Chapter 747: The Whetstone
A war began but it was not the glorious conquest the Termite King had been expecting this day.
With his backing erased from existence, the pale traitor was left standing alone on the tournament stage. He faced the combined and unfettered wrath of four Domain Kings. The Termite King tried to trigger his biological regeneration. He tried to sacrifice his limbs to launch a final lethal pulse of destructive energy.
It did not matter.
The Moth Queen enveloped him in a sphere of molecular rot. Emperor Xerxis crushed his lower body with a pillar of demonic Qi. The King of Flies severed his connection to his surroundings using a storm of lightning. The Ant Queen brought a golden hammer down upon his pale head.
The Termite King was reduced to a smear of gray dust in a matter of seconds.
His death signaled the official beginning of the purge. It was not a war of subjugation. The four rulers recognized the existential threat the Hollow Dominion posed. The termites operated on a unified hivemind. They knew that if even a single pale drone or hidden egg survived the purge, the network could rebuild itself in the shadows.
Every single termite in every single territory had to be killed.
The supreme rulers commanded their massive armies to march into the Hollow Dominion and purge their own lands. The invasion was swift, brutal and merciless. The elite forces of the Eclipse Court and the Hive Empire put their ancient blood feud aside during this time.
Moth generals and hornet commanders fought side by side, flooding the vast underground networks of the termite territory. The Moth Queen deployed endless clouds of toxic gas into the deep tunnels, melting millions of workers at a time. The Aegis Legion collapsed the earthen structures while the Aether Swarm hunted down anyone who tried to flee into the sky.
Right or wrong, it did not matter to the rulers of this realm. They had nearly been handed over to a cosmic plague. They would not allow this betrayal to stand and they were systematically genociding the entire species that had betrayed them from these lands. It didn’t matter if the individual did no wrong, they were treated all the same.
Li Yu stood on the observation deck of the royal warship and was watching the columns of black smoke rise from the burning pale cities below.
"Nothing brings people together like a common enemy…" Li Yu noted softly.
He watched a group of armored ants coordinate a defensive shield wall so a squad of wasp assassins could safely dive into a heavily fortified termite bunker. A week ago those two groups would have gladly killed each other on sight. Now they were brothers in arms and were united by the terror of what had almost emerged from that shattered sky.
The one sided war lasted roughly a few days as the supreme rulers blasted through the enemy lands with their combined might. They had already agreed to split the territory and all its resources evenly among the four remaining empires.
Throughout the entire campaign Emperor Xerxis had refused to let Li Yu out of his sight.
The Domain King hovered nearby and was constantly offering the finest foods and drinks they acquired during their purge. Xerxis was still deeply regretting his inaction on the tournament stage. He cursed his own shock every single day. If he had just moved a fraction of a second faster and thrown his body in front of Li Yu, he could have proven his loyalty and services.
Since he missed that golden opportunity Xerxis was doing everything in his power to make up for it now. He treated Li Yu better than anyone else.
Garrick had recovered his legendary courage the very second the terrifying aura of the dark mountain vanished. Though he had been begging and groveling naked on the floor just a few days ago, he was right back to his old habits.
He was currently surrounded by six beautiful women and drinking heavy wine in a private room. He was laughing loudly at his own jokes and drowning in the pleasures that he seeks. He seemed completely unbothered by the genocide taking place on the ground below.
Li Yu looked away from the burning cities and stared up into the clear sky. He still wondered exactly who had left that mountain artifact behind and just how massive the universe truly was.
Far away from the realm Li Yu was currently in, in a deep and uncharted sector of the cosmos, the true scale of the universe was currently on display. This was a major stronghold of the Xylarri Swarm. The realm was forged from dark purple chitin and swirling malevolent nebulas that actively devoured the light of nearby stars.
At the very center of this corrupting domain sat a massive grand chamber. It was the supreme gathering place for the Council of One Hundred. These were the apex leaders of the Xylarri lineage. They were ancient creatures that commanded endless fleets and devoured entire realms for the nourishment of their species.
Currently though, the grand chamber was a slaughterhouse.
Dozens of massive pale bodies littered the floor. Their smooth ovoid heads were severed. Their jagged scythe claws were shattered into pieces. Their thick purple auras had been forcefully extinguished. There were exactly fifty dead Xylarri leaders. They were bleeding out onto the polished purple stone.
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The remaining fifty leaders were backed into the far corners of the chamber. They stood trembling in fear. In the center of the room stood a man holding a simple straight sword.
He wore unassuming gray robes that fluttered slightly in the still air. He did not project a massive localized sun of Qi. He did not summon a terrifying domain of beasts. He just stood there, his sword dripping with thick purple blood. He was one of the top generals serving Li Yu's mother. A peer and friend would be a more apt description for him on a personal level.
At the general's feet knelt a Xylarri leader. The creature was hissing in agonizing pain. Its right arm, a scythe claw was cleanly severed from its shoulder.
"Let this be your first, last and only warning." The man with the sword said. His voice was casual but it carried a weight that threatened to shatter the very fabric of the realm. "Do not bully that boy again."
The Xylarri leader kneeling on the ground was the father of the creature Li Yu had killed in his first encounter with the Xylarri. He glared up at the human general with chaotic clusters of black eyes and they were burning with unyielding hatred.
The creature could not speak but it forcefully projected its thoughts directly into the general's mind.
"He killed my daughter!" The Xylarri leader yelled into the mental space. "It is the eternal law of our lineage! I will have my revenge!"
The general casually flicked his sword and shook the purple blood from the pristine blade.
"I do not care what happened to start this." The general replied while his tone remained perfectly flat. "I do not care about your eternal laws or your daughter. If you want revenge you can have it. You are a predator. Acting like a predator is in your nature. But you will get your revenge using forces that are fair to the boy's current level."
The general pointed the tip of his sword at the kneeling creature.
"What you sent just now was bullying the young." The general stated coldly. "That is unacceptable."
"Those forces were not meant for him!" The Xylarri protested, its mind transmission frantic and furious. "Those forces were deployed to consume that specific realm! It was a feeding ground! We did not know he was there until the tournament! It just happened to work out that way!"
"Then you should not have targeted him when the forces arrived." The general countered and was completely unimpressed by the excuse. "You saw he was there. You should have ignored him or sent drones at his exact level to fight him."
The general let out a long heavy sigh and rubbed his temples with his free hand. He looked genuinely exhausted.
He looked around the grand chamber at the fifty dead leaders and the fifty cowering survivors. He was having a massive headache at his assigned task. He truly believed it would be much easier to simply swing his sword a few more times and wipe these damn purple bugs from the face of the cosmos. They were a plague and exterminating them would save everyone a lot of future trouble.
But he could not do that.
His supreme leader had given him very explicit orders. She did not want the Xylarri completely wiped out. She said they were somewhat of a balancing force in the cosmos. She was also intentionally leaving this specific species around to act as a sharpening stone for her son. She wanted Li Yu to have constant pressure on him so he would never grow complacent in his cultivation.
"Dealing with family matters is always such a massive headache. It is always so much more complicated than it should be!" The general muttered to himself and was complaining softly under his breath. He lowered his sword and looked back down at the bleeding father.
"This matter is over now." The general declared as his voice echoed through the grand chamber once. "We have taken what was owed. That is the price for bullying the young. If you overstep again and send forces beyond his realm, the price will be total annihilation. Do you understand?"
The Xylarri leader hissed but did not respond.
The general turned his back on the creature. There were several other men and women standing near the entrance of the chamber. They wore similar unassuming clothes but they radiated an intense and quiet lethality. They were the elite strike team the general had brought to enforce the warning.
"We are leaving." The general commanded.
The team stepped into the void and vanished from the grand chamber without leaving a single ripple in space. The moment the humans were gone the heavy oppressive pressure lifted from the room. The fifty surviving Xylarri leaders stepped forward from the shadows.
The bleeding father staggered to his feet clutching his severed shoulder. His chaotic black eyes burned with pure madness.
"I will kill him." The father transmitted furiously to the rest of the council. "I will gather the remaining battlestations. I will burn that realm to ash and drag that boy's soul back here to be tortured for eternity!"
Before the father could take another step, a jagged scythe claw pierced directly through his back.
The father gasped, choking on his own purple blood. He looked down to see the jagged blade protruding from his chest. He turned his head slowly. The other forty nine leaders had surrounded him. Their expressions were cold and completely devoid of empathy.
"You will doom us all." One of the elder leaders transmitted into the hivemind. "Your quest for personal revenge has already cost us half the council and countless others. If you provoke that monster again, he will erase our entire lineage."
The other leaders moved in unison. They overpowered the wounded father and completely bound his limbs with thick strands of condensed Qi. They dragged him away, locking him deep within the impenetrable prisons of their realm. The Swarm operated on mostly logic and put survival at the forefront. A leader who let personal vengeance threaten the existence of the entire species was a liability that had to be contained.
Outside the grand chamber the true devastation of the strike team was visible.
The general and his subordinates had not just killed fifty council members. They had carved a path of destruction through the Xylarri realm. Half of the entire population of that specific realm had been casually slaughtered as the ‘price.’ Billions of elite drones and towering defenders lay dead, their purple auras permanently extinguished.
The men and women of the general's strike team floated in the void above the dying realm. They were not simply leaving. They were performing a harvest.
They raised their hands and generated massive suction vortexes of pure Qi. They actively gathered the raw essence, the lingering soul fragments and the highly concentrated purple Qi from the billions of slaughtered Xylarri.
The dark energy formed into a massive swirling sphere. The team compressed the power and squeezed it down until it was the size of a small pearl. One of the women uncorked a simple brown gourd and guided the compressed sphere inside and sealed it tight.
They had delivered the warning, enforced the unspoken rules and gathered the necessary resources. The strike team turned and vanished. They left the crippled Swarm to rebuild in the shadows.