Cultivation: From Poor Peasant to Celestial Lord

Chapter 319: Chapter 167: A True God Falls, the Heavens Shatter

At the Lingma Mountain Foot, the very landscape contorted. The already fragmented space, under the collision of two Deities, had utterly transformed into a destructive Thunder Pool.

To Xia Xing and the others, this battle was completely beyond the comprehension of Qi Cultivation Cultivators.

It was not a simple clash of Spiritual Power, but rather a mutual erosion and strangulation between some form of higher-level Decrees.

Every thunderous clang of metal on metal was accompanied by violent tremors in the Earth Veins and subtle tears in space. The rippling aftershocks forcefully ground the surrounding, already dilapidated Pill Kiln ruins into fine dust.

The Night Patrol God’s enormous, black-iron Divine Body was like a tireless killing machine. Its logic was simple and pure, yet also ruthless to the extreme.

Under the ”nightfall” that had descended after ten thousand years of deathly stillness, any being whose life force fluctuated was considered a taboo-breaking Evil Demon.

It was not targeting any single person. It targeted all the ”unrest” within this entire domain.

”Puri...fication!”

The Wandering God’s double-pupiled eyes, which seemed to devour all light, suddenly focused. Its Iron Mace, wreathed in a jet-black gale, swept toward the crowd of frantically fleeing examinees like a reaper’s scythe hungry for life.

Even before the mace truly fell, its terrifying spiritual pressure caused the bodies of several escapees to crack and split, blood bursting from their pores.

”That is the blood food I have reserved! How could I allow a spiritless hunk of iron like you to squander it at will!”

In mid-air, the Beastkeeping Commissioner let out an incredibly greedy and ear-piercing roar.

It was by no means saving them out of kindness. Rather, in Its twisted Divine Soul’s perception, these examinees, bearing both Merit and lifeblood, had long ago been branded with the Seal of Beastkeeping.

These were Its rations for surviving the next ten-thousand-year Great Annihilation, the sustenance for rebuilding Its Divine Body. It would allow no one else to lay a finger on them.

It abruptly brandished a pale bone whip, and a sky-spanning expanse of dark green divine light materialized before the Underground Palace entrance. Like a giant net blotting out the sun, it crashed headlong into the black gale.

The collision of two Foundation Establishment Level Divine Powers generated a shockwave that became a visible, white, ring-shaped tide, fanning out and expanding madly outward.

Two Cultivators next to Xia Xing were merely grazed by the edge of this blast wave, yet it was as if they had been struck head-on by a ten-thousand-ton hammer. Their Protective Spiritual Lights shattered instantly, and they were sent flying dozens of yards, vomiting blood, their fates unknown.

In a clash of this magnitude, Mortals did not even possess the right to be spectators.

Even though the Beastkeeping Commissioner had ”protected” this group of Cultivators, the lethal aftershocks still caused so many casualties that the survivors felt as though they had been plunged into an icy abyss, their very souls trembling in terror.

”Go! Let’s go! If we don’t leave now, we’ll be nothing more than trampled confetti from the Divine Spirits’ clash!”

Xia Xing wiped a splash of blood from his face and shouted hoarsely.

His hands were trembling slightly. The situation before him had spun completely out of control.

He looked at the chaotic battlefield ahead: Wuu Ziqing was leading his colleagues—their faces mangled beyond recognition, moving like walking corpses—in a fearless charge against the Night Patrol God, all under the Beastkeeping Commissioner’s command. Meanwhile, the Wandering God carried its ghastly white lantern, and with every step it took, a great mist of blood would rise.

The greatest irony was that these examinees, who on any other day fancied themselves geniuses, were now trapped in a state of extreme absurdity and despair.

They were being ”protected,” in a twisted sense, by a Demon God that wanted to rear them as future rations, thus saving them from death at the hands of a True God that wanted to subject them to Purification as ”Evil Demons.”

The path to survival had narrowed to such an infinitesimal sliver.

”Brother Xia, look behind us... The space is collapsing all the way to the mountain’s foot! Our retreat, our path of retreat is completely gone!”

The young Cultivator at his side pointed back the way they had come, a sob of despair in his voice.

He saw the forest and wasteland that had served as their escape route now crumbling away like the leavings of a great beast’s meal, falling piece by piece into a bottomless, pitch-black Void. Howling blades of Void-wind arrived, shredding all matter into oblivion.

The circle of survival, with these two frenzied Deities at its epicenter, was spiraling and contracting inwards with terrifying speed.

Xia Xing’s heart sank into an abyss. Forward lay the meat grinder of two Ancient Gods; backward lay the irredeemable Void.

Caught in this desperate impasse, he couldn’t help but turn his gaze toward the entrance of the Underground Palace, which remained eternally still, as if detached from the world around it.

From within the Underground Palace, that heavy, restrained, yet immensely powerful fluctuation of Spiritual Power continued to pulse steadily.

Even as the outside world was torn asunder, the earth’s surface churned up a meter deep by the clash of Divine Power, that Fellow Daoist within seemed to remain seated firmly on the altar, like a veritable Stabilizing Needle.

’This is not good... If these two gods keep fighting like this, the main Earth Vein of the entire Lingma Mountain will be severed.’

A war raged within Xia Xing’s heart.

For his small group of six, even just standing firm under the divine pressure was now a luxury. Hoping to survive on this battlefield of Divine Spirits was nothing but a fool’s errand.

”Brother Xia, should we... should we try to enter the Underground Palace?” the young Cultivator asked, trembling. ”No matter how dangerous it is in there, it has to be better than waiting out here to die.”

’Should I... call that Fellow Daoist inside and ask him to escape with us?’ Chu Bai’s cold and composed face suddenly appeared in Xia Xing’s mind.

Shortly after entering the Secret Realm, he had witnessed Chu Bai’s abilities firsthand.

That was why he hadn’t dared to enter the Underground Palace to investigate before, but now... he had no choice but to try.

’That Fellow Daoist doesn’t seem like the type to kill indiscriminately. If even he can’t find a way to survive in this shattered world, then it’s useless no matter who we beg for help.’