Victors' Divine Kingdom Reduced to Ruins! Phanes's Divine Body Covered in Abyssal Cracks, Light Wings Extinguished

"Father, this..." Ning Tian looked at her father, while Ning Rongrong also turned to Tang San with a questioning expression.

Tang San didn't answer right away. He silently watched the Light Screen, watching the figure seated on the throne, covered in cracks and curses. After a long while, he finally spoke slowly, enunciating each word. His voice wasn't loud, but it clearly reached everyone's ears.

"I understand now."

Everyone's gaze turned to him.

"He nailed the Dragon King down, extracted power, established order, and proclaimed his authority... None of it was because he was powerful." Tang San's gaze grew unfathomably deep, as though he had pierced the mists of time and space and seen into the heart of that dying god.

"On the contrary..." He paused, then delivered a conclusion that made everyone's scalp tingle. "It's precisely because he's weaker than ever before that he needs to use unprecedented brutality to prove that he's still a god."

Huo Yuhao's body jolted. In an instant, he understood everything. The seemingly incomprehensible cruelty, the endless torment—what lay hidden behind it was the deepest fear of the Gods themselves! Fear of death, fear of their rule collapsing!

"He... was afraid." Huo Yuhao softly uttered the three words.

That was right. He was afraid. So he had to create an even greater fear to conceal his own.

Gu Yuena watched the struggling figure on the Light Screen, then thought of Apep, nailed to the ground. Beneath her silver hair, a cold, mocking smile appeared on her exquisitely beautiful face.

Tang Wulin stood beside her, golden Dragon Marks flickering beneath his skin. He felt the waves of fighting spirit surging within him. So even gods could die.

Zhou Weiqing whistled, breaking the oppressive silence. "So after all that, he's just a paper tiger! Looks terrifying, but falls apart with one poke?"

"It's not that simple." Tang San shook his head. "A dying tiger is the most dangerous of all. Everything he's doing now is to stay alive. He'll stop at nothing to survive."

His words weighed down the atmosphere once more, just as it had begun to lighten.

That was right. A dying god who would stop at nothing to survive might be even more deranged and terrifying than one at the height of his power.

The deathly silence of that desert seemed to cross the Light Screen and seep into everyone's bones. Huo Yuhao's trembling words—"He... can sense everything"—were like an invisible needle, pricking at everyone's heart. To remain conscious while enduring eternal torment... How utterly despairing that must be.

Just as the oppressive atmosphere reached its breaking point, the scene on the Light Screen changed without warning. The view no longer focused on the Giant Nail that pierced heaven and earth, nor lingered on Apep's body, twisted by pain. It began to pull back rapidly, passing over the withered desert and rising above the thin Cloud Layer, higher and higher, as if taking everyone to the dwelling of the Gods.

"Where's it taking us?" He Caitou couldn't help asking, breaking the silence.

No one answered him. Everyone stared intently at the Light Screen. They saw an island suspended in the sky. It should have been sacred, majestic, and radiant. But what appeared before them now was... a ruin on the verge of collapse.

Yes, a ruin. The Sky Island, which should have been the foundation of a divine kingdom, had dimmed almost completely. Its vast body was covered in sinister, spiderweb-like cracks, as if it might shatter completely at any moment and plunge from the heavens to the mortal world.

"How could this happen?" Ning Rongrong covered her mouth, her face full of disbelief. "The Victors' Divine Kingdom... Why is it in such a state of ruin?"

"T-That doesn't make sense!" Dai Hao frowned deeply. As a duke, he couldn't understand what he was seeing. "They won the war, but their own home is about to collapse?"

The last trace of color that had returned to Emperor Xue Ye's face drained away again. He had only just despaired at the might of the god who could slay gods and Buddhas in his path. Yet in the blink of an eye, that god's home had become a crumbling ruin. The enormous contrast tightened his already fragile nerves once more.

The Light Screen's view kept moving. It passed through the shattered shield around Sky Island and entered the floating Divine City. At last, it stopped before a magnificent yet silent throne. A figure sat upon it. That should be the "Heavenly Principles"—the New God, Phanes, who had just nailed the Dragon King to the earth.

But when everyone saw his appearance, all their surging fury, fear, and reverence froze in an instant, replaced by an even more profound bewilderment that rose from the depths of their souls.

The God on the throne showed none of a victor's triumphant pride. His body was like a shattered porcelain vessel that had been hastily pieced back together, covered in sinister cracks. They ran so deep that bone showed through. What seeped from them wasn't divine radiance, but an unsettling aura of the Abyss, rife with decay and ill omen.

That savage Abyss Power was like a maggot burrowing into bone, constantly devouring the Power of Order at his core. The four pairs of Light Wings that should have blotted out the sky behind him had gone completely dark, hanging limply like withered branches.

His light was fading. He was barely alive. This wasn't some majestic New God—it was a dying god, gravely wounded and on the verge of falling at any moment!

"He... he..." The Dragon Prince pointed at the figure on the Light Screen. He was so shocked that he couldn't manage a complete sentence.

The Dragon God's blood-red eyes had blazed with murderous intent, but it instantly stilled, then shifted into a cold appraisal tinged with delight. "So that's it... So that's it!"

"He won the Throne War, but he paid a price beyond anything we could imagine." Rong Nianbing murmured to himself. At last, he understood why the Dragon King's Storm of Despair had carried that hint of unwillingness and frenzied cursing. Her enemy, it turned out, had reached the end of the road too.

Ji Dong and Lie Yan exchanged a glance, both seeing the same shock on each other's faces. They had faced the enforcers of the Divine Realm before and knew how powerful Deities were. Yet this one had been powerful enough to suppress the Dragon King, while still being on the brink of death himself. Just how brutal had that "Throne War" been?

"The Abyss's Curse..." God of Death A'Dai's wooden expression, twisted by Apep's fate, now became one of understanding. "He toyed with life and death, yet death and decay have him by the throat. What... exquisite irony."