The Emperor Hero Armor's feet planted firmly onto the earth.
"Boom!"
A muffled, deafening crash caved the ground inward. Centered on his landing point, all Pola Beasts of varying sizes within a hundred-meter radius were instantly blown away and torn apart by an invisible shockwave, exploding into a sky full of foul, bloody mist.
Immediately after, the golden figure vanished.
Atop the ridge, Bai Yuekui's pupils suddenly shrank to dangerous pinpricks.
In her perception, the man clad in golden armor transformed into streaks of golden lightning that were completely impossible to track visually.
He had no fixed trajectory and no tactics to speak of; he merely darted recklessly through the boundless black beast tide. Every flash was accompanied by the disintegration of massive swaths of Pola Beasts.
"What... what kind of technology is this armor?" For the first time, she doubted her own proud research capabilities. It was a technology completely impossible to analyze or comprehend.
Her mind involuntarily flashed to the Abyss Walker armor she once wore. It was a masterpiece forged through painstaking effort, combining Life Source Essence technology with the mysteries of the Mana Ecology.
However, compared to the god-like armament before her, the Abyss Walker was like a delicate toy.
Inside the Lighthouse, all the survivors pressed themselves tightly against the portholes and surveillance screens, witnessing this miraculous scene.
A second ago, it was an apocalyptic beast tide capable of devouring them and the Lighthouse entirely.
At this very moment, that black despair had become livestock being unilaterally slaughtered.
The massive contrast caused their minds to short-circuit. The nerve called "despair" was completely burned out, replaced by an extreme awe and fanaticism akin to a volcanic eruption.
"A god... a miracle..."
"The Lord of Light and Shadow... a true god..."
Countless people could no longer support their bodies. Their knees gave out, and they knelt on the ground toward the golden figure rampaging across the battlefield. They let out the most devout prayers and cries of their lives, their voices hoarse, their faces covered in tears.
On the battlefield, Marc and the legion of over a hundred Mutant Beasts he led had long since stopped their slaughter.
They could clearly feel that supreme, world-dominating will originating from Ian.
This will did not oppress them; instead, it felt like a primal summons from the deepest depths of their bloodlines and souls, making the newly acquired, untamed dark power within their bodies submit and tremble.
Marc looked up at the golden figure. No expression could be seen on his terrifying Mutant Beast face, but deep within his eyes burning with black flames, aside from awe, there was a trace of supreme glory in being able to follow such an existence.
After clearing out the vast majority of the grunts, Ian's figure slowly came to a halt in the very center of the battlefield.
Behind him, massive phantoms of the five pure elements—Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth—materialized out of thin air. Like five slowly rotating planets, they exuded a terrifying aura intertwining creation and destruction.
The energy of the entire world fell into chaos with the appearance of these five elemental phantoms.
The gorgeously designed Aurora Sword in Ian's hand dissipated into a flurry of light particles. He grasped at the air with his right hand again, instantly drawing upon the power of the five elements behind him, which transformed into five torrents that madly surged into his palm.
The light twisted, compressed, and reforged.
He tightly gripped an Emperor Halberd—a weapon even more domineering and majestic than the Aurora Sword, with Great Dao runes flowing across its blade.
The moment the halberd appeared, even the sky seemed to dim a fraction. All the light in the world appeared to actively converge here, submitting to its existence.
In the distance, the colossal Super Monarch-class Pola Beast that had crawled out of the earth, larger than the Lighthouse itself, revealed a clearly visible emotion for the first time in its countless, endlessly rotating scarlet compound eyes.
It was fear.
Pure fear, stemming from the instinct of life.
Its massive body, large enough to crush mountains, was actually trembling slightly.
It wanted to retreat, to flee back into the subterranean abyss, only to find itself firmly locked onto by an invisible aura. Even moving a single tentacle had become an extravagant hope.
Ian slowly raised the Emperor Halberd, pointed it at the behemoth from afar, and violently swung the weapon down.
An indescribable golden slash detached from the halberd's blade, instantly tearing through everything between the sky and the earth as it silently sliced across the massive body of the Super Monarch-class Pola Beast.
Time seemed to stand still at this moment.
After being cleaved by the slash, the behemoth's massive body did not disintegrate, nor did it explode.
Instead, under the watchful eyes of the Lighthouse crowd, Marc's legion, and Bai Yuekui's squad on the ridge, it began to undergo a bizarre collapse that transcended the laws of physics.
Its massive flesh, hard bones, and surging energy core all turned into a cascading waterfall of data streams. All of its "existence" was forcibly erased and compressed.
Ultimately, all the data streams converged into a card engraved with complex, mysterious patterns on its back, fluttering lightly into Ian's hand.
Ian casually stored the card into the slot on his belt, his gaze sweeping contemptuously over the remaining beast tide on the battlefield, which had fallen into chaos due to their leader being instantly obliterated.
He violently thrust the Emperor Halberd into the earth beneath his feet.
"Ommm—!"
Centered on the Emperor Halberd, a golden shockwave that swept across the entire world erupted with a boom.
This shockwave was not a concussive blast, but an absolute force of purification.
Wherever the golden light passed, whether it was ordinary Pola Beasts or those massive Monarch-class individuals, their roars abruptly ceased. The moment their bodies touched the golden light, they were completely decomposed and vaporized.
In the end, they didn't leave even a single trace of their existence behind, all turning into golden dust dancing in the sky, sparkling under the sunlight—holy yet cruel.
A mere few seconds later, the golden shockwave dissipated.
The world fell completely silent.
The battlefield, which had just been littered with corpses and shaking with roars, was now cleaner than anywhere else. The earth had been vitrified by high heat, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the light of the sky.
It was as if this place had been an empty, dead wasteland for millions of years.
All that remained was the faintly trembling Emperor Halberd on the ground, the completely unharmed Mutant Beast Legion led by Marc, and Bai Yuekui's squad on the distant ridge, who had long since fallen into a petrified stupor.
"..."
On the ridge, Xia Dou and the others had completely lost their ability to think. Their minds were entirely blank, their mouths hanging open unconsciously, unable to make a sound.
Bai Yuekui's breathing became somewhat rapid.
She stared fixedly at the golden figure below who was retracting his halberd. An unprecedented desire for exploration burned in her eyes, along with... a trace of trembling excitement that even she hadn't noticed.
"This trip really wasn't in vain," she said, licking her somewhat dry lips, her voice hoarse.
Right at that moment, Ian, in the center of the battlefield below, seemed to sense something.
He slowly retracted his helmet's visor, revealing his true face.
Then, he raised his head. His gaze crossed a distance of several kilometers, meeting Bai Yuekui's eyes atop the ridge.
A playful smile appeared on his face.