Church, Holy Mountain.
Towering temples stood all around, their walls carved with countless reliefs of deities. Every one of them wore the same imposing expression, heads slightly lowered as they gazed down upon the rectangular plaza at the center. The Western Continent had entered the depths of winter. Heavy snow drifted down as violent winds swept up ice crystals and hurled them across the temple complex, snowflakes striking the temples with dull thuds.
Several hundred young men in black clerical robes knelt reverently on the ground, multicolored divine light flickering over their bodies. They carried an intense air of nobility and majesty, an aura much like that of gods themselves.
These young men were all divine descendants of the Church's divine-descendant families, and the most important members of their respective clans. They possessed divinity; their souls had been born with a trace of divine soul concealed within them, while their bloodlines held a sliver of the power of their ancestral gods.
That trace of divinity was now beating madly within them, frantically drawing upon the omnipresent mystical power in the air, driving their strength ever higher and sending their cultivation soaring in relentless leaps.
Suddenly, a muffled groan rang out. Several youths who had originally possessed only Heaven-rank strength instantly broke through to the Saint Disciple realm. Powerful elemental tides surged into their bodies, transforming into pure divine power that cleansed them. Threads of thick black blood seeped from their pores as toxins and impurities accumulated within them after birth were forcibly expelled from their bodies.
Masses of dark clouds churned high in the sky, and several bolts of lightning poised themselves to strike. But an incomparably powerful will shot into the heavens and blasted those clouds to pieces. Not a single streak of lightning could descend, while another group