Chapter 562 - The Divine Dragons Appear (Part 1)

Baby Cloud was still a little dazed after its evolution, but its ears perked up when it overheard Dark Crow. Out of all of Lu Ran’s familiars, it was the first one to feel groggy after evolving. It was a clear side effect of consuming too many Legendary resources. Even the Taotie itself would be exhausted after eating nine Elemental Gods in one sitting.

When it finally came to, Baby Cloud felt a tremendous power within itself. It was confident enough to take down a Sudden Death King with a single attack. It was just a little disappointed that it didn’t reach Intermediate Legendary in one go.

“This was only the first batch,” Lu Ran assured it. “We just needed to bring your nine attributes up to the Legendary rank first. Nine seems like a lot, but they were matched to your attributes. You’ll need to consume more elemental cores of the suitable attributes if you want to go even further.”

Having nine Legendary attributes made Baby Cloud far superior to the average Legendary creature. Its destructive capabilities could compete against Intermediate Legendaries that appeared toward the end of each era.

Once Lu Ran was done speaking, Baby Cloud jumped into his arms, which made his other familiars jealous. They thought that it was quite shameless to beg for resources by acting cute. Captain Doofus and Sudden Death King could never lower themselves to that level. Dark Crow wasn’t above trying, but it was afraid that Lu Ran would slap it if it did.

“All right,” Lu Ran said after taking a short break. “Let’s start round two.”

It had already been two days, and the eight high-ranking Elemental Gods were still searching for Lu Ran without any luck. What shocked them the most was that he even had the audacity to provoke both the Light God and the Dark God.

They were waiting for the two big shots to step in and punish the evildoer. Those two far out-classed the eight of them. If the world didn’t need every element to maintain balance, then they would’ve been eliminated long ago.

As time passed, many of the Elemental Gods fell silent as the Light God and Dark God couldn’t find Lu Ran either. The ten Elemental Gods were determined to destroy him, so they were constantly communicating and sharing intel. As more of their followers were being slain, they had to turn some of their attention to protecting them.

Lu Ran knew that it was time to switch things up a bit.

Crack!

Space fissures appeared around the divine statues that were being worshiped in several nations and swallowed them up one after another. Instead of hunting the gods themselves, he targeted their divine statues. They were valuable, especially to the Light and Dark Gods.

With the statues, #18 could summon their heroic spirits. Even if only one percent of their true powers were manifested, then it would still be quite formidable. They were also technically edible since they were made from soul, time, and faith energy. Their value was on par with elemental cores.

“My statue!” The Fire God's short temper immediately flared up. It ignited the void in an attempt to capture the culprit. The ten Elemental Gods were completely caught off guard as they had been focused on hunting Lu Ran and protecting their subordinates.

“Damn it!”

The Ice Goddess was livid. Its statue had already been stolen, so it didn’t expect him to strike again. It couldn’t wrap its head around the fact that someone strong enough to kill gods would bother with these stupid statues. The faith energy in those statues could actually expose his location.

“He’s hiding in the void beyond the world barrier!”

The stolen statues finally gave away Lu Ran’s position. During this time period, there wasn’t a taboo against breaking the world barrier, not that anything could’ve stopped the Elemental Gods from doing so. They couldn’t let him continue to run around doing whatever he wanted.

“He won’t escape this time.” The Light and Dark Gods refused to back down until they completely destroyed Lu Ran.

The world shook as if it were being torn apart. Rifts appeared in the skies over the Light Kingdom, and auroras poured out from them.

The elements clashed as they were devoured by the fissures, causing the mountain to shake and the rivers to rage chaotically. The Elemental Gods combined their powers to pierce through the world barrier that separated them from the void.

The chaos caused panic to overtake the entire mortal world.

“The gods are taking action! They must have found that necromancer.”

“What’s going to happen now?”

“God, please protect us and punish the blasphemer!”

As the world barrier became increasingly eroded, the Elemental Gods began to sense wisps of their faith from within the void. The statues served as a beacon that pinpointed Lu Ran's location.

Once they entered the void, they followed the traces from their respective statues only to find that they had been deceived again. Lu Ran had separated the statues he stole into two portions. He put half of them in the Hell Domain as his spoils, while he used the other half as bait to mislead the Elemental Gods. The statues he stashed away remained undetectable.

“Your divine statues suck!”

To add insult to injury, Lu Ran even left them a note. Thanks to his diversion, he was able to once again rampantly hunt the weaker Elemental Gods.

In the Dark Kingdom, Lu Ran targeted the Legendary Dark Sprite Butterfly as soon as the Dark God was gone. Dark Crow’s eyes materialized in the air, but a black hand immediately grabbed it.

The voice of the Dark God echoed from the void.

“I’ve split off dozens of Superior-Divine avatars. No matter where you hide, I will still be able to find you.”

With that, the avatar crushed the Dark Crow’s Evil God’s Eye and stepped into a tear in space. When it emerged at its destination, it rapidly gathered the surrounding Dark energy. However, it missed its target once again, proving Lu Ran’s cunning.

The Dark God wasn’t the only one to try this strategy. All the Elemental Gods had the same ideas, with some leaving behind weaker avatars of the Intermediate-Divine rank, which put a wrinkle in Lu Ran’s plans.

Whenever the Evil God’s Eye showed signs of appearing, the gods would tear open space to try to trace back his location. This, unfortunately, sped up the Stellar Moon’s deterioration.

“Oh, so that’s how you want to play?” After another round of cat and mouse, Lu Ran found himself hitting a wall at every turn. He started to feel frustrated after failing to kill a single Elemental God.

No wonder Manager Ying was so fond of avatars. It was truly an annoying ability. Every lower Elemental God now had an avatar playing bodyguard. The other team wasn’t playing fair!

“Fine then, I quit!” Lu Ran pouted.

Beside him, Six-Path Flower’s activated Fate’s Gaze.

“Lu Ran, force them to deal more damage to the world barrier. I can see many elemental beings dying. This world’s fate is about to change.”

“You mean...?” Lu Ran froze for a moment before donning a knowing grin. “Let’s see how many avatars y’all really have.”

Lu Ran shifted his focus once more and started hunting weaker elemental lifeforms, mostly of the Quasi-Legendary and Overlord ranks. These creatures were the foundation of the elemental kingdoms. Lu Ran refused to believe that the Elemental Gods had enough avatars to protect them all.

For efficiency, he solely utilized curses to assassinate his targets. Their elemental cores weren’t worth the effort it took to pick them up.

Although they didn’t provide much benefit to Lu Ran, their deaths inflicted a heavy toll on the Elemental Gods. Their inability to protect these weaker creatures would affect the amount of faith energy the citizens generated and cause general unrest.

The Elemental God could only watch as their followers were mercilessly slaughtered, and the inflow of faith energy plummeted. Lu Ran wasn’t in a rush to hunt Elemental Gods. He had plenty of chances after all. If he failed this time, then he could just try again later.

His main priority this time was to trigger the appearance of the Divine Dragons. Once they spawned, they would naturally punish the Elemental Gods, so he could just let them carry him through the rest of the ascension realm.

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Boom!

Countless Evil God’s Eyes appeared in the sky, and another group of Elemental Overlords suddenly exploded. While the eyes that appeared this time were smaller and weaker, a single glance was still enough to wipe out an Overlord.

“Bad news! The Legendary Necromancer has gone crazy! He’s not just hunting gods anymore and has started massacring Overlords!”

“Is this his dying struggle? God, please smite him and put an end to this madness!”

“God, save us!”

Although the rebellion Hel started was gaining traction, it wasn’t enough when accounting for the size of the total population. During the turmoil, the vast majority of the citizens still prayed for the Elemental Gods to capture Lu Ran. Lu Ran’s villainous rampage caused the world to descend rapidly into chaos.

“This human is far too troublesome. Where did he even come from?”

“That doesn’t matter. He must die.”

“At this point, we only have one option left.”

“It will work, but at too high a price!”

“Any price is worth it as long as we can force him to reveal himself.”

The Elemental Gods were going crazy themselves. Lu Ran finally pushed them to a breaking point, which forced them to make a terrifying decision. To be honest, even Lu Ran felt that he went a little too far.

“Damn, I really overdid it this time. Six-Path Flower, we need to run!” Lu Ran yelled when he sensed an overwhelming and turbulent mass of elemental energy shooting straight at him from the void.

“How insightful, Captain Obvious. A cornered dog will bite back. Although you do have an unmatched talent for pissing people off,” Six-Path Flower replied.

The Elemental Gods were already frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t find him in the void. His rampant killing of weaker elemental lifeforms further enraged them until they finally lost their patience and decided to indiscriminately rain down destruction from the outside in the void.

Their attacks filled the void outside of the world barrier and heralded devastation across the entire Stellar Moon world. Despite the damage it would inflict on the world at large, the Elemental Gods were obsessed with forcing Lu Ran out of hiding, no matter the cost.

A deafening explosion rang out across the void, and spatial fractures spread in every direction. Elemental energy condensed into raging storms, each hundreds of times more powerful than Baby Cloud’s attacks. These storms then fused together, which was exponentially more destructive. The entire void turned into a turbulent sea.