# Chapter 38: Soulflame Gaze
At this moment, the Sixth Abyss.
Since one thousand two hundred and fifty-seven years ago, when all Greater Demons above Gold-rank in the Sixth Abyss were wiped out for unknown reasons, nothing had ever been worse than what was happening now.
At least, that was the case for the demons.
It was the five hundred and twenty-eighth cycle of lava extinguishing and solidifying. On an ordinary, bloody day like any other, newly born little demons had just opened their yellow eyes. Wandering demons hunted each other in every corner of the Sixth Abyss for energy. Huge war beasts, raised by their lords, leisurely chewed on the corpses of dead monsters one by one. But on this day, so ordinary it was unremarkable, they faced an unprecedented calamity.
The rule of demon lords over this land was rapidly collapsing.
Cities were destroyed. Fortresses were ravaged by flames and dragon claws. At some unknown point, a force of destruction began walking across the land. Starting from the Black Sea Great Plains, it raced outward at a speed beyond demonic comprehension, granting death equally to all unfortunate enough to encounter it.
One fortress, two fortresses, over a dozen demon fortresses were completely annihilated. From top to bottom, from lords to abyss worms, no life was spared. In just a few short days, nearly seventy thousand demons had been slaughtered. Black smoke from burning corpses rose to the heavens, becoming part of the dim clouds.
Most of the slain demons didn't even know what was happening. In truth, they were killed before they could react, because many demons lacked organs for rational thought. Before becoming Greater Demons, the thinking organs of most low-level demons were merely slightly complex nerve clusters and chaotic souls formed from countless fragments. This was why demon warlocks could easily control them. But aside from those ordinary demons, many demon lords had received secret information early on.
They actually knew the truth of the destruction, as well as the enemy's route and purpose.
Unfortunately, arrogance prevented these lords from avoiding their foe. They chose to witness the enemy's power and attempt to resist it. This decision ultimately cost them their lives.
Now, on the fourth day of the nameless destruction's spread, all demon lords had to admit one thing.
The Sixth Abyss, which had always aggressively invaded other worlds, was now being invaded by a powerful being from another world.
On the wide black magma-rock plains, gray-black stone buildings were scattered everywhere, with tens of thousands of low and mid-rank demons living among them. Though these stone buildings were crude in workmanship and twisted in design, they represented one of the few signs of civilization in the abyss. At the edge of this rough city, countless little demon laborers were digging black volcanic rock under the whips of winged demon overseers, piling them into small mountains. A dozen low-rank eye demons rotated their giant eyes to inspect and select fragments containing trace amounts of magic, setting them aside. These fragments would eventually be transported by a whole squad of berserk demons to the city center, to a massive black crude tower, becoming part of it.
A ferocious giant eye emblem flickered with an unstable black-red light on the tower's surface. Obvious magical fluctuations flowed through the entire tower. This was the local demon lord's way of displaying its power. In the resource-poor abyss, building such a magic tower was no simple feat. If not a sovereign, then at least a peak Greater Demon lord would have the strength to construct it.
Now, in the dark central chamber of the black tower, a powerful thousand-eyed eye demon waved its tentacles, which were embedded with over a dozen secondary eyes, silently listening to the argument among over a dozen demon lords in the magical projection before it.
Rotting Ruins Forest, Fire River, Styx Port, Pus Blood City... Around the Black Sea Great Plains of the Sixth Abyss, almost all powerful demon lords had joined this magical projection meeting. These ferocious beings, who would normally smash each other's brains out upon meeting, were now forcibly suppressing their destructive urges, angrily arguing and conversing with other lords.
The reason was to discuss how to deal with the otherworldly being that was rapidly advancing and conducting mass slaughter.
Demons were free and undisciplined. Lords rarely engaged in meaningful communication. There were only two possibilities for them to meet peacefully: one was being summoned simultaneously by an Abyss Lord, and the other was one side submitting to the other. This poor communication environment undoubtedly made their reaction to unexpected events extremely slow, especially regarding matters of external invasion.
After all, how many years had it been since anyone came to the Molten Sea Fire Prison? Demons excelled at destruction and plunder, understanding everything related to conquest and annihilation. But 'defense' and 'dealing with invasion' were beyond their capabilities. Moreover, the powerful otherworldly being's movements were so swift that even in other strong, normal worlds, it would be extremely difficult to guard against.
"My elite troops were taken by the Sovereign Lord to participate in the Blood War," said one of the projections. Most demon lords were arguing with each other or making meaningless roars, but a few were still engaging in rational conversation and information sharing. In the projection, a bone demon so huge that even magic couldn't fully capture it spoke with a muddy voice: "Including the demon lords in the Black Sea Great Plains who can't be contacted, all the destroyed demon fortresses are the same. We remaining lords can only keep less than ten thousand troops. Against a powerful being, this few troops are utterly meaningless. We can't even buy time."
It spoke the truth. In fact, because the Sixth Abyss was currently invading the outside world while also fighting a bloody war with another layer of the abyss, most demon lords and their forces had been conscripted by the Abyss Sovereign to participate in the slaughter. These remaining lords just happened to be on rotation, but most of their subordinates had also been sent to the front lines. The Sixth Abyss itself was unprecedentedly weak.
"The enemy's route is a straight line, without any turns," another demon lord spoke up. It was completely covered in ice, a rare ice-devouring demon in the Molten Sea Fire Prison. Its voice was sharp: "All the dead lords were destroyed because they took the initiative to provoke and attack. In fact, the brain demon lord of Corrosion Swamp was on the enemy's route, but because it was slow to react and didn't strike, it survived."
Such conversations were in the minority in the overall environment, and their actual content was limited. The main reason was that all demons who had personally witnessed the powerful being were dead, with no information leaking out. The old eye demon listened for a while longer, then wearily waved its tentacles. Its body was like an octopus with dozens of clawed limbs, but at its center was not a strangely shaped head, but a giant eye like a dark gem. Eye demons had no vocal organs and could only communicate through mental fluctuations, so facing this magical projection meeting, it could only listen.
But precisely because it couldn't communicate, its focused attention allowed it to notice changes in every magical projection.
So, when a certain projection that had also been silent showed strange changes, it was the first to notice.
It seemed to be a real-time broadcast from a detection array, viewed from a high altitude looking down. The image was very stable. The one holding the detection array should be a high-rank winged demon, flying rapidly beneath the clouds, moving toward an unknown direction.
It wasn't just the eye demon that noticed this strange change. The arguing voices of other demon lords gradually faded. Somehow, perhaps by instinct, their differently ferocious faces all fixed their gaze on this silent image, which seemed to be just a daily patrol by a winged demon carrying a detection array.
"This is the Gray Salt Mountains," the ice-devouring demon lord suddenly spoke. "According to the route, the powerful otherworldly being should be here now."
No demon answered it. All the lords frowned, staring at the image. A vague sense of dangerous foreboding echoed in the hearts of those present, but naturally, no demon would admit to feeling uneasy.
The winged demon continued flying. The situation around the Gray Salt Mountains was very stable. In the detection array's view, there were no wandering demons fighting, no magical beasts or other native abyss creatures roaming. The whole world was in a rare state of peace, without any conflict.
It looked normal, but for the abyss, this was the greatest abnormality! A vast mountain range with not a single wandering demon or magical beast? How could that be?
Soon, the anomaly appeared.
The detection array twisted its angle slightly. All the demon lords could see that at the edge of the distant gray rock mountains, a huge column of smoke was rising and rapidly moving toward the other side of the range. Several lords left their seats, pressing closer to the magical projection. They seemed to want to observe the situation within that smoke column more closely.
No need to think. Within that huge smoke column was the true form of the 'otherworldly being' they had been heatedly discussing!
The image suddenly distorted, as if the signal was unstable, but it quickly returned to normal. The smoke column was rapidly approaching the detection array's location. Many demon lords present subconsciously held their breath. They all knew that the enemy's true appearance would soon appear before their eyes.
"Boom, boom, boom—" A low rumbling like thunder sounded, coming from within the smoke column. At first faint, it quickly became deafening. The image also became extremely unstable. The winged demon's flight path began to twist, as if affected by a powerful pressure, wanting to instinctively move away. But the demon lord controlling it naturally wouldn't allow this. After a painful mid-air struggle, the winged demon obediently carried the detection array toward the smoke column.
The first thing to enter the demon lords' view was a mass of golden-red flames.
It was a flame demon running at high speed. Its entire body burned with pure flames that had not a trace of abyss aura. Like a meteor, it dragged a long tail of fire as it moved rapidly across the ground. The pressure emanating from this flame demon made the flying winged demon tremble. Most demon lords on the other end of the image also frowned—they noticed that, aside from its strange pure flames, the flame demon's speed had already reached several times the speed of sound. This indicated its strength had reached Greater Demon peak. And flame demons were not a race known for speed.
But clearly, the flame demon was not the source of the smoke column. The lords suppressed their emotions and continued watching the image.
The next to appear was a huge black dragon with a peculiar appearance.
At the very front of the cone-shaped smoke cloud was a black dragon running at high speed. It had a massive body over thirty meters tall, its sturdy and streamlined form displaying a kind of muscular beauty. Its limbs burned with flames like a nightmare warhorse. Every time it stepped on the ground, it caused violent explosions and tremors, which was the source of the smoke column. Though the black dragon had wings, the bone-spike-covered wings lacked the membrane for flight. Rather than flight organs, they were more like structures for stabilizing the body. Its saw-like ferocious tail occasionally lashed the ground, striking countless pale blue sparks from the solid earth of the Gray Salt Mountains.
The flame demon and the black dragon, one in front and one behind, were rapidly moving in a straight line toward the central region of the Sixth Abyss. This scene made many demon lords feel troubled. A Greater Demon peak flame demon alone could continuously destroy several understrength fortresses. Add an aberrant black dragon close to the Greater Demon rank, and this was a combination that would be very difficult for all the demon lords present to deal with together.
Buzz! The image grew increasingly distorted. Powerful energy fluctuations prevented the detection array from functioning properly. The winged demon, probably exhausted from its lord's forced control, fell from the sky. But all the demon lords present were satisfied. They now knew the enemy's true face—a powerful flame demon and an aberrant black dragon, probably from another abyss. Though such enemies were strong, they were much better than complete unknowns. At least they could prepare countermeasures.
The old eye demon felt the same. Watching the detection image falling from the sky, spinning continuously in mid-air, the wrinkled layers of skin on its body surface, representing its age, rippled one after another. This indicated the Greater Demon was in a good mood. Though it wasn't good at dealing with flame demons, high-ranking Greater Demons with extremely high magic resistance, it was more than capable of handling a black dragon. Relying on its magic tower, it was confident it could repel these two enemies.
The meeting resumed. Noisy conversation once again appeared among the magical projections. But the matter wasn't over. Something astonishing happened.
With a violent distortion of the image, the view suddenly detached from the presumably dead winged demon and flew rapidly toward the black dragon's head. In the blurry, snow-filled screen, the old eye demon seemed to vaguely see a figure wearing a dragon-head helmet.
Buzz! Its energy core suddenly stalled for a moment. All the demon lords still watching the image shuddered simultaneously.
The carrier of the detection array seemed to have fallen into someone's hands. The distortion had reached a point where nothing could be seen clearly. Twisted ripples mixed with frantically flashing snow appeared in the magical projection, yet it miraculously maintained communication. The image flipped around for a while. The unknown being seemed to be looking for which side was the viewing port. The next moment, two dim red lights appeared in the center of the now completely white communication image.
Time seemed to freeze.
"You lot."
The owner of the red light, the mysterious being's gaze seemed to penetrate through the image, directly projecting to the other end of each magical projection. It sneered, then said in a cold tone: "You're watching, aren't you?"
The next moment, time began to move again!
Crack!
Crack, crack! Crack, crack, crack, crack!
"Whaaa—!"
"My eyes! My eyes!"
With rapid sounds of objects shattering, demon lords throughout the Sixth Abyss who had participated in this projection meeting let out violent screams. Black-red flames shot from their eye sockets like pillars of fire. In the demon city built on volcanic rock, the outer layer of the huge black magic tower began to crack, then suddenly collapsed. With extremely unstable magical flows, countless magical items were destroyed by their own power, producing one violent explosion after another during the collapse!
In the crumbling control center of the black tower, the old eye demon had already burned into a fireball. It let out mental screams that stunned most of the demons in the city unconscious. The eye demon wasn't dead yet. Though all its magical power had been disrupted and self-ignited by the mysterious being's gaze, it had protected its life core. But even so, it could still recall the scene that terrified even demons.
The scarlet light point was like a deep abyss. Endless darkness swallowed all its will. The suddenly ignited flames were the only light in this abyss. They ignited the darkness, and also ignited everything within itself.
That was a gaze that burned souls, flames that destroyed minds.
At the other end of the image.
Standing atop the black dragon's head, crushing the obsidian communication array in his hand, Joshua shifted his attention to the system notification that had been silent for some time.
[Soulflame Gaze]