The Malice Sea.
Black chaos churned like thick ink, viscous Malice congealing into tangible waves that writhed and twisted in the void.
The sea had no reflections, only strange ripples that sank and rose again and again, as if countless invisible things were tearing at one another beneath the surface.
Across a Pure Land that had been reduced beyond recognition, traces of explosions were everywhere.
A group of more than a dozen people crossed the shattered earth, their expressions grave.
"This is already the fifth site. We still don't know how many settlements of executioners have been destroyed like this."
"Whoever did this—how could they have done so much in such a short time? It's simply unbelievable."
"Eighth Order. It had to be Eighth Order."
They continued talking, occasionally crouching to scoop charred soil from the Pure Land into a silver glass bottle.
"Just as I thought!"
A low voice rang out, and everyone turned to look at the speaker.
"My lord, what is it?" someone asked.
The man in purple robes crouched on the ground, breathing hard, his eyes wide.
"It's the aura of a Divine Formation!"
At the purple-robed man's words, everyone's breath caught.
They had never seen him look so shaken before.
That was because the man was named Ma Zhiyao, deputy envoy to the Prefecture Lord of Zhiyang Prefecture, a man of high standing.
Ma Zhiyao carefully stored a large clod of earth etched with faint Formation Patterns into Origin Space, exclaiming in amazement,
"In the four Pure Lands destroyed earlier, I could only faintly sense the aura of annihilation. Only here have some remnants of the Annihilation Formation survived."
Ma Zhiyao rose to his feet, his face alight with joy.
"I'm returning to the prefecture at once to personally present these Formation remnants to the