Chapter 1236: Acquisitioner Squad Reporting for Duty

The starry sky shook!

The kelp plant was pushing itself to the limit. But even with the kelp’s help, the dozens of ascendees weren’t a match for so many gods.... The fighting simply wasn’t even. When Xu Qing and the other top ascendees made their move, the kelp plant could just work hard to buy time. It didn’t take long for the kelp’s sealing barrier to start breaking down. The huge leaves were battered away.

The ascendees, despite giving it their all, were so badly wounded they had to fall back.

The isolated area opened up, and the gods who had been temporarily blocked outside were able to rush inside. Except... as the gods entered one by one, they were shocked to the core.

They had already forgotten that they previously had two peak Altar Gods as their leaders. In their minds, they only had a single leader.

But that leader was in horrible condition. Hīs skin was covered with a gruish tattoo that looked like a host of mountain peaks. Those distant mountains contained an incredibly heavy canon that sealed the enemy with the power of 10,000 mountains.

Hē was also wrapped up with a host of chains, each of which glittered with the light of order, and emanated the might of heaven’s principle. Every moment that passed, the chains pulsed with the power of judgment. Hīs chest was a mangled mass, out of which grew a huge eye! The evil, bloodshot eye was the manifestation of Zhou Zhengli’s canon, which suppressed the god soul and cut off all avenues of escape!

On the god’s back was a bright red flower that was the manifestation of Li Mengtu’s canon.

Furthermore, buried in the location of his heart was a broken sword. In fact, the sword pierced right through the Altar God’s heart, where it pulsed with avarice and madness.

There was also a taboo poison curse, manifested as streams of black smoke that covered the god, invading hīm and inflicting excruciating pain.

Beyond all that, an endless voice reached their ears and echoed into their minds, rising and falling with sounds of torment. All of the blood in hīs body was flowing backward, causing the god to slowly wither in on hīmself.

But most importantly of all was the fact that an iron skewer had stabbed into hīs forehead!

Xu Qing had two iron skewers. He had left one behind in the Revered Ancient mainland, with Patriarch Golden Vajra Warrior as the spiritual soul, to stand guard over Plumdark. The other had been forged by the apprentice of Immortal Lord Nineshores in the Fifth Star Ring. It contained Xu Qing’s personal canon, so it could enter overlapping universes and form resonances with multiple space-times! It also had a mote of heaven’s principle, and given all that, the iron skewer’s personhood was extremely high. It also had immense ‘weight.’ It was a weight that even Quasi-Immortals would have to fear and respect!

It could well be said that his second iron skewer was a precious treasure of canon, and the most powerful weapon Xu Qing currently controlled! Its Infinite Timelessness was something no one could tamper with!

When it stabbed into this Altar God, it sealed space-time, cutting hīm off beyond the timescape. Hē was not in the current time! Hē was completely and utterly suppressed!

After the iron skewer stabbed into the god, it glittered brightly. And then, in front of all the other gods, the peak Altar God simply disappeared. Hē was imprisoned in Infinite Timelessness!

The gods were astonished beyond belief. After a brief moment of shocked silence, Xu Qing and the others’ killing intent raged out across the battlefield again.

This had been the plan all along. First, deal with the Altar Gods. Then, go on a rampage! One couldn’t afford blunders when fighting the gods! It was fine to shrink from a fight with them. But if you chose to do battle, you needed to kill them. You had to go all out.

That was especially true in a case like this one. After all, even though Xu Qing and the other top experts had dealt with the peak Altar Gods, the enemy still had a huge advantage. They still had a desperate fight ahead of them!

Preheaven gods had no emotions, but they did have an instinctual desire to remain alive. That obsession to live meant that they would do anything to avoid death. To truly resolve this crisis, they had to kill these cultivators despite their instinctual desire to avoid death.

In the blink of an eye, intense fighting broke out in the starry sky. Blood sprayed everywhere. The blood of gods and the blood of cultivators intermixed and flowed. The stench of gore filled the void. Slaughter turned the area into a living hell. Screams of mourning. Howls of rage. Cries of anguish. The sound of clashing magical techniques, divine abilities, and god magics. The mixture of canon and godly authority. Such things all mixed together. Mad killing took place!

Li Mengtu and Yuanshan Su were splattered with blood from severe injuries. They were nearly spent. That was especially true of Yuanshan Su, whose face was ashen. Her canon was destabilizing. Zhou Zhengli was in similarly bad shape. Blood oozed out of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Sir Vilespirit trembled from head to toe. The flame of his life force was flickering weakly.

Sir Star Ring’s chains of order had lost much of their luster, and he was having a hard time controlling them. Hordeslayer and Rampart flitted about unstably. They were even reaching the point where they couldn’t curse and grumble in their hearts.

Exhaustion and injuries spread like a rising tide. God corpses were piling up, but so were the mangled limbs and disfigured corpses of ascendees. And yet... the slaughter continued.

Xu Qing was like the ambassador of death, bringing a massacre wherever he went. His space-time canon erupted, causing numerous instances of space-time to appear around him. He was like a nightmare for the gods.

But even terrifying nightmares would end upon waking. Xu Qing and his squadron were getting very tired, and thus, it seemed like that awakening would come sooner rather than later.

Thankfully... the instinct to avoid death seemed to be coming even sooner. When about half of the gods had been slaughtered, the survivors began to feel the instinct to flee, rising up from their god souls. After all, their leaders had been captured and mostly killed.

Eventually, one god turned and vanished into the void. All living things have the instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm. That was even truer of the gods. If the two peak Altar Gods were still around, they could use their status as superior gods to compel the others to fight. But now... the inherent cold apathy that existed in the bones of the gods prompted them to flee.

Soon enough, a second god disappeared. As the moments passed, it happened again and again. The gods began dispersing. The scale of the fighting grew smaller. Eventually, silence filled the battlefield. There wasn’t a single god left.

Xu Qing and the survivors hovered in the starry sky. They were completely and utterly spent, in both mind and body. What was more... their numbers had been reduced.

There were no longer over fifty of them. There were now hardly twenty. And they were in bad shape.

However, each and every survivor had an intensely baleful aura, and their eyes were the color of blood. This group had been with Xu Qing on a long journey. They had experienced the incident in the Helioterra Universe, they had seized ringsource with him, they had pillaged the god prison, and they had fought with him.

When they had been given the chance to leave with the other ascendees, they instead chose to stick with Xu Qing. Having survived to this point, they were warriors who had gone through countless trials, and all of them were now elites among elites!

Xu Qing looked around at them for a long moment, then hoarsely said, “Let’s go!”

At that point, Xu Qing stopped using the clay fox form. Turning, he shot off into the distance. No one said a thing. But at the same time, they didn’t waste any time. Turning into beams of prismatic light, they followed him. Together, they made their way off into the starry sky like a pack of wolves!

In that manner, time passed.

The fighting in the eastern theater went on. In fact, it grew more intense. Gods continued to invade from other areas. Cultivator armies that had been waiting in hiding also joined the fighting.

The eastern theater had truly become a grindstone of flesh and blood. One after another, the dao flags in various universes crumbled. Entire armies of gods transformed into corpses.

Countless cultivators were buried in the starry sky, including all of the ascendees who had left Xu Qing and the rest of the squadron. Ascendees were like seeds. But in war, they didn’t count for much. And that was because only the true seeds would end up growing! Those who died were not truly seeds.

The glow of blood grew stronger in the eastern theater. It became like a torch in the night, attracting more and more attention. It seemed as if both sides were getting closer and closer to reaching their goal.

The two peak Altar Gods who had gone missing weren’t very important at all. The fact that the small squadron of gods didn’t make it to the fighting wasn’t even noticed. When bright light shines, dust can’t be seen.

Similarly, as the light grew brighter, no one noticed Xu Qing and his exhausted squadron fleeing into the darkness. Slowly but surely, they approached the border between the staging areas and the front lines of the eastern theater.

The closer they got, the emptier the starry sky became, and the weaker the mutagen. At a certain point, the mutagen disappeared entirely, and they could sense that they were surrounded by immortal energy.

Everyone looked around in surprise. They had left the staging areas. They were now... on the front lines of the eastern theater!

Off in the distance, they could see the massive ramparts that had been erected by the magical techniques of the cultivators. The ramparts went on forever and ever, glittering with bright light.

“We’re finally here,” Zhou Zhengli murmured. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was badly wounded.

For the most part, it was the same with everyone. As they looked at the distant cultivator ramparts, they breathed sighs of relief.

The starry sky here was dazzling, and because the dao flags were all in place, there was no mutagen. The immortal energy was strong. Because of that immortal energy, Xu Qing and the rest of the squadron felt their injuries starting to heal even faster than before. That said, they still weren’t completely safe, so they continued moving forward toward the protective magical techniques.

About two hours later, they were very close to the ramparts. That was when a vast stream of divine will emerged from the ramparts and covered them. Along with the will came a flabbergasted voice.

“Who goes there?”

It spoke into the minds of Xu Qing and the others like heavenly thunder, forcing them to stop in place.

Xu Qing stepped forward. “We’re a squadron from the Department of Acquisitions in the Nineshores Heaven, here on orders from Immortal Lord Nineshores to deliver the ringsource we have acquired to the front lines!”