's Tomb... had just begun.