Black Mud City's inner city, the white jade plaza before the City Lord's Manor.
The grand array had completely shattered, and the raging spiritual energy storm had only just subsided. What had once been a luxurious, imposing immortal sect stronghold was now nothing but broken bricks and shattered tiles strewn across the ground. The air reeked of scorching and thick blood.
"Ah—my eyes! My divine sense is ruined!"
"Help! What is burning my soul?!"
Over a hundred elite sword cultivators from the Azure Firmament Sword Sect lay sprawled across the bluestone pavement. These immortal sect prodigies, who usually stood high above all others and were worshipped as gods by mortals, were now rolling frantically in the foul mud, wracked with agony. Both hands clutched tightly over their faces, while thick, stinking black blood constantly streamed from between their fingers.
The backlash from the ultimate qi and blood was overwhelmingly tyrannical, utterly ignoring the defenses of immortal true essence. That destructive force had directly turned every one of those sword cultivators into complete and utter blind men.
The City Lord lay collapsed in a muddy pit at the edge of the ruins, half his face smeared with blood. He too had suffered the backlash. Enduring the needle-like agony in his eye sockets, he braced himself against the ground and crawled on all fours toward the blasted crater ahead.
At the bottom of the crater, the Four Symbols Spirit-Sealing Formation Disk he had deployed earlier was tightly pinning down the black fragmentary stele that had ignited everything.
The dark-red Desolate patterns on the stele's surface still twitched restlessly, radiating a terrifying heat.
"Treasure... this is a supreme treasure that can withstand even Golden Core laws head-on. I absolutely cannot hand over such an opportunity." The City Lord panted heavily as he moved