"Thud!"
Suddenly, the legs of several imperial princes with White Tiger bloodlines standing at the very front of the assembled officials gave way, and they dropped straight to their knees.
Then, like falling dominoes, a chain reaction began.
"Thud! Thud! Thud!"
Across the square, and indeed throughout the entire palace, anyone with the Dai Family's imperial blood flowing through their veins, anyone who had awakened the White Tiger Martial Soul-
Regardless of their cultivation, regardless of whether they were eating, sleeping, or cultivating-
All felt an urge to submit rising from the depths of their souls at the same instant.
They could not control their bodies at all and prostrated themselves on the ground, their Martial Souls bursting out uncontrollably and letting out mournful cries toward the Sky Screen.
Even the lofty Star Luo Emperor, Dai Tianfeng, had turned as pale as paper.
The flat-topped crown on his head, symbolizing supreme imperial authority, fell to the ground with a clang and rolled far away.
Only by bracing both hands firmly against the white jade railing before him did he barely keep himself from kneeling like those princes.
"W-what kind of being is that...?"
Dai Tianfeng swallowed, his lips trembling violently.
To his eyes, the enormous black-and-white tiger on the Sky Screen was no Soul Beast at all.
That was the god of tigers!
The absolute ruler of all feline bloodlines!
The Evil-Eyed White Tiger had been passed down through the Star Luo Imperial Family for thousands of years, a source of constant pride that they even used to oppress the Soul Masters of the world.
Yet before that Yin-Yang Saint Tiger, it was worth less than a rat in a gutter!
"It's over. It's all over..."
Suddenly, as though driven mad, Dai Tianfeng slammed a palm against the railing, shattering the white marble.
"Unfilial son! That beast has no idea how close to death he is!"
"Does he have any idea what kind of beings he's provoked?!"
At that moment, Dai Tianfeng's heart was bleeding.
The girl Dai Mubai had verbally harassed and even threatened to rob had actually called that terrifying expert with the Yin-Yang Saint Tiger manifestation Uncle Yan!
Not to mention the man with the Sky Demon Marten manifestation, whose bearing was even more sinister and alluring.
He was clearly one of the girl's elders as well.
And what terrified him to the point that his liver and gall nearly split was his sudden recollection of the name revered as a god during the earlier Sky Screen showing the Ice Spirit Clan.
The Martial Ancestor!
This girl's surname was Lin, and those two experts with Divine Beast manifestations were here as well.
As all these clues came together, a truth he dared not contemplate instantly surfaced.
The girl Dai Mubai had harassed was the Little Princess of the Martial Realm!
She was the biological daughter of the Martial Ancestor who had single-handedly slaughtered his way through a superpower!
"Your Majesty, what are we to do...?"
Below him, an elderly official was already so frightened that tears and snot streamed down his face as he knelt on the ground and kowtowed repeatedly.
"If beings like that so much as glance at us through the Sky Screen, I'm afraid the entire Star Luo Empire will be reduced to ashes in an instant!"
"Must our Star Luo Empire's foundation of thousands of years be destroyed at the hands of this unfilial son who prizes lust above his own life?"
For a time, cries filled the entire palace.
Those members of the imperial family who usually threw their weight around now wished they could charge into the Sky Screen immediately and slice Dai Mubai into a thousand pieces to appease the Little Princess of the Martial Realm's wrath.
Their million-strong army, of which they were so proud? It was a joke before a single breath from those manifestations.
Their revered Titled Douluo retainers? They probably were not even fit to carry those experts' shoes.
This attack from a higher dimension brought more than an overwhelming disparity in martial might; it stripped the Star Luo Empire's laughable political confidence and imperial dignity bare, inside and out.
Dai Tianfeng slumped dejectedly onto his dragon throne, as though he had aged ten years in an instant.
All he could do now was pray frantically in his heart that those two mighty beings would consider Dai Mubai too filthy to bother venting their anger on this plane.
And just as the human empire sank into endless panic-
In the deepest forbidden grounds of the Star Dou Great Forest.
The Lake of Life.
This emerald lake, which had nurtured countless high-ranking Soul Beasts on the Douluo Continent and remained peaceful and tranquil year-round-
Now seemed to be churned violently by a pair of invisible hands, its waters rolling and roaring wildly.
Around the lakeshore.
More than a dozen Ferocious Beasts at or above the hundred-thousand-year level, led by the Emerald Swan Bi Ji and the Dark Gold Terrorclaw Bear Xiong Jun-
Had all lost their usual ferocity, their enormous bodies pressed into the mud as they trembled from head to toe.
Even Xiong Jun, the most short-tempered of them, had buried his head deep between his forepaws, not daring to let out so much as a low growl.
And above the Lake of Life.
A middle-aged man in black robes, with a head of golden hair, stood suspended in the air.
He was the uncrowned king of the Star Dou Great Forest, the foremost of the Ten Great Ferocious Beasts, the Beast God with eight hundred thousand years of cultivation.
Di Tian!
He possessed the purest bloodline of the Black Dragon Clan and had even received the Dragon God Claw directly from the Dragon God himself.
In the hearts of all Soul Beasts on the Douluo Continent, Di Tian was a living god, an insurmountable peak.
Yet now, Di Tian had lost every trace of his usual composure.
His golden slit pupils contracted violently as he stared fixedly at the images on the Sky Screen in midair, his body shaking like chaff in a sieve.
Even the incomparably hard black dragon scales on his neck involuntarily stood on end beneath this bloodline pressure.
"How could such a terrifying bloodline aura possibly exist in this world...?"
Di Tian swallowed and could not help murmuring aloud.
He could clearly sense that the Yin-Yang Saint Tiger and the Sky Demon Marten on the Sky Screen-
Were emanating auras that had long since transcended the lowly category of Soul Beasts.
Those were true Divine Beasts!
Supreme beings who lived as long as heaven and earth and commanded the laws of the Great Dao!
Never mind mere Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts-even the Black Dragon King Bloodline Di Tian himself took such pride in was nowhere near enough before those two manifestations.
"Lord Dragon God..."
The image of the Dragon God, who had once led the Divine Beast Clan in an assault on the Divine Realm and shaken the universe with his might, involuntarily surfaced in Di Tian's mind.
In Di Tian's heart, the Dragon God represented the ultimate in power, the pinnacle of bloodlines.
But now, as he looked at that Yin-Yang Saint Tiger, with life in his left eye and destruction in his right-
As he looked at that Sky Demon Marten, who seemed capable of swallowing the stars of all the heavens in a single gulp-
A thought that set even his own heart pounding with fear began to grow uncontrollably in his mind.
"These two beings-even if Lord Dragon God stood before them at his peak..."
"I'm afraid... I'm afraid he wouldn't gain the slightest advantage, would he?"
"Even Lord Dragon God's bloodline might rank below theirs..."
The moment this thought appeared, even Di Tian himself felt a little afraid.
Their Soul Beast Clan had suffered oppression from the gods of the Divine Realm on the Douluo Continent for hundreds of thousands of years.
They could not become gods or ascend; they could only cling to a wretched existence in this forest, constantly facing annihilation by heavenly tribulations and slaughter by humans.
They had always held overthrowing the Divine Realm and restoring the Dragon God's glory as their lifelong conviction.
Yet seeing the scene on the Sky Screen now left him feeling somewhat distressed.
So, in that so-called Great Thousand World-
Divine Beasts not only had no need to suffer oppression by human gods, but could stand as equals with the greatest human experts, even becoming brothers and founding world-renowned superpowers together.
There, Divine Beasts could freely draw in and breathe out the power of the stars and look down upon all living beings from on high.
"Why are we denied even the right to pursue the Great Dao?"
Looking at Lin Diao and Lin Yan chatting and laughing in the pavilion.
Di Tian suddenly felt that his eight hundred thousand years of arduous cultivation were utterly laughable.
How could frogs at the bottom of a well like them, struggling in the mire, know how vast the starry sky outside truly was?
If those God Kings of the Divine Realm encountered Divine Beasts of such might from the Great Thousand World-
They probably would not dare act so brazenly either...
Before you continue