Chapter 1022: You Traitors, Blast That Demon God Apart

As Deorus set out, at the opposite edge of the Dark Demonic Morkaya Empire, deep within the ancestral court, Demon God Livedes suddenly opened its eyes. Floating in the void around it were eight dark-red demonic crystals. Among them, the one representing Deorus was trembling faintly.

Deorus’ voice resonated from within the crystal. "Livedes, a tremor has emerged in the forbidden zone south of my empire. A time-type primordial treasure has appeared. I’ve already departed to investigate. The timing of this treasure’s appearance is rather coincidental. Although I’ve confirmed its authenticity, just in case, I hope you’ll follow up shortly."

Just as Heavenly King Zhenwu had methods to communicate across vast distances, the demon gods naturally had their own means of contact. However, after delivering that single message, the crystal representing Deorus dimmed slightly, its glow waning. At this rate, it would only be able to send two more one-way messages before its power ran out.

Despite everything seeming in order, the cautious Deorus still chose to notify Livedes. This place was the joint base of the coalition formed by the three great empires. By informing Livedes, it effectively notified the other demon gods as well, in hopes of rallying a few to bolster the formation. With the power of demon gods, it would take little time to cross over two million kilometers to the Silver Forest Forbidden Zone.

By the time Deorus entered the ruins, Livedes and the others would likely arrive too. Even if something went wrong, with several demon gods working together, they could still retreat unscathed. After all, Deorus’ own empire wasn’t far from here.

***

Above the sky, dark-red demonic clouds roiled, sweeping toward the horizon with rapid speed. Soon, they surged past the Morkaya Empire’s borders. The remaining four hundred thousand kilometers were crossed in moments as the demon god warped space.

Even tens of thousands of kilometers away, Deorus could already see the silver brilliance piercing the sky and earth, as well as sense intense temporal fluctuations radiating from the halos encircling that column of light. More importantly, deep within the forbidden zone, a powerful temporal source, blazing like the sun, instantly caused Deorus’ demon god bloodline to boil.

A principle-level, primordial world treasure that rivaled a world-level weapon. Even Deorus couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath, demonic light blazing in its eyes.

Boom!

A colossal dark-red pillar descended from the heavens. Tabor and the two demons stationed there were all forced to the ground by its invisible pressure. From the demonic light, Deorus’ massive form slowly emerged, followed by Brooks, and behind him a grievously wounded forked-horned demon king.

Feeling the terror emanating from the bloodline, the prostrate Tabor trembled and whispered with reverence, "G-Greetings, Your Majesty."

Deorus merely cast it a cold glance and said nothing, its full attention fixed on the increasingly vivid and powerful time power deep within the forbidden zone.

Behind Deorus, Brooks asked solemnly, "Tabor, has anything unusual happened here since I left?"

Tabor respectfully answered, "My lord, after your departure, my subordinates and I, along with Devon’s group, monitored the area from three directions. We’ve found nothing abnormal."

Brooks nodded slightly, then looked up toward Deorus, pledging with unwavering loyalty, "Your Majesty, shall I venture inside again to scout the path?"

Deorus’ gaze flickered briefly before it slowly shook its head. "No need. A mid-tier forbidden zone is of no consequence to one at my level. You all did well this time. Here is your reward."

As it spoke, Deorus shattered space with a flick of its hand. Two one-meter-wide drops of pure black blood, each emanating terrifying energy, floated into view.

Demon God Origin Blood!

The three advanced demons on the ground, including Tabor, widened their eyes in greed and envy.

Unlike the Demon God Blood refined from countless colossal beasts and powerful lifeforms, this was condensed directly from a true demon god’s origin bloodline. Its value was equivalent to half of a principle-level divine object, and to true demons, it was even more precious than most principle-level treasures.

Even a great demon king who absorbed and refined this could drastically boost its bloodline and enhance the power of its laws. A mythical-level demon king like Brooks could break through to the middle stage of the mythical level just by refining one drop.

More importantly, it would significantly purify their Purgatory bloodline, drawing their true form's essence closer to Deorus’, and perhaps even awaken time-type bloodline abilities.

Brooks immediately dropped to one knee, overwhelmed with gratitude. "Thank you for your grace, Your Majesty. I shall serve you with even greater devotion."

Deorus nodded in satisfaction. It was clearly pleased with this demon king it had personally cultivated.

Though the infiltration of the Blue Planet had failed last time, Brooks wasn’t to blame. The real problem lay with traitors within the Giant Cult who had long colluded with humanity and fed them false intelligence.

This time, however, everything had gone smoothly. From the moment the anomaly appeared, Brooks had risked itself to investigate, confirmed the treasure’s authenticity, and promptly returned to report.

Now that the treasure was indeed real, Deorus had no time to waste. The other demon gods, including Livedes, would be arriving soon. Thinking of this, Deorus felt a twinge of regret. It shouldn’t have been so cautious, and should have delayed sending that message to Livedes.

"You all stay here. I’ll go retrieve that primordial treasure myself."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Boom!

Deorus, like a boundless creature, crossed a thousand kilometers in an instant through the violently shaking space, arriving before the silver forest. With its descent, the towering trees—over a thousand meters tall, their branches and leaves like forged silver—began to collapse and shatter one after another, forming a broad, straight passage through the woods.

The spatial distortion and magnetic fields permeating the forest were forcibly suppressed by the might of its dark principle, unleashing ring after ring of violent shockwaves that swept across thousands of kilometers. Such overwhelming force left Brooks and the other demons watching from afar utterly shaken.

"No wonder it’s the demon god... Our Majesty is terrifying." While sighing in awe, Brooks swallowed a drop of the Demon God Origin Blood in one gulp. Then, dragging the other drop over to the unconscious Guludeen, he slammed it into its body with a palm strike.

Boom! Boom!

In an instant, both Brooks and Guludeen’s auras surged explosively. Deorus was about to step into the ambush. If they didn’t refine the bloodline-infused origin now, it would be too late once Deorus realized what was happening.

Just as Brooks consumed the essence of the demon god, Deorus entered the silver forbidden zone, its vast demonic force surging outward. Immediately, the entire zone trembled under the oppressive power of dark principle. Razor-sharp spatial beams erupted, obliterating everything nearby.

However, the moment it stepped into the zone, a tremendous sense of danger surged within its heart.

Something's wrong. Very wrong!

Boom!

Deorus' body expanded violently. Endless dark demonic qi burst from it, manifesting a ten-thousand-meter-tall true form.

"Since you're already here, you should stay." Chen Chu’s cold and indifferent voice echoed from three directions at once. At the center of the forbidden zone, webs of brilliant golden-white lightning erupted in every direction.

The silver wings that had previously emitted powerful temporal fluctuations in Deorus’ senses vanished, revealing Chen Chu clad in black imperial robes.

Outside the zone, the void shattered. A ten-thousand-meter figure with three faces and ten arms emerged slowly, with a towering golden Heavenly Gate bound by nine layers of dark-golden dragon-patterned chains standing behind it.

Elsewhere at the zone’s entrance, another Chen Chu appeared. His aura was slightly weaker, his manifested form standing at three thousand meters tall, with three faces and eight arms, and behind him, too, rose a Nine-Fold Heavenly Gate.

"Chu Batian!" Deorus roared in shock and fury.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Four of Deorus’ arms exploded instantly, transforming into clouds of dark-red blood mist that rushed toward the two heads of monstrous black colossal beasts it held and a broken blue mirror shard. At the same time, Deorus ignited its boundless dark flames, sacrificing all four arms to fuel the fire.

The inferno shot skyward, boiling the heavens and seas as it bloomed into an immense black lotus. Time surged from the center of the lotus, connecting past and future to form a transparent river that spiraled through time itself.

Boom! Boom!

In that instant, two demon-god-level presences—one strong, one weak—descended from the transparent river of time. They were two versions of Deorus from the past and the future.

The entire world trembled, and time collapsed. Past and future twisted into a chaotic tangle as the present buckled under their weight. Facing death, Deorus not only sacrificed four arms, but burned its entire bloodline, summoning its true forms from past and future. Even if it somehow survived, its vitality would be crippled for centuries, its cultivation realm falling by a full minor realm.

However, in the very next moment, three even more terrifying auras descended.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Behind each Chen Chu, their Nine-Fold Heavenly Gates shattered simultaneously. Roaring dragon shadows, each bearing the World-Ending Dark Star power, surged forth and merged into them.

In an instant, dark-golden light illuminated the entire night sky. Heaven and earth crumbled, and the destructive might detonated the entire forbidden zone, collapsing the void itself.

𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Roar! Roar! Roar!

Roars echoed endlessly across the heavens. Then, the entire world plunged into absolute darkness, within which three halberds, entwined in golden-white lightning and forged of pure dark-golden light, descended slowly.

Their descent seemed slow, but in truth, they moved faster than time itself. All things perished under their light. Only that domineering force remained, crushing the heavens, space, and time alike.

Boom!

With the combined strike from the three Chen Chus at their peak state, all of time and space was annihilated. The entire forbidden zone exploded, forming a black hole tens of thousands of kilometers wide.

Yet the energy of the strike was utterly contained. Even Brooks and the others a thousand kilometers away sensed no shockwave of destruction. This display of power left the newly awakened Guludeen trembling in fear.

This human’s control over power is utterly monstrous.

Then, from the chaotic void left behind by the strike, a red crystalline bark, shaped like a Purgatory Demon and over ten meters tall, slowly floated into view. It was covered in countless cracks. Without a sound, it disintegrated into rings of crimson light that shattered into dust.

Within the fading ripples, the figure of Deorus, who had just been obliterated by Chen Chu’s strike, reappeared as if time had reversed. However, its aura had plummeted all the way down to the beginning stage of the ancient titan level.

All of this had happened in a mere instant. As Chen Chu’s gaze flickered, Deorus disappeared amid the distortion of space-time, leaving behind only its hateful, venomous roar echoing in the void. "Chu Batian, I will kill everyone connected to you! I’ll wipe out everything you hold dear! And those traitors, you’re all dead. Dead!"

Deorus had all but descended into madness. Even so, faced with Chen Chu, who had nearly obliterated its true form in an instant and wiped out eighty percent of its divine soul, it dared not linger for even a breath. Its retreat caused both Brooks and Guludeen’s expressions to shift subtly.

In contrast, Chen Chu didn’t show the slightest urgency. His three manifestations stood coldly across the crumbling forbidden zone, each occupying a different direction. "As expected, this guy is extremely hard to kill. It even carried a death-substitute divine item."

An artifact capable of granting a demon god a second life had nearly reached world-creation level, making it unimaginably rare and precious. As he spoke, Chen Chu calmly retrieved a palm-sized transparent crystal from his storage space. Sealed within the crystal was the phantom of a demon god. It was Deorus’ very soul essence, the same one hidden within the demon god puppet that had infiltrated the Blue Planet.

Bang!

Chen Chu crushed the crystal, grabbing the wisp of soul essence with his hand. At the same time, a silver rune flared between his brows, bursting with radiant brilliance, like a pair of silver wings of light.

"Found you." As the words fell coldly from his lips, time around him twisted, an eerie, instinctive distortion of spacetime, and he vanished without a sound.

Though Chen Chu possessed a time-based divine ability, it typically only allowed him to absorb and refine time power to condense clones, or expend time energy to isolate himself from temporal influence.

Now, however, through the connection between his own soul essence and Deorus', he could use this trace to lock onto its position. He could then consume time power to enter a temporal rift and emerge directly at Deorus’ current point in the time stream.

As his main body tore through time in pursuit of Deorus, the two temporal true forms didn’t follow. Instead, they turned their gazes in the direction of the Purgatory Empire.

The moment Chen Chu had struck down Deorus, seven other demon-god-level auras had erupted in the distance, and principle powers shook the heavens and the earth.

There, where the ambush had been prepared, Qian Tian, Xuntian the Faerie King, Tarodell the Divine King, and the Golden-Winged Divine King Tolstoy had already clashed with three demon gods who had come as reinforcements.

Boom!

Space shattered, and the two Chen Chus, both clad in black imperial robes and transformed into the Dark Star World-Ending Dragon Emperor form, soared through the void, heading toward the battlefield hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

This time, their target wasn’t just Deorus.