Chapter 252: Rout, Self-Detonation, and Escape

A moment later.

A deafening boom resounded across Heaven and Earth. On the border, hundreds of cultivators who had already begun engaging the Corpse Tide suddenly looked up, only to see a monstrous black wave rising in the depths of the vast Corpse Tide, like a meteor striking the ground, causing the sky to collapse and the earth to sink.

The sea of millions of corpses boiled; whether they were Corpse Soldiers, Corpse Generals, or Corpse Kings, all began to howl wildly. Immediately after, everyone saw two streaks of light fleeing from the sea of corpses in an extremely disheveled state, and urgent Divine Sense transmissions reached the ears of every cultivator:

"The Third Heavenly Corpse King cannot be fought head-on! All of you, retreat immediately! Retreat to Beiling Immortal City!"

"Only by relying on the Immortal City Great Array is it possible to resist this fiend!"

"Retreat quickly! We shall cover the rear here; if you delay any longer, you won't be able to leave!"

What?

With a sweep of their Divine Sense, Yang Xianlin and the other True Monarchs saw that these two True Monarchs, usually possessing an immortal air and supreme majesty, were in a disheveled state and appeared to have suffered significant injuries. Furthermore, a dark light was pursuing each of them from behind, causing the True Monarchs to reveal expressions of horror.

The defensive line was over two thousand miles away from Beiling Immortal City. Each defensive line had been equipped with a Great Array utilizing the terrain, serving as a tremendous aid in resisting the Corpse Tide. If they were to fully retreat and abandon the depth and the barrier of the Great Array, the Corpse Tide would split and flow, potentially leading directly to the fall of the entire border and bringing great trouble to other Immortal Cities.

But now, three Heavenly Corpse Kings had appeared within the Corpse Tide, one of whom was an existence comparable to the late stage of Transformation to Divinity. Since the two great True Monarchs could not match or block them, it was naturally impossible for these cultivators to resist them in the slightest.

Below Transformation to Divinity, all are ants. If they were to stay by force, it would only lead to the total annihilation of their living strength. Yang Xianlin made a decision in an instant and roared:

"All cultivators of every Immortal City, retreat immediately!"

The Divine Sense transmission swept across all directions. The cultivators of the various Immortal Cities, though shocked, followed the order; they stopped their slaughter with the Corpse Tide before them and steered their Flying Boats to retreat rapidly toward the rear.

Yet, amidst this scene of rout, a power that was incomparably vast, gloomy, and evil surged like a tsunami from the deepest part of the Corpse Tide. Millions of Corpse Demons seemed as if they had been injected with stimulants; amidst their frantic howling, their fierce flames and speed surged, rolling forward with extreme velocity just like a flood that would destroy the world.

"How can you blood-food think you can come as you please and leave as you please?"

"Stay behind, offer up your living souls and essence blood, and become one of us."

At the same time, the Corpse Bone Heavenly Demon Concubine and the other Heavenly Corpse King, who were hunting Lingjian Tianjun and Zhuhuo Tianjun, also let out shrill, strange laughs. Then, they simply abandoned the two great True Monarchs and lunged straight toward Yang Xianlin and the other Nascent Soul cultivators who were retreating.

"You wicked creature, how dare you!"

The most formidable Shi Mingkong did not pursue. Although the two great True Monarchs were heavily injured, they could not sit idly by and watch their own True Monarchs and Golden Core Cultivators be slaughtered. They immediately turned back to intercept the Corpse Bone Heavenly Demon Concubine and the other Heavenly Corpse King.

In an instant, Sword Qi crisscrossed, flames burned the sky, and corpse energy obscured the heavens. Both sides once again erupted into a world-destroying, earth-shattering battle. Thousands of Corpse Demons were instantly torn apart amidst the surging power, turning into fly ash.

But unlike before, the two great True Monarchs had originally clearly surpassed the two great Heavenly Corpses in both cultivation and methods, occupying a clear upper hand.

However, after clashing with Shi Mingkong, they seemed to have suffered heavy injuries; fighting against the two Heavenly Corpse Kings, they were now evenly matched, or even slightly at a disadvantage.

"Go!"

This opportunity could not be missed. Although Yang Xianlin and the other cultivators were extremely furious, they raced against every second, leading all the cultivators of the Immortal City to distance themselves in an instant.

Including Lu Yuan on the Flying Boat, he had absolutely no intention of intervening and followed the main force to quickly break away from the battlefield, retreating rapidly toward the rear.

Within a few breaths, the Golden Core and Foundation Establishment elites led by the Nascent Soul True Monarchs of the five Immortal Cities had calmly retreated, their figures disappearing into the horizon.

Behind them.

The pitch-black Corpse Tide spread and pursued at an unprecedented speed. At the same time, Lingjian and Zhuhuo, the two great True Monarchs who were entangled with the two Heavenly Corpse Kings, had no heart to linger any longer; they immediately forced a breath and prepared to withdraw.

But suddenly, streaks of pitch-black chains pierced the firmament, forming a massive cage that sealed off the space for a radius of over ten miles.

The pitch-black chains were not physical; they seemed to be condensed and compressed from endless corpse energy and death energy. As they rubbed against each other, they emitted inexplicably complex trembling sounds, like countless people screaming, howling, shouting, and groaning at the same time. Each sound was hoarse and desperate, never-ending until death, as if containing all the resentment, malice, pain, and cruelty of the living beings in the world.

At the same time, a massive Corpse Bone Throne was hoisted by ten thousand Corpse Demons and rose into the high sky. The figure of Shi Mingkong sat upon it, his dead, silent gaze filled with indifference:

"Without my permission, where do you two think you are going?"

The next moment, he pointed his finger lightly. The massive black chains coiled and wound, forming a tornado vortex like a strange python. Carrying black-red, eerie lightning, it mixed the void's death energy into a boiling tsunami of energy. Accompanied by rolling, thunder-like detonation sounds, it whistled and tumbled, winding down from the sky.

As Transformation to Divinity True Monarchs, Lingjian and Zhuhuo had not experienced such a critical moment in several hundred years. They each let out a sharp shout and unleashed their trump card methods without reservation.

On Lingjian Tianjun, the chilling Sword Qi had already pierced the void, forming countless sword threads that constantly intersected in the void. According to different combinations of Yin/Yang, Two Forms, Three Talents, Four Symbols, Five Elements, and Eight Trigrams, they converged into one Sword Array after another. The Sword Arrays interacted and nested layer upon layer, endless and infinite, evolving into an illusory Sword Qi Great Array filled with slaughter, sharpness, and annihilation, blocking in front of him.

On the other side, Zhuhuo Tianjun's aura exploded. An infinite, immeasurable scorching golden light suddenly burst forth in the sky, illuminating the entire world in an instant.

He himself seemed to have transformed into a blazing sun. A massive fireball, large enough to occupy the entire sky, burned fiercely, casting light ten thousand times fiercer than the sun's rays onto the world, as if to burn everything and evaporate everything with light and heat. The sky was instantly ignited, burning into a boundless sea of fire!

Subsequently, the pitch-black chains and the black dragon collided with the two True Monarchs' Sword Array and blazing sun, just like three stars crashing into each other. Destructive and dazzling brilliance filled Heaven and Earth. Amidst the silence of the world, the multicolored, violent power transformed into destructive energy that swept in all directions. Thousands of different sounds—some dull, some sharp, some clanging, some brief, some lingering—all sounded at the same time, merging into a vast, boundless, soul-shaking, destructive roar!

Infinite dazzling electric light flashed in the void and tore through the void. Wherever it passed, pitch-black space cracks that could swallow all light spread endlessly. Wherever it passed, the energy of earth, water, fire, and wind surged like boiling water, as if it were an endlessly extending giant wave that crushed and destroyed all matter and energy. With the point of the three-way collision as the center, it completely sliced the world into three impassable sections!

At the most intense point of the collision, the entire void presented a state of great destruction and nothingness. Within a radius of several dozen miles, hundreds of thousands of Corpse Demons were likely instantly evaporated under this earth-shattering collision, while the destructive ripples continued to surge and roar, as if to completely scramble time and space.

Under such a world-destroying scene, Lingjian Tianjun and Zhuhuo Tianjun both turned pale, blood spilling from their mouths and noses. The flickering spiritual light on their bodies trembled and shattered rapidly, and they retreated wildly into the void in a powerless state. On the Corpse Bone Throne in the void, Shi Mingkong remained unmoved and laughed grimly:

"Not bad, to be able to withstand a strike at eighty percent of my power, but it is still not enough!"

Clang!

Just as the two great True Monarchs were heavily injured and retreating, he still had strength to spare. With a wave of his hand, hundreds more pitch-black chains emerged from the void like poisonous dragons, then shot toward the two great True Monarchs like maggots on a tarsal bone, their momentum even more vicious than before!

At this moment, although the two great True Monarchs appeared physically unharmed, their Primordial Spirits were both damaged, and their Dharma Power was exhausted. However, Lingjian Tianjun barely had some strength left. As a Talisman was activated, his figure instantly exploded, transforming into dozens or hundreds of streaks of light shooting in all directions, instantly fleeing a hundred miles away. Even with a sweep of Divine Sense, it was difficult to judge which was real and which was illusory.

But compared to him, Zhuhuo Tianjun's situation was even more critical. The injuries he sustained from the shockwave were clearly slightly heavier than Lingjian Tianjun's, causing his speed in activating the Escape Talisman to be half a beat slower. As a result, before the Escape Talisman was fully activated, the void around him was sealed by hundreds of pitch-black corpse energy chains, which then coiled in from all directions!

"Zhuhuo!"

The outcome of being entangled by these corpse energy chains was either death and soul destruction, or being polluted by corpse energy, having one's Primordial Spirit corroded, and turning into a Corpse Demon—it was absolutely unthinkable. Lingjian Tianjun, who had escaped the range of the chains like a meteor shower, sensed this scene but, being unable to care for himself, could not assist, and immediately let out a furious, sharp cry.

However, at the very instant the hundreds of chains were about to completely entangle and bind Zhuhuo Tianjun.

Boom!

Zhuhuo Tianjun's body shattered. A line of extremely bright white light within his body, brighter than a thunderbolt by countless times, pierced through the thick pitch-black darkness and flashed once. All the spiritual energy, death energy, and corpse energy in the surroundings shook violently. A wave-like shockwave surged wildly in all directions. Immediately after, it was as if the sun had suddenly fallen onto this land, erupting with immeasurable, fierce light that destroyed everything and burned everything!

The fierce light was like a pillar of heaven, not only sweeping away all the black energy chains but also instantly impacting the Bone Throne where Shi Mingkong was located. The Yang Flame power, representing the supreme Yang force, and the death energy and corpse energy, representing death, exploded violently like boiling water in a frying pan. The entire world was already neither touching the sky nor the earth; Heaven and Earth were indistinguishable, filled everywhere with flames and fierce light. Endless explosions and burning filled Heaven and Earth, as if the apocalypse had arrived.

In an instant, the land for a hundred miles was brilliant and then extinguished, with all phenomena collapsing. The scene changed and shifted frequently, and a roar a hundred or even a thousand times louder than thunder and lightning crashed through Heaven and Earth.

This kind of method was very much like perishing together or burning both jade and stone. Lingjian Tianjun, who had just escaped danger a hundred miles away and was investigating with his Divine Sense, was filled with shock and anger, his heart sinking to the bottom.

But at that same instant, a fiery red meteor streaked across the void at an extraordinary speed that even Divine Sense scanning could not track, disappearing in an instant, leaving only a transmission between Heaven and Earth:

"What are you still stunned for? Run!"

Hearing this transmission, Lingjian Tianjun instantly understood that Zhuhuo Tianjun seemed to have used his own physical body as the price to release that world-destroying strike. As long as a Transformation to Divinity cultivator's Primordial Spirit is unharmed, whether through possession or recreating a body, they can still fully recover.

He immediately set his mind at ease and, under the support of the Escape Talisman, fled rapidly into the void, disappearing into the skyline in the blink of an eye.

"Unreasonable!"

"Lord Mingkong?!"

Failing to intercept the escape of these two Heaven Monarchs of the Spirit Transformation realm, both the Corpse Bone Heavenly Demon Maiden and the other Heavenly Corpse King were incomparably furious, roaring into the void and rushing with concern toward the position of the Corpse Bone Throne.

Just as they arrived beside the Corpse Bone Throne, the sky-filling solar flames were suddenly dispersed, revealing Shi Mingkong upon the throne with a cold expression; his robes and even his body showed varying degrees of charring, as if he had suffered some damage from the counterattack of Zhuhuo Tianjun abandoning his physical body.

However, these injuries were by no means fatal to a Heavenly Corpse King with a body of inhuman strength; he lowered his head, baring his ghastly fangs, and chuckled lowly:

"To actually be able to injure me, these two cultivators did well."

"As expected, a body below the Emperor level is still not strong enough; only by ascending to the Emperor level can I share the burdens of my master."

Without waiting for the two Heavenly Corpse Kings beside him to speak, he waved his large sleeve, and a grand, sinister will swept across a radius of a thousand miles, like an emperor whose words carried the mandate of Heaven, issuing an order to the endless Corpse Tide:

"Advance at full speed! I shall use the lives of the ten million living beings of Beiling Immortal City to lay the foundation for my ascension to Emperor!"

Boom.

In an instant, within a radius of several hundred miles, the army of Corpse Demons boiled over, beginning to surge and dash at extreme speed, rushing toward the defensive line of Beiling Immortal City like a tsunami, like a world-destroying frenzy.

At the same time.

The Flying Boat that Lu Yuan was riding had already arrived at the first line of defense where the Xianmo Great Array was located; the defensive line was garrisoned by a full ten thousand cultivators, who, under the command of Yang Xianlin, assembled with extreme speed, completely abandoning the camps, arrays, and all other arrangements, and boarded the Flying Boats to retreat toward the rear.

This great retreat was completed in merely half a cup of tea's time, but at the same time, on the horizon in the extreme distance, a deep and evil darkness was already looming, clearly indicating that the Corpse Tide was surging in this direction.

Over a hundred Flying Boats sped away in an instant; on the Flying Boat of Longshan Immortal City, every single Golden Core Cultivator had an extremely solemn and murderous expression, and Su Lingyue looked back toward the direction behind them from time to time, saying heavily:

"I never imagined that this Century Impact would develop into this; I do not know how the two Heaven Monarchs are faring now, or if the Heaven Monarchs coming to support from the Immortal Alliance will arrive in time."

Another Golden Core Cultivator also sighed:

"Indeed, as far as I know, the protective city array of Beiling Immortal City is only barely at the Fifth Tier level; this array may not necessarily be able to block the three Heavenly Corpse Kings."

Another cultivator said uncertainly: "With a Fifth Tier array, plus the two Heaven Monarchs presiding over it, it should be no problem, right?"

Someone shook their head and said in a low voice:

"That high-tier Heavenly Corpse King is comparable to the late Spirit Transformation stage, and there are two Heavenly Corpse King helpers; the situation is truly not optimistic. If the Immortal Alliance's reinforcements arrive late, then the over one hundred thousand cultivators and over ten million mortals in that Immortal City will likely suffer a catastrophe."

Hearing this, Lu Yuan could not help but frown slightly.