Facing the coordinated assault of two Second-Class Gods—one a frontal heavy strike and the other a flank execution—the divine light in Electrolux's grey eyes flared brilliantly.
He knew that a direct clash offered no hope of victory; he had to rely on technique and specialized abilities to maneuver.
"Necrotic Canopy: Wall of Lament."
His left hand blurred as he gestured, chanting ancient and obscure incantations.
In an instant, with him at the center, a grey-black deathly frost as dense as physical matter gushed out. It instantly coalesced into two massive, heavy grey bone walls in front of and beside him, adorned with reliefs of agonized, wailing faces.
Atop the bone walls, countless phantom wraiths flickered in and out of existence, emitting soul-piercing shrieks that created powerful mental interference alongside physical protection.
This was a defensive technique Electrolux had crafted by combining necromantic magic with Huo Yuhao's spiritual power. It could not only block physical energy attacks but also weaken spiritual locking.
Simultaneously, he pointed his right hand toward the direction of the charging Dai Mubai, fully activating the Core of the Herrscher of Sentience.
"Mental Labyrinth: Thousandfold Nightmare."
Silently and invisibly, a strange and vast spiritual wave rippled outward.
The charging Dai Mubai and the surging Zhu Zhuqing both felt a slight trance flicker across their resilient divine souls.
It was not a direct attack, but rather an explosion of bizarre, twisted, and fragmented illusions appearing before their eyes, ears, and even the depths of their memories.
There were the voices of old friends calling out; flickers of doubt and fear deep within their hearts were amplified infinitely; spatial perception became distorted, making it seem as though enemies were attacking from every conceivable direction...
This was a high-intensity spiritual illusion woven by Electrolux using the authority of the Herrscher of Sentience combined with his own understanding of the soul, designed to disrupt the judgment and rhythm of Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing.
"Tricks and toys! Break for me!"
Dai Mubai's charge slowed slightly, but the will of the War God was indestructible. He widened his tiger-like eyes, and a brilliant golden light erupted from his body. A pure and domineering torrent of battle intent exploded from him like a sun melting snow, attempting to forcibly wash away the illusory interference invading his soul.
At the same time, his fist, wreathed in golden flames, slammed heavily and without pretense into the Wall of Lament.
"Dong—!!!!!"
A dull thud, so heavy it felt as if a giant drum had been struck, erupted.
The golden divine power of the War God collided violently with the grey-black necrotic death energy, annihilating each other.
The Wall of Lament shook violently as dense cracks spiderwebbed across it, and countless wraith phantoms dissipated with wails.
However, the wall did not shatter immediately. Electrolux's necrotic magic truly had unique defensive properties, infused with the resilience of the Law of Death.
Meanwhile, Zhu Zhuqing's Hell Stab sliced into the side bone wall as easily as a hot knife through butter.
But the intense deathly frost and soulful shrieks contained within the bone wall caused a minute stagnation in her unparalleled speed, slightly weakening the trajectory and power of her attack.
Borrowing this moment of obstruction and interference, Electrolux controlled Huo Yuhao's body to tap his toe against the ground, floating backward rapidly while gesturing with both hands.
"Resurrection of the Dead: Dragon Bone Array!"
A muffled rumble echoed from deep beneath the wasteland. In the next moment, seven or eight beast skeletons, each as large as a small hill and shimmering with a metallic luster, burst from the ground.
Pale soul-fires flickered in their eye sockets as they let out silent roars toward the sky. Forming a simple formation, they lunged fearlessly toward Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing, exhaling corrosive necrotic breath and lashing out with massive bone wings and claws.
"Memory Alteration: Cognitive Distortion!"
Electrolux unleashed the power of the Herrscher of Sentience again, this time with a more concentrated focus.
He attempted to temporarily blur Huo Yuhao's exact location within the divine soul perception of Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing, even creating several "false targets" with similar auras, while lightly interfering with their "cognition" of each other's positions and movements to break their teamwork.
"Annoying bones."
Dai Mubai was entangled by several bone beasts, roaring repeatedly.
As he struck out with fists and kicks, golden light exploded; often, a single punch could shatter a bone beast's frame. However, the bone beasts were numerous and disregarded all damage, preventing him from immediately breaking free.
More troublesome was the pervasive spiritual illusion and cognitive interference. It made the enemy before him seem blurred one moment and multiplied the next, making his attacks feel sluggish; sometimes his full strength could only produce seventy or eighty percent of its effect.
Zhu Zhuqing's figure was ephemeral as she wove through the bone beasts. Her speed was so extreme that they could not touch a hair on her head.
However, Electrolux gave her spatial perception and positioning abilities special "attention," causing minute deviations and delays in her near-instantaneous flickers.
In a battle between gods, such a deviation was often a fatal flaw.
Several of her exquisite surprise attacks were narrowly avoided or blocked by Electrolux because of these tiny errors.
The battle instantly reached a fever pitch.
The more Dai Mubai fought, the more courageous he became. His War God divine power erupted like a volcano; he simply gave up some precision in favor of large-scale divine area-of-effect skills.
"War God Domain: Tiger Roar Shaking the Firmament!"
With him as the center, a massive golden domain hundreds of meters in diameter slammed open.
Within the domain, violent battle intent, scorching divine flames, and terrifying gravity suppression filled the air. Countless golden tiger-shaped energy phantoms roared and galloped through the domain, indiscriminately striking everything that was not an ally.
The remaining bone beasts were quickly crushed and purified within this domain.
The domain even began to faintly warp physical space, making it difficult for Electrolux to summon more undead and placing the spiritual illusions under immense strain.
Zhu Zhuqing utilized her advantage in speed to the absolute limit. She no longer sought a one-hit kill but instead transformed into countless shadows—hard to distinguish between real and fake—revolving around Electrolux at high speed, slashing, cutting, and stabbing.
Every shadow could be a real attack, or it could be a mere illusion.
Her attacks were like a torrential gale and a maggot in the bone, forcing Electrolux to maintain the highest intensity of spiritual perception and defense at all times, causing his consumption to skyrocket.
"Death Wither: Eternal Lullaby!"
Electrolux was under immense pressure and was forced to use a stronger necrotic forbidden art.
He raised both hands, and grey light shot into the sky, where thick, leaden-grey clouds of death condensed.
Grey-black light-rain fell from the clouds, carrying a potent life-siphoning and soul-freezing effect. Everything within the range withered rapidly, and even the golden light of Dai Mubai's War God Domain was slightly eroded and dimmed.
Simultaneously, a soul-piercing, sleep-inducing lullaby melody echoed across the battlefield, attempting to forcibly soothe or even hypnotize the battle intent and divine souls of the two gods.
"Hell Hundred Crack."
Zhu Zhuqing felt the lullaby affecting her senses. A cold light flashed in her eyes as she finally unleashed a stronger divine skill.
Her figure instantly split into over a hundred solid shadows. From above, below, left, right, and every possible angle, she launched a simultaneous saturated assault of extreme thrusts containing the power of spatial cutting, moving far faster than the naked eye could track.
It was as if she alone had launched a saturation attack with no blind spots.
"White Tiger Annihilation Kill."
Dai Mubai also erupted at the same time, concentrating most of his divine power into his right fist. Above his knuckles, the head of a golden tiger—condensed to the extreme, lifelike, and snarling with savage fangs—emerged. Carrying a will that sought to destroy all things, he threw the punch.
This strike concentrated the essence of the War God Domain, locking onto Electrolux to crush him and that annoying necrotic magic together.
Facing this near-certain deathblow, Electrolux pushed his remaining spiritual sense, Huo Yuhao's soul power, and the energy of the Herrscher Core to the limit.
He constructed his strongest spiritual defense, attempting to weaken the spiritual impact carried within the two gods' attacks.
At the same time, regardless of the cost, he instantaneously sacrificed and detonated all previously summoned and remaining necrotic constructs, forming a grey storm of death, soul impact, and energy turbulence to meet their attacks.
"BOM BOM BOM BOM BOM—!!!!!"
Three forces capable of destroying heaven and earth collided at the central point of this wasteland with the most violent impact.
An explosion beyond the power of words to describe occurred.
First came a point of light compressed to the extreme, which then expanded into a sphere of destruction that swallowed everything.
One half of the sphere was a blazing, burning golden-white; the other half was a grey-black that eroded all things. The edges were marked by dark silken threads that flickered and cut.
Inside the sphere, energy clashed and annihilated wildly; even the laws of the world seemed to wail.
Following this was a spherical expansion of a destructive shockwave ring.
Wherever the ring passed, the earth was not merely torn apart but directly vaporized and annihilated.
A giant crater over a thousand meters in diameter and hundreds of meters deep formed instantly.
The edges of the crater were rocks melted into a glass-like state, while the bottom was a chaos of energy turbulence and spatial rifts.
The terrifying sound of the explosion echoed through the clouds, audible for a thousand miles.
The blinding light made the surrounding hundred miles as bright as day, before being instantly obscured by the rising endless dust and energy turbulence.
The intense energy storm and spatial vibrations swept outward; the trembling of the earth and the violent turbulence in the air could be felt even hundreds of miles away.
When the light and dust slightly dissipated, Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing could be seen at the center of the crater, each having retreated a certain distance. Their divine light was slightly disordered, but they were largely unharmed, though their consumption was significant and their expressions solemn.
As for the location where Electrolux had been, it was shrouded by a semi-transparent, crack-riddled grey spiritual barrier and a pile of bone ash that had been reduced to fine powder.
He was kneeling on one knee, his face as pale as paper. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, and the grey light on his body had dimmed to the extreme.
Electrolux's spiritual sense aura was markedly weaker; the remnant soul seemed as if it might scatter with the wind at any moment.
Despite relying on the abilities of the Herrscher of Sentience, necrotic magic, and the sacrifice made regardless of the cost, he had barely withstood this combined attack, but the price had been heavy.
Meanwhile, Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing clearly still had strength to spare.
"It's over."
Dai Mubai steadied his breathing and approached step by step, his golden eyes filled with chilling killing intent.
"We will give you one last chance. Speak the whereabouts of Xiao Wu."
Zhu Zhuqing's figure flickered on the flank again, sealing off Electrolux's last possible escape route.
Electrolux looked up, but a trace of a smile appeared on his face. His reinforcements had arrived.
In the eastern sky, a violent purple lightning bolt tore through the firmament, carrying an anger that sought to destroy all and a towering hatred as it arrived with inconceivable speed.
Before the person even arrived, the terrifying pressure containing the authority of the Herrscher of Thunder had already blanketed the entire battlefield.
"Sea God's dogs, your lives... this Empress shall take them."
The Demon Empress's voice, cold and saturated with killing intent, boomed like thunder from the highest heavens over the ravaged wasteland.
Almost simultaneously, in the northern sky, the temperature plummeted. Snowflakes condensed out of thin air and drifted down without warning.
An elegant, ice-blue figure, treading upon stairs formed of ice and snow, seemed to stroll out from a lunar palace.
Wherever she passed, the air froze and all things were coated in frost. A cold, holy, and yet similarly vast divine snow pressure rose to contend with the violent thunder.
"The Far North, Ice-Snow Goddess Snow Empress, comes to seek guidance from the God of Speed and the War God."
A clear and pleasant female voice sounded, devoid of worldly heat, yet it caused the pupils of Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing to contract violently at the same time.
The situation reversed in an instant.
Two powerful allies had made their grand entrance at Electrolux's moment of greatest peril.
The wind of the wasteland still wailed. The glass-like rocks at the edge of the crater glowed with stinging residual heat. The energy turbulence at the bottom had not yet subsided, and distorted spatial rifts flickered like hideous scars on the surface of the earth.
The pupils of Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing contracted almost instinctively the moment they saw the Snow Empress and the Demon Empress, the contraction so sharp that blood vessels faintly appeared in the whites of their eyes.
It wasn't because of how violent the opponents' auras were, but rather the Divine Seat auras swirling around them, tightly linked to the rules of heaven and earth—they were too pure, and too obvious.
Having spent decades in the Divine Realm, Dai Mubai and Zhu Zhuqing were intimately familiar with Divine Seats.
A Rank-100 True God without a Divine Seat, no matter how thick their divine power or how strong their spiritual sense, possessed a detached aura, like rootless duckweed—they had power but could not gain the resonance of the world's will.
But a god with a Divine Seat was different; it was a feeling of being anchored. When their divine power circulated, it would resonate with the corresponding laws of heaven and earth. Every movement carried the pressure of those laws. Even just standing there, they caused the surrounding energy to spontaneously yield and obey.
The ice-blue divine light around the Snow Empress was faintly connected to the ice and snow laws of the Douluo Continent. Every step she took on her ice stairs resonated with the moisture of the entire wasteland upon landing. Even the leaden-grey clouds above the crater began to condense into fine ice crystals.
The purple lightning on the Demon Empress was even more pronounced. The violent authority of the Herrscher of Thunder threatened to tear the heavens and earth apart. That destructive aura actually reminded Dai Mubai of the Chaotic Sea of Thunder at the edge of the Divine Realm.
"Impossible."
Dai Mubai's voice dropped suddenly, carrying a trace of loss of composure that he himself hadn't noticed. His brow furrowed, and his tiger-like eyes were full of unbelievable shock.
"The Divine Seats of the Divine Realm have long been saturated and divided up entirely. The Douluo Continent is but a lower-plane dimension; how could it possibly give birth to so many gods possessing complete Divine Seats?"
As the War God of the Divine Realm, he understood the rules of the realm too well—a Divine Seat is the manifestation of the laws of heaven and earth. The birth of every Divine Seat requires the corresponding jurisdictional authority of the laws. The Divine Realm is the place where those laws are most concentrated, while the laws in lower planes are thin, utterly insufficient to support a Divine Seat.