Profound Fusion

Thirty years passed in the blink of an eye. For Gobada's prisoners, it was merely an insignificant stretch of an endless sentence.

But for Barn, these were thirty years worth celebrating—he had finally found the opportunity to merge the Water Element with the Water Body Technique!

"The Water Element is absolute control over elements, and the Water Body Technique is the law of integrating the physical body with water. There was always a sliver of commonality hidden between them."

"I never expected that the Round Soft Profound Mystery, which I had placed so much hope in, would make no progress in merging, yet the Water Element, which I comprehended later, was the first to integrate with the Water Body Technique."

Barn, who had just emerged from his enlightenment, was filled with emotion.

Water-elemental magic slowly surged around him. He could clearly feel that the Water Profound Mystery had more than doubled the speed, defense, and explosive power of his physical body. Of course, such a significant increase also stemmed from his previous shallow understanding of the two profound mysteries. It was only after merging that he truly grasped the essence.

"Next, I will slowly deduce and refine the merged profound mystery. I hope to break through to the God level as soon as possible."

The merging of profound mysteries was precisely the most difficult bottleneck for breaking through to the God level from the Sanctuary. Once this hurdle was crossed, the subsequent steps would be a gradual process of deduction and refinement, with no insurmountable obstacles remaining.

However, Gobada was never a true paradise. The peaceful guarding life was eventually broken.

In thirty years, the guarding members above and below ground had rotated twice.

Just as Barn was engrossed in deducing and merging the profound mystery, making steady progress, Declan's voice suddenly echoed in his mind, urgent yet steady: "Barn, inform the lady. There's abnormal movement underground, the aura is very weak!"

Barn's heart tightened. He subtly extended his divine sense towards Fukaloss, who was meditating beside him, and informed her via Soul Transmission.

Fukaloss did not open her eyes, nor did she rashly release her divine sense to notify the other two teams. She merely covered her entire squad with her soul power and calmly reminded them: "All personnel, be on guard. Do not act rashly."

As expected, after only a few breaths, a violent burst of fire-elemental divine power erupted in the distance, its scorching aura sweeping over, distorting even the air.

"Be careful! The attacker is a mid-level God of fire! You few lower-level Gods, assist me in repelling the enemy immediately!"

The taciturn old man who had been guarding the center of the orchard for years finally opened his eyes. His divine sense instantly spread to the three teams. Before he finished speaking, he transformed into an earth-yellow streamer and shot straight into the sky, over ten meters high.

Above ten meters in this area, deadly spatial rifts were scattered. Because of this, it was an excellent battlefield for Gods—easy to defend and difficult to attack. Although mid-level Gods were strong, they dared not fly freely within the spatial rifts and could only fight in a narrow area.

"You guard the ground and the orchard. No mistakes are allowed." Fukaloss left a parting instruction. Her water-elemental clone instantly transformed into a pale blue streamer and, along with the old man, shot into the sky to meet the fiery red figure.

At the same time, three more streamers flew out from the other two teams—obviously, each team had a God-level expert stationed to deal with sudden attacks.

The violent aftermath of the divine power collision boomed. Barn looked up, and the distant sky had been dyed a scorching fiery red, intertwined with the earth-yellow divine power. The roaring sound made the ground tremble slightly.

"The mid-level God attacker is not weak," Barn worried inwardly. "And the mid-level God on our side is clearly someone who broke through by refining a divine spark. Mid-level Gods who refine divine sparks are inherently weaker than those who break through on their own. This battle is precarious."

In a battle between Gods, if their side lost, they, as mere Saints, would have no chance of survival.

But at this moment, their more pressing concern was the threat from underground.

"Boom—!"

With a loud bang, the ground shook violently, and the battle aftermath instantly spread. However, the disturbance was not under Barn's feet but beneath the earthen house of another team.

Declan's voice came again, with a hint of solemnity: "There's a God-level expert too! The one attacking from underground is at least a lower-level God!"

The erupting dark-elemental divine power fluctuation did not conceal its ferocity, and the ground beneath that team immediately erupted with corresponding defensive divine power—obviously, the other side also had a God-level expert stationed underground, and they were already engaged in battle.

"The Gods who dared to form the Ice Blade Squad are indeed not weak," Blair's vertical pupils narrowed slightly, and he said in a deep voice, "I just saw that the God-level expert of that team sent a clone to the sky to repel the enemy. The one guarding underground should be his other clone."

Being able to condense two clones during the lower-level God stage was already an outstanding feat among peers, far beyond ordinary lower-level Gods.

Following that, a third battle erupted—in the area guarded by the team with two God-level experts, the last attacking lower-level God finally revealed himself.

And the fourth anomaly arrived as scheduled, landing precisely beneath Barn and his companions.

"It seems like a sneak attack, but it's no different from a frontal assault," Barn thought to himself as he moved towards the edge of the orchard.

Fortunately, Fukaloss had anticipated that the enemy would launch a sneak attack from underground and had left a Death Clone to guard the tunnel. At this moment, the sounds of Death Divine Power clashing with Wind Divine Power could already be heard from underground.

As the four-way God-level battles raged, unable to attend to the ground, the battles between Saints officially began.

More than fifty Saints, divided into three teams, charged towards the orchard with imposing momentum, their eyes filled with bloodshot madness and a desperate resolve; the Saints from the three guarding teams numbered only eighteen in total, a vast disparity in numbers.

Over the years, the three teams had encountered each other many times. Although they weren't very familiar, they knew each other's backgrounds.

The team that had been expelled from the Royal City consisted of eight people: two God-level experts and six Saints. However, what made them stand out was that their entire family were the same type of magical beast—the Moonflower Deer, a Saint-level magical beast.

Aside from the two God-level experts currently in battle, the remaining members still maintained their white spirit deer forms.

As for the third team, its members were more diverse, a full ten people: one God-level expert and nine Saints, a mix of humans and magical beasts, seemingly a team assembled by their captain.

Facing the surging enemies, a Saint with a weathered face, clearly experienced in defensive battles, immediately shouted: "Everyone, hold steady! The Saints who are here to seize the resource are not that strong! Most of them were temporarily recruited by the God-level experts from the wilderness. They are gamblers on the verge of starvation and death, risking their lives for a sliver of survival. Their actual combat strength is far inferior to ours!"

These words were not false.

In this resource point, there were only a dozen or so dwarf trees, bearing only ordinary fruits. The God-level experts merely used them as a pastime to satisfy their appetites when they had free time. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been occupied by a single mid-level God who refined a divine spark for so long.

Truly powerful teams would choose to fight for superior resource points that produced Divine Artifact materials and were rich in elemental energy. Such mediocre resources were merely used by a few God-level experts to temporarily recruit a group of dying Saints to gamble on luck—if they won, they would receive some scraps as rewards; if they lost, it would only be the loss of a group of insignificant prisoners, and they wouldn't care at all.

The three guarding teams each defended a direction, fiercely protecting the orchard.