Chapter 167: The Awakening of the Primordial Blood - Part 1
The immense obsidian coliseum wept under the crushing weight of annihilation. It was not a natural rain dictated by the clouds of the outside world; it was a divine, poetic, and sadistic punishment, forged exclusively with the elite's own stolen talents.
From the dark sky of the dimension, Violeta's blue frost fell like a plague, freezing matter at the cellular level and halting the thermodynamics of the air. But what made it truly lethal was what it harbored inside: Eris's black and white Flame of Ruin, cunningly hidden within each shard of ice. The cold immobilized, and the conceptual fire erased the very existence of everything it touched, breaking down rock, crystal, and flesh into absolute nothingness.
CRACK! HISSSS!
The sound of matter dying was deafening. The immense, thick wall of boiling magma that Kael Morningstar had raised toward the sky, using every last drop of his overwhelming power as a Stage 3 Saint, began to darken and die. The indomitable heat of the planetary core, which minutes before threatened to melt the dimension itself, was being mercilessly devoured by the tyranny of Absolute Zero. The thick walls of liquid rock crystallized and cracked under the incessant bombardment of the bicolor rain.
Kael's knees trembled violently, threatening to give way and sink into the shattered black crystal floor. Thick, boiling golden blood dripped uncontrollably from his nose, ears, and the corners of his golden eyes, hissing upon touching the frozen obsidian. The Sword King was using his own body as the pillar holding up the weight of the world to prevent his siblings from being erased from existence.
Right behind his broad back, the delicate Aylin and the luminous Lys were on their knees, palms extended, desperately channeling inexhaustible torrents of emerald healing Qi and holy light toward Kael's spine. They were forcefully pumping life to prevent the redhead's overloaded meridians from collapsing under the obscene pressure of sustaining an attack empowered by the cultivation of a Peak Stage 7 Saint.
"He's not going to hold much longer!" Draven shouted over the deafening roar.
The immense ice titan was fifty meters away, completely isolated by Samael's previous spatial attack. Draven was taking the bombardment directly on his colossal Ice Physique, arms crossed over his head. His black eyes widened in pure horror as he watched his own unbreakable dragon frost being corroded, blackened, and disintegrated by the destructive Flame of Ruin that had infiltrated the Patriarch's attack.
In his isolated prison of four perfect mirror walls, Cedric, the Emperor of Seals, processed the chaotic battlefield information at breakneck speed. His gray eyes darted frantically from side to side. He saw through the reflections how his brothers were being massacred and suppressed from afar by an enemy who didn't even need to move a single muscle. His brilliant logical mind crashed abruptly against an immense wall of mathematical despair before finding, amidst the panic, the only terrifying possible answer.
"Listen, everyone in the Nexus!" Cedric transmitted, his voice echoing telepathically with feverish urgency in the minds of the thirty-one survivors, cutting through the din of the collapse. "Immediately stop all ranged elemental Qi attacks! Stop firing! If you project energy towards him, his suffocating Law of Space will deflect it to crush us, or his tyrannical Law of the Void will absorb it to return it to us! Fighting from a distance and using magic against the Patriarch is simply handing him free attacks to execute us with!"
Dante Morningstar, dodging lethal needles of ice and fire of ruin through anatomically impossible contortions in mid-air, landed heavily on the edge of a broken pillar.
"Then what the hell do we do, strategist?" the assassin growled through the mental link, gasping for air, his left arm partially frozen, the skin necrosed and bleeding profusely. "His base physical body is that of a damn Great Saint! Our short weapons and our fists bounce off his skin as if we were punching a diamond mountain!"
In the exact center of the apocalyptic storm, Samael Morningstar walked slowly.
The lethal rain of black and white ruin and absolute zero ice fell directly upon him in a torrential downpour, but the Imperial Void Dragon Armor passively covering his body simply swallowed the impacts. The elements vanished upon touching his dark tunic, leaving the Patriarch enveloped in an immaculate, untouchable gloom. His unfathomable violet eyes shone through the curtain of destruction with a cold, meticulously calculated disappointment.
"All of you carry my thick dragon blood in your veins," Samael's voice was not a shout, but it swept the entire coliseum, overpowering and completely drowning out the deafening sound of explosions and cracking ice. "But you remain determined to fight like simple, weak, pathetic human cultivators. You rely too much on the flashiness of your Laws, on the sharpness of your swords, and on your cowardly ranged attacks. You have completely forgotten what kind of primordial beasts you truly are."
The Patriarch's sharp words struck Kael's already fractured pride like a red-hot iron mallet to the chest.
The Sword King, still holding up the crumbling wall, looked at his own trembling hands, stained with his golden blood. The Patriarch was absolutely right. They had been trying to defeat an ancient god using magic tricks, choreography, and tactical formations designed by human minds. If ranged magic was useless, if the space around them was blocked by a monarch, and if swords bounced off, only one single option remained in the depths of their souls: the pure, raw, carnal brutality of their ancestral bloodline.
But before Kael could issue the order to shift through the Soul Nexus, Samael lazily raised his left hand. The Patriarch of Morningstar Citadel was not going to afford them the luxury of having heroic epiphanies in the middle of the battlefield.
"You are too slow."
Samael closed his fingers and struck the empty air in front of him with his bare knuckles.
There was no expansive shockwave. There was no fire or wind. There was only a sharp, unnatural, crystalline crash that reverberated directly into the core of their souls; a sound identical to an immense Zen gong forged of glass just shattered by a steel hammer.
At the exact point of impact of Samael's knuckles, the air itself physically cracked. The dark sky and the firm floor of the coliseum groaned with a deafening wail. Silver and violet fracture lines propagated at the speed of light, and the three-dimensional structure of space shattered to pieces, transforming reality into hundreds of thousands of invisible, two-dimensional fragments.
The combat radius transformed into a static limbo. Kael, Cedric, Dante, Violeta... absolutely no one had the physical or neural time to react.
The thousands of fragments of broken space did not fly through the air toward them like conventional daggers; they simply appeared suddenly, occupying the exact geometric coordinates where the bodies of the thirty-one survivors were located.
Divine flesh, bones forged in agony, and thick Qi armors were sliced at the subatomic level without meeting the slightest resistance. The edges of this "spatial slag" were cracks in the universe reflecting the outer void. Every time a warrior instinctively tried to take a step or simply fill their lungs with air, the surrounding atmosphere cut them multidimensionally.
In a single, agonizing second, the vast obsidian coliseum was stained deep red and the golden light of resurrection.
The thirty-one heirs fell in unison, dismembered, shredded, and massacred in the most grotesque way by the inescapable tyranny of broken space. Their shattered bodies quickly dissolved in the thick air, claimed by Sienna's merciful illusion rules to be regenerated in the abyss of the Labyrinth.
The first round of Year Five had ended in an absolute, silent, and humiliating extermination.
Hours later, the sepulchral, oppressive, and blood-stained silence of the coliseum was broken by the heavy rhythmic sound of forty-five pairs of boots stepping on the cold obsidian once again.
They had revived. Their physical bodies were flawless, healed down to the last cell by the magic of the dimension. But the mental trauma of having been cut alive into a thousand pieces, of feeling space separate their internal organs, weighed like a mountain of lead on their immortal souls.
Upon arriving marching in formation at the center of the shattered arena, they stopped dead.
Samael Morningstar was still standing exactly in the same spot where they had left him. He had not moved a single centimeter. His arms were crossed peacefully over the dark breastplate of his armor. At his side, the immense black Odachi floated in the air, but this time the monstrous steel was not alone.
Projected like a mirage from Kurohime's dark metal, floated the translucent, spectral illusion of a woman of unreal, painful beauty. She had extremely long black hair that moved and rippled around her as if it were ink spilled in clear water. Fine black horns crowned her head, majestic wings of obsidian feathers sprouted from her back, and her slanted violet dragon eyes emitted a profoundly chilling aura.
The Black Princess looked down from above at the forty-five regenerated geniuses and let out a feminine laugh; a melancholy, seductive, and simultaneously atrociously sadistic melody that made colossi like Draven and assassins like Sylas instinctively bristle the hair on the back of their necks. The sword was alive, and it was thirsty to devour more souls.
Kael and Cedric, at the head of the vanguard, exchanged a long look.
Kael swallowed thick saliva, still feeling the agonizing phantom echo of his own throat being separated from his body by space.
"Cedric... alone, fighting with simple human techniques, we are absolutely nothing more than dust before him," Kael transmitted through the thick threads of the Soul Nexus. His telepathic voice was now completely devoid of its usual imperial arrogance; it harbored only an icy, animalistic, and lethal clarity.
"I know perfectly well," replied the Emperor of Seals, his gray eyes shining with relentless mathematical coldness. "The rules of the game have changed forever. Ranged magic is certain death. We are going to crush his pride with his own damn biology. We are going to use everything at once. Elowen, Cassius... immediately prepare extreme life support in the Nexus."
Kael raised his face, his golden reptilian eyes burning with a savage, primordial resolve he had never shown before.
"Cut off all offensive flow from the Soul Nexus!" the Sword King ordered with a mental roar that shook the network. "Elowen, Cassius, stop projecting healing! Pump all our shared vitality directly and violently into our muscle fibers! If we cannot use our sublime Laws as outward projectiles, we will swallow them to feed and accelerate our mutations from the inside!"
The forty-five Dantians on the plain resonated with a single deafening heartbeat. Each and every one of them understood the gravity of the order. They were going to unleash the chains. They were going to irreversibly cross the line separating proud human cultivators from the primordial abominations slumbering in their chromosomes.
The twenty-one Imperial Sequences burst their Qi inward, forcing their bodies to expand until they reached the crushing, incomprehensible passive power of a Stage 5 Saint. Meanwhile, the shadows, the lethal assassins of the Void, pushed their newly forged cores and reached the level of a Low Stage 3 Saint.
As all this carnal energy combined and stabilized under Cedric's architectural network, the group's physical atmospheric pressure skyrocketed exponentially, crushing the obsidian under their boots, until it reached the suffocating, divine immensity of a Peak Stage 2 to 3 Great Saint.
The oxygen inside the coliseum began to boil, hissing from the friction.
The imposing illusory magma wall Kael used to project collapsed, vanishing into thin air. But he was no longer cowering behind a rock defense. With a guttural, deep, unnatural roar that shook every last mirror in the dimension, Kael's Dantian forced all the thick Stage 5 Magma Qi directly into his own bones and bloodstream.
Directly infernal heat radiated from his body in visible waves, distorting the air. But this time, the destructive energy did not go outward; it condensed brutally on the surface of his skin.
With a chorus of biological crunches, simultaneously repulsive and darkly fascinating, dense, thick scales of a brilliant, metallic crimson erupted, tearing human skin along his broad arms, torso, and muscular neck. These were not simple keratin plates; they were perfect Thermal Conduction Armor. Through them, the orange glow of his blood could be seen flowing not as liquid, but as molten metal.
From his skull, tearing his bloody forehead, two massive volcanic horns erupted toward the sky, burning at their tips with the terrifying Nirvana Intent. They acted as perfect regulators, lightning rods to contain the atomic friction of his power and prevent his own brain from frying. Kael's eyes lost all human pupils, becoming spheres of thermal light capable of seeing the ignition points and flaws in the enemy's Qi flow.
His golden and red aura shot up to the absolute peak of the Peak Stage 5. His regal presence ceased to be that of a sacred, noble, honorable swordsman, transmuting into that of the Spiritual Edge Crimson Dragon, a primordial predator emitting a vibration so sharp and hot that the air itself around him began to evaporate.
At a single mental command from the mutated leader, the biological infection spread like the plague through the rest of the vanguard.
To Kael's left, the shadows writhed in agony. Dante Morningstar let out a hoarse, high-pitched, bloodthirsty laugh that sounded entirely inhuman.
Extremely fine but impenetrable black obsidian scales, sharp as butcher knives, tore the pale skin of his neck, shoulders, and all his mobile joints. They were his bloodline's Trauma Condensers; designed not to deflect attacks, but to absorb kinetic impact, boil his blood to nullify the brain's pain signals, and convert brute force into pure murderous adrenaline.
Under the influence of the Void Frenzy, the assassin's black hair suddenly turned a brilliant scarlet red. Dante's pupils disappeared, replaced by terrifying dead gray interfaces; demonic eyes that no longer saw muscles or armor, but the "Seams of Existence," the red lines in the universe where the enemy's molecular cohesion was weak enough to be cut effortlessly. Dante raised his black dagger, having become the herald of absolute death, the Slaughter Demon Dragon.
Right behind the sadistic assassin, the silent Void twins, Aion and Aia, clasped hands tightly in the center of the chaos.
The scales erupting from Aion's immense anatomy were an abyssal velvet matte black, dense and obscenely heavy like stellar chrome. They did not shine; they swallowed and devoured the light of the room around him, embodying dark matter and collapsed mass. From his back sprouted immense wings made not of feathers, but of tatters of black smoke and broken space.
At the same time, slender Aia's scales burst forth, piercing her skin in a boiling, liquid silver, vibrating at an extremely high, blinding frequency. From her shoulder blades unfurled beautiful wings of white light and plasma filaments.
As they clasped hands, there was no outward explosion. There was an unnatural inward implosion. A binary magnetic field, the Stellar Absolute Zero, began to distort and bend gravity around them within a hundred-meter radius. Their auras orbited each other, creating a gray halo of negation that consumed matter. They were no longer two human siblings; they had merged into a destructive astronomical event, embodying the inescapable singularity of the Binary Eclipse Stellar Dragon.
To the imposing Sword King's right, the female royalty of the Empire bloodily claimed their ancestral heritage.
Violeta and Eris Morningstar screamed in unison, their graceful, supreme physiques being forced to mutate by the immense heat of Samael's blood in their veins.
Violeta's scales emerged tearing her pale skin like perfect, beautiful pearls of translucent ice. They were not rigid defenses; they created a dimensional refraction armor that physically bent light and space around her, making her look like an unreachable mirage. Her fine, elegant icy crystal horns grew, tuning her intent to halt the very movement of particles in the air, creating a zone of passive stasis. Her neon violet eye and her diamond blue eye focused in unison, seeing the imperceptible fissures and vectors in the very Law of Space her older brother used to weave. She was the incarnation of the cold that stops the universe, the Winter Void Dragon.
A few meters from her, her twin Eris became an unstable, violent black supernova. Dark, rough scales that devoured the room's light quickly and painfully covered her arms and legs. The edges of these scales were not gray; they glowed red-hot and bled constant flames of Ruin that fell to the floor, vitrifying it. On her skull, twisted igneous obsidian horns tore through her forehead, acting as immense lightning rods to channel the deadly instability of her Singularity Marrow before her own power disintegrated her. Her catastrophe veins shone beneath her pale skin, indicating that, for her, pain was simply more fuel. Every furious step the younger twin took melted the crystal floor. She was the end of matter itself, the Ruin Dragon.
In the protected rearguard of the battalion, the invisible threads of death began to be woven in the gloom.
The fingertips of the necromancer Orion hardened and became a brilliant, translucent crystal. From those new biological glands he began to secrete endless Void Qi silk, conceptual and invisible threads designed not to cut flesh, but to parasitically anchor into the enemy's nervous system. Orion's eyes lost their pupils, becoming two cold silver mirrors, opening wide, processing thousands of simultaneous motion vectors at once, ready to invade and control the shattered limbs and bodies that fell on the field. He stood as the supreme puppeteer, the Soul Weaver Dragon.
Right beside him, beautiful Vania lifted her proud chin toward the false sky. Thick, deep blue sapphire scales emerged, covering her temples, her delicate neck, and her shoulders. These scales vibrated at inaudible frequencies, creating a sonic dermis that completely nullified the friction of sound around her. Beneath the skin of her throat, her vocal cords mutated, hardening into crimson gold and dragon cartilage. The siren tensed her divine organ, preparing to emit an ultrasonic note that would not travel through the air, but through Qi, capable of matching the atomic resonance of a god's bones and reducing them to dust. She was the Leviathan Echo Sovereign.
In the logistical and tactical center of the apocalyptic formation, Cedric, the Emperor of Seals, closed his eyes and willingly accepted the cold iron into his soul.
The sound of a heavy anvil forging metal echoed from within his imperial heart. Immense pain shot through him as his fragile biological human bones were purged and replaced; bones of pure divine steel, capable of bearing the weight of fortresses, solidified and assembled within his bleeding flesh. Sharp, lethal claws, forged in a mysterious runic alloy designed to dismantle magical barriers with a single touch, grew, breaking his fingertips. Over his chest, metallic steel-gray scales of variable geometry adjusted and assembled like the plates of high-tech armor.
Cedric's mind ceased to function organically. His brain mutated into a fractal consciousness network, a runic quantum processor capable of analyzing ten thousand death variables per second. As the ultimate Battlefield Architect, he stabilized in his mind the overwhelming energy of the forty-four primordial beasts roaring around him, becoming the Metal and Matrices Dragon.
In a matter of short, agonizing, glorious seconds, the forty-five prodigy geniuses retracted all their expansive auras inward into their bodies. They no longer emitted dazzling lights of magic; they were not ethereal cultivators.
They were living biological weapons. Forty-five monsters armored in impenetrable scales, sharp horns, destructive claws, plasma blood, and empty stares, all united by the Nexus into a single, terrifying objective: to hunt the Demon King.
A hundred meters away, Samael Morningstar stopped slowly.
He stopped walking. He rested the heavy tip of Kurohime, still kept inside the immense physical void of its Devouring Twilight Sheath, against the broken crystal of the floor. Samael tilted his white-haired head, scrutinizing with his abyssal eyes the grotesque, beautiful, and lethal biological transformation of his pack.
And then, for the first genuine time since the sadistic tactical nightmare began five years ago in this abyss, a broad smile of pure, dark anticipation curved the Patriarch's lips. His fangs flashed in the gloom.
The ethereal projection of the black-haired woman, floating beside him tied to the dark steel, stopped laughing melancholically. The Black Princess gently flapped her obsidian wings, and her immense violet dragon eyes instantly locked onto the succulent new beasts rising before them, drooling with a terrifying, primordial hunger that threatened to tear the veil of reality.
Samael looked up, unsheathing a single centimeter of the black blade.
"Finally," whispered the absolute monarch, and his voice brought not terror, but the promise of a war worthy of myths. "My little pups have finally decided to bare their fangs. Let the true hunt begin."