Against the Gods

Partially Edited Chapter - Rubble

Nan Zhaoming said unhurriedly, “We are soon-to-be Abyssal Knights who hail from the Abyss and serve the Abyssal Monarch and the Pope. By the order of the Abyssal Monarch, we have come over in advance to take over this world.”

“Those who submit will live, and those who rebel will die!”

His voice gradually sank. “So what is your choice? Do you choose to live, or do you choose to die?”

Mu Xuanyin was powerful enough to sense their deadly strength as a matter of course. The six men were obviously carrying varying degrees of injuries on their person, but their auras… were only second to the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor who returned from the crimson crack in the Wall of Primal Chaos back then.

The Abyss? Mu Xuanyin frowned deeply to herself.

Nan Zhaoguang raised a hand and said, “She’s probably the emperor of this divine region, so she does not fall under the category of people we should not kill indiscriminately. Long story short, save your breath and kill her already. If nothing else, it will be much easier for us to take over this divine region.”

“...” Nan Zhaoming did not disagree. Clearly, their way of doing things was very different from that of Mo Beichen.

“Before that though,” Nan Zhaoguang’s expression turned mocking, “I am interested to know how far the greatest experts of this world can struggle.”

“I personally think you’ll be disappointed, but sure,” Nan Zhaoguang said with a smirk. “Go teach her a lesson, Yin Feng. She’s an empress, so don’t say I don’t take care of my subordinates’ welfare, hahahaha.”

Nan Zhaoguang also echoed his laughter.

They were the absolute kings of this world before the Abyssal Monarch arrived, so how could they not have some fun first?

“Yes, sir.”

Behind the cackling Nan Zhaoguang and Nan Zhaoming, one of the four pages responded affirmatively before stepping out of the ranks. His companions clearly looked disappointed.

Yin Feng was perfectly respectful in front of Mo Beichen, and compliant in front of Nan Zhaoming and Nan Zhaoguang. But Mu Xuanyin? It was as if an invisible force had pulled his features into a wild and lascivious expression. Slowly curling his index finger at the woman, he said, “A level ten Divine Master, huh… tsk tsk. I don’t want my companions to call me a woman beater, so I’ll allow you five moves before I make my own. Of course, you may also choose to prostrate yourself before us and beg for mercy. Who knows, maybe one of our squires will cave to their natural desire to protect the fairer sex and take you in as their slave? Hahahahaha!”

“Hahahahaha!” The pages behind him roared with laughter as well.

“...” Ice covered Mu Xuanyin’s palm soundlessly.

She would not believe that someone would dare to disrespect her so, if she wasn’t looking at them right now.

She did not recognize the six men’s faces or auras. The two leaders especially emanated an invisible pressure that was even greater than Long Bai’s!

This Yin Feng was a level ten Divine Master just like her, but his aura felt incredibly strange and unfamiliar. She could’ve sworn that it was a power that had never existed in this universe… until now.

This was no time for idle thoughts, however. Without a word, she unleashed the icy power she had gathered in her palm straight toward Yin Feng.

The beam of ice was so radiant that Yin Feng felt as if it had pierced right through his pupils and into his soul. His scornful expression did not change though. He reached out toward the icy beam as if he would crush it with his bare hands.

Although they were both level ten Divine Masters, it was clear Yin Feng thought himself superior to Mu Xuanyin because she was a denizen of Primal Chaos, and he the Abyss.

Ding!

The icy beam suddenly flashed right before it would hit Yin Feng, and a string of freezing explosions ripped across space. The surrounding area instantly transformed into a seemingly borderless, frozen prison.

Yin Feng did not move a muscle though. Lips curling into a disdainful sneer, he waved his arm and easily tore the veil of ice to shreds.

He wanted to taunt her saying something like, “Is this the best the strongest expert of this divine region had to offer?” but he didn’t even manage to open his mouth fully before his expression dropped all of a sudden.

It was because a new surge of ice profound energy exploded right in front of his face and filled the space with ice once more. It was a two-layered attack!

Eyes narrowing a little, Yin Feng let out a low cry and shredded the second prison of ice into pieces as well. However, a third surge of ice divine power enveloped him at a speed he thought was impossible for a level ten Divine Master until he saw it with his own eyes.

Mu Xuanyin didn’t stop there either. She proceeded to launch her fourth, fifth, tenth, thirtieth, fiftieth ice prison at her enemy, and each one as powerful as the last!

Mu Xuanyin wasn’t fully compatible with the Ice Phoenix Divine Soul during the battle against the Western Divine Region, but a few years had passed since then. Today, both her compatibility and her mastery of the divine power of the Ice Phoenix had improved vastly thanks to her dual cultivation with Yun Che.

Who would’ve thought that a single ice beam could create an icy calamity that spanned over ten thousand kilometers?

Meanwhile, Yin Feng had gone from supremely confident, to suitably wary, to absolutely flustered near the end of Mu Xuanyin’s assault. His arrogance had cost him dearly. Had he employed all of his strength from the get go, Mu Xuanyin would not have been able to push him so effortlessly. As it was, he never got the chance to muster his full strength after he missed the initial window of opportunity.

Cold energy ate through his profound energy, his flesh, his bones and even his soul. Most of his power was frozen before he even got the chance to use it. By the time Mu Xuanyin finally reached the end of her assault, he had lost nearly all sensation in his limbs, and his torso felt almost as stiff as a block of ice.

Bang!!

There was one final burst of cold ice before the most brilliant blue of them all pierced straight toward Yin Feng. It looked like a lone star amidst a sea of darkness.

Chi!

The Snow Princess Sword stabbed right through Yin Feng’s frozen chest and out of his back!

“Hahahahaha!”

One would think that Nan Zhaoming would be furious or panicked on behalf of his subordinate, but the man merely let out an uproarious laugh before saying, “See? I knew we would get a pleasant surprise eventually!”

“This woman…” Nan Zhaoguang stared at Mu Xuanyin curiously. “I knew she was a God Bearer, but there is more ‘god’ in her than I thought. I suppose it’s worth keeping her around after all.”

“That’s true,” Nan Zhaoming expressed his agreement.

Back to Yin Feng, the man’s complexion had turned a shade of pig liver from abject shock and fury. Glaring daggers at Mu Xuanyin, he finally managed to detonate his long frozen powers.

BOOM!!

The layers of ice freezing the man shattered uncontrollably, and countless cracks spread across the vast space.

Nearly half of his body and his profound energy had been frozen by the Ice Phoenix divine power, but Yin Feng’s counterattack was still unbelievably scary. Mu Xuanyin abruptly threw herself backward and withdrew her sword even as the explosion pushed her far, far away from ground zero.

Yin Feng himself was thrown back like a rag doll. By the time he finally caught himself and expelled the freezing energy inside his body, blood gushed out of his wounds for three whole breaths before it finally stopped.

“...” Mu Xuanyin did not try to press her advantage despite the opening. She unconsciously tightened her grip around her sword.

She had taken her enemy completely by surprise and was able to pressure him to a humiliating extent. However, the “meager” counterattack he had mustered with his unfrozen power was still far more powerful than she dared to imagine.

This outcome also opened her eyes to a terrifying truth: if this Yin Feng hadn’t underestimated her from the beginning, her chances of beating him in a head-on fight were probably less than fifty percent!

In terms of overall strength, Mu Xuanyin was second only to Yun Che with Hell Monarch turned on. Not even the Devil Queen or the three Yama Ancestors were strong enough to be called her equal.

In terms of cultivation alone, she was the undisputed number one in Primal Chaos.

However, her opponent was…

“Hmm… cough… cough cough cough cough!”

Yin Feng let out at least a dozen lung-bursting coughs before he finally managed to get his reaction under control. A shocking amount of blood floated around his person.

Mu Xuanyin’s strength far exceeded his expectations, and to say that he was shocked would be an understatement. However, it was nothing compared to the anger and humiliation he was feeling.

He was a pioneer of the Abyss, and there shouldn’t be a single being in this universe that could stand as his equal, much less look up to. However, he had been humiliated and soundly beaten in his very first battle.

What would his people say if they heard about this? He would become an overnight laughing stock!

“I… was careless!” Yin Feng uttered as he struggled to right himself. It was impossible to tell if he was shaking from the leftover cold or the sheer humiliation. “Again! This time, I’ll tear you apart!!”

Suddenly, Nan Zhaoming said, “Stand down, page.”

Caught off guard, Yin Feng looked back with a fearful expression, “Sir… sir squire, it was just a moment of carelessness! I swear! Please give me a second chance, I swear that this time I’ll—”

“Relax. No one is going to reveal your shame,” Nan Zhaoming consoled his subordinate while shaking his wrists carelessly. “I’m telling you to stand down only because this woman’s power is rather special, and I think there’s a chance the Pope may be interested in her. I would like to capture her alive or keep her body intact is all. I am certain you can beat her if you go all out, but are you sure you can do it without damaging her corpse? No?”

Yin Feng let out a long sigh of relief before bowing his head. “Of course, sir squire. Thank you.”

“Who are you people?” Mu Xuanyin uttered in a bone chilling voice that would’ve turned the blood of anyone from Primal Chaos to ice, but these people were not from Primal Chaos at all. “And where is this Abyss you speak of!”

Could it be… the Abyss of Nothingness!?

“Hehe.” In response, Nan Zhaoming merely let out a chuckle before saying, “My apologies, but weaklings do not have the right to question their superiors.”

“Now… kneel!”

He attacked at the same time he gave the order. A shocking blast of power immediately surged toward Mu Xuanyin.

Before the energy reached her—before it even exited his hands for the matter—Mu Xuanyin abruptly felt a crushing pressure on her chest. The next thing she knew, it felt as if the very universe was threatening to grind her into dust.

That Yin Feng was already powerful beyond belief, but this man was easily several times his better!

Mu Xuanyin forced herself to take a step forward despite the tidal wave of power crashing toward her. However, she immediately realized after taking that step that there was zero chance she could ever defeat the man. Without hesitation, she took a defensive stance and surrounded herself in an infinite amount of slow-moving ice crystals.

It was a new move she invented last year called Ice Razor Stars. It was a purely defensive move that maximized a profound practitioner’s defenses, and she had been planning to pass it down to those with the Ice Phoenix’s bloodline and improve their self-preservation capabilities.

She never thought there would come a day where she, a profound practitioner who was all but unbeatable in Primal Chaos, would have to execute this skill to the max to save her own life.

It was as if a hole had been gouged into the star region itself as Nan Zhaoming’s power enveloped Mu Xuanyin.

In just an instant, Ice Razor Stars shattered into a billion pieces. An instant later, even the fragments of icy energy had winked into nothingness.

Realizing that Ice Razor Stars alone wasn’t enough, Mu Xuanyin stabbed out with the Snow Princess Sword in a last-ditch effort to save herself. The shrill cry of metal entered her ears as the blade abruptly bent almost to the point of snapping. Blood drained from her face as she executed Moon Splitting Cascade and put fifty kilometers between herself and her opponent immediately. It was only then she finally managed to escape Nan Zhaoming’s power.

Crack…

An unnatural noise rang from her sword, and Mu Xuanyin looked down to find three cracks spreading across the blade that had accompanied for over ten thousand years. It stopped only when her gaze made contact with the blade.

A stream of blood flowed down her palm and drenched the sword in no time.

The contrast between the bright red blood and her snow white figure and sword painted a most bleak and poignant picture.

“...” Meanwhile, Nang Zhaoming was frowning a little. He wasn’t surprised when Yin Feng was taken by surprise because he thought it was a product of the page’s own arrogance and disdain for the enemy. However, he wasn’t expecting the woman to be strong enough to escape his power at all.

“What an incredible movement skill. I’ve never seen anything like it on a Divine Master even in the Abyss.” Nan Zhaoguang’s gaze grew a little more interested. “It looks like this world isn’t completely worthless after all.”

“Hmph! So what?” Nan Zhaoming let out a cold hmph as his eyes flashed black. This time, he stretched out both hands and summoned two black palms above Mu Xuanyin’s hands. They were kilometers wide in just the blink of an eye.

It was clearly made out of dark profound energy!

It was clear that Mu Xuanyin’s resistance had angered Nan Zhaoming. The dark pressure enveloping her entire body was far, far greater than it was before.

Mu Xuanyin was most familiar with dark profound energy as a matter of course. Although Nan Zhaoming’s dark profound energy wasn’t nearly as pure as Yun Che’s, there was more than enough power in it to extinguish her last vestiges of hope.

She whispered a word in her mind before her ice blue hair abruptly floated in the space. Each strand was shining with a pure, crystalline light. At the same time, the image of the ice phoenix manifested behind her and let out a long, shrill cry that shook the entire Eastern Divine Region.

She knew Yun Che would hear the cry and the soul voice contained within it for sure:

Don’t come, Yun Che!