Destruction Godhood

Hodan had originally planned to use the mission to hunt down the Black Mountain Bandits as an opportunity to create his own ultimate move. He hadn't expected to finish creating it just as he arrived at the Black Mountain Range.

He had the warm and welcoming bandits he'd encountered along the way to thank for that. Hodan silently offered a word of thanks to those who had given their lives to help him perfect his ultimate move—a small touch of humor in an otherwise cruel world.

"This move shall be called 'Present World Delusion'!" Hodan pondered for a moment, then gave his strongest slash the name Present World Delusion.

This was the obsession Hodan held in this world, transformed into his strongest slash. It contained his most powerful conviction and purpose.

His ultimate move was complete, and he had achieved the goal of his journey. But since he was already here, Hodan still intended to complete his mission.

Hodan suddenly stopped in front of the mountain range. His body blurred, and he vanished from the spot.

"You two have been following me all this way. What do you want?" Hodan's voice reached their ears. They turned around and only then realized he had appeared behind them.

This was the Black Mountain Range, and the two were clearly bandits from the Black Mountain Bandits.

"Die!" Now that they'd been discovered, they attacked at once. One of them glared viciously and thrust a longsword at Hodan, moving like a gust of wind.

At the same time, the other man's Divine Domain spread over Hodan. In an instant, Hodan was trapped in a sea of fire. The wind howled through the flames, making them burn even more fiercely.

"Two fools..." Hodan sneered. He swept Zhengdu through the air, and their Divine Domain shattered with a crash. His blade swept across their bodies, sending them plummeting from the sky.

They were two ordinary Highgods who hadn't fused even a single Mystery and didn't possess Defensive Divine Artifacts. One move was enough for Hodan to kill them.

"After becoming a god, what matters most is comprehending, fusing, and applying the Laws. Mere comprehension is the least valuable part." Hodan was struck by the thought.

For example, the Lightning Law had six Mysteries. Fusing just two of them would immediately increase one's power tenfold. Fusing Law Mysteries could bring an almost tenfold increase in strength, while fusing High-level Profound Mysteries could increase it by more than tenfold!

"Hm?" Hodan frowned and looked ahead. Three streaks of light flew out of a cave in the Black Mountain Range. The one in front was a young man dressed in a black robe. The other two looked almost exactly like the Highgods Hodan had just killed. They were obviously their Divine Clones.

"Boy, you actually dare cause trouble in the Black Mountain Range. And since you killed Parker and Marinan's Divine Clones, you can die too." The young man in black spoke coldly. Black light enveloped him, then spread in all directions. Space warped wherever the light touched, and the towering trees were swallowed up.

The darkness teemed with black miasma that corroded the soul. The black light also suppressed Hodan's divine sense, making it difficult for him to probe beyond the shroud. This move was somewhat like Linley's Blackstone Prison, except Linley's acted on matter, while this one was aimed primarily at the soul.

"Remember, I'm Kro, the one who killed you!" The young man in black spoke as if passing sentence on Hodan. "You should be proud to die beneath my ultimate move."

As soon as the black shroud had engulfed Hodan, it collapsed inward, centered on him.

Hearing that the young man in black was Kro, Hodan was taken aback. The Black Mountain Range was so vast that he'd been worrying about how to find Kro. He hadn't expected Kro to come straight to him.

"What terrifying power. He's definitely at the peak of Five-Star Fiend strength." Hodan looked at Kro in surprise. He hadn't expected Kro's Highgod to possess the strength of a peak Five-Star Fiend.

When Hodan had accepted the mission, he'd thought Kro was merely an ordinary Five-Star Fiend.

This black space alone would have been enough to kill the two Highgods he'd just slain in an instant.

"A powerhouse who cultivates the Darkness Laws." Hodan thrust the blade in his hand forward, piercing through the dark space.

"Die!" Hodan put all his strength into a single slash. Amid a fierce humming sound, space itself split open.

"Damn it! I picked a fight with the wrong person!" Kro's expression changed drastically. He realized at once that he'd offended someone he couldn't afford to provoke. After all, tearing open space in Hell required at least Six-Star Fiend strength.

Kro hadn't targeted Hodan merely to avenge his two subordinates. Even a Highgod who had refined a Divine Spark could amass a fortune given enough time. But if Kro had known Hodan possessed Six-Star Fiend strength, he would never have entertained the idea.

One star's difference in a Fiend's rank represented a difference of nearly ten times in strength. Kro was only a Five-Star Fiend.

"No! Spare me, my lord!" Kro begged.

"You're begging now? Too late!" Hodan coldly chopped off Kro's head. As Kro's body exploded, Hodan waved a hand and took his spatial ring. Then he immediately swung his blade again, wiping out the Divine Clones of the two men who had come with Reed.

Hodan dripped a drop of blood onto the spatial ring. After claiming it, he probed it with his divine sense and showed a hint of surprise. "There's actually two hundred billion Inkstones' worth of wealth in here, along with some precious ores."

The Black Mountain Range was also rich in ore, but Hodan didn't care about that. What mattered to him was that his full-strength attack had just torn a spatial rift in Hell.

Being able to tear open space in Hell meant that Hodan's material attack had reached Six-Star Fiend level. His soul attack was no weaker than that of an ordinary Six-Star Fiend, either.

Hodan suddenly realized that, without even noticing, he had already reached Six-Star Fiend strength. He had taken another step on the road to the summit.

Hodan continued pondering how he had torn open space.

Hodan had been cultivating the Destruction Rules, but even after all this time, he had remained stuck at the Saint-level limit, unable to become a god.

What was destruction? It was the complete breaking or annihilation of something. When your power was sufficient, even space could be destroyed. Killing was one form of destruction, as was breaking things. Anything that made something disappear from this world was a form of destruction.

In Hogg's mind, all manner of thoughts about the Destruction Rules kept appearing, and his understanding of them continued to deepen.

At last, Hodan's Destruction Rules crossed that boundary: the divide between the Saint Domain and the divine realm.

The Laws of the universe descended once more, and Hodan became a god through the Destruction Rules. Without hesitation, he chose External Godhood.

The soul of his Saint Domain True Body was split in two once again, bringing excruciating pain, but Hodan endured it.

"Chh, chh."

A Hodan with dark gray hair and dressed in a dark gray robe appeared out of thin air. It was Hodan's Destruction God Clone.

A moment later, the fluctuations of the universal Laws faded, and the Destruction God Clone merged into Hodan's true body.

The newly born Destruction God Clone and the Saint Domain True Body both had weakened souls. Hodan hurriedly absorbed Soul Golden Beads, so that they could recover to their best condition as quickly as possible and continue comprehending the Rules.