The color drained from the face of a man behind Chen Yong. He gripped the heavy black ruler tighter and tighter until his knuckles turned white, before finally managing to squeeze out a single sentence.
"Senior brother, this is..." He stared at the huge dragon head that was slowly lowering, his voice trembling uncontrollably. "This is... the Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon???" The other four people tensed up at the same time.
Before they set off, the elders of their clan had mentioned the name "Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon" several times. But after actually seeing it, they realized that the few words recorded in the records could not possibly capture the oppressive aura emanating from this creature.
Especially when those dragon eyes swept over their bodies, the group experienced an extremely strange sense of disorientation. They couldn't be sure whether what the demonic dragon had just seen was their real selves or a phantom projection within their Fate Soul.
Chen Yong also sensed the danger, but he did not turn around.
Danger loomed close, yet his expression remained calm and composed. His gray-black spear lay horizontally before him, seven dark red rings slowly illuminating. Years of experience had honed his caution, preventing the dragon's appearance from clouding his judgment. His Fate Soul essence had already been secretly unleashed, simultaneously sensing the changes around the Nine Nether Cold Pool and calculating the Limit of what the six of them could achieve by working together.
The True Annihilation Realm · Supreme, while this is the True Annihilation Realm · Peak; there is indeed a difference in their levels. However, there are six of them. At least for now, they absolutely cannot afford to panic first. Chen Yong's voice then turned serious. "Don't panic, you absolutely cannot panic."
The gazes of the people behind him immediately fell on him. "This demonic dragon's cultivation is only at the True Annihilation Realm · Supreme. If we join forces, we can definitely destroy it." As he said this, his gaze never left the demonic dragon's eyes.
"Everyone must not panic."
Upon hearing this, the previously disordered breathing of the several Annihilation God Clan cultivators gradually calmed down. The six divine weapons simultaneously dispersed outwards, and their Fate Soul essences began to resonate secretly. Chen Yong stood at the forefront, using his True Annihilation Realm · Peak cultivation to bear most of the pressure brought by the Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon.
Just as they had stabilized their formation, the demonic dragon twitched its nostrils slightly, and a wisp of dark blue Azure Dragon breath slowly emerged from its nostrils. There was no earth-shattering power eruption, nor a cold wave sweeping across the mountains.
It was just a faint wisp of dark blue aura, but Chen Yong's eyes changed completely at that moment. "Defense!" As soon as he finished speaking, the wisp of dragon breath dissipated. Buzz!!! The Fate Soul of the six people trembled violently at the same time.
The young man standing at the back suddenly froze. He had clearly heard Chen Yong's reminder and knew that he had to activate his divine weapon at this moment, but his right hand stopped in front of his chest as soon as he raised it.
He forgot why he should continue raising his hand next. Even more strangely, he knew he had "forgotten," but the causal connection between "forgetting" and "remembering" was rapidly freezing.
The other woman's pupils contracted sharply. She had clearly activated the silver-gray short sword in her hand, but the Fate Soul patterns on the sword's surface had just lit up before stopping. She could sense her own Fate Soul origin, but she could no longer confirm what kind of connection existed between "her own Fate Soul" and "activating the divine weapon."
The chill is spreading inward along the cause and effect, first freezing the result, then the process, and finally tracing back to the cause. The dragon breath of the Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon truly invaded the part of the cause and effect that sustains the self, actions, and results within the six Fate Soul.
"Guard your Fate Soul!" Chen Yong suddenly plunged his spear into the icy crystal beneath his feet, and bang!!! A large amount of icy crystal shattered on the spot.
For the first time, the ultimate Fate Soul origin of the True Annihilation Realm · Peak was unleashed without reservation. Gray-black Dao traces rapidly extended from Chen Yong's feet in five directions, simultaneously raising a semi-transparent barrier in front of the five cultivators. The barrier had no fixed shape, and reality and illusion constantly exchanged within it. Chen Yong directly used his own True Annihilation Realm to forcibly disrupt the dragon breath's lock on the five Fate Soul causality.
Since the chill can freeze established cause and effect—then he will first make this cause and effect lose its discernible reality! True Annihilation —Open! Buzz!!! Gray-black Dao traces simultaneously appeared deep within Chen Yong's eyes. The azure frost on the five cultivators finally paused for a moment.
In that instant! "Retreat!" Chen Yong swung his spear horizontally with his right arm.
The gray-black spear light did not attack the demonic dragon, but instead created a True Annihilation Barrier in front of the six people, forcibly disrupting the connection between the dragon's breath that had invaded the area and reality. The five people finally regained control of their bodies and immediately retreated hundreds of feet.
But Chen Yong did not retreat. He needed to know just how powerful this demonic dragon was. He gripped the gun barrel tightly with his five fingers, his body suddenly leaning forward, and the icy crystal beneath his feet was pressed into dense cracks by a tremendous force.
The next moment—whoosh!!! Chen Yong disappeared from the spot.
The gray-black spear pierced through the cold mist, and the reality in front of the spear tip was swallowed up layer by layer by the True Annihilation Realm's origin. The space along the way was sometimes solid and sometimes ethereal, and a gray-black trajectory thousands of feet long went straight towards the brow of the Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon.
This shot was uncomplicated; Chen Yong only wanted to test it once. Finally, the Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon made a move. Its massive head turned slightly, and its dark blue vertical pupils locked onto Chen Yong. Then, it raised one of its dragon claws.
Without gathering any momentum, the dragon claw simply pressed forward lightly.
The world before Chen Yong instantly lost its boundary between reality and illusion. His thrusting spear was clearly still advancing, yet his Fate Soul perception told him that the thrust was already over; his body was clearly still in mid-air, yet his consciousness showed that he had already retreated back to the precipice. Two contradictory realities simultaneously pressed into his Fate Soul, Chen Yong's expression changed noticeably for the first time.
The next instant, the enormous dragon claw landed on the spearhead, bang!!! A ring of True Annihilation ripples, interwoven with gray-black and dark blue, surged out from between the two! The thousand-foot pool sank downwards.
The surrounding rocks were not shattered; they simply disappeared from sight after being swept by the True Annihilation Ripple. Some parts of the mountain remained, while others were transformed into gray outlines whose existence could not be confirmed.
The spear in Chen Yong's hand bent violently, his tiger's mouth split open instantly, his entire right arm went numb, and the protective True Annihilation Realm · Peak collapsed in three layers, causing his body to be thrown backward on the spot.
Whoosh!!! After retreating hundreds of feet, Chen Yong forcibly twisted his body, his feet landing on the icy cliff, sliding backward for nearly a hundred feet before finally stopping. He still held the spear in his hand, a drop of blood slowly flowing down his tiger's mouth.
Chen Yong glanced down, then looked up again. His composure hadn't completely vanished, but the caution in his eyes was several times greater than before.
In the distance, the Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon slowly retracted its claws. The colossal creature, at the True Annihilation Realm · Supreme, still hovered above the Nine Nether Cold Pool, its dark Azure Dragon body hidden among the rolling cold mist, its deep blue eyes remaining largely unchanged throughout.
The clash just now wasn't even a real attack for it. The five people behind Chen Yong understood this, and no one said anymore, "The six of us combined can definitely destroy it." The Nine Nether Cold Pool fell into a chilling silence again. Chen Yong gripped his spear tightly, his gaze gradually darkening. The first test was over. And the result far exceeded his expectations.
Chen Yong stood at the edge of the shattered, frosty cliff, blood still slowly trickling down his gray-black spear from the web of his right hand. He didn't wipe it away, his gaze fixed on the enormous demonic dragon coiled in the icy mist above the Nine Nether Cold Pool.
The previous test was enough. He was at the True Annihilation Realm · Peak, and single-handedly withstood a casual claw strike from the Nine Nether Dark Ruins Demon Dragon. The three layers of True Annihilation Origin protecting his Fate Soul collapsed one after another. This demon dragon also had the natural advantage of the Nine Nether Cold Pool's terrain, allowing them to continue fighting each other individually.
The five True Annihilation Realm · Initial Stage cultivators wouldn't last long enough for the Demonic Dragon to unleash its true innate divine power. Chen Yong showed no panic; instead, his mind grew increasingly calm as danger approached. He quickly scanned the five figures' positions, his left hand clenching tightly, a gray-white life rune flashing in his palm. He shouted in a deep voice, "Form the formation—form the formation immediately!"
Buzz!!! An ancient array diagram with a diameter of nearly a thousand feet quickly unfolded. The Annihilation God Clan's Life-Protecting Array - Six Lives Returning to Annihilation True Formation. This array does not have the ability to launch powerful attacks. Its true purpose is only two - to share the erosion of Fate Soul and to protect the reality of existence.
When six cultivators simultaneously form an array, their Fate Soul create a six-fold mutual verification, with the array's core as the pivot. Any attempt to erode the Fate Soul of any one individual will be instantly diverted to six different locations, borne collectively by all six. More importantly, if a person's perception, causality, or even their true reality is disturbed...
The Fate Soul of the other five people will simultaneously become his external witnesses, confirming "this person is still here" through five independent perceptions. For a power like the True Annihilation Realm that can invade the boundaries between truth and falsehood, existence and non-existence, and reality, this mutual verification of six lives can greatly delay the complete dragging of a single existence into an indistinguishable state.
Chen Yong was the most important "guardian of the formation". His Fate Soul, which True Annihilation Realm · Peak, flowed into the five directions along the formation patterns under his feet, and the six auras were connected accordingly.