Where Istaroth's gaze fell, the black blindfold on Jingliu's face drifted away with the wind, revealing her murderous, crimson eyes.
The longsword in her hand, condensed from ultimate ice crystals, seemed to sense its master's battle intent, emitting a clear, cold hum. The chill flowing over the blade became increasingly biting, as if it had long yearned to taste the blood of a god.
On the other side of the battlefield, Artoria once again raised her Holy Sword, which shone with glorious light. The massive energy resonated with her will, transforming into a dazzling, golden torrent. Her clear voice rang across the field: "Excalibur!"
A scorching flood of light poured out like a great celestial river breaking its banks, carrying terrifying light and heat capable of instantly vaporizing steel and demolishing armies. Where the energy beam passed, the scorched earth was instantly melted and cut into deep ravines, the rocks at the edges dissolving into scorching lava flows.
However, this astonishing blow, powerful enough to flatten a mountain, was steadily blocked by a seemingly thin yet incredibly tough, pale blue Divine Power shield. The brilliant light, upon touching the shield, was forced to split in two, like a river hitting a reef. It scraped past Xiao Wu's body on both sides, finally slamming into the distant, already ruined buildings, triggering continuous, violent explosions and sending flames soaring into the sky.
Artoria's heroic brow furrowed tightly. How many times had she released her Noble Phantasm's true name? She herself was beginning to lose count. Yet, even so, she still couldn't truly tear through or break Xiao Wu's seemingly precarious, yet fundamentally deep, divine power defense.
In this Mingdu that had become a purgatory, the pervasive negative energy generated by death, fear, and despair was exceptionally abundant and virtually inexhaustible. As a Servant, she no longer needed to worry about insufficient energy. While she still couldn't use her Noble Phantasm as casually as a normal attack, performing continuous releases several times like this was effortless. Even so, these repeated Anti-City level Noble Phantasm bombardments had failed to completely kill her opponent.
The only encouraging piece of good news was that the divine aura emanating from Xiao Wu was visibly weakening, and the surging divine power fluctuations were becoming increasingly unstable and faint.
"The gods of this world... their vitality and defense are simply unreasonable. They're too difficult to kill..."
Cú Chulainn leaned on his magic spear, shaking his head with a bitter smile in lament. His figure had become somewhat blurry and transparent, clearly on the verge of collapsing, at the end of his rope, having reached his limit. Just now, he had relied entirely on his "Battle Continuation" skill to forcibly cling to his last breath, but even that skill had a limit to its endurance. The only thing keeping him standing here now was the indomitable will of a warrior.
Having been in this world for some time, he had also secretly gathered information about this world's power system at Shrek Academy. Cú Chulainn knew well that while the top human powerhouses or 100,000-year Soul Beasts of this world were powerful, very few could truly contend head-on with a top-tier Servant. An absurd opponent like Xiao Wu, who could both tank a Cause-and-Effect Noble Phantasm and continuously withstand Excalibur, could only be the legendary Gods of the God Realm of this world. After all, only true gods could possess such super-standard, formidable vitality and defense. Although Xiao Wu hadn't displayed the rumored world-destroying, crushing power of a true god, her seemingly immortal defense and tenacious vitality undoubtedly placed her at a genuine God-level. Therefore, Xiao Wu's identity was already quite clear in his mind: she could only be one of this world's legendary gods. Both the vast, powerful spiritual power and the energy, which was far superior and purer than Soul Power, indicated this fact.
Not only were Cú Chulainn and Artoria finding her difficult to handle, but Xiao Wu herself was inwardly lamenting. Artoria's "Instinct" skill was simply too monstrous and sensitive; several times, her carefully prepared fatal attacks were predicted and dodged by her opponent. Moreover, the enemy's Noble Phantasm was immensely powerful, and each time, she had to expend her Origin Divine Power just to barely defend against it. This, however, caused the severe, old injury in her body—caused by Ma Hongjun'sPhoenix Divine Power and never fully healed—to flare up and backlash, as the continuous suppression by her own divine power was interrupted. This caused her combat state to continuously decline, and her divine power recovery rate lagged far behind the rate of consumption.
Just in the brief gap between the fierce offense and defense, Xiao Wu suddenly keenly felt an extremely familiar, warm, and authoritative Divine Sense fluctuation coming from nearby. That fluctuation instinctively made her feel immense intimacy and joy, as if it were the aura of the most important, most beloved person in her life. However, her mind felt shrouded in a thick fog; she couldn't recall who the person was. This sense of contradiction made her momentarily dazed.
Almost at the exact same instant, she also clearly sensed another equally familiar, but rougher and heavier, aura completely and eternally vanish. That feeling caused her heart to suddenly twitch violently. An immense, indescribable sadness, like a cold tide, instantly flooded her mind, as if she had lost an indispensable, dearly beloved relative.
"Why is this... my heart hurts so much..."
Xiao Wu subconsciously raised a hand to touch her eyes, only to find that cold tears had already unknowingly slipped down her cheeks. She didn't understand why she was suddenly weeping, but that irresistible sorrow, stemming from the depths of her soul, completely overwhelmed her like a towering wave. For a moment, she forgot to continue attacking and stood dazed in place.
"What... happened to her all of a sudden?"
Cú Chulainn and Artoria quickly exchanged glances, their eyes filled with confusion and vigilance. While they could both clearly sense the storm-like, intense energy fluctuations coming from a distant direction, suggesting that top powerhouses were engaged in a life-or-death battle there, they themselves were completely exhausted and in terrible condition. They simply didn't have the spare mental energy to pay much attention to the distant battle. Just dealing with the unkillable Xiao Wu right in front of them had already driven them to the brink.
"Herta, immediately connect me to Ningguang and Ganyu for an emergency communication."
Lu Jingming swiftly activated the high-level communication Soul Tool on his wrist. The energy network within the scope of Mingdu had already become chaotic due to the mixed battle of various factions, and powerful energy interference was everywhere. Without Herta's transcending technical support, he would be unable to contact Ningguang and Ganyu, who were thousands of miles away in Shrek City.
"Hehe, little guy, realizing it only now might be a bit late, don't you think?~"
Herta's voice, tinged with a playful and 'schadenfreude' tone, sounded directly in his mind. Simultaneously, countless pale-blue data streams rapidly converged and circulated in the void before him as if alive. They finally condensed into an extremely clear optical screen projection, showing the real-time scene of Shrek City in the distance.
"This is... a Beast Tide?! On such a scale?!"
On the screen, the image rapidly focused and zoomed in on the southern region of Shrek City. That area was originally a strategically crucial location, guarding the entrance to the Great Star Dou Forest and built with countless defensive fortifications—the strongest first line of defense against a Beast Tide. But now, smoke and dust soared into the sky at the edge of the Great Star Dou Forest, like the arrival of a sandstorm. Countless Soul Beasts of various shapes, their eyes blood-red, surged out like a catastrophic flood breaking a dam, densely packed and stretching beyond the horizon. The pounding of their four feet gathered into a terrifying sonic boom, violently shaking the earth. In the sky, a vast, black mass of countless flying Soul Beasts blotted out the sun, staining the entire sky an ominous, inky black. Even the sunlight was completely swallowed, as if the apocalypse had suddenly descended.
"Impossible, this is absolutely impossible!"
Gu Yue's figure instantly flashed next to Lu Jingming. Her eyes were glued to the suffocating scene on the screen. Her exquisitely beautiful face was etched with disbelief and shock.
"Di Tian would never initiate a Beast Tide of this magnitude without reason, let alone without my permission, and he hasn't sent me any message."
Before her words even finished, several massive figures flashed quickly across the screen, causing her purple pupils to suddenly constrict. They were the Three-Headed Scarlet Demon Mastiff, Scarlet King, with a body as huge as a small mountain and three ferocious, roaring heads, and the Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear, Xiong Jun, covered in dark gold light, his sharp claws tearing the earth. These were formidable, senior ferocious beasts of extremely high status and terrifying power from the Great Star Dou Forest's core circle. Their presence in the Beast Tide army was enough to prove that this Beast Tide was by no means an ordinary, small-scale disturbance, but an unprecedented, all-out war with the Great Star Dou Forest emptying its territory.
"Di Tian would indeed not act without your authorization, but what if... the one controlling all of this now is not Di Tian himself?"
Lu Jingming's voice was low and heavy. He had realized the worst possible scenario. He knew well that although Gu Yue's main body was still asleep in the core of the Great Star Dou Forest due to old injuries, this clone, which possessed most of her consciousness, maintained a close connection with the forest. Given Di Tian's absolute loyalty to the Silver Dragon King and his cautious nature, even if he didn't want to disturb Gu Yue's main body's recuperation, he would still find a way to consult or at least inform the Gu Yue clone before launching a super Beast Tide of this magnitude, one capable of changing the continent's landscape. But now, Gu Yue was completely unaware of the matter, yet the Beast Tide had fully erupted.
The answer was almost singular: Something has happened to Di Tian.
On this Douluo Continent, the beings capable of threatening an existence like Di Tian, the King of Ferocious Beasts with a cultivation close to 900,000 years and the power of a demigod, were few and far between. And one who could operate in the deepest part of the Great Star Dou Forest, in Di Tian's lair, without alarming Gu Yue's main body or the other ferocious beasts... he couldn't think of anyone else besides the deeply hidden Annihilation Monarch, Phantylia, who was most adept at manipulating minds and souls.
"Controlling Di Tian and driving the entire Great Star Dou Forest's Soul Beasts for her own use... that aligns perfectly with Phantylia's malignant aesthetic of destruction."
Lu Jingming's eyes turned cold.
"She never likes to resort to crude, direct destruction. She's better at turning people against each other, using the hands of living beings themselves and internal conflicts to achieve her goal of destroying civilizations."
With the power of the Annihilation Monarch Phantylia, even if only a memory body, and given Shrek Academy's currently extremely vulnerable defense—with Xuan Zi and several Sea God Pavilion veteran Title Douluo trapped in Mingdu and unable to escape—the few Dean-level combatants like Yan Shaozhe and Cai Mei'er inside the academy could pose no substantial threat to her. Yet, she didn't choose to directly crush Shrek City. Instead, she went to the great lengths of controlling Di Tian and launching this terrifying Beast Tide, which could sweep the entire continent. The maliciousness of her intent was obvious.
Brutal, direct destruction was never Phantylia's style; that was a method favored by Zephyro. She preferred to sow discord, planting the seeds of suspicion and hatred, watching civilizations take steps toward self-destruction through internal strife and despair.
Once Shrek City was breached by this unprecedented Beast Tide, the human world would inevitably unleash endless rage and hatred upon the entire Soul Beast race. This had nothing to do with personal grudges; it was purely the most direct conflict between species and stances. The Heavenly Soul, Star Luo, and Dou Ling Empires, as well as all human factions, would never sit idly by while Soul Beasts rampaged. At that point, the centuries-old conflict between humans and Soul Beasts would be fully ignited, erupting into all-out war. This scene of bloodshed and civilizational regression was precisely the masterpiece Phantylia most wanted to see.
Even more sinister was the fact that she could use the full-scale Beast Tide attack—when everyone's attention was drawn to the front lines—to secretly infiltrate the depths of Shrek Academy. She might even have succeeded already... in seizing the Golden Tree, which was related to the world's origin, thereby achieving her fundamental goal of breaking free from the Holy Grail's shackles and reshaping her true divine body.
A two-pronged approach, manipulating the strong figures and forces of the entire continent.
"Vile, simply shameless."
Gu Yue bit her lip hard, her eyes blazing with fury. Phantylia dared to take advantage of her main body's sleep to infiltrate and manipulate the Great Star Dou Forest—the last sanctuary and foundation of the Soul Beast race. This was blatant provocation, touching her reverse scale.
In the deepest part of the Great Star Dou Forest, beneath the clear yet bottomless surface of the Lake of Life, lay a separate dimensional space opened by the Silver Dragon King's power. At this moment, within this space, which was once serene and peaceful, the slumbering silver giant dragon suddenly opened her eyes, which were like huge purple crystals. Undeniable anger churned within those majestic vertical pupils. Her hundreds-of-meters-long dragon body suddenly stretched out, the friction of her tough silver scales emitting a metallic clanking sound. The instant her dragon wings spread, an ultimate, terrifying, pure dragon might surged like a tsunami across the entire dimensional space, even causing the stable spatial barriers to hum under the unbearable strain.
"Phan—tyl—ia—!"
A clear, melodious female voice, yet infused with boundless fury and majesty, exploded like thunder in this space. Gu Yuena was about to mobilize the power of space to forcibly tear open a portal to the outside world to settle the score with that audacious Annihilation Monarch, but she suddenly realized that the space around her was already entwined and imprisoned by countless strange chains condensed from pale blue starlight. These chains shone with a cold, deep glow, slowly writhing like living vipers, weaving into a gigantic net that completely sealed off the entire dimensional space from the outside, rendering it completely airtight. Its structure was so solid that it couldn't be instantly breached by brute force.
Silver light flared around her. In the dazzling radiance, her massive dragon body rapidly shrank and transformed, finally taking the form of a slender young woman in a plain white dress. Her silver hair cascaded like a waterfall from the nine heavens, and her purple eyes held unquestionable majesty. Her features conveyed an innate nobility and coolness, as if she gathered the essence of the world's beauty and spirit. This was her true appearance, the co-sovereign of the Soul Beasts, the Silver Dragon King, Gu Yuena.
Silver power, infused with the laws of space, circulated and condensed at her slender fingertips. It moved like the sharpest blade, attempting to cut and tear open a tiny passage. But the starlight chains were extraordinarily stubborn and tough. Not only were they not severed by the spatial power, but they seemed to be enraged, as more of the same chains shot out from the void like animated shadow vipers, trying to completely bind and suppress her there.
Gu Yuena's eyes turned cold. Several silver spatial blades, condensed to the extreme and nearly materialized, flashed past, accurately severing the dozens of chains that had first attacked. The broken chains dissolved into specks of pale blue starlight. But her expression grew even more serious.
She had clearly been schemed against by the Annihilation Monarch Phantylia. This dimensional space, which she had personally opened and kept deeply hidden, was originally a place of absolute safety to evade the prying eyes of the God Realm—her ultimate core sanctuary. Now, without her knowledge, it had become the perfect prison to confine herself.
To escape now, her only option was to forcefully use power to break the spell, blasting apart this space along with the external seal. But her opponent was clearly fully prepared. This strange starlight seal was not rootless. Its energy core seemed to be subtly linked to the vast life force of the Lake of Life below. Trying to quickly dismantle it would be extremely difficult, requiring a considerable amount of time to wear down.
"Di Tian..."
Gu Yuena's face completely darkened, covered in a layer of frost. The only one who knew the precise coordinates of this dimensional space was her most trusted lieutenant, the Golden-Eyed Black Dragon King, Di Tian. Given Di Tian's absolute loyalty to her, which was carved into his soul, there was no possibility of voluntary betrayal.
That left only one fact: Phantylia had not only controlled Di Tian through some bizarre means, but also had the ability to scour the most core secret of her main body's slumbering place from his soul memories. Otherwise, her opponent could never have found this place so accurately, nor would she have prepared such a powerful seal specifically targeting spatial abilities, all to prevent her from leaving and disrupting her overall plan.
Gu Yuena couldn't help but feel a hint of helplessness and self-mockery, an absurd sense of having woven her own cocoon. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. With the partial power she had recovered, forcefully blasting apart this dimensional space along with the seal was not entirely impossible, but the destructive energy turbulence generated by the instantaneous collapse of the spatial structure would severely worsen her already unhealed old injuries, potentially even damaging her foundation. It was truly an unprofitable endeavor.
"Fortunately... I have A'Ming."
Thinking of the figure who always brought unexpected surprises, Gu Yuena's turbulent emotions settled slightly. Lu Jingming was clearly on her side. With his power and foundation, he would never idly stand by and watch humans and Soul Beasts be so easily provoked by Phantylia into endless, bloody slaughter and infighting. As long as Lu Jingming mediated and controlled the overall situation, even if Shrek City unfortunately fell, the subsequent situation might not be beyond redemption and mitigation.
As for the survival of Shrek Academy itself... a hint of subtle indifference flashed in Gu Yuena's eyes. She didn't particularly care. The weakening of the top human factions was not necessarily a bad thing from the perspective of the Soul Beasts. With a completely trustworthy reliance acting outside, she no longer needed to rush things. Instead, she suppressed her impatience and began to patiently mobilize the vast divine power within her body, like the most meticulous craftsman, gradually wearing down and dissolving the energy nodes of the external seal, one by one.
It would naturally be best if she could get out sooner. She was eager to properly settle this entire score with Phantylia. To dare to use and trample the Soul Beast race in such a manner, this debt must be settled in blood.
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