Chapter 3089: Two Gods Fall
After leaving the divine temple, the Human Skin Lantern said, "What do you think, will Yuling Shen compromise?"
The Big-Headed Cloth Doll let out a sharp laugh. "Yuling Shen was severely wounded before, and her lifespan has been draining away. She most likely won't survive the next Eon Calamity. If it were just her alone, she might very well fight us to the death."
"But just now, she didn't make a move against us, which shows she's not that kind of emotionless god. In the end, she cares about the survival of her race."
"The Yecha Clan is her bond! Now that we've grasped that, no matter how high her cultivation, she can't stir up any waves. She can only resign herself to fate."
The Human Skin Lantern said, "That was quite dangerous just now. Both of us suffered not-insignificant injuries. With Yuling Shen's cultivation, if she had struck out fiercely, we might not have been able to retreat unscathed."
The Big-Headed Cloth Doll was quite smug. "No need to worry. Now that Zhang Ruochen has stirred up public anger and borrowed the momentum of the Heavenly Venerable and Void Heaven, what we couldn't do or dared not do before, we can now push through directly. The Hundred Clans Royal City should have been taken long ago!"
"Besides, the Yecha Clan was reckless and gave us a handle to grab. Naturally, we have to squeeze them dry to the bone."
The Human Skin Lantern laughed loudly. "This strike against the Yecha Clan must be ruthless. Only then can we make the various small clans in the Hundred Clans Royal City tremble in fear, all come to pledge allegiance, and willingly submit to the Darkness Temple. From now on, the Divine Stones and tributes we receive each year will surely increase significantly, and we won't have to worry about finding cultivation resources."
The Human Skin Lantern and the Big-Headed Cloth Doll broke through the air, about to fly out of the Yecha Clan Ancestral Realm's atmosphere, when they crashed into a layer of light curtain and fell into a space bubble wrapped in formation inscription patterns.
The Human Skin Lantern thought the Yecha Clan had activated a divine formation to trap them. Dark divine light flickered in his hand, and a Supreme Sacred Artifact War Axe appeared, heavy enough to split heaven and earth.
His hair disheveled, he roared angrily, "How dare you! Yuling Shen, if you dare touch us, the Hall Master will level the Yecha Clan Ancestral Realm today, demote you to the lowest divine plaything, and make you the shame of the entire Yecha Clan."
"Whoosh!"
Above, within the divine formation, a beam of light, bright to the extreme, slashed straight down.
The Human Skin Lantern let out a long howl, mobilizing the dark divine power within him. Dense divine patterns around him surged upward as he swung the black metal war axe, cleaving toward the light.
Two powerful divine forces clashed head-on.
Only then did the Human Skin Lantern realize that the light falling from above was emitted by a stone axe.
He was greatly shocked. "Desolate... Heaven..."
"Boom!"
The war axe in his hand shattered, and even his human-skin divine body exploded.
Around the shattered skin, divine fire spread, and thick black divine qi churned.
The Human Skin Lantern's cultivation was deep and powerful. In the Dark Great Triangle Star Domain, his skin had been shattered several times, but he had always escaped and preserved his life. As long as even a fingernail-sized piece of skin escaped, he could reform his body.
The shattered skin, the blazing divine fire, and the river-like rule divine patterns immediately fled, crashing against the formation inscriptions that sealed the surrounding space.
"Human Skin Lantern, before this god, do you think you can still escape?"
Desolate Heaven revealed his true form, his palm pressing outward, forming a massive vortex that sucked the skin, divine fire, and rule divine patterns all into his hand.
Desolate Heaven's palm was thick with death qi, like a five-fingered world. In an instant, the screaming Human Skin Lantern was refined into divine form annihilation.
A Great God is indeed difficult to kill completely.
But Desolate Heaven wielded a vast amount of Death Esoterica, making him a god-killer among god-killers.
Absorbing the Death Esoterica that the Human Skin Lantern had mastered, Desolate Heaven's body blazed with death divine light, turning the entire world pitch black. "Excellent, that's enough! From now on, I, Desolate Heaven, am the Death Master God."
If not for the divine formation that Yu Yao had set up to envelop this world, the moment he became the Death Master God, all the death rules in the entire star domain would have converged on him like a thousand armies.
The Big-Headed Cloth Doll had tried several times to break the formation but failed each time.
Only when Yu Yao's figure appeared at the center of a circular divine formation array disk did it realize that something was terribly wrong.
In terms of spiritual power, Yu Yao surpassed it.
In terms of formation mastery, the gap was far more than a single level.
The Big-Headed Cloth Doll grew panicked, dense spiritual power threads appearing around it. "Desolate Heaven, if you dare oppose the Darkness Temple, there will be no place for you in the Hell Realm. The Hall Master must have already sensed the Human Skin Lantern's fall and will descend here at any moment."
Desolate Heaven said calmly, "Wubian? This isn't the Darkness Temple's territory. This is the edge of the Hell Realm. Who calls the shots here, don't you know? Do you think Wubian's spiritual power can see who killed you?"
The Big-Headed Cloth Doll was shocked and immediately struck at Yu Yao.
Desolate Heaven's stone axe spun out, severing all the spiritual power threads. One axe broke the spiritual power field, striking heavily on the Big-Headed Cloth Doll's body, sending it crashing into the center of a divine formation.
"Plop!"
The divine formation world was a blue-green lake, and the Big-Headed Cloth Doll fell into the water.
Desolate Heaven charged into the lake, grabbed the Big-Headed Cloth Doll, and refined it to death with Death Esoterica.
Thus fell a powerhouse with spiritual power at the eightieth rank. The spiritual power storm unleashed at the moment of death couldn't break through Desolate Heaven's Dayan Qiankun protective light shield, failing to harm him in the slightest.
...
Inside the divine temple.
Ailianjun said, "Master, even if we must fight to the death, we absolutely cannot agree to the Darkness Temple's outrageous demands. Otherwise, from now on, the Yecha Clan's clansmen will never be able to hold their heads high in the world."
The Ancestral Realm World Venerable's expression was dark. "We can issue a death decree, calling on all Yecha Clan cultivators to launch attacks on the Darkness Temple's territory. Mobilize all gods, whether in the Ancestral Realm or outside, and disperse them. If we can destroy one realm of the Darkness Temple, destroy it; if we can annihilate one star, annihilate it. If the Darkness Temple truly wants to destroy our Yecha Clan, they will pay a heavy price."
A Saint-realm cultivator self-detonating their Sacred Source would cause no small amount of destruction.
With hundreds of thousands of Saint-realm cultivators in the Yecha Clan, if they truly fought to the death, they could destroy half of the Darkness Temple's mortal world and sever its foundation.
Moreover, such a calamity wouldn't be resolved in just a few hundred or thousand years!
As long as the Yecha Clan wasn't wiped out in a single day, the Darkness Temple would suffer eternal backlash.
A high-ranking god named Yunshangxu said, "If we really do that, the Yecha Clan will be finished! The top priority is still to awaken the two ancestors and have them negotiate with the Darkness Temple. Perhaps the price we have to pay can be reduced."
...
Yuling Shen coldly observed the disputes among the gods in the temple. She could see that some gods resented her and the Ancestral Realm World Venerable, believing they had brought disaster upon the Yecha Clan, and were inclined to submit to the Darkness Temple.
If Night Sky God Lord hadn't submitted to Wubian, Yuling Shen would have truly wanted to issue a death decree and fight the Darkness Temple to the death.
She believed that then, the Darkness Temple would likely back down and not push so ruthlessly.
But, beneath the ancestors, she was the number one powerhouse. Yet Night Sky God Lord was also at the Tai Xu realm, possessing extraordinary prestige within the Yecha Clan, and could very well overturn her death decree.
Just then, Yuling Shen's expression changed, and she flew out of the temple.
The gods inside also sensed something and immediately chased after her.
They saw two balls of fire falling from the sky.
When they hit the ground, the Human Skin Lantern's skin and the Big-Headed Cloth Doll's cloth body both burned into black dust.
Two great gods of the Darkness Temple, with transcendent status...
Had fallen!
"How could this be, how could this be..."
"The Human Skin Lantern's cultivation had reached the peak of the Tai Bai realm. And the Big-Headed Cloth Doll was an existence with spiritual power at the eightieth rank. Who could have killed them so silently?"
"Could it be that an ancestor made a move?"
"Don't talk nonsense."
Yuling Shen's fair, jade-like face changed repeatedly. She looked toward the direction of Xinghuantian, her gaze icy cold.
For two great gods to be killed within the Yecha Clan Ancestral Realm, and she had sensed nothing, and the Darkness Temple Hall Master hadn't come to rescue them—there was no doubt that someone with extraordinary spiritual power had masked the heavenly secrets earlier.
On the edge of the Hell Realm, who had such ability?
Besides the two on Xinghuantian and Xingtiaya, who else could it be?
But would the Darkness Temple see it that way? They would only think that the Yecha Clan, using an ancient formation, had killed the Human Skin Lantern and the Big-Headed Cloth Doll.
This was no different from a declaration of war!
Yuling Shen's divine voice spread across the Ancestral Realm. "Immediately activate all defensive formations and realm-protecting divine patterns of the Ancestral Realm. Activate the war fortresses. The moment of life and death for the Yecha Clan has arrived!"
...
A day later.
Zhang Ruochen was stopped a hundred million miles away from the Yecha Clan Ancestral Realm. Without even needing to calculate, he knew that the relationship between the Yecha Clan and the Darkness Temple must have deteriorated, and war was imminent.
So, he released the Yecha Clan Chief from the pearl.
"It's the Chief."
"The Chief is back!"
Seeing the Yecha Clan Chief, the soldiers were all excited and bowed to the void.
Soon, Ailianjun flew out from a war fortress and escorted the Yecha Clan Chief into the formation, heading straight for the Ancestral Realm. Zhang Ruochen had naturally hidden himself and didn't show his face.
The Yecha Clan Chief asked, "What exactly happened? Is war truly unavoidable?"
Ailianjun's expression was heavy. "The Darkness Temple's Hall Master Wubian sent the Human Skin Lantern and the Big-Headed Cloth Doll to the Ancestral Realm to demand accountability and propose a huge compensation, but they died within the Ancestral Realm."
The Yecha Clan Chief's face changed. Although the Yecha Clan had previously joined forces with Zhang Ruochen to ambush and kill a large number of Darkness Temple cultivators, that matter hadn't spread.
If there were sufficient benefits, the Darkness Temple could completely suppress this incident.
Moreover, in the Dark Great Triangle Star Domain, no great god-level powerhouse had died at the hands of the Yecha Clan, so there was room for negotiation.
Could the Darkness Temple possibly want to destroy the entire Yecha Clan over such a loss?
The Yecha Clan wasn't an ordinary small clan. If it retaliated, it could even affect the war situation between the Heavenly Court and Hell. Moreover, even if the Yecha Clan was destroyed, it would trigger countless adverse consequences.
Wouldn't the various small clans in the Hundred Clans Royal City feel a sense of sympathy for the fox's death?
Although they couldn't resist the Darkness Temple, they could choose to attach themselves to the Ten Great Clans or the Destiny Temple. Wouldn't the Darkness Temple then end up with nothing?