Chapter 77: The Fall of a God
Chapter 77: The Fall of a God
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
The blood-red sphere exploded.
A colossal dome of crimson fire expanded outward from the point of impact, swallowing Hayden’s body entirely in a fraction of a heartbeat.
The shockwave that followed was so monstrously powerful that it dwarfed the Sunfire Orb’s explosion several times over.
The massive stone gates of the Azure Cloud Sect, the towering archway that had stood for over a century were instantaneously vaporized.
The mountain path leading up to the sect, carved painstakingly into the rocky hillside over decades, was gouged open as if a god had dragged a burning finger across the landscape.
Boulders the size of houses were hurled hundreds of feet into the air, tumbling end over end before crashing down into the distant forests below, igniting fires wherever they landed.
Trees within a quarter-mile radius were uprooted instantly, their trunks snapping like dry twigs before being flung aside like discarded toys.
And then came the light.
The dim evening sky, already darkening toward twilight, was suddenly reversed.
The blinding, blood-red radiance like that of a descending sun, pierced through the gathering dusk, entirely banishing the darkness.
For a single, breathtaking moment, night became day.
The citizens of Greymist Town, miles away in the valley below, stumbled out of their homes, shielding their eyes against the impossible brilliance.
"What is that?" a man screamed, pointing at the blood-red pillar of light scorching the skies above the Azure Cloud Sect’s mountain.
No one had an answer.
They could only stare, paralyzed, as the sky burned.
Back at the plaza, the devastation was absolute.
"DEFEND! EVERYONE, DEFEND!"
Harmon’s voice tore through the panic.
More than fifty Spirit Manifestation Realm experts had gathered today.
Clan patriarchs, secluded elders, and wandering masters who had come to pay their respects or secretly gauge the Azure Cloud Sect’s strength.
They did not need a second warning.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
In the fraction of a millisecond, more than fifty different colors of essence bloomed simultaneously across the Azure Cloud Sect.
Harmon’s blue essence erupted, forming a towering dome.
Dorris and Kory Graves unleashed their full strength, their golden light soaring into the sky to interlock with Harmon’s.
The old man from the Green Bamboo Sect let out a desperate roar, his hands pushing forward as a vibrant green barrier exploded from his palms.
The entire mountain looked as though a garden of luminous shields had sprouted.
And then, the blood-red shockwave hit.
CRACK!
The deafening sound of shattering glass echoed endlessly.
"Hold on! Pour everything you have!" Dorris roared, a thick vein bulging on his forehead as his golden aura flickered rapidly.
For what felt like an eternity but lasted only a handful of heartbeats, the blood-red inferno raged.
And then, slowly, the heat and light began to recede.
The evening gloom slowly reclaimed the sky, the blood-red radiance retreating like a tide pulling back from the shore.
Wisps of thick smoke and ash drifted lazily through the still air.
Where the magnificent stone gates of the Azure Cloud Sect had once proudly stood, there was now nothing but a vast, smoldering crater.
The ground itself had been vitrified, the rocky soil fused into a dark, glass-like surface that still radiated waves of distorted heat.
The crater stretched nearly two hundred feet across and plunged thirty feet deep at its center.
And at the very bottom of that molten pit, a figure lay motionless.
Hayden.
Or rather, what remained of him.
His skin was charred beyond recognition, blackened and cracked like dried earth in a drought.
Only a blackened, unrecognizable, charred skeleton remained.
A Core Formation Realm expert was dead.
The fifty or so Spirit Manifestation Realm experts slowly lowered their trembling hands.
The luminous shields that had sprouted across the plaza flickered and died one by one, shattering into dissipating sparks of essence.
Many of the lower-level cultivators in the plaza had already collapsed to the ground, foaming at the mouth, while others simply stared openly into space with vacant gazes.
All gazes locked onto the vitrified, glass-like crater and the blackened skeleton resting at its bottom.
"Is...is it over?" Someone whispered, his voice sounded as if he had just came back enduring the torture of nine hells.
"That was... that was Core Formation... he killed Core Formation..."
In all my seventy-eight years of life..." A Spirit Manifestation Realm murmured with a vacant gaze, "I have never... never witnessed anything remotely close to this..."
Not far from the edge of the destruction, a faint, flickering golden barrier finally shattered like thin glass.
Orion Ashvele stumbled forward, falling heavily onto his knees.
Beside him, Evolet was curled into a pathetic ball, sobbing hysterically, her mind entirely shattered by the blinding blast.
But Orion didn’t look at her.
His eyes were fixed on the smoking crater.
Orion’s luxurious silver robes were now scorched, and a jade pendant hanging heavily from his neck abruptly crumbled into fine grey ash.
It was an Epic Grade life-saving artifact bestowed upon him by his father, the Patriarch of the Ashvele Clan.
An artifact designed to withstand a direct strike from a Core Formation expert.
It had been completely consumed just to shield them from the residual shockwave.
Orion slowly raised his trembling head.
His arrogant, condescending eyes, which had previously looked upon the people of Greymist Town like worthless insects, were now stretched wide with absolute, soul-crushing terror.
His gaze fell upon the charred skeleton in the pit.
"Master Hayden...?" Orion choked out.
In his eyes, Hayden had always been an Invincible existence, the kind of a man he always aspired to be, yet the very same man was now lying in such a pitiful state.
And the one who did it all...
Orion slowly, rigidly turned his head.
His terrified gaze locked onto the dark-robed youth standing at the edge of the devastation.
But the figure that had casually traded blows with a Core Formation Realm expert just moments ago looked nothing like the invincible reaper they had witnessed.
The jet-black darkness that had swallowed his eyes began to recede, slowly returning to his usual, indifferent dark grey irises.
The tyrannical aura of the third level of the Spirit Manifestation Realm plummeted rapidly as the borrowed power of the Spirit-Ascension Lotus faded, settling back to the third level of the Essence Condensation Realm.
Rhain let out a slow, heavy breath.
The truth was brutally simple.
The Solar Annihilation Sphere Art that served as its conduit was merely a Rare-Grade technique.
But the Red Tribulations Heavenly Flame was a Heaven-Grade fire.
The instant Rhain had ignited the Heavenly Flame and shaped it into the sphere, the battle had ceased to be a fight against Hayden.
It had become a fight against the flame itself.
Every fiber of Rhain’s consciousness, every last shred of his spiritual sense and willpower, had been poured into a single, task of directing the blast forward.
If it had been allowed to expand naturally, not only would Hayden have died, but Seris, Harmon, the Azure Cloud disciples, and all fifty visiting Spirit Manifestation experts would have been killed on the spot.
Rhain finally understood the true nature of a Heaven-Grade flame.
It was a double-edged sword.
Today, he managed to win.
But the margin had been razor-thin.
Feeling Orian’s gaze, Rhain also looks at him.
A chill ran down Orion’s spine.
He knew exactly what that indifferent stare meant.
Rhain was going to kill him as well.
He wanted to curse Rhain, to scream that he would regret this day.
But facing those emotionless eyes, his courage broke.
He didn’t dare.
Orion stumbled backward, his trembling hand grasping a jade talisman from his robes.
"My Ashvele family will return soon," Orion gritted his teeth, his voice shaking with fear and venom. "And this time, we will come with full force. No one related to you will be left alive."
Crack.
He crushed the talisman.
A flash of spatial light engulfed him.
In the next second, he vanished from the ruined plaza.