As the mark on Chang Qing's brow gradually turned black, the deep green healing energy within his origin began to be tainted by a layer of darkness. However, this power did not weaken the inherent healing properties of the energy itself. Instead, it added a terrifying devouring force to the periphery of the restorative light.
At that moment, however, no one's attention was on his transformation. Too many demons had been drawn to the sound of battle. They had to eliminate the approaching demonic cultivators at the fastest possible speed. If too many demons gathered, their situation would remain perilous despite the newfound power.
Fortunately, supported by the immense healing and recovery capabilities, every person under the enhancement of the Qing-God Array erupted with their full power. Spears struck out like dragons and massive hammers shook the world. Every strike reduced a demon to several shattered fragments.
Time passed in a blur. Except for Chang Qing, every person fought until they reached a state of frenzy. Every inch of their bodies was coated in unidentifiable gore, and the surroundings had long since become a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
Due to the excessive exhaustion, even after the last demon fell, everyone's heart remained tightly strung. They stared into every corner of the environment, their thoughts entirely consumed by the combat. It was only quite a while after the battle ended that Chang E was the first to react.
"Is it over?"
Those words startled the others out of their trance.
"Is it over?"
"Are the demons all dead?"
After their divine sense swept the area frantically and their investigative techniques repeatedly failed to find any living targets, the Little Spear Saint was the first who could no longer hold himself up. He collapsed onto the ground.
The three warriors of the Qing-God Army first established a protective formation before they, too, lay on the ground like heaps of mud. Every corner of their bodies seemed to stiffen instantly in that moment.
Yes, it was over. This god-forsaken war. A slaughter that left flesh and blood flying, creating a sea of corpses. They had fought until they were numb, until they were on the verge of collapse.
In the beginning, almost every person had carried a heart set on killing enemies and establishing merit. But after fighting to this point, they no longer knew how many enemies they had slain, how many times they had been wounded, or how many times they had lingered at the gates of the underworld. They didn't know how many times they had watched a companion fall beside them.
Their entire beings, even their consciousness, were wrapped in thick, sticky layers of minced meat and blood. By the end, they no longer knew why they were killing, why they had come here, or when it would end. They had no time to think of anything else; the only thought remaining was to kill the enemy... and to live!
The negative emotions welling up within them were released frantically before they could even be processed, transforming into the power of slaughter. Even after the battle ended, they remained unable to extricate themselves from that state. Chang E's question, "Is it over?" was like a call that woke them from that bizarre and terrifying nightmare.
In that moment, almost every person shed tears, though they did not know why. Dread, fear, madness, bloodlust, exhaustion, despair... all the hidden emotions swarmed out at once. Before this day, the life-and-death battles they had experienced and the people they had killed did not amount to even a fraction of what they had seen today!
No one had expected the first battle to be this cruel. They had made the worst possible psychological preparations for this war, but only after truly experiencing it could they feel that profound despair, pain, and the soul-deep fatigue.
Only the three warriors of the Qing-God Army were in a slightly better state. They had undergone many slaughters before, so their level of acceptance for such carnage was higher. However, fighting with such desperation was a first for them as well.
But if even they found it this difficult, what about the others? Would the companions they lived and breathed with every day be able to survive? This was only their first battle; it was far from the end.
However, they soon discovered that Chang Qing's state seemed wrong. His entire body was enveloped in a bizarre interweaving of black and green power. The mysterious mark on his brow had also turned into a mixture of cyan and black. His brow was tightly furrowed as if he were enduring extreme agony.
The battlefield where Chang Qing and the Little Spear Saint were located was merely a microcosm of the numerous sub-battlefields across the World-Domain. They were unfortunate to have encountered a number of demons that far exceeded them, with a ratio reaching a staggering one to over a hundred!
If anyone had heard that number before the war started, they would have been driven to absolute despair. To fight a hundred opponents of the same level? Especially demons, whose combat power was consistently above the average?
Yet, they had ultimately won. Formidable individual combat strength and coordination, the legendary Qing-God Array, and the talismans and armor forged with the full strength of the Star-Sea... along with each person's battle power erupting beyond the physical limit allowed them to luckily win this fight. Once they endured this battle, they were bound to undergo an unprecedented rebirth and breakthrough.
However, in the wider Golden Core battlefield, many more were unfortunate. The enemies simply could not be finished! Weapons broke. Talismans were used up. Healing and recovery pills were exhausted. Companions fell one after another until only one was left.
When one struck out for the final time, there was only a weapon snapped down to its hilt, a set of shattered armor, and a body covered in scars. The storage bags were empty, the spiritual power was gone, and even the companions had all fallen.
And the demons remained endless! In the end, they could only watch helplessly as they were torn apart by sharp claws, sinking into eternal sleep alongside the final wave of pain.
This was the current state of the Golden Core battlefield. No one knew what these people thought in the final moment before death. Was it the unattainable dream of becoming an immortal, the family they would never see again, or the regrets they would never be able to fulfill?
The Golden Core battlefield was a crushing defeat! Countless chosen geniuses and powerful warriors of the Qing-God Army perished there. Their past glory and bright futures were all buried in that cold battlefield. Some could not even leave behind a single trace of their bodies.
The only small consolation was that people wearing special spirit tools to conceal their auras appeared on the battlefield. While they collected the corpses of demons, they also solemnly gathered the broken bodies or relics of the Star-Sea warriors into specially made jade coffins.
They were the Corpse Collector teams specially nurtured by the Star-Sea Continent. They were not skilled in combat; all their spirit tools and methods were designed for stealth and escape. Their purpose in entering the battlefield was to clean up the dead, bringing back demon corpses to serve as resources for the Star-Sea world, while returning the remains and relics of every warrior so they might have a place of rest and burial.
But though the Golden Core battlefield suffered a defeat, some sub-battlefields were victorious, just like the world where Chang Qing and Chang E were! Moreover, what was astonishing was that while this brutal battlefield had the lowest survival rate, it produced the most peerless geniuses who surpassed their era!
Just like Chang Qing. After enduring the initial pain and a transformation of extreme difficulty, his cultivation foundation had directly become several times stronger than before! When Chang Qing stood up from the depths of his agony, his gaze had completely changed.
His originally warm eyes had become one cyan and one black. The black eye, in particular, radiated an extreme terror as if it could devour everything it saw. His entire physical body also gave off a suffocating feeling that he could not yet fully control.
"Brother..."
"Brother Chang..."
"Fellow Daoist Chang..."
"How do you feel?"
Seeing Chang Qing wake from his pain, the others hurried forward to ask with concern. To this, Chang Qing only shook his head.
"I am fine. You do not need to worry. I have gained much from this breakthrough. You should rest well. I will stand guard here. No demon will be able to disturb you."
"Brother, are you really alright?" Chang E gripped Chang Qing's arm, her eyes full of worry.
"I am fine. It is just that the experience just now was too complex. I still need to digest many things. Rest well and recover. With me here, everything will be fine!" Chang Qing patted Chang E's head dotingly.
Only after seeing this familiar smile did Chang E drop the heavy stone in her heart.
"Alright!" After giving Chang Qing a warm hug, Chang E fell asleep beside him with a sense of security. She was truly too exhausted. Seeing that her brother was fine, she could no longer endure and fell into a deep sleep.
Once his gaze left Chang E and turned toward the demon corpses not far away, Chang Qing's eyes gradually became incredibly cold.
'Demons... the next fight will be the final clash of the Golden Core battlefield. In that battle, you will not have an easy time!'
Simply studying medicine could not save his group of companions; he had to devour demons as well. By devouring all the enemies, he could save the companions by his side!
The life-and-death crises his sister and his brother, the Little Spear Saint, had faced earlier had pierced his heart deeply. But from today onward, that would never happen again! He would never allow such a thing to occur a second time!
In other parts of the Golden Core battlefield, atop the endless demon corpses, several figures that seemed to reach the heavens also stood up. Some were towering blood-colored willows. Some were saber-wielders soaked in blood. Some were spell-cultivators who froze the world for ten thousand miles. Some were body-refiners whose physical forms were extremely brilliant.
These geniuses who rose in the face of despair and death were all tainted with an extreme killing intent. The only thing they shared was that in the next battle, they would never allow their companions to fall beside them again. If not for those companions, they would have long since become cold corpses themselves.
Each of these individuals was a terrifying genius born from an extreme impasse. After this baptism of true blood and fire, they would awaken their true potential and become the most terrifying demons of slaughter. Their Dao Hearts were so firm that nothing could shake them.
Currently, the Foundation Establishment battlefield presented a similar scene. Relatively speaking, the situation in the Foundation Establishment battlefield was slightly better. As the fighting reached the final stage, the win rate was gradually evening out with the demons.
After enduring extreme impasse and slaughter, many young geniuses grew into truly formidable experts. This was actually for a reason; the cultivators in the Foundation Establishment and Golden Core battlefields were the geniuses born after Qi Ping reshaped the Nine Domains of the Star-Sea. The Golden Core cultivators were the group with the highest potential and talent.
Foundation Establishment was the tier with the largest number of geniuses. Unfortunately, these two levels were exactly where the Star-Sea Continent was weakest in terms of historical accumulation. Thus, even though it was known before the war that it would be exceptionally cruel, everyone had to be sent in.
Especially those geniuses with bright futures. Without their participation, these two battlefields would have been doomed to defeat. So, knowing it was likely a path to death and that most of the geniuses would die in battle, they had to step up. Otherwise, with a defeat here and another there, everyone—including the entire Star-Sea Continent—would be completely destroyed!
But fortunately, some peerless geniuses had already awakened and revived in the blood and fire. They had experienced the most desperate, terrifying, sorrowful, and powerless moments; nothing could strike them down now. Now that they had gained even stronger combat power, they would only believe firmly in their ability to tear apart any enemy blocking their path!
Moreover, they knew that there were surely others like them, waiting for the next final battle to kill their way through the enemy positions! Furthermore, after witnessing the true power of the Qing-God Army, they knew that once the surviving warriors gathered to form a true Qing-God Array, the real moment for their counterattack would arrive.
In addition, the soil of the Star-Sea world contributed greatly to the birth of such powerful and numerous genius warriors. It was precisely because of the nearly impartial recruitment and nurturing conditions, the best cultivation system, and the most precise means of detecting talent, along with the most suitable manuals equipped with the ultimate equipment, pills, and talisman resources the continent could provide, that more people were able to barely complete their breakthroughs and transformations at their limits.
Otherwise, if any of those links were missing, the Foundation Establishment and Golden Core battlefields would likely have been nearly wiped out by now. A world that only knows how to engage in class struggle and control will not give birth to many strong experts and will ultimately be overtaken by even stronger newcomers.
In the eyes of those truly transformed peerless geniuses, the real war has only just begun. In the upcoming battlefields, they will let the demons know the meaning of... fear!
However, compared to the brutality of the Foundation Establishment and Golden Core battlefields, the Nascent Soul and Soul Transformation battlefields were in much better shape. Although there were many sub-battlefields at these two levels, there were several existences within them that could overturn the war situation.
The foremost among them was the Void-Aether Fish school. With their spatial talent, their escape, defense, and attack capabilities were all supreme. But what truly allowed them to rewrite the battlefield's structure was their ability to break through the barriers of the World-Domain Battlefield. This ability allowed them to lead those with absolute strength to sweep through the Nascent Soul battlefields!
In these battlefields, the most dazzling performance in terms of killing enemies came from the demonic insects.
As the Master of Star-Sea, the strongest spirit bees Qi Ping had nurtured now perfectly covered the Nascent Soul and Soul Transformation battlefields. In the Nascent Soul battlefield, there were the Heaven-Emperor Bees, the Nether Bees, and the Balanced Bees that combined the traits of those two species. They were already leaders in combat at the Nascent Soul level, and once their numbers increased, they became nearly invincible among their peers. When combined with their specialized arrays and battle formations, their combat power was further enhanced.
However, while the performance of Qi Ping's Golden Marrow Bees was powerful, the most dazzling performance did not come from them, but from another, even more ferocious type of blood-colored demonic insect.