# 504
Chapter 504 – The Nether Death Realm
Seeing him in this state, Ninth Seat’s pupils shrank sharply.
Ignoring the agony in his body, he shouted to the people in the sky, “Stop him! Don’t let him reach the altar!”
Before the words had even faded, Third Seat raised his hand and slammed it downward!
The gravity field shrouding the entire manor twisted in an instant; the pull became twenty times stronger. Those still floating in weightlessness were swatted like flies by an invisible palm and smashed into the ground.
At the same moment, the heavy steel cloud suspended overhead plummeted!
A colossal shadow swallowed the estate.
“Jialan!!”
Pinned by gravity, Lin Qiye watched the thousand-square-meter slab of steel fall and yelled.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—!!
Celestial Gate’s spear thrust out several after-images, golden pillars punching huge holes through the crashing steel cloud, leaving just enough space for the group to stand.
BOOM—!!
The steel cloud slammed down, flattening the manor and everything around it. Only Lin Qiye and the others remained standing in their small pocket of safety.
Without pause they shot skyward, chasing the streak of lightning.
But Third Seat was simply too fast.
Before they could close the distance, he had already dived directly above the altar, lightning crackling around him, showing no sign of slowing.
A savage grin split his face.
“All of you—die!!”
The lightning vanished as he smashed, utterly unprotected, into the top of the altar at terrifying speed.
Thud!
A dull impact.
A blossom of blood burst over the altar. The mangled Third Seat lay atop it; gurgling crimson seeped into the cracks, trickling into the tawny Source Conductors and giving off a faint spiritual glow.
“…We’re done for,” Ninth Seat muttered.
The next instant, a terrifying black pillar exploded from the altar’s peak and lanced into the heavens!
The bright sky dimmed at a speed visible to the naked eye. A yin-cold aura spread between heaven and earth.
High above, Zhou Ping—arriving on his flying sword—saw this and his expression turned grave.
“The altar was already destroyed…” He frowned at the seemingly endless black column. “Now things are really troublesome.”
Centered on that pillar, a dark, bizarre city-outline appeared in the sky, inverted like a mirror image above the clouds, condensing rapidly…
Thick, frigid death-qi poured down from the upside-down city, making everyone feel as though they had fallen into an ice cellar.
A gloomy wind howled.
Lin Qiye and the others stared at the suspended metropolis, faces dark.
“In the end… it still awakened,” Shen Qingzhu said. He carried the badly wounded Ninth Seat aside and gently set him down. The latter gazed skyward, bitterness on his face.
“What is that thing?” Shen Qingzhu asked.
“A Nether God altar—naturally meant to summon a Nether God,” Ninth Seat answered slowly. “Have you heard of Osiris?”
Lin Qiye’s brows knitted instantly. “One of Egypt’s Nine Pillar Gods—Osiris, god of the dead?”
He knew the name, and not for the first time. In Fengdu, the spirits had told him why that city shattered; Osiris had been one of the four foreign gods who stole its fragments.
“Exactly.” Ninth Seat jerked his chin at the grey-white altar now hovering in the air. “That is what summons him. The inverted city above us is his… Nether Death Realm.”
“But why would an altar to summon the Egyptian god of death appear in Lintang?” Baili Pangpang asked, bewildered.
“At first I didn’t know, but now it’s clear.” Ninth Seat closed his eyes. “That Wind-Vein Earth Dragon must have swallowed the altar while abroad, then tunneled back into Great Xia and delivered it to Lintang.”
“Why Lintang specifically?”
“No idea, but what’s certain is the Church of the Ancient Gods wants to bypass Great Xia’s border defenses, summon Osiris directly, destroy the current order, and usher in the dark, evil age they crave…”
“Inviting a wolf into the house?” Baili Pangpang cursed. “Damn the Church of the Ancient Gods.”
“A group controlled by evil gods will stop at nothing. They’re a cancer on Great Xia.” Ninth Seat sighed. “We fought this hard… and still failed to stop it.”
Cao Yuan mused, “But what’s the point? If a Nether God descends inside Great Xia, our gods won’t sit idle. Even Loki and Indra met defeat here—what can one Osiris hope to accomplish?”
“I wonder the same. With Great Xia’s gods present, why would Osiris answer the summons and come alone…? Is he rushing to his death?”
Ninth Seat’s frown deepened.
In the sky, the inverted Nether Death Realm grew ever more solid. All of Lintang was plunged into darkness; no light could penetrate the black city. Though it was late autumn, the temperature plummeted to eight or nine degrees below zero—unheard of in the south.
Dense death-qi rolled overhead. At the center of the inverted realm, a reflection of the grey altar appeared, the black pillar linking the two like a mirror flipping the world.
From within the pillar, a withered figure in pale robes and a gold-bound sash stepped out. His sockets were sunken, skin bloodless, black and cracked like a corpse long dead. A golden crook in his hand glowed with eerie light.
He stood at the very center of the mirror: above him, the real modern world; below, the dark, bizarre Nether Death Realm.
Complete, overwhelming divine might descended.
This was no mere avatar like the Yama king that had appeared in Fengdu—this was the true, full-power body of the Egyptian god of death.
His gaze swept the modern world above, those pupil-less white eyes seeming to pierce space, searching.
“I, great lord of the Nether, Osiris, wielder of death and eternal life, have arrived…
Gods of Great Xia—
where… are you?”
Clang—!!
A clear sword-cry rang through the air.
The next moment, a man in a black shirt, sword-case on his back, hovered before him.
A breeze lifted the hem of his shirt.
He raised his head slowly.
“You… think you’re worthy of the gods of Great Xia taking action?”