Chapter 1065

Nüwa Island, a small grove.

In front of an ordinary little wooden building, there was a small courtyard paved with white sand.

An old matriarch, small in stature, about the height of a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old child, thin and weak with a head full of white hair, sat on a low wooden stump, taking advantage of the moonlight and starlight that were much brighter than candlelight to sort the wild vegetables she had gathered during the day.

She removed the roots and stems from the wild vegetables, sorted them by type, shook off the dirt, and neatly stacked them in a bamboo basket nearby.

As for the wild mushrooms, they needed careful examination to determine whether they were poisonous or edible… In a small bamboo basket nearby, the old matriarch had already picked out three poisonous mushrooms that were deadly yet looked ninety percent like ordinary mushrooms.

"Each generation is worse than the last, each generation worse than the last. If our human children cannot even find safely edible mushrooms in the mountains and forests… have we made a mistake?" the old matriarch said, pursing her lips. With hardly any teeth left in her mouth, her speech was airy and hard to understand.

"Have we perhaps been overprotecting them too much?"

The old matriarch murmured softly.

The human people of the sacrificial hunting grounds were made to pay with their blood, bearing the frenzied harvesting of the extraterrestrial demons.

The human people of the sacrificial battlefield were made to form a solid front line, wearing down and intimidating the demons' claws and fangs.

As for the human beings' blessed lands, vast, fertile, spiritually endowed continents rich in produce, they were, under the protection of the will of heaven and earth of Mu Dalu, safely maintained in their primordial state from antiquity, undisturbed.

They were hardly ever disturbed by demons, and generation after generation of their people almost forgot how dangerous the world beyond the blessed lands could be.

Some time ago, the children of the elite among the common folk began wearing fine silks and satins, adorning themselves with precious gems and jade, and even started keeping-***, catamites, and other decadent licentious practices.

The matriarchs of Nüwa Island have cracked down time and again, yet people keep popping up.

Gradually, there appeared people like Ji Bai Jie, humble-born human youths who, after great effort, had amassed a modest fortune, but before the Nüwa Island matriarchs could give him sufficient reward, high-ranking clansmen came to seize his estate.

Nowadays, even among those who permanently reside on Nüwa Island and inherit humanity's oldest traditions, there are people who go up the mountain to gather wild vegetables and bring back poisonous mushrooms, mistaking them for edible ones.

This is the survival skill painstakingly accumulated by the ancestors of humanity, generation after generation, who struggled to survive in the mountains and forests, fought heaven and earth, and kept the human flame alive.

All of it has been returned to the ancestors.

The old matriarch muttered complaints: "Ah, Yu, you say, your older sisters Qing'er and Dai'er… which one…"

A gentle, lovely woman came over carrying a basket of wild vegetables, setting it down heavily beside the old matriarch: "Ah, why do you still worry about them? Each of them is incredibly capable."

She gave a soft hum: "They all married well, their husbands have good backgrounds, their sons are talented, they have powerful backers, and each is eyeing the supreme human throne that the matriarchs prophesied would come after the great calamity."

The woman put her hands on her hips and sighed: "We useless folk can only spend our days serving the matriarchs—washing vegetables, tilling fields, raising chickens and ducks—and that's all we'll ever amount to."

The old matriarch pursed her lips and chuckled "hehehe": "You little brat, all you have is a sharp tongue."

The woman shook her head: "In my opinion, matriarch, you should let those little girls handle these things. You're not young anymore—save your strength where you can."

The old matriarch fell silent, then she picked out another poisonous mushroom and casually tossed it into the small bamboo basket.

After a long while, the old matriarch murmured: "I've done this all my life; I can't stay idle. Unless I'm bedridden like my sister, truly unable to move, I'll do what I can."

"Ah, Yu, you say, over these years, have we on Nüwa Island worn away our children's vigor?" The old matriarch lifted her gaze to the moon in the sky and the stars spread across the heavens: "Should we, as Qing'er suggested, raise a great army and do battle with the demons?"

The woman fell silent for a moment, then shook her head: "I dare not say. Waging war outward is the task of Xi Gu, isn't it? You should go find that bunch of increasingly arrogant and domineering old fogeys."

The old matriarch's face darkened: "Yes, arrogant and domineering. They have taken humanity's military power as their private property, while we have no means whatsoever to deal with them."

"If we…"

The old matriarch sighed, rubbed the tears that the wind had blown from her eyes, and said calmly: "These past few days, the starlight and moonlight have been too tumultuous; those extraterrestrial demons are about to reach the point where their true intentions are exposed."

The woman lifted her head, her gaze cool as she looked at the stars and moon filling the sky, and sighed lightly: "Really? With the matriarchs guarding Nüwa Island, we feel at ease. Without them, we, all of humanity, wouldn't know what to do."

The old matriarch chuckled: "Perhaps, without us old women, humanity…"

The old matriarch's eyes suddenly burst with dazzling divine light; she sprang to her feet, and a terrifying surge of spiritual power spread through her body.

Her two legs swiftly merged, and in an instant they became a single, slender, pure-gold serpent's tail.

Her upper body swayed slightly as a layer of dead skin quickly cracked and fell away, revealing beneath the aged corpse the youthful visage of a girl in her teens, brimming with vitality.

A surge of vigorous life force burst from the transformed old matriarch, so abundant that in the surrounding grove countless trees 'rustle-rustle' as they rapidly thickened and grew, putting forth myriad tender, jade-green branches.

"Wrong, wrong—tonight's starlight and moonlight are too strange… Nüwa Island's aura has become too strange… its Dao resonance, its earth-vein spiritual rhythm, and moreover the fortune of the millions of children on Nüwa Island, and their vital destinies…"

The Nuwa clan, bearing the responsibility of inheriting human civilization, hold the authority to sacrifice to heaven and earth, and they possess various miraculous powers.

At this moment, in the old matriarch's eyes, Nüwa Island, which had originally been wrapped in lively divine light and spiritual rhythm, suddenly became sunless and moonless, the winds and clouds grim; a thick layer of black qi enveloped the island, and various deathly, sickly, moldy, calamitous inauspicious qi rapidly proliferated, in an instant sweeping over every blade of grass, every tree, and every person on the island…

The old matriarch shouted hoarsely: "Send the warning, prepare for battle, prepare for battle… Nüwa Island faces an existential catastrophe!"

The old matriarch looked up at her own head, where an extremely dense black deathly qi, so intense it nearly shattered her spirit, was pressing down from above. This deathly qi contained thousands of kinds of inauspicious disaster vapors; such toxic, perilous vapors made even the long-lived, worldly-wise old matriarch's complexion turn ashen.

"No!"

The old matriarch instinctively glanced toward the little wooden building.

Several close-attendant women and maidservants had streams of deathly qi continually falling upon their heads, their bodies nearly completely dyed black by the deathly qi.

But… the old matriarch's most attentive and capable attendant, Nuwa Yu, had a faint spiritual glow about her, her qi lively, and a strand of fortune transformed into purple qi three thousand zhang high, shooting straight into the heavens, far denser than before—by hundreds of times!

"Yu!"

Just as the old matriarch was about to speak, Nuwa Yu, standing beside her, lightly moved her right hand; a dagger resembling a phantom, wholly black and oddly shaped, had already slipped silently into the old matriarch's back heart.

The Wisdom Divine Clan's supreme artifact, which can be called their sole killing weapon, the 'Dagger of Murder,' though merely a projection of a duplicate, the instant it pierced the old matriarch's back heart, it erased all her vitality.

The matriarchs of the Nuwa clan, though versed in various secret arts, are not necessarily endowed with sturdy flesh or great vitality.

The duplicate of the Dagger of Murder might only be able to severely injure the elders of the Xi Huang lineage, but for the Nuwa clan's matriarchs, it is an absolutely lethal strike.

"You must have many questions, but letting you die with those doubts is such a delightful pleasure!"

"When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you."

"Heh… when you presumptuously try to interfere with the six paths of reincarnation using mortal strength, the six paths will naturally retaliate against you." Nuwa Yu lightly twisted her body and untied a jade token from the old matriarch's waist.

"Well… wearing a human identity all these years, I'm really not used to it." Nuwa Yu gave a light sigh: "Especially… having to run around serving the Crown Prince of Qing Lemon, that's truly uncomfortable!"

Inside the wooden building, the several women and little maids did not scream hysterically like ordinary women; instead, they swiftly employed secret arts to flee in all directions.

They had barely taken a few steps when their escape light came to a halt.

Blood water continually flowed from their mouths, noses, and eyes.

In just a few breaths, these women and maids had no time to send any warning before the deadly poison erased their lives.

"Poisonous mushrooms, of course, are good mushrooms too." Nuwa Yu looked at those former companions and gave a light chuckle: "Back in antiquity, humanity's ancestors had already researched an extremely terrifying poison art; in the Descent War, how many spirits perished under those frightful and wicked poisons?"

Dear old ladies, you actually say that poison techniques are too evil and vicious, strictly forbidding humanity from studying these forbidden arts?

Good heavens, as long as it can kill the enemy, that's the most useful knowledge, and you…

However, we do not scorn your wisdom crystals.

You are truly old and foolish. The human race's bottom line, ethics, morality, and precepts… Perhaps these are important, but in war, at the life-and-death moment of the tribe, you have absolutely no right to quibble over them!

Only the strong have the right to speak of the bottom line, ethics, morality, and precepts…

Does the human race have the right?

Fire ignited on Wa Island.

It was not just one or two places, but thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of places……

The defenses of Wa Island were flung open, the void seals completely vanished, and one after another teleportation arrays lit up all over Wa Island, as hordes upon hordes of venerable-level demons, leading countless divine-realm demonic monsters, surged out of the arrays.

Before Qing Ning decided to exterminate Wa Island, the gods' divine edict had already been transmitted to the leaders of the demons and monsters all over Mu Dalu.

They had long since made preparations, and according to the blueprints provided in the divine edict, they had forged countless teleportation arrays in advance.

They received the signal, they activated the teleportation arrays, they commanded the elite forces that had long been ready, and in mighty numbers they poured through the arrays into Wa Island.

In just a quarter of an hour, the human inhabitants of Wa Island had not yet figured out what had happened, while the number of demons and monsters on Wa Island had already reached over a hundred times the human population.

On the ground, in the high skies, and across the surrounding seas, countless demons were densely spread.

Moonlight and starlight poured down from the heavens; these demons employed secret arts to draw upon stellar power, sealing Wa Island so tightly that not a whisper nor a shadow could escape.

Countless people fell under the demons' encirclement.

Countless palaces and pavilions burst into raging flames.

One secret realm and forbidden zone after another was breached; countless brave human warriors had their strength drained by enemies a hundred times their number, and then were slain on the spot.

The vicious demons were drenched in blood; they stood amid the ruins, howling in triumph, with chunks of enemy corpses clenched in their mouths.

Wa Dai led hundreds of clan warriors, desperately guarding the entrance of a cave dwelling, she screamed hoarsely: "Quickly activate the Ancestral Spirit power of the Ancestral Spirit Space, and annihilate these damned demons!"

Wa Dai was already drenched in sweat, her gaze desperate as she looked out at the boundless sea of demons all around.

"How did they get in? How did they get in?"

"Wa Island's coordinates are so secret, and with Mu Dalu's heavenly will aiding the concealment, its position has never been leaked in countless years."

"Even the high-ranking humans travel to and from Wa Island only via teleportation arrays."

"Who leaked Wa Island's location?"

"Who made Wa Island defenseless?"

"Who is it? Who is it?"

About a hundred women gathered in the cave dwelling, sitting cross-legged on the ground, frantically chanting incantations, communicating with the primordial spirits of the Wa clan ancestors in the Ancestral Spirit Space, hoping to borrow these spirits' immense power to annihilate the enemy.

In the Ancestral Spirit Space, each primordial spirit of the Wa clan has been worshipped by countless human folk for countless years; countless Wa clan matriarchs continually provide them with an endless stream of faith power.

Each Wa clan primordial spirit possesses power enough to easily inflict heavy damage upon a venerable-level being.

If it were not for their lack of physical bodies, preventing them from moving freely in the outside world, these Wa clan primordial spirits would be the most terrifying pinnacle of martial power for humanity!

About a hundred women communicated with the Wa clan primordial spirits, feeling that vast, boundless power and sensing the frenzied wrath of the Wa clan ancestors; they joyfully drew upon this power, imbuing themselves with it!

Then, about a hundred women simultaneously exploded and died.

The terrifying power of the self‑blast shattered the cave dwelling into fragments, and hurled Wa Dai and the others guarding its entrance completely outward.

Countless demons instantly engulfed Wa Dai and the others.

The same self‑detonations kept erupting all over Wa Island, everywhere Wa clan women sought to borrow the Ancestral Spirits' power to wound the enemy.

But this time, the frantic surge of Ancestral Spirit power was too immense; it easily burst their bodies. They were like fragile glass bottles, each the size of a fist, instantly filled with an ocean—there was no outcome but explosion.