Chapter 1172 - 254: The Heavens Boil with Fear of the Xirong Manor Master

Chapter 1172: Chapter 254: The Heavens Boil with Fear of the Xirong Manor Master

"This guy?"

In the darkness, most of the Immortal Venerates had already cast their gazes toward the battlefield outside the city, frowning slightly.

The Combat between Jiumu Qing and Nether Cauldron Immortal Venerate was what they had been watching all along.

And at this moment, cultivators on Immortal Ships scattered across the void, hundreds of thousands, millions of Celestial Soldiers, all stared wide-eyed as one black shadow Embers after another crawled up, joined the ranks, and concentrated their arrows on the surrounding cultivators!

"What’s happening?"

"Something dropped off us..."

"It’s souls—our souls are being torn apart—no, it’s like a miniature version of us being born..."

"Insane, insane, they’re treating us like an Earth Vein, with Embers sprouting off our bodies one by one?"

Puchi, puchi!

Countless soldiers on the decks of Immortal Ships collapsed.

Countless soldiers recalled certain vicious Divine Techniques that parasitized the body and made mushrooms grow all over the ground.

But here it was a virus parasitizing the body, sprouting Embers one after another...

And then an even more terrifying scene unfolded.

Now that the Shadow Crocodile Embers had reached Immortal Venerate level, the soul-born Shadow Crocodile void-bubble figures already began to develop independent consciousness.

Even the Embers bubbles dropping off one after another were staring around in confusion.

"Where am I?"

"I’m Wen City True Immortal, shouldn’t I be on the battlefield?"

"Eh, Lotus Sugar True Immortal, how did you end up over on the other side?"

...

The small Embers bubble soldiers falling off the opponents’ bodies fixed their eyes on the ones that were their originals.

"They’re fake, they’re Pseudo-humans! Kill them!"

As they spoke, those Shadow Crocodile-type versions of themselves actually started bending bows and shooting, attacking their own originals.

Puchi, puchi!

The originals were hit again, their bodies weakened further by the virus, separating out new Shadow Crocodile bubble shells.

Their second bubble clone of themselves once more stood up, staring at the original.

"Who are you?"

"You’re Pseudo-humans, impersonating me—courting death! Brothers, kill!"

The Shadow Crocodile soldiers continued attacking their originals; this trick of imposters usurping the nest made all the Celestial Soldiers’ true bodies go cold with terror.

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

The entire battlefield fell into endless scenes of horror and grotesquerie that made the enemy’s spine crawl.

"Is this the full outbreak of the Embers Disaster?" Watching themselves split off one after another and stand up again, not a single soldier could remain calm.

The collapse of morale came in almost an instant.

Puchi, puchi!

The versions of themselves that had fallen off their bodies attacked again.

In their despair, staring at the black selves whose faces, voices, and smiles were identical, they suddenly remembered that line, a sentence surfacing in their minds at the moment of death—

How can you know that this moment is the true me?

And the Shadow Crocodile soldiers opposite them were thinking the exact same thing.

"Who am I, really? Are you the bubbles that dropped off my body?"

"These Shadow Crocodile viruses are too terrifying, save me!"

"Hahahahaha! Hahahahaha! Who am I? Am I the original now, or just a fragment that fell off—how can you know that this moment is the true me?"

...

The entire world plunged into chaos.

Even the soldiers’ originals, in the constant melee, began to be just like the Shadow Crocodile soldiers—unable to tell true from false.

"Stand up!"

Jiumu Qing’s expression was icy and merciless, her gaze arrogant and sweeping. "So this is the Manor Master’s Divine Technique? I’ve barely begun to develop it, and already it’s made them doubt their very lives, unable to recognize themselves."

Hands clasped behind her back, she stood proudly, as though about to merge with this boundless darkness of heaven and earth.

"Using oneself as the Earth Vein and splitting off countless Embers... who wouldn’t be afraid?"

The Shadow Crocodile soldiers were snowballing madly, swelling their ranks, growing geometrically as they marched across the battlefield.

If there were no cultivators attacking nearby, these shadow soldiers would loose their arrows at the sky, becoming an unending rain of black shafts.

"This—this? Am I dreaming?" Even True Immortal Momei and True Man Danding were struck dumb, mouths agape, staring blankly at this curtain of pure black rain, staring at that Jiumu Qing who was driving the Xirong Manor Master’s black Giant God, confronting Refining Cauldron Immortal Venerate like a God or Demon.

Xirong Manor Master was actually that strong?

But everything had erupted far, far too quickly.

Jiumu Qing was a sinister woman with extremely high combat cunning; from concealment to eruption took only an instant. This one First-Time Kill just happened to wipe out a huge number of Celestial Soldiers, converging into an even more colossal Demon God.

Behind her, the Ten Halls of the Yama Palace made her seem like a Demon God stepping forth from endless Demon Prison.

Just then, in this Hell World shrouded in black night, a moon rose—the Sun Moon Su Yuniang ascended, serving as atmosphere in the sky, casting her light.

And one Su Yuniang after another, tall and voluptuous, walked out and brought forth Treasure Lotus Lamps, absorbing the surrounding Shadow Crocodiles, as though becoming the only cluster of stars in the night.

"What kind of Divine Technique is this? This world shouldn’t be so utterly against common sense." One Immortal Venerate couldn’t help muttering.

A bone-deep chill surged wildly in his heart.

Though he had no proof, the unique Strong Luck intuition of an Immortal Venerate told him that this Shadow Crocodile Divine Technique seemed to be tainted with some truly astonishing evil—something very terrifying, very shocking.

"Heh, a Daoist Civilization launching its first raid—if we’d been prepared..." another Immortal Venerate spoke after the fact, "at most, at most it’d just be an extremely heaven-defying Divine Technique, that’s all."

The other Immortal Venerates were unable to say a single word.

Without preparation, this battlefield had simply flipped the entire situation!

With preparation, if you prevent the other side from snowballing, clean up the small fry in advance, and focus on single-target attacks, it’s still an extremely powerful Divine Technique—the kind that slices off your partial Embers to besiege you.

This power obviously comes from a root-level Divine Technique of Embers!

"Boom!"

Just as everyone’s thoughts were spinning rapidly, Jiumu Qing spoke faintly from across the field.

"Not worth a single blow—and you lot dare to provoke Xi Rong?"

Her voice was level as she gazed at the firmament, continuing, full of ill intent, to draw hatred onto someone else’s head,

"Our Manor Master stands outside the two realms and beyond the Five Elements. The Manor Master doesn’t care about you, and so ignores the war between the Immortal and Nether Realms. If the Manor Master did care, whoever he aided would win this age-defying war."

In the next instant, the Shadow Crocodile soldiers that were rolling up more and more bodies surged forth like a raging tide, like a God-and-Demon army, turning the surrounding heaven and earth pure black.

This pure black wasn’t the world itself changing color—it was the endless black, high-frequency arrow rain dyeing the entire surroundings into an ink-wash painting.

At this time, the Netherworld Immortal Venerates all wore different expressions, watching this apocalyptic world of black night unfurl; only the Painter’s face blossomed into a smile,

"Back then, when I was still young, I only knew how to paint people. But painting them one by one was too troublesome. How could the beings of the whole world all be drawn into my scroll?"

"I wanted my paintings to automatically... paint vivid living beings on their own." His self-absorbed words made the other Immortal Venerates glance over.

"But at that time, no matter how I studied, I couldn’t create fully automatic Painters,"

"Later, by chance, I saw a mysterious black crocodile. From it I gained inspiration, and only then did I learn how to paint automatic Painters. My painting-virus parasitized organisms in advance; after the organism died, it could depart from the frame and demold."

"That mysterious crocodile was born with the ability to create shadows... you could say it was the Ancestor of Embers."

At these words, Holy Nether Immortal Venerate, Chaotic Yellow Immortal Venerate, Nether Cauldron Immortal Venerate, and several other Netherworld giants all had their expressions change slightly.

This shadow Giant Crocodile virus, that chops people to produce Embers—it was no wonder it was so similar to the Embers Disaster virus the Painter spread; they were actually of the same origin, all Embers being improvements based on that mysterious Shadow Crocodile behemoth?

The Ancestor... of Embers?

In that instant, they seemed to have grasped the true identity of Xirong Manor Master.