Chapter 822: The Quaking Golden Mammoth

Fang Yi sucked in a deep breath. "The black and void spirits are both artificially created monsters, then..."

Sun Mengmeng shook her head. "How cruel. Not only do the death spirits destroy the worlds they invade, they even turn their original inhabitants into these monstrosities."

Zhang Lie shrugged. "There are plenty of cruel races among the three thousand worlds. Genocide is part of that harsh reality."

Fang Yi focused on something different. "In that case, just what are the death spirits?"

If the void and dark spirits were both monsters that came from living lifeforms' souls and bodies, what was the true nature of the death spirits?"

Zhang Lie hummed. "As far as I know, all the death spirits are like clones of the death spirit king but with individual, independent minds.

As for the origin of the death spirit king, there are a few hypotheses I know of. Some suggest that the death spirit king was a biological experiment gone awry, or a collective consciousness formed from large quantities of souls of the malignant dead. However, as far as I know, all these are legends or unfounded rumors."

Li Qianlin asked curiously, "As an alien from the Milky Way, how do you know so much about these death spirits? You even know more than Dong Mingxing and I, and we're native to this realm!"

Zhang Lie shrugged. "I traveled widely in the past."

Sun Mengmeng asked worriedly, "Since we killed the black spirits, will the death spirits seek us out for revenge?"

Zhang Lie replied, "They'll come for us eventually, but it's no easy feat for them. The other nine races from the superior worlds are keeping a close eye on them because of their rapid expansion.

"Those races have divided into three major factions. One faction acts allegedly to preserve the peace among the three thousand worlds, but really to maintain the rule of the ten superior worlds.

"Four superior worlds are represented in this faction. Of the remaining five, three are in a long, drawn-out war against the death spirits, and the remaining two don't want to be dragged into this mess."

Fang Yi remarked, "For the death spirits to be able to survive the combined assault of three superior worlds for all this time—they really have to be quite skilled."

Zhang Lie shrugged. "After all, they can repurpose their dead and turn them into void spirits, and any warriors they capture can be treated similarly. In other words, they grow stronger the longer the war drags on, whereas it's the opposite for the three races fighting against them."

The hunters of Team Zenith still seemed rather worried to have provoked such a powerful existence, but Zhang Lie didn't pay it much mind.

"We'll have to deal with them sooner or later, so it isn't a problem. Furthermore, the other superior races do have methods that would be effective against the death spirits—they're just too costly to be worth using. None of the superior races can justify using those methods, so they've simply been curbing the death spirits' development rather than striking them down directly."

Sun Mengmeng asked, "Why are the death spirits so bent on expansion, anyway? Do they simply want to amass more black and void spirits?"

Zhang Lie shook his head. "That's simply a secondary advantage. Their primary goal is to absorb as many wills of the world as they can, in order to strengthen the death spirit king. It's attempting to absorb the wills of the world in order to augment its own strength and, eventually, devour all three thousand worlds of the realm."

"The death spirits are that ambitious?" Li Qianlin's face grew pale—she was a native inhabitant of these lands, and the person present who would be most affected by the death spirits' goals.

"Too ambitious, perhaps," Dong Mingxing commented with a wry smile. From her perspective, the three thousand worlds were so immense that the death spirit king's ambition was just a ludicrous dream.

Zhang Lie replied seriously, "That's only the start of the death spirit king's objectives. Its next step is to absorb the collective will of the third realm, and then that of the fourth and fifth realms—and finally to escape from this dimension altogether and devour the Milky Way, the universe at large!"

"Aren't you being a little dramatic?" Dong Mingxing laughed to counter her swelling anxiety. Devouring the three thousand worlds was enough of a nightmare—and that was only the beginning?! She shook her head. "No, it's impossible."

The death spirit king's ambitions were so lofty that no ordinary person could take them seriously. Someone who expressed the intention to rob a bank had to be dealt with, but someone who claimed that they would storm the World Trade Organization's headquarters was just a fool.

However, what Zhang Lie spoke of had really happened—in his past life. The death spirits' ambitious plan had almost succeeded in its entirety, all thanks to the mouthpiece known as the black spirits.

As the black spirits slowly expanded and transferred the power of their captured worlds to the death spirit king, the king grew stronger and stronger, until it finally unleashed its true might.

The nine other superior worlds, in conjunction with the whole of the realm, barely managed to stop the death spirit king, but the third realm paid a heavy price for quelling that threat. Only a thousand of the three thousand worlds remained; the other two thousand had been absorbed and stripped clean of lifeforce by the death spirits.

When the black spirits attacked their neighboring worlds, the humans and draconians were dragged into this conflict.

Zhang Lie had been one of the hunters participating in the war against the death spirits, and he would never be able to forget the massive army of black spirits that he encountered on the battlefield.

Zhang Lie didn't intend to let such a tragedy happen again.

With the superior worlds holding the death spirits back, the death spirits wouldn't dare to take action against them yet—at least, not with a frontal attack.

Sun Mengmeng frowned. "Neither Li Feng nor Zhou Ying have returned yet. Could something have gone wrong?"

Fang Yi asked, "Captain, Li Feng and Zhou Ying aren't as unlucky as I am, are they?"

Zhang Lie smiled. "Don't worry—the kings they have to deal with are relatively tame. The king that Li Feng has to face isn't particularly strong, and I expect he'll return shortly. The king that Zhou Ying's dealing with... well, that demon's a little disgusting, but it won't be a problem."

Yang Ze patted Sun Mengmeng's shoulder. "We all know how strong Zhou Ying is. She'd be able to survive an attack that would kill the rest of us. Ignoring combat strength for the moment, Zhou Ying's vitality and regenerative abilities exceed all of ours combined. Unless the aliens have someone like Zhang Lie who can suppress her with brute force, no one will be able to harm Zhou Ying at all."

Sun Xiaowu added, "Li Feng's also made a lot of progress on his end, and his cultivation is proceeding along a different path from all of ours. A king of a medium-sized world won't be a challenge for him."

After a few days, Li Feng returned alongside a golden mammoth.

Zhang Lie laughed. "Li Feng, you're finally back! But you didn't have to go to the trouble of bringing back a specialty from your world for us—it's not like we're lacking food."

Upon seeing Zhang Lie, the golden mammoth immediately reared back, sensitive to the disparity between her power and his own. She immediately shrunk back behind Li Feng and asked, "Li Feng, are all your companions so frightening?"

Li Feng shook his head. "Captain, this isn't food or prey. She's a friend from an alien race, and I brought her back because she wanted to speak with you."