Lin Qingyue let out a long sigh, and with a loud crunch, crushed the last hard candy.
"The Lord Celestial God personally requested an audience, so we must obey."
She clapped her hands together and turned to her teammates. "Let's go meet the Lord Celestial God who corresponds to 'Envy' and see what He wants to talk to us about."
The High Priest bowed deeply and made a "please" gesture, personally leading the way.
His reverent attitude was less like guiding an audiencee and more like welcoming a top-level superior arriving for an inspection.
They did not take the main hall Hao Chi and the others had entered earlier. Instead, they turned toward a deeper, more ancient corridor on the side of the temple.
At the end of the corridor stood a giant bronze gate, more massive and primitive than the main hall's entrance.
The gate bore no intricate carvings, only crisscrossing claw marks. Each mark itself radiated a chilling, murderous intent.
As the High Priest chanted the ancient incantations, the giant bronze gate emitted an ear-grating screech and slowly swung open to the sides.
"Rumble!"
A Geng-Metal Slaughter Qi, thousands of times more concentrated than any they'd felt on the battlefield, surged violently from the gap in the door!
That wasn't just the pressure of energy.
It was the Law itself.
The abstract concept of "slaughter" had been compressed to its absolute limit, then liquefied and poured directly over their heads!
The air was instantaneously replaced, transforming into a trillion invisible yet razor-sharp blades.
Every breath felt like forcibly swallowing shards of broken glass that scraped their throats.
A needle-like pain shot through their skin, the aftershocks of the Law itself being sliced by invisible sharpness.
Just standing at the doorway, they felt their souls being flayed inch by inch by this power, on the verge of being completely torn to dust.
Lin Xiyue almost instinctively raised [Blackstone's Protection] in front of her.
The light of the Libram [Mountain's Resilience] surged, and a solid Golden Shield enveloped the four of them.
Yet, that all-pervading Slaughter Qi still penetrated the shield's edge, leaving her arm gripping the shield numb and tingling.
The shield's metal surface was actually scraped by the invisible cutting force, sending out a dense spray of sparks and emitting a piercing shriek!
Su Wan's reaction was equally swift, her deep blue mage robes billowing without wind.
A crystal-clear Ice Crystal Shield quietly formed inside the Golden Shield, its extreme cold struggling to neutralize that wildly sharp force.
Her brow furrowed, the magic power within her body churning uncontrollably. This was the phenomenon of elements being suppressed by a higher-order Law.
The magical model she had meticulously constructed was as fragile as a sandcastle before the rising tide in the face of this power.
Xia Lian had already gripped her twin blades, [Fangs of Shadow Strike], her body tensed like a fully drawn bow.
Her perception was severely distorted, and everything in her vision was coated in a layer of blood-red.
Countless illusions of ancient battlefields were frantically trying to drag her soul into an eternal cycle of slaughter.
Yet, before this Slaughter Divine Realm that could make even heroes struggle to move an inch, one person seemed completely out of place.
Lin Qingyue.
She stood at the very front of the group, bearing the brunt of the most terrifying impact.
But the expression on her face didn't change in the slightest.
She still looked lazy, as if she had just woken up from a nap.
She even had the leisure to pull another piece of milk candy from her Storage Space, tear off the wrapper, and stuff it into her mouth.
"Hiss..."
She sucked in a sharp breath, not out of fear, but because the biting Wind of Rules made her gums ache.
"This welcome ceremony is a bit hardcore. With the wind this strong, are they planning to give us a full-body, no-dead-angle physical sterilization?"
Her casual quip nearly made her three teammates, who felt like they were being scraped down to the bone, choke on their own breath.
Lin Qingyue chewed on her milk candy, stepping over the threshold of the Giant Bronze Gate with a leisurely stroll, all while braving the Wind of Rules that could tear apart battleship armor.
The three behind her exchanged glances and, gritting their teeth, forced themselves forward against the pressure.
The moment they fully stepped into the main hall, the soul-tearing Slaughter Qi vanished in an instant, like a power cut.
The sight before them left everyone stunned.
This was a... Temple that was almost excessively exquisite.
The floor was paved with a single, flawless slab of white jade, so smooth it could bring a clean freak to tears of joy.
The vaulted ceiling was inlaid with countless fist-sized gemstones, arranged in a perfect star map, with every position strictly following the golden ratio.
The pillars, candlesticks, and decorations in the hall were all crafted from rare metals and gemstones, featuring fluid lines and perfect symmetry.
This looked less like a temple and more like an art gallery created by a top-tier artisan with extreme OCD, who had poured their heart and soul into every detail.
And at the center of this perfect hall, atop a throne forged from pure platinum with simple yet powerful lines...
No sky-blotting, ferocious tiger god.
Nor a majestic and aloof older sister goddess.
A little girl, wearing a platinum divine robe layered in opulent and intricate folds, her hair tied in a pair of silver-white twin tails, sat there.
She looked no older than eleven or twelve years old.
A face carved from pink jade, so cute it was practically cheating, was now pulled tight, her brows furrowed and her mouth turned down, her entire face written with "unhappy" and "disdain."
Her small feet, dangling in mid-air, wore exquisite little white leather boots, still a considerable distance from the footstool below the throne.
Her tiny body, sunk into the massive throne, created such a strong sense of contrast that it almost seemed to warp the air.
Her gaze completely ignored Lin Xiyue and her two companions, landing precisely on Lin Qingyue.
Within those golden vertical pupils was a piercingly sharp scrutiny, mixed with curiosity, inquiry, and a hint of unconcealable astonishment.
The entire scene fell into a strange, deathly silence.
"Pfft—cough cough!"
The milk candy in Lin Qingyue's mouth nearly went straight down her windpipe, but she forced herself to chew it into pieces and swallow.
Good lord, the Celestial God is a legal loli?
What kind of weird fetish system is this?
Xia Lian's originally vigilant battle expression melted away instantly.
The "danger alarm" circuits in her brain were short-circuited by the "cute" signal.
A doting auntie's smile, the kind only shown when seeing someone else's adorable child, crept onto her lips. She even subconsciously wanted to pull a lollipop out of her backpack and offer it.
Su Wan's aloof iceberg face also nearly collapsed on the spot, her eyes twitching uncontrollably.
If her series of complex micro-expressions were played in slow motion, they would be enough to edit into a complete "Old Man with Smartphone" meme.
And Lin Xiyue, the straightforward Paladin, made a gesture that seemed to freeze time itself.
She subconsciously raised her hand.
With a purely academic spirit of inquiry, devoid of any malice, she leveled her hand at her own chest... and gestured to indicate the other girl's height.
This gesture, in this hall where even the air molecules seemed to be arranged in perfect order, looked especially jarring.
Upon the throne, those golden, cat-like slit pupils instantly constricted, locking onto Lin Xiyue's hand as it conducted its "academic research."
Voom—
The radiance of all the gemstones in the hall dimmed simultaneously for an instant.
The temperature of the entire great hall did not simply drop; it was directly drained away.
Air ceased to flow, light stopped dancing, and spacetime itself seemed to be grasped by an invisible giant hand, on the verge of being crushed to powder.
That was no magic.
That was pure, concentrated to the absolute extreme, enough to freeze all concepts—
Fury.