Chapter 2031: Demigod's Remnant Demise
"Release him." Meng Jingzhe said for the third time, but this time his voice was far weaker than before: "I swear by my name, Meng Jingzhe, and by my lifelong honor that after you release him, I will not harm a single hair on your head. Let today's matter be settled here and now. If we meet again in the future, I will not make things difficult for you."
Given his identity and status, this oath was extraordinarily weighty. But as the words fell, facing Yun Che's gaze full of mockery, even he himself suddenly felt... as if he had just spouted a pile of nonsense.
"Meng Jingzhe?" Yun Che's words dripped with sarcasm. "I've never even heard that name. As for your honor... you know full well what kind of goods Meng Jianzhou is. And as his guardian and overseer, you turned a blind eye to his actions and never once stopped him. Honor? You dare speak of those two words?"
Meng Jingzhe's chest heaved, seething with anger—but not entirely directed at Yun Che. At least half of it was aimed at Meng Jianzhou.
He had wanted to stop him, to admonish him, but could he actually stop him? During the Mist Sea trial, one was supposed to immerse oneself in danger, to temper the heart and seek breakthroughs through peril. But Meng Jianzhou... whenever he faced an Abyss Beast even slightly dangerous, he would panic completely. After barely escaping, he would flee like a dog with its tail between its legs back to the outer edges of the Mist Sea, then vent his frustrations by tormenting the weak around the periphery.
He had embodied the saying "rotten mud that can't be plastered on the wall" to its utmost extreme. Meng Jingzhe, as his mentor, had been bound to him all this time, and for the rest of his life, he was forced to be tied to him. And as one of the only two legitimate sons of the Dreamless Divine Venerable, he had once been proud and confident. In his youth, Meng Jianzhou had absolutely deserved the title of "genius"—he was held in high regard by everyone, including the Dreamless Divine Venerable, Meng Kongchan, who had placed great hopes on him. But later, with the birth of Meng Kongchan's youngest son, Meng Jianyuan, who awakened his divine rank at an early age, Meng Jianzhou's status in the Weaving Dream Divine Kingdom plummeted. Under the immense disparity, his mind completely wandered. He wanted to surpass Meng Jianyuan in everything, but Meng Kongchan was no ordinary person—how could he not see through his son's intentions? He grew increasingly displeased with him...
Fortunately, Meng Jianyuan died. A death that was "frightening but safe."
But Meng Jianzhou hadn't enjoyed his relief for long. Just two years later, his previously mediocre younger brother, Meng Jianxi, suddenly awakened his divine rank...
And became the current Dreamweaving Divine Son.
Meng Jianzhou's mentality shattered.
Although Meng Jianyuan was a peerless genius who awakened his divine rank at birth, he was still young and naive about the ways of the world, making him vulnerable to schemes.
But Meng Jianxi was completely different. In obscurity, he had quietly bided his time, drawing no undue attention to himself. Once his divine rank awakened, he burst forth like a whale breaking the sea, shaking the entire Weaving Dream Divine Kingdom.
A gentle stream trickles, eventually gathering into a vast ocean. Although Meng Jianyuan's death was widely rumored to be the work of other divine kingdoms, many secretly suspected Meng Jianzhou, though there was no proof. However, this inevitably made Meng Jianxi extremely wary of him. When it came to suppressing and trampling on him, he showed no mercy whatsoever. With both his mentality and willpower shattered, Meng Jianzhou had made virtually no progress in recent years. Instead, his temperament and behavior grew increasingly intolerable. He dared not even breathe loudly in front of Meng Jianxi, while outside, he indulged in extravagance and violence, desperately trying to vent the hatred building in his heart a thousand times over.
This Mist Sea trial had pushed Meng Jingzhe to the brink of despair, almost to the point of giving up completely. More than once, he sighed inwardly... This Meng Jianzhou was a disgrace to the Weaving Dream Divine Kingdom!
But no matter how worthless he was, he was still the son of a Divine Venerable. His safety had to be ensured at all costs. Meng Jingzhe struggled to calm his emotions, and his expression returned to composure: "Yun Che, you may not trust me. But you just heard—his soul bears a Soul Imprint left by the Divine Venerable. If you kill him, there truly will be no turning back. You, and all your family and clansmen, will have nowhere to hide in this vast Abyss."
"You haven't made a move yet, which suggests you don't want to die either." Meng Jingzhe no longer tried to suppress Yun Che with his soul pressure, instead softening his aura and tone: "There isn't really any deep grudge between you two. Why force a mutual destruction? Tell me, what will it take for you to release him?"
Seeming to sense his sincerity, Yun Che's eyes sharpened slightly less. He said coldly, "If I could live, who would want to die? What I've always wanted is simple: to ensure I can leave here alive. But how to ensure that... I can't trust any guarantee you make. Only what I say counts."
"Name your terms." Meng Jingzhe suppressed his breathing and said.
"Simple." Yun Che dragged Meng Jianzhou back step by step. After a hundred paces, he removed his hand from Meng Jianzhou's neck, and in his palm appeared a red orb.
Meng Jingzhe could faintly sense a rather peculiar spatial aura floating above it.
"This Space Profound Stone will open a teleportation profound formation lasting five breaths." Yun Che said slowly. "It connects to another teleportation formation. I will step into it with him. You must not follow. When the teleportation formation is about to disappear after five breaths, I will send him back. Only then can I ensure my complete retreat!"
Meng Jingzhe frowned deeply: "But if, within five breaths, before the teleportation formation disappears, you do not send him back..."
Yun Che grinned: "Since we both can't trust each other, I might as well kill him right now!"
"Wait!" Meng Jingzhe cried out in panic... Life for life, Yun Che was nothing compared to Meng Jianzhou in his eyes. He could only grind his teeth heavily: "Fine, I agree to your terms."
He had wanted to add a few more threats and oppressive remarks, but faced with Yun Che's terrifying gaze, he swallowed them back.
Outside the divine kingdom, to think there was such a ruthless person... who completely disregarded the majesty of the divine kingdom and had pushed him to this point.
"Very well." Yun Che narrowed his eyes and issued his final warning: "Until the very last moment before the teleportation formation closes, I will have him in my grasp. If you dare to follow, we'll both be destroyed immediately!"
With that, without waiting for Meng Jingzhe's response, he activated the Cosmic Array Stone in his hand.
A teleportation profound formation, barely ten feet wide, slowly opened before Yun Che.
As a teleportation formation, it did not emit the pure white light one would expect, but instead shimmered with a faint crimson profound glow.
Yun Che instantly moved forward with Meng Jianzhou and vanished into the crimson divine light.
Meng Jingzhe quickly shifted his position, arriving at the edge of the space formation. Only then did he finally let out a heavy sigh of relief, but his steps halted at the edge of the formation, not daring to advance half a step.
One breath...
Two breaths...
Three breaths...
Meanwhile, on the other side, as the scenery shifted before him, Yun Che did not pause for a moment. He forcefully dragged Meng Jianzhou and shot off into the distance at top speed.
"You..."
Meng Jianzhou barely let out a startled cry before being struck speechless by the overwhelmingly thick abyssal dust.
Rolling clouds of abyssal dust swallowed him whole like an overturning tide... Though still the Mist Sea, compared to the outer area they had been in, this was an entirely different world—a terrifying abyss that only existed in nightmares.
Four breaths...
Meng Jingzhe's spirit was tightly concentrated, his arm already extended, ready to protect Meng Jianzhou the moment he appeared in the formation.
Five breaths...
Meng Jianzhou still had not appeared. The teleportation formation, shimmering with strange red light, did not disappear either.
Six breaths!
Meng Jingzhe's five fingers clenched tightly. He no longer hesitated and stepped into the formation.
The world shifted. The already dim vision suddenly darkened several times over.
Abyssal dust poured in from all directions, startling Meng Jingzhe for an instant.
This was still the Mist Sea, but the abyssal dust was so dense... it was a depth he had never set foot in before!
But now, he had no time to care about anything else. His powerful spiritual sense strained against the suppression of the abyssal dust, radiating outward... Finally, just as his detection range was about to reach its limit, he touched the aura of Yun Che and Meng Jianzhou, who were fleeing at full speed.
"You... actually... DARED... to trick... me!"
Meng Jingzhe gritted his words through his teeth. Even if Yun Che had thrown Meng Jianzhou to the ground and fled alone, he wouldn't have been this enraged, and he might not even have given chase.
Meng Jianzhou's life was paramount. At this depth of the Mist Sea, he had to take him away immediately.
With a low roar, his profound energy erupted with pent-up fury, shooting after Yun Che like a bolt of lightning.
Sensing the sudden burst of aura behind him, Yun Che instead slowed down, turning leisurely in midair, a strange glint flashing in his eyes.
With the abyssal dust as cover, if he wanted to shake off Meng Jingzhe's spiritual sense, two breaths would have been enough, let alone six.
What he wanted was never a simple retreat.
It was to eliminate the root of trouble forever!
And incidentally...
Just as Meng Jingzhe's body surged forward, two points of gray dim light suddenly appeared in his pupils—like hellfire lanterns suddenly lit.
Cultivators from the Weaving Dream Divine Kingdom were all adept in soul force, which also gave them a keener perception of danger. The moment those two points of light entered his pupils, a chill pierced straight into the depths of his soul.
Then that chill frantically surged through every meridian in his body, causing him to convulse and curl up from head to soul.
What... is... that...?
The sudden chill and fear plunged Meng Jingzhe into a momentary daze. When he came to, a black shadow had already descended above him.
The pressure released by that black shadow instantly shattered the profound energy around him. The sounds of bones being crushed under force echoed throughout his body, like thunderclaps.
Divine... Extreme!?
These two terrifying words flashed through Meng Jingzhe's mind, nearly shattering his seven souls and six spirits in an instant.
Without even a shred of will to resist, Meng Jingzhe struck out with a palm, his profound energy compounded with the recoil force to propel his body into a wild retreat.
There was already a vast chasm in profound power between the mid-stage Divine Annihilation Realm and the Divine Extreme Realm.
And here, deep in the Mist Sea, the disparity only grew. Under the dual suppression of the abyssal dust and the Divine Extreme Abyss Beast, he could not release even one-tenth of his power. His body felt as heavy as if every cell were weighed down by a thousand pounds of boulders. He could only watch helplessly as that black shadow drew closer and closer, closer and closer...
The terror reflected in his pupils from those two points of dim light slowly turned into a dim despair.
BOOM————
After fleeing at full power for a full six breaths, Yun Che had already put a great distance between himself and the scene. But when the Abyss Lin God's power erupted, the terrifying force, even across such a vast distance, still violently flung Yun Che back, sending him tumbling several miles away.
"Hiss!"
Yun Che sucked in a sharp breath.
So this was the terror of the Divine Extreme Realm. It was hard to imagine how much more powerful a true god's power must be.
Although he had once been in close contact with Jie Yuan, who was above the true gods, in that fragile world, Jie Yuan probably had to be careful even with her breathing, and she usually tried to suppress the natural aura leaking from her body.
He had never had the chance to truly experience the terror of the true god or demon god level through Jie Yuan.
A million miles of Mist Sea ground collapsed in an instant. Meng Jingzhe's body was slammed deep into the earth, to an unfathomable depth.
But as long as there was life, the Abyss Beast's instinct for destruction would not cease. The beast claw of the Abyss Lin God swirled with gray light of destruction, stomping straight down onto the collapsing ground.
BOOM!
The destructive force from the previous moment was still wreaking havoc, and a second calamity descended, splitting the already overturned earth with thousands of new cracks.
Yun Che quickly raised a barrier before him, barely managing to avoid being thrown even further back.
He couldn't help but sigh inwardly: his level of control was still too low, unable to precisely direct the area of its power output... otherwise, he could stand right on top of its head and enjoy the show.
Amidst the chain collapse of the Mist Sea ground, Meng Jingzhe's figure shot out. His face was bloodless, half his body stained with blood, his left arm hanging limp. In his right hand, he held a silver longsword, and he reversed direction, flying toward the two most conspicuous points of dim light—the eyes of the Abyss Lin God.
Under the shadow of death, there was only desperate struggle.
CLANG!!
The flying sword, carrying the remnants of a demigod's power, struck the eyelid of the Abyss Lin God, but only produced a piercing metallic clash. The sword wielded by a demigod of a divine kingdom was no ordinary weapon. But the Lin God, as a guardian beast, had an incredibly tough body. The silver sword was sent flying far away by the impact, leaving only a scratch less than an inch deep on the struck spot, not even drawing a drop of blood.
And then, the enormous qilin claw of the Abyss Lin God slammed heavily toward Meng Jingzhe.
BOOM!!
The fleeing demigod was smacked down like a lowly fly by a single claw.
The sound of breaking bones was as harsh as if it had rung right next to Yun Che's ear... Yun Che instantly recognized it as Meng Jingzhe's spine being brutally snapped.
With his spine broken, even a demigod was crippled.
The Abyss Lin God let out a muffled roar, and its qilin claw wildly hammered down at Meng Jingzhe's location.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM—Abyss Beasts' attacks were never flashy; they were almost always pure destructive power. Each strike of the qilin claw, infused with Divine Extreme might, caused the ground to boil and space to tremble. Meanwhile, Meng Jingzhe's demigod aura rapidly leaked away, growing weaker and weaker...
Just as Meng Jingzhe's aura withered to the point of being almost imperceptible, the destructive rumbling suddenly stopped. The Abyss Lin God's half-raised qilin claw froze strangely in midair, not descending again for a long time.
A chilling wind howled. Yun Che, carrying Meng Jianzhou, drifted lightly to the side of the Abyss Lin God, glancing sideways at Meng Jingzhe.
Meng Jingzhe lay sprawled in a huge crater. This demigod, who once looked down upon all living beings, was now so miserable that even the word "gruesome" fell short.
He was less a person and more a pile of barely connected rotten flesh.
But his eyeballs still moved slightly, and there was a faint, threadlike breath.
After all, he was a demigod, one foot already in the realm of gods. Even so, he still clung to a sliver of life... though such an existence was worse than a clean death.
"I told you not to follow. Why are you so disobedient?"
Yun Che shook his head with a pitying expression, then casually threw Meng Jianzhou to the ground.
Although Meng Jianzhou had had his heart pierced, it was hardly a serious injury. Yun Che hadn't even bothered to seal his profound energy.
But the moment he was thrown to the ground, Meng Jianzhou's limbs trembled and curled up. Not only did he not take the chance to flee, he couldn't even stand. His face was as pale as paper, and his mouth opened and closed for a long time without producing a sound.
"Guh... ugh..."
A sound unlike any human came from Meng Jingzhe's throat. Like a dying man's last gasp, his vision cleared slightly.
He saw the Abyss Lin God, more terrifying than ten thousand nightmares, now standing motionless. He saw Yun Che floating at the side of that hideous beast...
This scene was more absurd than all the most beautiful dreams of his life combined.
After the absurdity came an extreme terror that swallowed up all his remaining consciousness in an instant.
Yun Che reached out, and an invisible soul light pierced straight into Meng Jingzhe's Soul Sea.
With his Soul Sea invaded, the soul he had cultivated his entire life instinctively tried to fight back. But before his remnant soul could gather, a dragon roar that seemed to come from ancient times rang out in his Soul Sea, shattering his remaining soul power in an instant.
"Hmm..." Yun Che withdrew his soul power and said calmly, "It seems there's no Soul Imprint. After all, who would be willing to scatter a part of their soul to leave a mark on a piece of garbage like you?"
Meng Jianzhou's earlier words had given him a reminder, making him a bit more cautious.
"So then. Die in peace."
Yun Che lightly flicked his finger, and a wisp of profound energy shot toward Meng Jingzhe.
That wisp of profound energy was so weak it couldn't even wound a Profound Origin realm cultivator, yet in an instant, it extinguished the last spark of life in this demigod of a divine kingdom.
"Jing... Jing... Grandfather..." Meng Jianzhou finally managed to force out a sound, his pupils rapidly contracting and dilating as if they might burst at any moment.
Meng Jingzhe could no longer respond to him. The last remnants of color in his still barely intact eyeballs slowly faded away.
"Your turn." Yun Che crossed his arms and looked at Meng Jianzhou with leisurely amusement. "Tell me, how do you want to die?"
The words that reached his ears made Meng Jianzhou's entire body stiffen. He immediately rolled and crawled backward: "Don't... don't kill me... don't kill me..."
Even though his profound energy wasn't sealed, he couldn't muster a single shred of power. His legs trembled so violently they seemed ready to fall apart at any moment.
He feared Yun Che. He feared the Abyss Beast that had brutally killed Meng Jingzhe. And he feared even more... the sight of the two of them standing together.
Nothing in the world was more terrifying than something completely beyond one's understanding.
Yun Che raised his hand and casually beckoned backward.
Immediately, the Abyss Lin God slowly stepped back, retreating a thousand zhang, then quietly crouched down on the ground.
This scene shocked Meng Jianzhou so much that he lost all color in his face.