Chapter 1040: Infighting Among the Demon Gods, Revival of the Purgatory Primordial Ancestor (I)

From the very start, the decisive battle between the Human Alliance and the Purgatory Demon Clan had spiralled out of control, straying far from the plans laid by the ancient-titan-level powerhouses of both sides.

First came the sudden eruption of the second mythical surge, then the shattering of Cardeos’ true form and his suppression into a black hole of dark matter. Even separated by a million kilometers, the disappearance of that terrifying aura, one that had pressed on them with a suffocating dread, left both the Alliance’s divine kings and faerie kings, as well as the demon gods, in shock.

"How is this possible!"

"Our Majesty Cardeos... defeated? Slain by that human?"

"No, impossible. It must be fake. Our Majesty must have used some kind of bloodline ability to erase its own aura."

A middle-stage ancient-titan-level demon god roared, "Our Majesty’s strength has already surpassed the limit of the demon god level. Even against a true-spirit-level existence, it could hold its own for a long time. There’s no way it could be slain in such a short time by a human who only just broke through to the same level!"

The stunned expressions on the demon gods’ faces eased into doubt. It did sound reasonable. The distance was simply too great, and the destructive power unleashed by the detonation of the destructive crystal and the apocalyptic nuclear weapon had churned heaven and earth over hundreds of thousands of kilometers in a swirl of prismatic light and rolling dust.

At that range, none of the demon gods could see what had truly transpired. They could only judge the situation from the fluctuations of Cardeos' and Tyretis’ battle aura.

It was then that Tyretis’ furious roar shook the heavens. "Cardeos was merely careless and fell into the black hole. Beketivi, Kristev, disengage from those people and come here to pin down Qian Tian. I will go and kill Chu Batian."

The demon gods’ spirits lifted. The two demon gods pressing the Primordial King and the others on the front lines exploded with blood-red light and black flame.

"Out of the way!" In Kristev’s hand, the demonic spear bristling with spikes shattered and transformed into nine demonic dragons, each over a hundred thousand meters long and radiating ancient auras. They roared and, like meteor streaks, appeared instantly before Tolstoy and the purple crystalline wall in front of him.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The dragons erupted, releasing an endless wave of dark force that swept across tens of thousands of kilometers. Under that overwhelming power, the heavens and earth quaked, the entire world shoved sideways over a thousand kilometers, and the purple crystalline wall cracked in great fissures.

Knocked back by a single strike, Tolstoy roared, “Where do you think you’re going? Your opponent is me!”

The golden battle sword in his hand flared brilliantly. His ten golden wings unfurled, tearing their layered shield apart, and countless golden feathers appeared within thirty thousand kilometers. They radiated a soft yet domineering light, forming ranks of winged angelic figures that enclosed Kristev in twelve inner and outer layers.

The angels’ mouths opened slightly. Though silent, their sacred murmurs resounded through the void. In an instant, the world bathed in golden radiance fell into absolute stillness, including the turbulent laws of heaven and earth and the rampaging energies. Kristev, who had just knocked Tolstoy back and was about to tear space to retreat from the battlefield, found its movements slowed by tens of thousands of times.

As the strongest Heavenly Feathered powerhouse after the Divine King of Light, Tolstoy’s might was formidable. His only disadvantage against the Purgatory Empires' rulers lay in the level of his weapon, which was merely a top-tier pseudo-world-level one, putting him slightly at a disadvantage in direct clashes. Even so, he could still hold an opponent indefinitely.

Behind Kristev, the rolling black demonic qi condensed into a colossal demonic head tens of thousands of kilometers wide, biting down at the frozen angelic formation. Simultaneously, Kristev roared within the angelic light array.

Boom!

Assaulted from both front and back, the angelic formation collapsed instantly. From the dark demonic domain emerged another demon god, radiating the oppressive might of the middle stage of the ancient titan level. It glanced at Tolstoy. "Your Majesty, I will hold off this Heavenly Feathered remnant."

"I leave it to you, Astel."

With Qian Tian gone, the front lines had shifted to thirteen against eight. Added to that was the superior combined cultivation of the three Purgatory Empires' rulers.

Tolstoy could only watch helplessly as that demon god departed. However, another imperial ruler was quickly intercepted by the suddenly explosive Faerie King Xuntian, Heavenly King Zhenwu, two other faerie kings, and a Heavenly Feathered divine king.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Across the twenty-thousand-kilometer-wide front, divine kings and demon gods in their towering true forms clashed, their explosive power devastating the heavens and earth. The chaos was no longer confined to the demon-god-level battlefield high above. More than half of the forbidden zone had descended into madness as countless transcendent soldiers tore at one another.

The battlefields of the demon kings and great demon kings against human kings and heavenly kings stretched for hundreds of thousands of kilometers, dazzling lights of law clashing in an endless weave. From time to time, a demon king’s true form was blasted apart and fell from the skies, or a deity was torn in two by two demon kings, divine blood raining down in torrents.

Missiles and crystal energy hydrogen bombs were spent as if they cost nothing, erupting in chain detonations across the battlefield, guided with precision under the Celestial King’s control.

Whenever a front was breached and millions of the Purgatory Legion surged forward in a tide of rolling demonic qi, they were met by the pinpoint strikes of over a dozen crystal energy nuclear bombs, each with a yield of hundreds of megatons.

In an instant, the destructive power released erased everything. Even a demon king struck head-on by the detonation of a crystalline hydrogen bomb with a yield exceeding a hundred megatons would cough up blood and be wounded.

In terms of instantaneous destructive strength, the human nuclear weapons were on par with the law power of an ordinary mythical-level attack, yet their volume and density of force were dozens or even hundreds of times greater. Such weapons were perfectly suited for large-scale cleansing of transcendent battlefields.

When the fighting spread toward the central fringes, the Celestial King even detonated apocalyptic nuclear weapons that had long been buried, annihilating everything within ten thousand kilometers in an instant.

With the constant chain reaction of dark matter energy explosions, the principles of heaven and earth across a region more than 1.8 million kilometers wide and over 2 million kilometers deep began to show unstable fluctuations. The surrounding space-time storms, death whirlwinds, and apocalyptic lightning that had once circled the battlefield as a stabilising force now began to surge inward.

Only the Celestial King, who had an overview of the entire battlefield, noticed this scene.

While tens of thousands of alliance warriors and true demons fell with every passing moment, a violent tremor erupted from the black holes formed by the detonation of seventeen apocalyptic nuclear weapons. From within a black hole more than five thousand kilometers wide, as if black ink were swallowing all matter and space, came Cardeos’ roar of defiance.

"I refuse to accept this!" The black hole shuddered, and a colossal black arm struggled outward.

𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Only scraps of muscle clung to it, revealing a dark-golden skeletal frame coiled in pitch-black liquid that radiated an aura so dreadful even Chen Chu felt a chill.

Boom!

Space collapsed, and a golden-purple halberd light tens of thousands of meters long descended from the heavens, tearing the void and striking the mangled arm. The immense force snapped the arm and drove it, along with the halberd light, back into the black hole where both vanished without a trace, leaving only Cardeos’ hate-filled scream echoing between heaven and earth.

High above, tens of thousands of kilometers in the sky, Chen Chu stood with his halberd, his aura noticeably weaker and his expression cold and solemn.

When suppressing Cardeos just now, the strike he unleashed carried the power infused with principles and a portion of his divine soul will, which had been swallowed entirely by the annihilating dark matter. This devouring force was much like the Dragon Emperor’s Terminal Dark Devourer, erasing all traces completely.

Compared to the eradication of a great demon god, this loss was insignificant, a worthy trade in Chen Chu’s mind. He could sense Cardeos’ aura plummeting at a rapid rate within the dark matter.

Even with its true form tempered to the extreme and fused with a world-level weapon, Cardeos’ strength availed it nothing. The planar power of the Supreme Abyss that Cardeos had been drawing on was also dissolved by the dark matter blasts, stripping away its final hope. Such destructive potential made even Chen Chu’s eyes show a trace of wariness.

"Out of the way!"

Boom!

Half of the world split apart under Tyretis’ ferocious saber light, black as night and boundlessly domineering as it formed a rift a hundred thousand kilometers long. In that mad strike, white flames roared, and Qian Tian, whose form was now slightly transparent, let out a muffled groan as he was forced back.

Even the Divine Yin-Yang Wheel in his hands was cut with a crack. After maintaining peak output for half a day to hold Tyretis at bay, Qian Tian’s aura inevitably began to wane.

"Kristev, this human is yours." Towering a hundred thousand meters high, like a great abyssal devil, Tyretis surged forward with a demonic saber fused to its arm, aiming for Chen Chu. From the front lines arrived Kristev, the ruler of an empire, stepping before Qian Tian.

Gazing at the fifty-thousand-meter-tall demon god looming in endless demonic qi, Qian Tian, whose long white hair flowed amid white flames, laughed. "To think that at the last moment of my life, I could still take an imperial ruler with me."

From ten thousand kilometers away, Kristev’s cold eyes and deep, frigid voice answered, "I’m afraid that you do not have that strength, human. In your current state, I need only delay you briefly before you turn to ash. Before that happens, cutting you down will suffice."

Boom!

The flames surrounding Qian Tian flared, and his form split in two. From within stepped another Qian Tian with flowing black hair. The moment the black-haired Qian Tian appeared, the burning of his true form accelerated dozens of times over, its brilliance dazzling, and a faint vision of a civilization at its peak appearing behind him.

More importantly, as Qian Tian divided himself, his mastery over the Principle of Life-and-Death split into the Principle of Life and the Principle of Death.

Kristev’s face twisted in shock and anger. "Do not think you are the only one with a secret art for explosive power."

Roar!

Kristev’s true form detonated into a storm of blood mist that merged with the dark demonic domain. The domain quaked across hundreds of thousands of kilometers as endless demonic qi fused with the principle power of the Primordial Ancestor.

The surging qi rolled together, and a three-headed dark demonic dragon a hundred thousand meters long emerged, radiating an intense ferocity. Faced with Qian Tian’s intent to drag it into death, Kristev also chose to burn its bloodline and unleash its most powerful form.

Roar! Roar! Roar!

The three-headed demonic dragon bellowed, its six wings flaring as waves of black demonic qi blotted out the daylight sky.

"In my current state, whether you burn your bloodline or not makes no difference if you have not broken your limits," the two Qian Tians said softly.

In his hands, the Divine Yin-Yang Wheel split in two, one half transforming into white divine light, the other into black divine light, both merging into one of his bodies. At once, boundless black and white lights enveloped the heavens and earth.

"Yin and yang, life and death, eternal silence of all realms."

Splurt!

The three-headed demonic dragon screamed as the dark demonic domain and the very world around it were ripped apart, divided into two halves by pure intersecting beams of black and white lights. From afar, it looked as if an X, thirty thousand kilometers high, had appeared in the sky, lingering without fading.

Within the torn rift, endless and pure principles of yin-yang and life-and-death churned. Yin-yang erased all, life and death alternated, and the portion of Kristev’s true form and divine soul that had been torn away was destroyed outright.

This was the power of Qian Tian breaking his limits once more, erupting and reaching the true spirit level. Those beneath that level couldn’t resist such force.

The further one progressed in cultivation, the greater the leaps between levels of strength became. The gap between the ancient titan level and the true spirit level was like a huge chasm. In the entire Purgatory Demon Clan, in ten thousand years, only two demon gods with monstrous, peerless talent had broken those shackles.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Before the utterly unleashed Qian Tian, Kristev, who only moments ago had been so full of vigor, saw its true form shattered again and again, Demon God Blood spraying through the sky and dyeing it red. The shockwaves from that immense power destroyed everything within hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

Under Qian Tian’s deliberate control, the two quickly moved toward the front battlefield, soon appearing in the central region of the forbidden zone. All of the demon gods’ expressions changed drastically.