Where Istaroth's gaze fell, the black eyepatch on Jingliu's face fluttered away in the wind, revealing a pair of scarlet eyes filled with killing intent.
The long sword of ultimate ice crystal in her hand seemed to sense its master's battle will, issuing a clear, icy hum. The cold light flowing along its edge grew ever more biting, as though it had long yearned to taste the blood of deities.
…
On another part of the battlefield, Artoria once again raised the Holy Sword shining with the radiance of glory. Her vast energy resonated with her will, becoming a dazzling current of golden light. Her clear voice rang across the field: "Excalibur!"
A torrential flood of light poured out like a bursting heavenly river, carrying searing light and heat enough to vaporize steel in an instant and raze cities and armies.
Where the beam swept, the scorched earth was instantly melted, cut into deep ravines, whose edges ran with molten rock.
Yet this blow, powerful enough to flatten mountains, was held fast by a layer of pale blue divine shield that seemed thin but was unyieldingly tough.
The brilliant light stream, upon touching the shield, was forced to split in two, flowing around Xiao Wu's sides like a river divided by a reef, ultimately slamming into the distant ruins and triggering a chain of violent explosions that sent firelight soaring.
Artoria's bold brows knit tight. How many times had she already unleashed her Noble Phantasm's true name?
Even she could no longer clearly recall.
Even so, she still couldn't truly tear through and shatter Xiao Wu's seemingly tottering yet deeply rooted divine defense.
In this Mingdu turned purgatory, death, fear, and despair saturated the air; negative energy was abnormally abundant, nearly inexhaustible. As a Servant, she no longer had to worry about energy shortage.
She still couldn't fling her Noble Phantasm around like a normal attack, but unleashing it several times in succession like this posed no pressure.
Even so, this city-level Noble Phantasm, fired repeatedly, still failed to finish the opponent.
The only comforting news was that the divinity aura emanating from Xiao Wu was visibly weakening. The surging divine power fluctuations grew more unstable and faint by the moment.
"The gods of this world… their vitality and defense are absurd. They're a bit too hard to kill…"
Cú Chulainn leaned on his magic spear, smiling wryly.
His figure had grown somewhat translucent and blurry, clearly at the point of collapse, a guttering lamp at its limit.
He had just been holding on by brute force with Battle Continuation, but even that had its limits.
Still standing now was entirely due to the unyielding will of a warrior.
He had been in this world a while and had quietly gathered intelligence on its power systems at Shrek Academy.
Cú Chulainn knew that while this world's peak human experts or hundred-thousand-year soul beasts were strong, few could truly contend head-on with top Servants.
An opponent like Xiao Wu—who could tank a causality-type Noble Phantasm and repeatedly withstand Excalibur—could only be one thing in this world: a God Realm deity.
Only a true deity could have such over-spec vitality and defense.
Although Xiao Wu hadn't displayed the crushing, world-shattering might rumored of deities, in terms of undying defense and tenacious life force, she was undoubtedly at true god level.
Thus, in his mind her identity was set: a deity from legend in this world.
Her vast mental power and divine energy, higher and purer than soul power, both testified to it.
It wasn't only Cú Chulainn and Artoria who found her troublesome—Xiao Wu herself was secretly vexed.
Artoria's "Instinct" was too abnormal and keen; several times her brewing lethal strikes were pre-read and dodged.
And the opponent's Noble Phantasm was immensely powerful; every time she was forced to expend primordial divine power just to barely defend.
But in so doing, the heavy old injury within her body—inflicted by Ma Hongjun's Phoenix divine power and never fully healed—began to throb and backlash as it lost the continuous suppression of divine power. Her combat state kept sliding, and her divine recovery lagged far behind consumption.
Amid the fierce exchange, Xiao Wu suddenly sensed an extremely familiar, warm yet majestic ripple of divine sense from not far away.
It made her instinctively feel infinite closeness and joy, like the aura of the most important, most cherished person in her life.
Yet her mind was shrouded in a thick fog; she couldn't recall who it was, and the contradiction left her dazed.
At the same moment, she distinctly sensed another familiar aura—more rugged and weighty—vanish completely and forever.
Her heart clenched with a violent spasm. An indescribable, immense sadness surged up like an icy tide, as if she had lost an indispensable loved one.
"Why… does it hurt so much…"
She instinctively raised a hand to her eye and found cold tears already sliding down her cheek without her noticing.
She didn't understand why she was suddenly crying, but that irresistible grief from the depths of her soul drowned her like a monstrous wave, leaving her staring blankly, forgetting to attack.
"What's… suddenly wrong with her?"
Cú Chulainn and Artoria exchanged a swift look, faces full of doubt and vigilance.
They could both clearly sense the storm-like energy fluctuations coming from afar—clearly top experts were fighting to the death over there.
But they themselves had gone all out and were in bad shape, with no spare strength to pay attention to the distant battle.
Dealing with the undying Xiao Wu before them already had them at their limits.
…
"Herta, patch me through to Ningguang and Ganyu, priority emergency."
Lu Jingming quickly activated the advanced communications soul tool on his wrist.
Within Mingdu, the energy network had long been thrown into chaos by the melee of various forces. Powerful interference was everywhere; without Herta's beyond-era technical support, he could never have contacted Ningguang and Ganyu five hundred of km away in Shrek City.
"Heh, Xiao Ming—only now you react? Might be a bit late~"
Herta's teasing, rubbernecking voice sounded directly in his mind as countless pale blue data streams gathered and flowed in the air before him, condensing into a razor-clear optical display that projected a real-time view of distant Shrek City.
"That's… a beast tide?! And this scale?!"
On screen, the image zoomed and focused on the southern sector of Shrek City.
There lay the strategic gateway guarding Star Dou Forest—fortified with countless defenses—the strongest first line against beast tides.
But now, dust rose to the heavens along the forest's edge like a descending sandstorm.
Countless soul beasts of every shape, eyes blood-red, surged forth like a dam-bursting flood of destruction, dense beyond sight.
The thunder of countless paws merged into a terrifying wave of sound that made the earth itself shudder.
Overhead, the sky was a black mass: innumerable flying soul beasts blotted out the heavens, dyeing the entire firmament an ominous ink-black, swallowing sunlight as if the end had come.
"Impossible. Absolutely impossible!"
Gu Yue's figure flashed to Lu Jingming's side. She stared fixedly at the suffocating scene on the screen, her exquisite face filled with shock and disbelief.
"Di Tian would never act without reason, much less launch a beast tide of this scale without my leave—and he sent me no message whatsoever."
Before she finished, several colossal silhouettes flickering across the screen made her violet pupils contract sharply.
The three-headed Scarlet Demon Mastiff—Scarlet King—roared with its mountain-like bulk, and the Dark-Gold Dreadclaw Bear—Bear Lord—tore the ground with claws glowing dark gold.
These were high-ranking, terrifyingly powerful ferocious-beast elders from the Star Dou Forest's core circle.
With even them appearing amid the beast tide army, this was no minor disturbance, but an all-out war with Star Dou Forest going all-in.
"Di Tian indeed wouldn't act over your head. But what if… the one leading all this now isn't Di Tian at all?"
Lu Jingming's voice was low and grave. He had realized the worst possibility.
He knew that although Gu Yue's true body still slept in the core of Star Dou Forest due to old injuries, this avatar—bearing most of her consciousness—remained in close contact with the Forest.
Given Di Tian's absolute loyalty and cautious nature, even if he didn't wish to disturb her true body's rest, before launching a super-scale beast tide capable of reshaping the continent's balance, he would surely seek a way to request or at least inform Gu Yuena's avatar.
But now Gu Yue knew nothing, and the tide had already fully erupted.
There was almost only one answer: Something had happened to Di Tian.
On this Douluo Continent, there were few who could threaten Di Tian—the ferocious-beast king with cultivation nearing nine hundred thousand years and power akin to a demigod.
And to strike in the deepest heart of Star Dou Forest—his home—and do so without alerting Gu Yuena's true body or other ferocious beasts, there was no one more likely than the Lord Ravager, Phantylia, master of hidden depths and manipulator of spirit and soul. He could think of no second candidate.
"Controlling Di Tian and driving the entire Star Dou Forest to her will… that fits Phantylia's vile aesthetics of destruction."
Lu Jingming's eyes went cold.
"She dislikes crude, direct destruction—prefers killing with a borrowed blade, making living beings destroy civilization with their own hands and internal strife."
With Phantylia's strength, even as a memory-body—and with Shrek Academy's defenses at a historic low, Xuan Zi and several Sea God Pavilion Super Douluo elders trapped in Mingdu—those like Yan Shaozhe and Cai Mei'er within the Academy posed no real threat to her.
Yet she didn't simply crush Shrek City, instead going to great lengths to control Di Tian and launch a continent-sweeping beast tide. Her malice was plain.
Crude annihilation was Celenova's style, not Phantylia's.
She adored sowing suspicion and hatred, watching civilization march toward self-destruction in internecine despair.
If Shrek City were overrun by this unprecedented tide, humanity would pour endless wrath and hatred upon the entire soul-beast race.
This was not personal grievance, but the most direct opposition of species and stances.
The three empires—Heaven Dou, Star Luo, and Dou Ling—and all human powers would never watch soul beasts rampage. The long-accumulated conflict between humans and soul beasts would explode into all-out war.
And the rivers of blood and civilizational regression would be Phantylia's favorite masterpiece.
More insidious still, she could slip into Shrek Academy's depths while all eyes were fixed on the front lines.
She might even already have succeeded—seizing the Golden Tree tied to the world's origin to free herself from the Holy Grail's restraints and rebuild a true divine body.
Killing two birds with one stone, toying with the continent's powers in her palm.
"Despicable. Utterly shameless."
Gu Yue bit down on her silver teeth, fury blazing in her eyes.
That Phantylia dared, while her true body slept, to defile and control Star Dou Forest—the soul beasts' last pure land and foundation—was poking the tiger's whiskers and touching her inverse scale.
…
In the deepest part of Star Dou Forest, beneath the clear yet bottomless surface of the Lake of Life, a separate inner space opened by the Silver Dragon King's power lay hidden.
At this moment, within that once serene space, a silver giant dragon snapped open her amethyst-like eyes.
Majestic slit pupils roiled with tangible anger. Her hundreds-meter body unfurled, silver scales rasping with metallic clangor.
As her wings spread, a terrifying pureblood dragon's might crashed across the space like a tidal wave, making even the sturdy spatial walls hum with strain.
"Lord—Ravager—!"
A clear, melodious female voice laden with endless rage and majesty thundered through the space.
Gu Yuena was about to wield the power of space to tear open a portal to the outside to settle accounts with the audacious Lord Ravager, when she suddenly discovered that the space around her was already bound and fettered by countless eerie chains woven of ghostly blue star-fire.
Those chains shone with cold, deep light, writhing slowly like living vipers, interlacing into an enormous net that sealed the entire inner space from the outside—tight as a drum. Its structure was so firm that brute force could not break through instantly.
Silver light flared around her. In the dazzling radiance, the colossal dragon quickly shrank and transformed into a graceful girl in a plain white dress.
Silver hair cascaded like a heavenly waterfall; violet eyes held indisputable sovereignty; her brows carried an innate nobility and chill, as if the essence of heaven and earth's grace were gathered in one.
This was her true visage: the Sovereign of Soul Beasts, the Silver Dragon King, Gu Yuena.
Silver power imbued with spatial law flowed and gathered at her slender fingertips, trying to cut and tear out a slender passage like the keenest blade.
But the star-fire chains were stubborn and tough. Rather than being severed by space, they seemed enraged; more chains shot from the void like shadow serpents, seeking to bind and suppress her utterly.
Gu Yuena's eyes went cold. Several silver space blades—condensed to the utmost, nearly tangible—flashed and precisely severed the dozen chains that struck first.
The broken chains scattered into motes of ghostly blue starlight.
Yet her expression only grew graver.
She had clearly been outmaneuvered by the Lord Ravager, Phantylia.
This inner space she'd personally created and hidden—meant to evade the God Realm's gaze—was a supposed absolute sanctuary, her last core nest.
Now, without her knowing, it had become the perfect prison to confine her.
To escape, she could only forcefully break the laws with power—detonate this space along with the external seal.
But the other side had clearly prepared thoroughly.
This strange star-fire seal was no rootless thing; its energy core seemed faintly linked to the vast life force of the Lake of Life below. Quickly unraveling it would not be easy, requiring considerable time to wear down.
"Di Tian…"
Gu Yuena's face turned utterly cold, as if covered in frost.
Only one person—her most trusted right hand, the Golden-Eyed Black Dragon King Di Tian—knew the precise coordinates of this inner space.
Given Di Tian's loyalty etched into the soul, betrayal was impossible.
The only remaining fact was this: Phantylia had not only controlled Di Tian by some uncanny means, but could also plunder from his soul memory the core secret of her true body's resting place.
Otherwise, the enemy could not have found this place so precisely, nor pre-laid such a powerful seal crafted to counter spatial abilities—meant to stop her from going out and wrecking the plan.
A wisp of helplessness and self-mockery stirred in Gu Yuena's heart—like being trapped in one's own cocoon.
She drew a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.
With the portion of strength recovered, forcibly blasting this inner space and seal was not impossible, but the destructive energy turbulence from the spatial collapse would aggravate her unhealed old wounds and perhaps harm her foundation—too costly.
"Fortunately… Xiao Ming is there."
Thinking of the figure who always brought unexpected surprises, Gu Yuena's restless heart eased somewhat.
Lu Jingming stood clearly on her side. With his force and resources, he would never watch humans and soul beasts be easily incited by Phantylia into endless bloodshed and attrition.
As long as Lu Jingming mediated and steered the situation, even if Shrek City unfortunately fell, the aftermath might still be salvageable.
As for Shrek Academy's survival itself… a faint indifference flickered in Gu Yuena's eyes. She hadn't cared much to begin with.
The weakening of humanity's top force, from a soul-beast standpoint, wasn't entirely bad.
With a wholly trustworthy ally acting outside, she was no longer impatient.
She suppressed her agitation and, with patient care, began to marshal her vast divine power, like a master craftsman, unpicking and dissolving the seal's energy nodes bit by bit.
Leaving sooner would be best—she was eager to settle this account with Phantylia.
To so exploit and trample the soul-beast race—this debt had to be paid in blood.