Chapter 196: Exterminate Them All

Elham’s head soared through the sky, the arc of blood it traced resembling the mockingly curved smile of some unknown entity.

His handsome face remained unchanged, yet his life had ended abruptly. Like a dew-kissed rose just plucked from its stem, blossoming only to wither instantly. Pale golden blood sprayed from his head and chest. Vast amounts of extremely fine, golden mist erupted from the blood, coalescing into tiny, hovering Divine Script characters flickering in and out of sight.

In the void, a massive cloud vortex suddenly appeared. An exceptionally thin beam of white light drifted down from within the vortex. The golden mist gushing from Elham’s body abruptly transformed into a blinding stream of light. It screamed upwards alongside the white beam, vanishing into the cloud vortex in the blink of an eye.

A sky-piercing thousand-meter-high pillar of pale golden light stood towering, stretching from the ground up into the clouds. This glorious pillar was visible throughout the entire Imperial Capital. This was the due treatment for Divine Descendants with Deity blood when they perished. Perhaps they lived unknown to the world, but in death, they must die spectacularly, radiating the glory befitting their Divine Descendant heritage.

Tolin, Yan, and An simultaneously roared with all their might. Tolin struggled pathetically to lift half his body, brandishing his Staff with tremendous effort. Copious amounts of blood gushed from Tolin’s mouth, instantly absorbed by the Staff. Tolin was burning his own Life Essence to fuel the strongest Divine Art he could muster.

“My God, my Ancestor, Master of all frost and cold. Your descendant beseeches You, use Your Divine Power to utterly purify all defilement!”

A sphere of white icy flame spread from Tolin’s body. It was a piercingly cold flame, flowing like molten crystal, yet emanating a serene beauty. The white icy flame burned silently. Enveloped in it, Tolin aged rapidly, transforming into a mid-fifties old man in an instant. His skin withered, his flesh shrank, and his hair turned an eerie greyish white.

“Blasphemers! Sinners tainted with Original Sin in bloodline and Soul! Only death can wash away your sins!”

Tolin waved his hand gently, about to unleash the Divine Art that had already burned away a significant portion of his lifespan.

But then, a terrifying cyan radiance roared in from the side. A bizarrely shaped halberd sliced through the air, ruthlessly and swiftly piercing Tolin’s throat and ripping his entire neck open. Tolin’s head flew high. His body exploded with a boom, vanishing into a dense white frost that rapidly spread outwards.

Within a three-hundred-meter radius, over a meter of deep blue Mystic Ice covered everything. Buildings, streets, all were entombed in thick ice. The walls of less sturdy structures even cracked densely under the extreme freeze.

Tolin’s head soared skywards. Golden mist sprayed from it. High above, another small cloud vortex formed. A blue speck of light drifted down, and another colossal pillar of golden light shot skyward, piercing the clouds.

Lin Qi was horrified. He looked at the halberd that had appeared so suddenly. It was a green halberd, over three meters long and as thick as a bowl’s mouth. Its head was over one foot long, with crescent-shaped crescent blades on each side which gleamed with a dazzling cyan chill under the night sky. The haft coiled around a green dragon, a Long from Eastern legends, capable of summoning wind and rain, overturning rivers and seas.

The halberd was incredibly resilient. After tearing through Tolin’s body, it slammed heavily into the ground. Its haft vibrated intensely, like a true Long yearning to break free from the earth and soar to the heavens. Embedded there, the halberd radiated a chillingly ferocious killing intent, alive with menace.

The green Long’s eyes were inlaid with thumb-sized Rubies. Lin Qi only glimpsed them. Instantly, a vast Blood Sea appeared before his eyes. Within the towering, furious waves, countless twisted faces shrieked and struggled in agony.

Lin Qi spat out a mouthful of blood. That one glance at the Long’s eyes made his innards feel scorched, forcing him to violently cough up blood. This was a cursed Magical Weapon, a tremendously potent one, imbued with its own spirit. Compared to it, Aunt Lili’s Wolf Fang mace seemed insignificant. So powerful that even a mere glance could make a High-Rank Earth Rider vomit blood!

Lin Qi lowered his head, not daring to look at the peculiar weapon again. He only let out a long whistle. He kicked Elham’s lifeless body far away, then brandished his axe and charged towards Yan and An, who were lunging at him with their swords.

The dark night was the perfect time for killing. Tonight was an excellent day for murder. Elham was dead. Tolin was dead. Ya and Ling had solidified into Nirvana Crystals. So why should Yan and An remain alive? Eliminating them would finally remove Arthur’s threat to Lin Qi completely!

These youths with formidable Church connections – if Arthur allied with them, it would spell extreme peril for Lin Qi! Therefore, kill them all. The best enemy is a dead enemy. That was the life principle Blackbeard had instilled in Lin Qi since childhood.

Two sharp longswords stabbed towards Lin Qi’s heart. He didn’t dodge or evade. He simply tucked himself into a ball and barreled forward.

A faint glow emanated from Lin Qi’s chest. The soft armor he retrieved from the family Secret Vault suddenly brightened, countless Runes surfacing from within its depths. The swords struck the armor, bending dramatically, failing to pierce Lin Qi’s body.

“You were fooled!” Lin Qi roared with crazed laughter. The Yan and An brothers couldn’t alter their sword thrusts in time. Lin Qi’s axe swept horizontally. With ghastly shrieks, the brothers were cleaved in half at the waist. As the axe flashed by, Lin Qi’s left-handed dagger slashed swiftly. Before their upper bodies even hit the ground, their necks had been split open.

Two more colossal pillars of golden light blasted into the sky. In a single night, within the span of a few heartbeats, four Divine Descendants had fallen.

Urgent alarm bells clanged from the distant Radiant Cathedral. Dozens of thin streaks of light shot skyward from the mountains behind the church, rushing frantically towards the scene. The fall of four Divine Descendants, regardless of which Temple or which Divine Descendant Clan they belonged to… the consequences were too terrible. Even the Archbishop of the Radiant Cathedral could not bear such culpability.

Find the killer. Kill the killer. Slay everyone associated with the killer. This was the only path to absolution for all the Radiant Cathedral’s Clergy. If they failed to find the culprit responsible for slaying four Divine Descendants of such supremely noble bloodlines, the Church’s Penitentiary would mercilessly send every Clergy member from the Radiant Cathedral to the Stake—along with their families, none would be spared.

After killing Yan and An, Lin Qi turned and fled without a word. The four resplendent light pillars still stood between heaven and earth—too conspicuous, too dazzling. Reinforcements from the Radiant Cathedral were moments away. If he didn’t flee now, escape would be impossible.

But after only a few steps, Lin Qi noticed a faint glimmer on Elham’s corpse on the ground. It came from an exquisitely delicate, thin ring on Elham’s left thumb. Lin Qi’s eyes flashed. He pounced like a starving wolf, snatched the ring, then turned and raced away.

Lin Qi knew the South City Commercial District backwards, every street and alley intimately familiar. As he ran, he stowed his weapons, vanishing into the vast darkness in the blink of an eye. While fleeing, he let out a shrill whistle, signaling Yulian and Vic to escape immediately, to stay far away from the site of the killings.

Jiang Yong, locked in his standoff with Ye Jiu, stared in terror at the Dragon Halberd that had plummeted from the sky. Crying out sharply, Jiang Yong called, “Blood Spirit Green Dragon Halberd!”

Jiang Yong’s usually calm mind erupted in chaos. The soft sword in his hand trembled slightly. The sword intent he emanated suddenly became wildly unstable.

Ye Jiu let out a sudden, piercing roar. He ordered fiercely, “Exterminate them! Slaughter them all! Damn it, they killed the four masters!”

The Knights of the Night scrambled to their feet. They morphed into tendrils of black mist, coalescing into a viscous shroud of darkness hurtling towards Jiang Yong and the Eunuchs behind him. Ye Jiu himself became a black hurricane, his fist shooting straight for Jiang Yong’s face.

Jiang Yong didn’t move. The eighteen Eunuchs behind him didn’t move. They only stared fixedly at the Blood Spirit Green Dragon Halberd still vibrating where it stood embedded in the ground. Until that killer manifested, Jiang Yong dared not move. His subordinates were even more paralyzed. Compared to that horror, Ye Jiu and his group were mere whelps!

The Green Dragon Halberd vanished abruptly, as if it had never existed.

Jiang Yong’s pupils contracted to pinpricks. Ye Jiu’s fist was now less than a foot from his face. The punch was incredibly heavy, a meaty blow carrying the sharpness of metal weapons. Jiang Yong flicked his soft sword sideways. The four-foot-long blade wound itself around Ye Jiu’s arm like a Poisonous Snake.

Ye Jiu bellowed. A cloud of black mist erupted from his hand, scraping against the sword and showering sparks.

Jiang Yong gave a grotesque grin. His left hand, seeming utterly limp and weak, tapped Ye Jiu’s chest eighteen times in an instant. The sound of the soft hand meeting his chest was like two chunks of iron violently colliding—piercingly loud and grating.

Ye Jiu spat out a mouthful of blood. His fist finally slammed into Jiang Yong’s face, shattering his straight nose with a crunch.

Screaming in agony, Jiang Yong erupted in purple gas. A purple glow radiated from his soft sword. The armor on Ye Jiu’s arm shrieked under the stress. The sword pulled back savagely. Jiang Yong’s horrifically sharp blade tore Ye Jiu’s right arm into more than a dozen pieces.

As Jiang Yong snarled in triumphant malice, the thick layer of ice beneath his feet exploded. A fist shrouded in purple energy slammed heavily onto his sole. Jiang Yong’s boot exploded. His left leg instantly shortened by three inches – the punch had violently compressed it.

Letting out a shrill, agonizing scream, Jiang Yong used the force of the blow to propel himself into the sky, vanishing into the darkness in an instant.

The other Eunuchs scattered in panic and vanished completely, leaving only Ye Jiu standing alone, utterly speechless.