Monster Paradise

Inside Virtuoso’s illusion, Nine Gloom watched his God Territory descend. It enveloped all his enemies, including the individual with the golden mask. With no hesitation at all, Nine Gloom summoned Giant Sarcoma, Crimson Eye, the three-tailed snake lady, and the other overlord-rank revenants once more.

In his God Territory, he could repeatedly summon the revenants, but it would require expending a massive amount of Divine Power. He could replenish this expenditure by recalling the revenants.

However, many of the revenants had been killed in the earlier battle with Silver Armor. This meant that Nine Gloom could not replenish his Divine Power, causing him to lose close to seventy percent of it. Even with the utilization of his God’s soul, the loss was severe, and his condition was deteriorating significantly.

Now that he was left with so little Divine Power, he did not dare to expend large amounts of it. Therefore, in this confrontation with the golden-masked individual, he could only summon a few overlord-rank revenants to aid in the battle. He did not have the courage to attempt a horde attack strategy against his opponent.

However, as far as Nine Gloom was concerned, this was already sufficient.

With several overlord-rank powerhouses joining the battle, the pressure on him decreased substantially.

Furthermore, the recovery of his Divine Power was more than several times faster in his God Territory. As long as he did not use any major techniques, it was practically impossible for his Divine Power to be exhausted. He also no longer had to worry about his opponent trying to drain his Divine Power. On the contrary, if the battle dragged on for a longer time, the Divine Power within his body would replenish even more, which was much more advantageous to him.

After the arrival of his God Territory, the tide of battle rapidly began to turn.

Nine Gloom had been under heavy suppression earlier, but now, with the assistance of the several revenants he had summoned, he began massacring his enemies.

With Nine Gloom and the revenants working together, the small teams were swiftly split up and obliterated. Their numbers began to dwindle.

Just when Nine Gloom was getting enthusiastically into the killing spree, an impending sense of danger suddenly assailed him.

Before he could even discover where this new threat lay, he felt a sudden wave of intense pain.

Upon looking down, he saw that his body had already been sliced apart at the waist by a scarlet electric arc.

When he lifted his head again, everything before him began disintegrating.

Every single one of the revenants that he had summoned, the imperial monster horde that was battling them so intently, the golden-masked individual in the distance, and the God Territory that he had summoned…

Everything was disintegrating and falling apart like broken glass. The only thing that was still vivid was the scarlet beam of light that had sliced him in half.

“This is an illusion?!” Nine Gloom came to an abrupt realization. He did not even know when he had fallen for his opponent’s ruse.

Once again, he lifted his head and looked in the direction from which the scarlet electric arc had originated. Three figures were standing there.

The one who had sliced him in half was a black-robed individual wearing a black mask.

However, Nine Gloom very quickly diverted his attention from the black-robed individual. This was because he saw that there was an eight-armed monk not too far from the black-robed individual. Furthermore, in front of that monk, nine gigantic saber formations were poised for action and targeted straight at him!

Without even thinking, Nine Gloom turned into thousands of snake-like vines that fled in all directions.

He was fleeing so decisively because the earlier slash from that black-robed individual had almost killed him.

He had less than ten percent of his Divine Power left after that slash; he had no more strength to continue fighting.

However, right as he moved, the hundreds upon thousands of saber gleams in the air surged down like a torrential rainstorm, completely swallowing him up.

When he saw that the area within several hundred meters had been entirely enveloped by Saber9’s saber formations, Lin Huang ceased any further attacks.

His move earlier was just about his most powerful attack, which was extremely taxing on his physical body.

For one, he needed to rest his body for a little while.

For another, he was secretly calculating the rewards obtained from that attack.

That move comprised twelve levels of compounded sequence power, in addition to Sword Dao heavenly rule.

An attack like this was enough to annihilate most ordinary ninth-rank Heavenly Gods.

However, Nine Gloom had been struck by the attack when he was completely off-guard, and yet he had not been killed.

The instant he slashed at his opponent, Lin Huang had clearly been able to sense that Nine Gloom’s body had immediately exuded a great deal of Divine Power and sequence power to offset the shock of the attack and its encroaching effects.

In the end, it looked as if he had certainly sliced Nine Gloom in half, but in reality, this had not done any concrete damage to his opponent. The attack had merely drained a portion of Nine Gloom’s Divine Power and Rule Bending Powers.

‘From the looks of it, one can’t be careless when fighting top heavenly god-level powerhouses. The intensity of Nine Gloom’s Divine Power and the number of rules he’s mastered far surpass my own. He didn’t even have time to utilize any defensive techniques whatsoever, yet he didn’t suffer any concrete damage from my blow. If we were to engage in direct confrontation, I fear even this attack of mine wouldn’t be able to breach his defenses. However, all he has to do is casually launch an attack, and if I’m hit, I’ll almost certainly be dead. This is an absolute gap in ability.

‘Furthermore, among Heavenly Gods, there are many powerhouses who have abilities that are on par with Nine Gloom’s, and there are quite a few who are even more powerful. Let’s not even talk about the higher-ranked half-step lord-level powerhouses…’

After reviewing the battle mentally, the threat that Lin Huang had sensed in his heart only increased.

Initially, he had considered his current abilities to be fairly top-notch already. However, now that he had encountered a true powerhouse, he was finally able to distinctly see the disparity between his ability and theirs.

While Lin Huang was still replaying the battle in his head, Virtuoso, who was next to him, had spread his Divine Telekinesis over an area of several thousand kilometers to prevent Nine Gloom from escaping.

The golden deluge of sabers finally stopped after pouring down for several minutes.

The entire surface of the ground in the area covered by the saber formations had been bombarded until it had become a depression full of potholes. In the whole area, not even a single microorganism could possibly have survived, much less any vegetation. Nine Gloom, on the other hand, had disappeared.

“From the looks of it, he should have been killed,” Saber9 commented somewhat uncertainly after he had withdrawn the saber formations and scanned the surroundings with Divine Telekinesis.

Virtuoso did not respond immediately; they seemed to be using Divine Telekinesis to sweep the area for quite a few rounds. Only after that did they observe, “My Divine Telekinesis certainly hasn’t picked up any signs of life at all. Moreover, when you attacked, the entire area was under constant coverage from my Divine Telekinesis. I didn’t come across any black vines that managed to escape from within your range of attack…”

“So, are we going to search his lair now?” Only now did Saber9 feel more at ease.

“Somehow, I feel… this is a little too easy.” Virtuoso glanced at Lin Huang after they finished speaking.

“I have the same feeling.” Lin Huang gave a slight nod. “If that fellow could become the final winner in this battle between overlords, it’s not very likely that we’d be able to kill him off so easily.”

“I think he was just far too gullible, so it makes sense that he would fail miserably.” Saber9 was extremely confident in his own abilities. He felt that Nine Gloom, with his almost-depleted Divine Power, would not have been able to survive the onslaught of the saber formations from earlier on.

Lin Huang did not bother to keep arguing about the matter. “Honestly, it’s no longer important whether he’s dead or alive. Given his condition just now, even if he’s still alive, he won’t be an obstacle to us. We’ll leave after we obtain the fragment, and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever encounter him again in the future.”

“When you put it like that, why am I suddenly harboring a faint hope that he might still be alive?” Saber9 said with a smile, “I’m just worried that he won’t show his face. If he dares to reveal himself, we’ll eliminate him immediately to prevent future problems!”

Virtuoso said nothing more. Instead, they turned around to look in the direction of Nine Gloom’s lair.

“Let’s go!”

They were off and running the moment they finished speaking. Lin Huang and Saber9 hurriedly caught up with them, and together, all three headed toward Nine Gloom’s lair, which was nearby.