High Martial: I Grind Professions

Chapter 441: Chapter 279: The Annihilation of the Demon Race

Li Wen gazed at the two members of the ”Demon Race” before him. Though their appearances were monstrous, within them burned the souls of the Human Race.

Even with his current level of composure, Li Wen couldn’t help but feel a stir of emotion.

”There’s no need for such formality, my brothers,” Li Wen said, his voice gentle yet solemn, filled with heartfelt respect. ”You’ve suffered greatly all these years. You... are the true heroes of the Human Race.”

He gave a slight nod. His words were spoken softly, but they carried immense weight.

Just then, three streaks of light shot over from the direction of Blue Star, arriving at incredible speed.

It was the three Venerables—Ye Qin, Xingxuan, and Gu He—who had sensed the situation and rushed to the scene.

”Teacher!” Lingya’s voice choked with emotion the moment he saw Ye Qin.

”Principal!” Unsuppressed excitement showed on Tie Zhan’s rock-like face.

Venerable Ye Qin took a step forward, his gaze locked onto Lingya and Tie Zhan.

His eyes, which had witnessed centuries of hardship and grown accustomed to the sight of life and death, instantly grew misty and turned red.

His throat worked a few times before he finally spoke, his voice trembling with an indescribable mixture of emotion and excitement.

”My boys... welcome home!”

His gaze swept over the strange, demonic shells that now housed his two disciples. ”All these years... you’ve suffered so much...”

Over two hundred years!

To plant a seed of hope in the heart of the malignant tumor that was the Demon Realm, Legacy University had secretly chosen more than a dozen of its finest disciples—students with exceptional Primordial Spirit aptitude and wills of steel.

They had voluntarily renounced their human identities, enduring immense pain and the risk of their very souls being torn asunder.

Using a Secret Technique to possess the bodies of demons, they infiltrated the treacherous depths of the Demon Realm, where mortal danger lurked at every turn.

Every piece of intelligence they sent was a dance on a knife’s edge, a gamble with death itself.

Now, of the more than a dozen who had departed all those years ago, only Lingya and Tie Zhan had lived to make the journey home.

The Human Race’s ability to learn of the Demon Race’s movements in advance and make the right decisions at several key junctures was in no small part thanks to them.

Lingya and Tie Zhan stood up straight, despite being trapped in the bodies of demons.

But in that moment, their eyes shone with the pure, unwavering light of humanity.

The two exchanged a look and spoke in unison, their voices firm and powerful, echoing through the space that was now a witness to history:

”For the Human Race!”

Those three words were filled with all the blood, tears, loneliness, and supreme conviction from their years in deep cover.

They also proclaimed the great, unyielding spirit of the Human Race, a legacy passed down from one generation to the next.

...

「Meanwhile.」

「The Demon Realm.」

This colossal world, which had given birth to countless vicious demons, was far vaster than Blue Star. Its lands were crisscrossed with mountain ranges and rivers, and a malevolent aura permeated the air.

Yet now, this once-vibrant land had become the execution ground for a final judgment.

Li Wen’s nine Primordial Spirit doppelgangers hovered in the skies of the Demon Realm like nine cold, impassive gods.

Two of the doppelgangers stood guard by the core of the world-projection Array.

They ensured the portal connecting to Blue Star remained stable and one-way, cutting off any possibility of demons flowing back through.

The other seven doppelgangers instantly dispersed to every corner of the Demon Realm, taking up strategic positions that spanned the heavens and the earth.

”Perish!”

Without any warning, the wills of the seven doppelgangers synchronized perfectly in a fraction of an instant.

A silent edict, yet more resonant than the thunder that heralded the dawn of the cosmos, rang in the very souls of every living being in the Demon Realm.

The next moment, seven vast and boundless waves of divine will—each powerful enough to crush stars—transformed into seven invisible, world-ending nets. They unfurled in an instant, blanketing and penetrating every inch of land, every ocean, and every corner of the Demon Realm.

This was a storm of pure annihilation, a tempest on the level of the Primordial Spirit.

Whether it was the demon soldiers and generals fleeing in a frenzy, the Low Tier Demon Beasts lurking in deep mountain forests, or the mid-level demons in their territories who hadn’t yet had time to react—the moment this divine will touched them, the flames of their souls were instantly snuffed out, like candles in the wind.

Their massive demonic bodies, suddenly devoid of support, collapsed in droves like fields of wheat before a scythe.

The very breath of life receded from the surface of the Demon Realm like a swift, ebbing tide.

The world, once filled with the roars of beasts, the cries of birds, and the howl of demonic winds, plunged into a dead, unnerving silence within the span of a few breaths.

The mountains and rivers remained, but they were now devoid of life.

However, the Demon Realm had deep reserves, and there were inevitably some who possessed special means of survival.

Dozens of powerful auras remained.

There were Demon Saints protected by rare soul-defending treasures, old demons who practiced unique Primordial Spirit Cultivation Techniques, and some who happened to be in perilous, remote locations that naturally shielded them from spiritual probes.

By burning their life force, detonating their precious treasures, or thanks to natural barriers, they had managed to withstand the initial, world-ending wave of divine will, like reefs weathering a furious storm. Though their seas of consciousness were violently shaken, blood streamed from their orifices, and their souls felt as if they would shatter, they had, just barely, survived.

Their auras weakened in an instant. They were grievously wounded, their eyes filled with nothing but boundless terror and the blank stupor of having survived a cataclysm.

Li Wen’s will, like a cold star hanging high in the heavens, immediately locked onto these few who had slipped through the net.

He felt no hesitation, not even the slightest ripple of pity stirred in the lake of his heart.

In a war between races, there is no end until one side is annihilated.

Those who could survive the first indiscriminate wave were, without exception, the true core leadership of the Demon Race.

They were the masterminds who had planned, commanded, and executed the slaughter of the Human Race.

The human blood they had spilled would be enough to form a sea.

’Mercy? That would be a desecration of the souls of our fallen heroes.’

The wills of the seven doppelgangers converged once more. This time, they did not form a world-spanning net, but precise, fatal spears.

”ZZZT! ZZZT! ZZZT! ZZZT...!”

Dozens of Primordial Spirit light beams—condensed to their absolute limit and imbued with the annihilating truth of ”Myriad Phenomena Return to Ruin”—ignored all distance and obstacles. They crossed thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of miles in an instant, precisely piercing the head or core of every last survivor.

Where the beams passed, they left behind fine, black cracks in the fabric of space that were slow to heal.

The high-ranking demons who had just believed themselves fortunate to survive did not even have time to let out a final, desperate roar before their consciousness was plunged into eternal darkness and oblivion.

The treasures they relied upon for protection shattered like paper before this absolute power.

Their remnant souls and last vestiges of life were utterly erased, annihilated into nothingness by this terrifying force, now dozens of times more concentrated.

Now, on the surface of the Demon Realm, there was not the slightest sign of life, save for the mournful cry of the wind sweeping across the empty land.

The once-bustling Demon Cities, the caves of powerful arch-demons, the jungles that echoed with the roars of Demon Beasts... all had been transformed into a colossal graveyard for trillions of demons.

The divine will of the nine Primordial Spirit doppelgangers did not relax. Instead, it wove itself into an even finer detection net.

It swept back and forth across the entire surface of the Demon Realm and its shallow crust more than a dozen times.

After confirming that not a single trace of life remained on the surface, the seven exterminating doppelgangers turned their attention to the deep, dark underworld.

’To cut the weeds, you must pull out the roots.’ Li Wen’s mind was as clear as a mirror.

He knew that deep beneath the earth’s crust, there were bound to be subterranean tribes of the Demon Race, born and bred in darkness.

Perhaps they had never set foot on the surface. Perhaps they were as weak and insignificant as ants.

There might even be innocents among them.

But what did that matter?

This was a war for survival. There was no room for misplaced compassion or wishful thinking.

The moment any survivor learned that their surface-dwelling kin had been exterminated by humanity, the resulting hatred—the kind of hatred born from the annihilation of one’s entire race—would be enough to turn any demon, no matter how weak, into a mortal enemy of the Human Race for all eternity.

’This sin, this burden of extinguishing all future hatred at its source... I, Li Wen, will bear it alone!’

The seven Primordial Spirit doppelgangers transformed into seven invisible streaks of light, easily tearing through the thick crustal rock and diving toward the planet’s core.

The deeper they went, the thicker the cloying, subterranean demonic aura became.

Sure enough, at depths of dozens, even hundreds of miles into the crust, they found subterranean demon settlements of all sizes, structured like hives and anthills.

The demons here took on varied forms; some resembled gigantic worms, while others looked like creatures with carapaces of rock.

When Li Wen’s divine will descended upon these sunless, subterranean worlds like the wrath of heaven itself, it triggered utter chaos and wails of despair.

But the outcome was already decided.

Like seven cold reapers, the doppelgangers’ annihilating Primordial Spirit energy penetrated every cave and every subterranean fissure with surgical precision.

There were no earthshaking explosions, no gruesome scenes of flying flesh and gore.

There were only bodies falling silently, one after another, and the extinguished flames of their souls.

When the nine Primordial Spirit doppelgangers tore through space once more, returning from the coordinates of the Demon Realm to merge with Li Wen’s true self high above Blue Star, the vast Demon Realm had been rendered a complete dead zone, utterly devoid of any sign of life.

At the same time, his immense Primordial Spirit power had formed invisible, giant hands, scooping up mountains of rare ores, precious Spirit Plants, Energy Crystal Stones, and other resources from across the Demon Realm and bringing them back as well.

Piled together, these resources were enough to form several large mountain ranges, their value beyond measure.

However, while the quantity of these resources plundered from the surface and depths of the Demon Realm was astonishing, their combined quality and rarity likely didn’t amount to even a tenth of the personal collections of the four Demon Emperors.

As such, he couldn’t care less about these resources, for which he had long since had no use.

”My dear seniors,” Li Wen’s calm voice rang out as his gaze fell upon the three visibly moved Human Race Venerables.

”I have brought back all the resources from the Demon Realm. They are of little use to me now. I leave them in your hands to manage—use them for post-war reconstruction, to support the families of our fallen heroes, and to cultivate the next generation of the Human Race.”

As he spoke, the mountains of resources, held aloft by an invisible Primordial Spirit force, drifted slowly toward Ye Qin and the other two Venerables.

Having dealt with the distribution of resources, Li Wen’s gaze swept over the scarred, yet hopeful, surface of Blue Star below.

It swept over the billions of his kin who had survived the apocalypse and were now looking up in eager anticipation.

He slowly raised his right hand. His voice was not loud, yet like a soft, clear whisper, it instantly traveled to every corner of Blue Star, ringing clearly in every person’s ears:

”As of today, the Demon Race is no more! The lands of the Demon Realm now belong to the Human Race!”

His voice faded, followed by a moment of stunned silence.

And then—

”ROAR!!!”

”LONG LIVE THE HUMAN RACE!!”

”LONG LIVE THE SAINT VENERABLE!!!”

A cheer—hotter, wilder, and more sustained than any that had come before—erupted like a volcano that had been building pressure for a billion years!

From bustling metropolises to remote towns, from the highest mountain peaks to the furthest shores, a deafening wave of sound erupted from every corner of the world.

In streets and alleys, countless strangers wept tears of joy, pulling each other into tight embraces.

For more than two hundred years, the threat of extinction had hung over humanity’s head. And now, in this moment, their Saint Venerable had ended it—completely and forever—with the force of a thunderbolt.

A new era—the Era of Humanity—had truly begun.