Lingering Aura

In the void, three figures slowly emerged.

A pale flame, a Black Dragon that blotted out the sky and sun, and a desiccated corpse wrapped in burial cloth.

The bodies of the three wizards radiated dark contamination, shrouding the entire town of Mountain Territory.

The surviving half-transcendent knights began to undergo all manner of mutations. Some underwent Elementalization, turning into balls of fire and burning to ash. Others grew black scales across their skin and let out beast-like roars. Corpses rapidly dehydrated and shriveled into zombies, madly biting the living.

"So this is what wizards are like. Compared to the Immortal Path, their aggression is far too strong!"

Yin Ming was likewise affected by the radiation contamination, which afflicted both mind and body.

As a Corpse-Liberation Immortal, his rank stood above those three wizards, so mental contamination naturally had no effect on him. The Golden Light Spell kept the physical contamination outside his body; otherwise, he would not even have been qualified to look at them.

"Golden Light Spell..."

The protective golden light around Zhu Bajie was nearly tangible, blocking the pale flames that burned in from the void.

Several divine dragons coiled around the Nine-Toothed Rake as it gathered power and struck at the largest target, the Black Dragon. The two colossal beings collided, and countless cracks instantly split open across the void.

The rake tore apart the dragon's wing. As the spilled black dragon blood touched the protective golden light, it was like droplets falling onto a red-hot branding iron, turning into billowing black smoke.

"Shadow Mist, restore!"

The Black Dragon transformed into a mass of mist and vanished in an instant. When it reappeared the next moment, the injury to its wing had fully healed.

The Shuoye Dark Dragon possessed the greatest strength. The other two knew this as well, so they had the Black Dragon fend off the enemy head-on while the Pale Flame and the Eternal Silence Corpse cast spells from the side to harass him.

Yet even one against three, Zhu Bajie still did not fall into a disadvantage, scattering the Black Dragon's form several times.

"So the Immortal Path was never weak. The weak one was... me."

Yin Ming felt sorrowful. He gripped a yellow talisman, waiting to flee the instant the barrier shattered.

The combat power of the Immortal Path System was determined by many factors, including realm, mana, divine abilities, and physical body.

Having only a realm was like the foolish son of a wealthy landowner who spent a fortune buying a Harvard degree. Without ascending to the Immortal Realm, he was just an unlucky bastard who had never received his diploma.

"Evil God, you cannot restore your mana. How much longer can you hold on?"

The Pale Flame transformed into a curtain of fire that filled the heavens, briefly freezing the divine dragons manifested by the Nine-Toothed Rake.

Taking advantage of the opening, the Black Dragon, whose body had been shattered, once again concealed itself with Shadow Mist, drawing upon the power of darkness to restore its body.

They did not need to win. So long as they could hold him off, the final victory would belong to them.

"If I unleash all the mana I have left, killing one of you will not be a problem. Which one of you will block it?"

The hundreds of millions of divine lights around the Nine-Toothed Rake drew inward. Its huge teeth were forged like dragon claws, its fine gold decorations shaped like coiling pythons. The Six Ding Six Jia Divine Incantation bloomed, and the yin and yang energies turned like a millstone.

In a daze, the divine weapon became a farmer's rake for turning soil, utterly plain and ordinary.

Yet power was constantly accumulating within it, making the hairs of all three stand on end as they sensed a deadly crisis.

"I have suffered grave injuries and need time to recover!"

With that, the Black Dragon completely merged into the night.

Elemental dragons possessed incomparably tenacious vitality, and it absolutely did not wish to endure an Evil God's final desperate strike head-on.

Even if it did not die, it would likely be severely wounded. How would it compete with the other two for the Godhead afterward?

"Ding!"

The Pale Flame continuously reinforced its Elemental Shield.

With a casual toss, it threw out a coin. The coin spun endlessly, let out a crisp ring, then vanished into thin air.

This was a Goddess of Fortune's Coin. In events governed by random probability, it would cause matters to develop in a direction favorable to its holder.

"City of the Undead, condense."

The Eternal Silence Corpse crushed a black crystal and summoned an enormous, ruined city of deathly silence.

Countless corpses revived, breaking down into bones and flesh that formed black-and-white cocoons, wrapping him tightly within.

These were all desiccated corpses that had been buried for over a thousand years without decaying. Empowered by dense deathly aura, they became harder than steel in an instant.

The gap in rank!

Unless one possessed a concealment talent like that of the Dark Dragon.

Otherwise, hiding was impossible. One could only pray not to be targeted by the Evil God.

"The target is me! The Goddess of Luck's Coin did not work."

The Nine-Toothed Heart-Piercing Rake flew from his hand like a planet crashing down from beyond the heavens. The energy level it unleashed surpassed everyone's expectations, and the Pale Flame's expression instantly changed drastically.

Wrong! We had been wrong from the very beginning!

The power this Evil God wielded was terrifyingly immense.

It had merely been limited by its mana and had never displayed its true strength.

It could not be blocked!

It absolutely could not be blocked.

The Pale Flame flickered dimly without pause, transforming into countless sparks that scattered in every direction to flee.

Yet this only briefly delayed the arrival of death.

How could an Evil God equivalent to a Seven-Circle Wizard, unleashing a killing move before death, lack a means of locking onto its target's aura?

"I dodged it!"

Yet the flowing light shot straight past its side.

At first, the Pale Flame found it unbelievable. Then, the relief of surviving a calamity and a flood of confusion surged into its heart.

What was going on? How could a seven-circle spell make such a low-level mistake? Could it be the Goddess of Luck's protection?

"Crack, crack!"

The rake's phantom struck the golden wheel in the sky without the slightest deviation.

The thunderous boom was like countless tons of lightning pouring down. Divine light spanning ten thousand zhang bloomed, and in the sky of the New Moon Night, it was as though a sun had risen.

The shockwave from the violent explosion overturned the entire town. Apart from Yin Ming, protected by golden light, every living thing was completely stripped of life, turning the place into a dead domain.

Spiderweb-like cracks appeared across the golden wheel, and the transparent Crystal Wall instantly shattered into fragments. The power sealing the void dissipated with it.

"Rumble!"

Zhu Bajie's enormous body crashed to the ground, utterly devoid of life.

Without mana to sustain the Dharma Form of Heaven and Earth, his body rapidly shrank until it became a palm-sized bronze Divine Statue.

"My thanks to the Pure Altar Envoy! This little immortal shall remember your immense grace in the depths of his heart."

Upon the altar, Yin Ming bowed slightly. From the strand of the law of "Pure" he had received, he learned that this incarnation had been differentiated from the Pure Altar Envoy's Dao Fruit.

That strike had not missed at all.

From beginning to end, Zhu Bajie's target had never been any one of the three wizards.

That so-called threat had actually been a reminder: the time to use the Minor Teleportation Talisman had arrived!

"Minor Teleportation Talisman..."

Seizing the opportunity, Yin Ming tore apart the yellow talisman in his hand.

The scattered yellow paper burst into crimson flames without wind.

Energy patterns drawn in cinnabar emerged, and ripples spread through the trembling space.

His body began to fade and turn illusory. The energy patterns collapsed into hundreds of millions of firefly-like motes, and at that very instant, his body vanished from where it stood.

"Eh! One little bug got away!"

The Black Dragon emerged from the darkness, its fleshy wings stirring up a gale that dispersed the smoke.

Its crimson eyes were ice-cold as it watched the altar from which Yin Ming had disappeared.

Space and time were regarded by gods as forbidden powers.

Aside from sorcerers of a few special bloodlines, and wizards such as the Pale Flame who specialized in researching the subject of the void.

To initially wield the power of space required stepping into the domain of seven-circle gods.

"Spatial teleportation! The distance actually exceeded this dragon's range of perception. It seems this is a little bug with secrets!"

However, compared to the Evil God's Godhead lying before it, the secrets of a little bug were not worth mentioning.

The Black Dragon silently memorized Yin Ming's life aura, its dragon eyes vigilantly sweeping the surroundings.

God Hunters!

The moment an Evil God fell, allies became the deadliest enemies. There had never been an exception throughout the ages.

This time, none of the three had suffered much damage. An incomparably brutal battle was bound to erupt. At a time like this, none of them could spare attention for anything else.