Chapter 701 - Final Battle Begins! Second Calamity Tide Descends

Yakasen Island was a forbidden zone from the moment Blood Vulture Dominator Fist and Xiadu began their clash. The danger was no longer the storm triggered by Cassius breaking through and leaking some aura, but the terrifying aftermath caused by two peak existences clashing. Towering tsunamis spread out from Yakasen Island, completely destroying coastal routes and ports in the area.

Some unfortunate cargo ships saw waves that were a hundred meters high. It was something they had never encountered in their lifetimes! A few extremely lucky survivors returned to land and frantically told others of their encounter with the wrath of the sea god. It was as if a deity from the depths of the ocean had gone mad!

A crystal chandelier hung quietly from the ceiling of a luxurious room in Starwatch Tower. There was a large bed covered with soft, fine satin by the window. The walls were carved with roses, and a subtle fragrance lingered in the air. It had the effect of calming one's spirit and seemed like a spice reserved exclusively for the royal family.

However, even this pleasant fragrance could not conceal the faint scent of blood that permeated the room. The metallic scent came from the figure lying on the bed. She had long blue hair spilling over the edge of the quilt.

Suddenly, a violent coughing rang out.

"Cough, cough, cough...

W-where... where am I?! My...

ah!

My eyes!!!"

The quilt at the head of the bed lifted as a delicate figure sat up. Her eyes were gently bound with a piece of soft white satin.

Click.

The door suddenly opened, and an elderly figure wearing an ornate priestly robe quickly rushed in. The old man walked to the bedside and spoke.

"Andrea, you've finally awakened!"

Andrea suddenly turned her head toward the voice. "Teacher?"

The High Priest sat at her bedside. "It's me. Your fleet's wreckage was found along the coast. Some priests and members survived and have already awakened, but only you remained unconscious. Did you use the protective treasure I gave you to shield the entire fleet? Don't do that again next time. You are my successor, and far more precious than the whole fleet..."

𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

"Teacher, I..." Andrea started to explain, but then immediately remembered something important. "Teacher! What happened on Yakasen Island may be a thousand times more terrifying than you ever imagined... It’s a battle between gods!"

On March 30, two days after Andrea had awakened, she regained part of her vision after dipping into the massive resources of the High Priest and the Starwatch Tower. She immediately drew all the images she had observed within Yakasen Island. There were four drawings in total, all depicting scenes of immense grandeur. They looked like sacred oil paintings from religious myths.

The first showed a colossal blood-colored bird gripping the peak of a mountain with a single talon. Its wings were spread as it looked up at a sky that was filled with countless bolts of thunder striking down. The second showed an armored figure draped in a black cloak, sitting cross-legged with his hands clasped, surrounded by tricolored divine light and stars. The third showed a colossal scaled arm of black smoke above the island descending to pollute the world. The final image showed the gigantic blood-colored bird soaring upward to clash with the black-scaled hand, while the armored figure on the ground remained as immovable as a mountain.

Experts from the royal family and the Starwatch Tower all provided their interpretations.

"A bird's claw can grasp an entire peak thousands of meters high?!"

"Do such terrifying beings truly exist in this world?"

"That giant smoky hand from beyond the skies... Doesn't it resemble the dark creatures and malevolent spirits that ravage human society?"

"The blood-colored bird and the armored figure seem allied, while the scaled hand was their enemy, trying to destroy something..."

They even sought to research references to identify who the holy beings in the drawings might be, but they had found nothing of note yet. Even comparing myths across regions yielded nothing similar until April 2, when Fifth Prince Omai and Sixth Princess Sharo returned from the international economic conference in Florence held in the Hongli Federation. They were shocked to find that the armored figure in the second drawing looked strikingly similar to the statue of the sect master of Golem Sect!

After the conference, Omai and Sharo had used Cassius's token to visit the Golem Sect's headquarters for some time. They had even secretly become disciples. Naturally, they had seen the Six Southern Dipper Volumes and the Golem Heart Codex. Those mysterious glazed tomes floating before the armored figure in the second drawing left a deep impression on them. Could it be that the figure was none other than Golem Sect's master?

"You're saying the being on Yakasen Island was not some holy spirit but the current master of Golem Sect? The only Holy Fist of this age?" The master of the Starwatch Tower, the High Priest, and the King of the Blue Star Empire were all struck with prolonged shock. They were all standing inside a grand hall of the Blue Star Empire imperial palace.

Was human strength truly limited while nature's was infinite? Nonsense! The aura coming from the Golem Sect Master alone caused upheavals thousands of times stronger than natural disasters. None of them doubted that the terrifying battle could sink the entirety of Yakasen Island into the sea.

The King of the Blue Star Empire waved his hand helplessly. "We will do all we can, then leave it to fate... Follow the prophecies of the Starwatch Tower."

He already stood at the peak of worldly power, yet some things were beyond even him. The Golem Sect's master, the only Holy Fist of the current age, possessed power that could destroy the entire empire.

"All of you leave. Omai and Sharo will stay."

In the hall, the King dismissed everyone else, leaving only the Fifth Prince and Sixth Princess. It seemed related to the fact that these two had already joined the Golem Sect. Princess Sharo had said herself that she had seen the Sect Master and engaged in an extraordinary transaction with him. Sometimes, destiny came through coincidence. From then on, there were no longer just four heirs of the Blue Star Empire.

***

The Hongli Federation had not been peaceful for over a month. Enormous upheavals had emerged across the continent. Disasters and crises of all kinds sharply increased in frequency and scale. Flash floods, landslides, storms, earthquakes, tsunamis... every kind of disaster and misfortune erupted at once.

A colossal tide swept forth from the world's depths. Inter-world portals appeared across the land like hornet nests. Many places suffered attacks by dark creatures. Fortunately, the newly risen Golem Sect quickly unified the Covert Martial Arts world. The Four Kings took charge of the four directions, commanding and directing without major mishaps. Now that the sect's martial halls had expanded to include common people, Covert Martial Arts became commonplace, so much that even small towns had Covert Martial Arts Practitioners. This greatly strengthened resistance against dark creatures.

In addition, the official supernatural force of the Hongli Federation, the Black Ops Agency, fully cooperated with the government, utilising technological advances in communication. Wherever portals appeared, strong experts would arrive to suppress them. One after another, cultivators with Golem Seeds in their bodies fought against monsters!

Their minds' malice were stirred with each slain dark creature, which seeped into the Golem Seeds as if nurturing some mysterious substance. In just one month, Humanity's Malice grew tenfold, even a hundredfold, which was much more than the previous several months combined.

The Golem Sect's headquarters was the center for all operations. They had been waiting for the Gate Organization to surface. Months ago, the Gate Organization had been beaten terribly by Cassius. They had fled in disgrace and were still hiding in the shadows. However, with the calamity tide looming, they had to be making their move again!

Yet strangely, the Gate Organization did not appear in either the Hongli Federation nor in the northern small nations. Even in the United States of Yana, there was no large-scale movement of its members. Only a few strong members surfaced, seemingly as decoys to distract attention.

On the night of April 9, a bloody massacre suddenly erupted at the border of the Blue Star Empire and a dozen small states. The Gate Organization carried out a well-prepared and meticulously planned blood sacrifice. Led by several generations of its deputy leaders revived by necromancy, they slaughtered hundreds of Covert Martial Art sects in the region. Even commoners were not spared.

Many towns were massacred and an altar emerged amidst the mountains of corpses and seas of blood. It was not the locator altar of the fifth time-travel, which had been used to find weak points between worlds in the first calamity tide. Now that a second, even larger calamity tide appeared, the barrier between worlds, which had already been fragile after the first calamity tide, no longer needed weak points. A passage was simply blasted open! In fact, it was big enough for even peak-level existences to pass through.

Xiadu and its Gate Organization lackeys had gathered enough Gate Fragments after a thousand years. They were planning to break open the seals of the other two Gates of Heaven together. Then, Xiadu would be whole again, becoming calamity itself. It could then summon its underworld servants to annihilate the surface world! It would turn both the surface world and underworld into a paradise of calamity!

The altar was completed on April 11. The powerful Gate Organization easily repelled all challengers and set the altar in the southeast, close to Yakasen Island. It was clear that Yakasen Island would become the battlefield destined for ruin.

In fact, Yakasen Island had already been flattened. The island, that was as big as a province, lay devastated, scarred with colossal palm prints as a great valley divided south from north. Scarlet Qi filled with murderous intent clashed everywhere against black calamity that polluted the world. Two unspeakably terrifying beings collided again and again in the skies, on land, and in the seas.

Xiadu sought several opportunities to approach the meditating Cassius, but was driven away by the rainbow strikes of Blood Vulture Dominator Fist each time. Not once did it succeed.

Xiadu had stopped trying to approach Cassius in the past ten days. Instead, it battled Blood Vulture Dominator Fist in mutual consumption as if it were waiting for something...

On April 12, at exactly midnight, the event which Xiadu had been waiting for finally arrived.

Rumble...

Though the clouds had already been scattered, a sound like countless muffled thunders echoed. But if one listened carefully, it was not thunder. Rather, it was the distorted sound of a colossal wave. It was a vast echo transmitted from the World of Calamity to the surface world in all directions. It was omnipresent. One could even feel their skull vibrating and brain echoing with the tide. The second calamity tide had descended!

"It's now or never!"

At the edge of Yakasen Island, the black colossal hand shook violently. Two scales on its surface blinked like eyes, locking onto the center of the island. The cloaked armored figure sitting cross-legged there was at a critical moment. Only three glazed tomes, the last of the advanced Six Southern Dipper Volumes, floated before him.

The second stage of Three Fists as One amounted to one hundred and thirty-two stars, of which one hundred and thirty-one had been lit. Only one remained dim and was right on the verge of lighting up.

Rumble...

Calamity waves swept invisibly over heaven and earth, passing Yakasen Island. The cloaked armored figure's cape trembled and the tricolored divine glow on his body rippled. His Qi also stalled for a rare moment. Cassius had been affected!

"Now! Even if it costs me, I will see you die here!"

The black hand flashed out instantly, descending to suppress Cassius.

"Trying to break the world's limits under my very eyes!? Utter delusion!"