On the battlefield of Skywild Plains.

A massive battle had just ended.

The giant golden falcon, which had reaped countless human lives, had finally run out of strength.

After nearly an entire day of battle and countless casualties, the humans had won yet again.

The plains had been thoroughly baptized in blood, and many of the soldiers were so exhausted that they simply collapsed motionless on the ground as soon as the Desolate Beast was slain, unable to even speak. Even the Ultimate Emperor Realm cultivators had shed all pretenses, and they were all currently resting in the palace.

Su Chen’s figure flickered as he returned to the scene. He glanced around and said, “Hm? You’re all done?”

“Yes. Even without you, we were able to finish off this Desolate Beast,” Gu Qingluo said as she shot him a proud glance.

Zhu Xianyao and Gu Qingluo played a huge part in their victory for this battle. Gu Qingluo, with her sixty percent purity bloodline, provided the most effective support. And Zhu Xianyao had the Crow Sovereign under her control. As such, each of them were about as strong as a Sovereign, which was why she had the grounds to speak so pridefully.

Zhu Xianyao chimed in. “That’s right! You left us behind to do the hard work while you went off to have fun on your own!”

Su Chen was rendered speechless and could only smile bitterly in response.

Thankfully, Li Chongshan gave him a way out. “So how did things go over at Sky City?”

“Serene Dream Lotus Crown died, but the Mother Goddess Sect’s divine techniques are indeed extraordinary. However, that did give me a chance to scrutinize some of the gods’ secrets......” After Su Chen said this, his voice began to trail off.

“You didn’t destroy Sark’s Nucleus?” Gu Huiming asked.

“Yes. I want Sky City,” Su Chen directly replied.

Yes, that’s right — Su Chen wanted Sky City for himself.

This was the reason why he hadn’t destroyed Sark’s Nucleus, and it was also why he had upheld his promise with the Harpies.

He wanted Sky City!

There was no other reason. Sky City’s power was undeniable. With it, the human race would have a much easier time fighting against Origin Beasts, and perhaps even be able to contest the gods.

When Su Chen had found out that he only had ten years to prepare for the gods’ arrival, his motivation to finish this war only increased.

He absolutely needed to obtain Sky City.

And thanks to his recent visit to the Harpies, Su Chen had finally understood what Sky City’s last resort was.

Self-destruction!

If the Floating Points could blow themselves up, then surely Sky City would be able to do so as well. If Eternal Night saw that the Harpies had no hope of victory, then it was very likely that he would give this command and drag the humans to the afterlife with them.

With this knowledge in hand, Su Chen could now account for it when making plans for the final battle.

After some discussion with the other human leaders, Su Chen returned to his cultivation room.

As soon as he opened the door, a brilliant golden light pierced his eyes as countless divine characters twinkled while floating in the air.

“Oh? It seems quite a few of them have already finished forming.” Su Chen nodded his head in satisfaction.

Naturally, Su Chen would not let an opportunity to generate more divine characters go to waste. As such, he had made the appropriate arrangements within a secret room and used a method similar to the Moon God’s to form new divine characters. Instead of offering them up as a sacrifice, however, he had kept them for his own use.

After stowing the newly formed divine characters away, Su Chen immediately began cultivating with them because he was in his own secret chambers.

The immortal energy in his body revolved slowly, putting a tremendous strain on his entire body due to its raw intensity.

At that moment, the divine characters sitting in the open box beside him began to glow, as if responding to the motion of the immortal energy in his body. Then, they all flew into the air and unleashed a powerful pressure.

This pressure was so immense that even Su Chen’s secret chamber, which was constructed from metal essence, Black Cloud Stone, and even a legendary Origin Formation, seemed incapable of fully containing it.

The Boundless Palace began to hum as a barrier suddenly covered it. Everyone thought that they had been ambushed and scrambled to arms.

At that moment, Su Chen was still enduring the heavy pressure being emitted by the divine characters.

These characters seemed to have been stimulated by something as they continued to pressure him. It was almost as if they wanted to charge into his body and exterminate him.

No, not him — they wanted to exterminate the energy in his body!

Su Chen could sense that the divine characters “hated” immortal energy!

Even worse, quite a few divine characters had been formed from the bloody battle, but the amount of immortal energy that Su Chen possessed was still very limited. The divine characters had an obvious advantage.

As such, the divine power suppressed the immortal energy by quite a bit. However, Su Chen was obviously on the side of his immortal energy, and he would not allow the divine characters to invade his body that easily.

Even so, all Su Chen could do was revolve his energy and continue to endure the pressure.

But the pressure coming off of the divine characters only continued to mount, and they ceaselessly tried to forcibly invade his body and devour the energy inside.

Devour!

Devour!

Devour!

Slowly but surely, Su Chen began to sense the will that was guiding the divine characters.

One of the divine characters suddenly broke the stalemate and rushed into Su Chen’s body.

“Dammit!” Su Chen knew that he was in deep trouble.

This divine character quickly fused itself into the immortal energy in his body, and the two began fighting against each other.

Under normal circumstances, this divine character would not have stood a chance. After all, it was fighting a battle against Su Chen inside of his own body.

An instant later, however, two more divine characters flew into Su Chen’s body.

The divine character grew stronger after being reinforced, and the immortal energy in his body was forced to start retreating.

Su Chen was extremely agitated, but there was nothing he could really do to help.

At that moment, Gu Qingluo and Zhu Xianyao knocked on the door. “Husband, the Boundless Sect’s alarms went off and the barrier has gone up. Is something wrong?”

When Su Chen heard this, he was delighted and roared, “Activate the Borderless Mystic Ice Formation and then bring all of the puppets here! Hurry!”

Gu Qingluo and Zhu Xianyao glanced at each other and were shocked for a brief moment before they came to their senses and flew off to do as Su Chen had commanded.

An instant later, the Boundless Sect rumbled once more as yet another powerful formation was activated.

The Borderless Mystic Ice Formation.

This formation was said to be so powerful that it could slow time itself when it was activated. Of course, this description was an exaggeration.

But once the formation was activated, it would greatly decrease the density of nearby energy. Specifically, all Origin Energy attacks unleashed within the formation area would be weakened by around eighty percent. The only drawback to this formation was that it made no distinction between friend and foe, which meant that everyone within the formation would be equally affected. As such, this formation’s only real use was to buy time. In an actual battle, it would only serve to hurt the Boundless Sect.

In that moment, however, Su Chen was going to use this formation to stall out the divine characters.

Even though the characters were formed out of divine power, that didn’t necessarily mean that they would be immune from the formation’s effects.

But against divine power, which was on the level of Method Power, the Borderless Mystic Ice Formation could only weaken it by twenty percent or so.

But that was enough!

Su Chen felt the pressure on him lighten up slightly.

He grimaced. “You want to devour me? I’ll devour you first!”

Su Chen furiously revolved the immortal energy in his body to launch a counterattack against the weakened divine characters in his body. However, Su Chen could sense that, as he eroded away at the divine characters’ power, they didn’t disappear. Instead, their golden luster was gradually converted to the faint white aura that was characteristic of immortal energy.

The characters were being converted?

Su Chen was delighted.

It seemed that divine power and immortal energy were both enemies and also of the same origin. Whenever they encountered each other, they would clash, and the winner would fully assimilate the loser.

Upon realizing this, Su Chen couldn’t help himself from throwing his head back and laughing loudly.

At that moment, however, countless streaks of divine power flew into his body.

There were just too many characters to deal with. Su Chen’s body was beginning to break down from the constant pressure, and even the support of the Borderless Mystic Ice Formation would only last him for a few more seconds.

At that moment, Zhu Xianyao returned. “Husband, here are the puppets that you wanted!”

She threw a handful of puppets at the door as if they were toy figurines.

Bang!

The door to the secret chamber flew open.

All Zhu Xianyao saw was a golden flash as dozens of divine characters flew towards those puppets.

Since he couldn’t withstand the pressure, Su Chen had asked for some puppets so that they could take some of the pressure off of him. A moment later, the door to the secret chamber slammed shut once more.

Zhu Xianyao watched on as the puppets in the room began to shake violently, as if they had suddenly fallen ill.

No, it wasn’t just the puppets — the entire Boundless Palace was shaking.

“Heavens! What is going on!?” Gu Qingluo cried out in shock. She had just gotten back from activating the formation.

It wasn’t just her, either. Li Chongshan, Du Qingxi, and the others all charged over.

Even the Borderless Mystic Ice Formation couldn’t suppress this violent shaking. As the Boundless Sect was rocked by tremor after tremor, some of the weaker disciples weren’t able to maintain their balance and started teeter-tottering around as if they were drunk.

The disciples on the North-Facing Slope stared up at the sky enviously — their commanding officers really knew how to throw a party.

Within the palace, the tremors continued to shake the entire structure.

This went on for an entire hour before it finally stopped.

This silence then lasted for about half an hour.

At that point, Gu Qingluo and Zhu Xianyao could no longer resist their urge to call out to Su Chen, and they did so a few times.

Some time later, the door creaked open.

Everyone immediately rushed into the secret chamber, only to find that it was completely empty with not a single person inside.

“What...... What’s happening? Why is there no one inside?” Zhu Xianyao immediately began to fret and worry.

“Wait a moment!” With her Shining Dragon Bloodline, Gu Qingluo could sense that something was wrong.

As Gu Qingluo surveyed the room, she warily said, “Our husband is right here. I can sense his presence.”

Everyone was stunned.

But why couldn’t they see him? Had he concealed himself? When did Su Chen take an interest in pulling petty pranks?

Gu Qingluo, however, shook her head. “It’s not concealment.”

Everyone was mystified by Gu Qingluo’s words. Gradually, however, the air before them began to twinkle faintly, as if stars had appeared before their very eyes.

They were all surprised by this, but only Gu Qingluo seemed to realize what it signified. “Back up! Back up, now!”

All of them scrambled backwards out of the room. The glimmering light intensified until it gradually took on the form of Su Chen.

At first, this form was nothing more than a silhouette of light. Finally, however, the light congealed into Su Chen himself.

“Su Chen!” Zhu Xianyao leapt forward in joy to hug him, but she grabbed nothing but empty air.

She discovered, to her shock, that her hands had passed right through Su Chen’s body.

Zhu Xianyao waved her hand back and forth through Su Chen’s body a few times. It really seemed that he was nothing more than an ephemeral projection.

Everyone was instantly dumbfounded. Su Chen, on the other hand, glanced at them in surprise, and then back at himself before finally realizing what had happened. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth.

Suddenly, Zhu Xianyao felt her hand being forcibly pushed out of Su Chen’s body.

She reached forward and tried to touch Su Chen again.

This time, she felt a physical sensation — flesh.

“Su Chen!” she yelled delightedly.

“Sorry! Something unexpected happened. I didn’t mean to make you all worry,” Su Chen said with a light laugh, his voice suddenly laced with a unique allure.

Li Chongshan squinted suspiciously as he commented, “You seem to have advanced yet again.”

“Yes, I made a new interesting discovery,” Su Chen said, quite serious this time.

Li Chongshan wasn’t surprised at all. Instead, he merely sighed. “Don’t you feel like your strength has been increasing a little too quickly lately? At this rate, you’ll soon be able to challenge a Desolate Beast on your own.”