The Father She Once Thought She Could Trust? (Continued)
The system fell silent.
The curve of Qian Xunji's lips deepened even further.
"What exactly can this furnace refine?"
Taiyi Zhenren's furnace suddenly lit up, as if in response to his words.
The system fell completely silent.
a long time.
[... You're crazy.]
For the first time, the system's voice trembled with a strange, resigned quality.
[From the very beginning, you never intended to be a ruler.]
[From the very beginning, you wanted to see them fight.]
[You've been waiting for this day from the very beginning.]
[I should have known, you're a madman.]
Qian Xunji did not deny it.
He simply smiled slightly and continued gazing at the distant battlefield.
"You're right."
"I've been waiting for this day for a long time."
"It started with Donghuang resurrecting the first batch of the Dragon Clan, with pushing forward the expansion of the Divine Realm, and with inspiring the God of Destruction's plan to 'resist the Dragon Clan'— "
"I'm waiting."
"Wait until they have gathered enough strength."
"Wait until they're ready."
"Wait for them—finally, we can have a good fight."
He turned his head and looked at the stove.
"Taiyi, are the things ready?"
Taiyi Zhenren nodded slightly, and a faint blue light flickered beneath his hood:
"Equivalent exchange".
"The Silver Dragon King Core you collected, plus those from this war—"
That's enough.
Qian Xunji nodded.
He then looked at Donghuang Taiyi.
"What about over there?"
Donghuang Taiyi closed his eyes slightly, then slowly opened them again.
Those crimson-gold dragon eyes reflected the void where countless dragon corpses floated.
"Can."
He said.
The voice of Taiyi Zhenren came from under his hood:
"Equivalent exchange".
"To gain something new, you must discard the old."
"This is an unchanging rule of alchemy."
Are you ready?
Qian Xunji did not answer.
He just stared at the stove, at the ever-growing light emanating from it.
Within the light, countless images could be vaguely seen shifting and moving.
a long time.
He spoke.
The voice was soft and faint, yet it carried an indescribable anticipation...
Let's begin.
He said.
·····························
Suddenly, something unexpected happened in the void.
Just as the Dragon Clan began to gather the wounded and the people of the Divine Realm were still catching their breath, an extremely complex light suddenly shone.
The light erupted from the very center of the battlefield, like a blooming lotus flower, instantly spreading in all directions. Golden patterns outlined, intertwined, and overlapped in the void, forming a colossal, unimaginably vast expanse that enveloped the entire battlefield.
Magic circle.
The magic array was so complex that just looking at it made one dizzy.
Countless layers of alchemical runes overlapped, each line pulsating, each node shimmering. The golden light grew ever brighter, dyeing the entire void a dazzling crimson gold.
Everyone was stunned.
Whether it was the retreating Dragon Clan, the gods who had just breathed a sigh of relief, their own kind lying on the dragon corpses, or the priests collecting the remains of their fallen comrades—everyone stopped what they were doing and stared blankly at the enormous golden array that had suddenly appeared above them and enveloped everything.
What's this?
Nobody knows.
No one can understand it.
But at that moment, everyone felt an indescribable unease.
The light from the magic circle began to circulate.
Like a giant vortex, like an inverted galaxy, the golden array slowly began to rotate.
With each rotation, the light within the formation brightens; with each increase in brightness, the power contained within the formation grows stronger.
Then--
The traction has begun.
The dragon corpses floating in the void began to move.
It wasn't propelled by the shockwave, nor lifted by the airflow, but rather drawn by some invisible force, slowly drifting towards the center of the magic circle.
One, two, ten, a hundred—countless dragon corpses, like puppets manipulated by invisible threads, lined up in long queues, converging towards the increasingly brighter direction.
Next came the corpse of the god.
Those gods who had just fallen, those beings who were once high above but now only had cold bodies, were also beginning to be drawn in.
The golden divine blood was still flowing, and the shattered divine core was still flickering with a faint light, but it was no longer able to stop its body from being sucked into the magic array.
Then came the wreckage of the warships.
That once invincible war fortress, that colossal vessel into which the Divine Realm poured millennia of effort, now reduced to ruins, too began to disintegrate.
Countless fragments were stripped away, pulled in, and sucked in, like an explosion played in reverse, with everything returning to its original starting point.
Finally, there were the fragments of laws scattered throughout the battlefield.
The ice crystals left by the Dragon Clan's breath, the light dissipated when the god fell, the primordial power drifting from the shattered divine core, and even the energy that had already dissipated into the void and was about to return to nothingness—all of these were being drawn, absorbed, and gathered by that magic array.
And the end of all this is that—
stove.
The furnace of the Taiyi Zhenren.
The alchemical furnace, which was originally only a few feet tall, had now expanded to an unimaginable size. It hovered in the very center of the magic array, its body trembling constantly. The intricate patterns lit up one by one, then went out one by one, and then lit up again one by one, like a heart that was beating violently.
The furnace mouth was wide open, like a bottomless black hole, greedily devouring everything that was drawn in.
Dragon corpses, divine corpses, warship wreckage, fragments of laws--
Everything vanished without a trace after entering that furnace.
It was as if they had never existed.
It was as if that fierce battle, those fallen lives, and the blood that stained the void were all just an illusion.
And the stove was glowing.
It grew brighter and brighter, so bright it was blinding, so bright it was impossible to look directly at it.
Everyone on the battlefield stared in disbelief at this scene.
The Dragon Clan ' roars ceased.
The gods fell silent.
Even the dragons who were collecting the corpses of their kin stopped what they were doing and stared blankly at the remains of their kin being led away.
Nobody knows what happened.
Nobody knows what happened.
But in everyone's mind, the same question arose—
Who... did this?
Qian Renxue stood at the edge of the warship wreckage, her golden eyes fixed on the massive magic array in the void.
Her hands were trembling.
Not because of fear, not because of anger, but because--
The array patterns.
Somewhere within the array patterns, there was a very inconspicuous, almost imperceptible detail.