Amid the sighs, the Buddha statue condensed by Buddha collided with Shen Shu’s pitch-black divine form. Like two planets colliding, violent shockwaves rippled outward, spreading dozens of li.

Where they passed, living beings were annihilated, soil layers stripped away, as if an apocalyptic storm had arrived.

A battlefield of this level was destined to be a forbidden zone for life.

The transcendent powerhouses swiftly retreated while raising their respective defensive measures to resist the aftershocks of Buddha and Shen Shu’s battle.

Except for warriors, transcendent powerhouses of all major systems had to be extremely careful, lest they suffer an unexpected defeat.

In the chaos, Liuli Bodhisattva appeared behind Sun Xuanji, her jade knife slicing toward the enemy’s throat.

After the Insect Clan leaders temporarily withdrew from the battlefield, she targeted the Third Realm Sun Xuanji, relying on her ghostlike speed.

This tactic of picking off the weak was simple but effective—among current transcendent powerhouses, none were faster than her.

The gap between the First Realm and the Third Realm meant she could kill enemies instantly.

Unsurprisingly, Sun Xuanji’s head flew off, but no blood flowed—it was a mechanical puppet wearing a human skin mask, hosting only a strand of Sun Xuanji’s divine consciousness.

Liuli shattered the bronze bell with one palm strike.

“Dong dong dong…”

In the distance, clear light rose as another white-robed figure appeared, vigorously striking a bell.

Undoubtedly, this was another puppet, and the bronze bell was new.

The real Sun Xuanji’s whereabouts remained unknown.

A blue vein bulged on Liuli Bodhisattva’s fair, unblemished forehead.

Though she could instantly kill Third Realm practitioners, spellcasters were truly troublesome. Not only did they possess transmission techniques to come and go at will, but they were especially wealthy…

With multiple experiences fighting Buddhist Bodhisattvas, Senior Brother Sun had become craftier—he only provided support, deploying artifacts while his true body avoided combat.

This way, unless his artifacts were depleted, he would always remain safe.

And as everyone knew, spellcasters were the most extravagant system.

Finding herself unable to instantly kill the Third Realm Fate Master, Liuli Bodhisattva immediately changed targets. On this battlefield, theoretically, she could instantly kill three people.

Li Miaozen, Yang Gong, and Hengyuan.

However, Great Feng’s transcendent powerhouses had prepared for this, almost all forming pairs of Second Realm protecting Third Realm!

Hengyuan stayed inseparable from Arhat Duer and Kouyang Prefecture; Li Miaozen stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Golden Lotus Daoist; Yang Gong remained under Zhao Shou’s clear light protection.

In this situation, killing Duer and Hengyuan was the best option.

First, higher realm practitioners of the same system had innate suppression over lower realms. Second, killing Duer would return Mahayana Buddhism’s fortune to Buddha.

As for the Confucian and Daoist pair, the former’s “words become law” were too unreasonable, while killing the latter would not only reduce fortune but invite heaven’s punishment.

On such a battlefield, losing fortune meant danger, let alone facing heaven’s punishment.

Having made her decision, Liuli Bodhisattva immediately deployed her Practitioner divine form, silently appearing before Arhat Duer, her jade knife stabbing toward Duer’s brow.

During this process, centered on her, the colorless crystal domain spread like water.

It froze Kouyang Prefecture’s shocked expression, froze Duer and Hengyuan’s wooden expressions as they hadn’t yet reacted.

This was the Practitioner’s divine form, faster than a warrior’s crisis warning.

Seeing the three trapped whole, Zhao Shou and Yang Gong simultaneously chanted:

“Do not move!”

Combining their strength, aided by the scholar’s cap and engraving knife, they successfully immobilized Liuli Bodhisattva.

But this could only affect a First Realm Bodhisattva for a brief instant. Change Duer’s predicament required other actions.

Zhao Shou bent his fingertip, about to flick out the engraving knife to break the colorless crystal domain.

Meanwhile, Li Miaozen and Golden Lotus Daoist simultaneously descended on their swords, one weakening Liuli’s fortune while the other attacked this Bodhisattva who was weak in close combat.

However, pure Buddhist light descended from the sky, enveloping this area, followed by Sanskrit chants.

This came from Guangxian Bodhisattva.

In the chanting, Golden Lotus Daoist and Li Miaozen with their golden body protection only slightly dazed, not directly losing their fighting spirit.

They couldn’t be fully immune to a First Realm Bodhisattva’s divine form power.

Zhao Shou and Yang Gong were affected—the former couldn’t flick out his engraving knife as both Confucian cultivators now felt peaceful, not wanting to fight, only wanting to return to their academies to teach.

The Confucian’s grand righteous qi claimed to resist all evil, but this referred to mental evils like wine, sex, wealth, and anger.

Thus every Confucian cultivator’s character was extremely pure.

Unlike the Daoist Golden Core’s immunity to all methods.

Luo Yuhen dove with her no-longer-rusty flying sword, the blade wrapped in the power of earth, wind, water, and fire, like a colorful meteor lighting up the night’s splendor.

With the Human Sect sword art’s killing power supplemented by an Earthly Immortal’s power, breaking the colorless crystal domain wasn’t difficult.

But at this moment, a figure flashed before her—Garo Tree, wearing red and yellow kasaya with half his chest exposed, his granite-like muscles blocking the brilliant meteor.

His rough, dark face revealed a sneer as his hands formed a mudra.

Hum!

Space wrinkles instantly smoothed, so still that not even a breeze stirred.

The concentrated spatial barrier blocked Luo Yuhen’s path.

A second later, the spatial barrier rapidly collapsed as visible wrinkles appeared in space, these wrinkles transforming into wild winds ravaging in all directions.

Luo Yuhen showed no joy, instead revealing a trace of helplessness.

Both sides fought for an instant’s chance of survival. Even if she could pierce Garo Tree with one sword strike, Duer would have lost that chance at life.

Moreover, she knew her swordsmanship couldn’t break through Garo Tree, who had the strongest comprehensive strength and defense among Buddhist First Realm practitioners.

Though Buddhism only had three transcendents, each was First Realm, while on Great Feng’s side, only she truly possessed First Realm combat power. Even relying on quantity to trigger qualitative change, they still lacked enough Second Realm transcendents.

Suddenly, a golden light descended from heaven, shattering the colorless crystal domain. Within the light pillar stood Asura, dark-skinned with protruding brow ridges, both ugly and heroic.

The Liuli Bodhisattva beside him stood motionless like a frozen painting, her jade knife’s tip having pierced Arhat Duer’s brow.

Asura casually waved his hand, shattering Liuli Bodhisattva’s figure.

It was only an illusion—her true body had already appeared beside Guangxian Bodhisattva.

Guangxian Bodhisattva glanced at her. Just now, Liuli had the opportunity to kill Duer but chose to retreat.

On the other side, Garo Tree and Luo Yuhen separated instantly without continuing to fight. The former slowly turned, scrutinizing the ugly yet heroic Asura, saying deeply:

“You’ve advanced to First Realm?”

This was why Liuli Bodhisattva retreated. Poor at close combat, if she insisted on killing Duer, the price would be a newly advanced First Realm practitioner at close range—certain death.

And this time, Buddha absolutely wouldn’t save her, as saving her meant saving Duer.

“I should thank you—hatred is the most powerful force.” Asura spread his arms.

Rolling vortices rose behind him. Within the rotating airflow, a pitch-black Vajra divine form condensed. Its features were fierce and ugly, somewhat resembling Asura, with twelve pairs of arms each holding illusory artifacts like knives, spears, swords, halberds, pagodas, and silk.

Behind the black divine form’s head lit not a burning fire ring, but a seven-colored wheel symbolizing the Arhat’s Bandit-Killing rank.

After months in seclusion, Asura finally took the last step. He referenced Shen Shu’s method, merging his Asura bloodline into the Vajra divine form as a foundation, then incorporating the Bandit-Killing power, finally pioneering a path to the First Realm.

Though lacking Garo Tree’s unreasonable defense, the Vajra divine form containing Bandit-Killing power and Asura tribe bloodline had slightly superior combat power to Garo Tree’s Vajra divine form.

“Interesting!” Garo Tree said flatly.

…

Fish-belly white appeared in the east as the serene, ethereal immortal mountain awakened under the first ray of dawn.

A streak of light swept from the horizon—the Holy Child Li Lingsu riding his flying sword.

Just as he approached the immortal mountain, an invisible barrier manifested. Li Lingsu crashed into it, groaning as he swayed unsteadily down from the high altitude on his flying sword.

He landed at the mountain foot’s memorial arch, gathering his full lung capacity to shout:

“Heaven Lord, great calamity has arrived! Disciple Li Lingsu humbly requests you emerge to aid Great Feng, to aid humanity!”

The voice echoed repeatedly through the mountain forest until distorting and dispersing.

The Heaven Sect remained silent, without any response.

“Heaven Lord, please help! As Heaven Sect’s representative in the mortal world, I’ve been useless—it’s very embarrassing!”

Still no response.

“Heaven Lord, disciple swears, after the great calamity, I will sever mortal ties, focus on seeking the Dao, and achieve Supreme Emotionlessness.”

Still no response.

Li Lingsu bit his teeth, kneeling at the memorial arch, repeating his previous words.

Again and again, again and again.

…

After asking, the sheep-bodied human-faced beast said deeply:

“I guessed wrong. The Gatekeeper isn’t the Overseer but the Martial God. The Gatekeeper can only be born from the warrior system.

“Xu Qi’an is the Martial God the Overseer wants to cultivate.”

Hearing this, the Insect God couldn’t help glancing at Huang, who saw a trace of pity in His eyes.

Faced with Huang’s question, the Insect God didn’t directly explain, instead saying in a low, majestic voice:

“He deliberately let you seal him, following you to the Returning Void to enter God-Demon Island, not to steal Heaven’s Gate, but to use your innate divine ability to refine the spirit essence remaining here. This way he could reopen Heaven’s Gate and force you to return to the Dao.

“Part of the spirit essence you devoured was absorbed by him.

“Am I right, Overseer!”

The Overseer in the horn didn’t respond. Instead, Huang shuddered in horror, finding it hard to believe:

“How could he? How could he, a mere Fate…”

Huang didn’t continue, because the Overseer’s various behaviors had long indicated he was far from a simple Fate Master.

Then, Huang’s expression turned fierce as he anxiously demanded:

“You arrived long ago, why didn’t you act at first?”

The Insect God answered:

“By acting later, letting you lose more spirit essence, you wouldn’t be my match.”

…Huang’s throat emitted low growls like a provoked beast as he said word by word:

“I am still super-realm, I can still kill you!”

“You know who I am now?” At this moment, the Overseer’s voice transmitted from the horn.

“Saw a blurry future, thanks to you being sealed by Huang, weakening the power blocking fate, letting me glimpse your true identity.” The Insect God responded calmly:

“What should I call you?

“Overseer, or Nine Provinces Will’s embodiment, or… Heaven’s Dao!”

Heaven’s Dao… These words raised stormy waves in Huang’s heart, making this ancient god-demon’s pupils contract to slits in an instant.

He didn’t refute the Insect God or angrily accuse him of being absurd because this matched his bold guess.

Besides Heaven’s Dao, who else could reopen Heaven’s Gate by absorbing spirit essence?

Moreover, this also explained His previous confusion about why the Overseer could replace the First Generation Overseer and advance to Fate Master.

And how a mere Fate Master controlled high-level rules that even He, who excelled at devouring, couldn’t kill. The First Generation Overseer didn’t have this ability.

Also, knowing God-Demon Island’s secrets, supporting the Martial God, giving the ancient Heaven’s Gate to Xu Qi’an, and so on—all these had reasonable explanations.

Meanwhile, Huang also found the reason for his misjudgment about the Gatekeeper.

“Very good!” the Overseer said flatly:

“Huang, your chance has come.”

As the words fell, thunder cracked in the clear sky as a lightning pillar carrying an extinction aura swallowed the Insect God.

This lightning pillar covered the Insect God’s massive flesh body, turning His “followers” to ash. The Insect God’s body only lasted three seconds before exploding into countless pieces.

Each piece was as large as a millstone, splattering on the ground like mud in a grand “rain of flesh and blood.”

They slowly writhed, gradually gathering, trying to reassemble the body.

The Insect God’s presence weakened to the extreme at this moment.

The price of revealing heaven’s secrets had come.

Even for Him, revealing heaven’s secrets required paying a terrible price, possible once but not twice.

“What are you waiting for?” the Overseer enticed:

“If not devour the Insect God now, then when? Your spirit essence is damaged—even though still super-realm, can you defeat the Shaman God and Buddha who have gathered fortune?

“Devour His spirit essence and you’ll reach your life’s strongest peak, competing with Buddha and Shaman God in the final battle.”

Greed flashed in Huang’s eyes, clearly tempted. His innate divine ability was to devour all things—His nature was greedy, lacking resistance to high-quality spirit essence, especially same-level spirit essence.

Huang’s nostrils flared several times as if smelling the fragrance of peerless delicacies.

But finally, He reluctantly closed His eyes, letting the Insect God’s remains slowly reassemble.

“If you had devoured me just now, he could have used my spirit essence to break the seal and reopen Heaven’s Gate, forcing you to return to the Dao.”

During the process, the not-yet-recovered Insect God spoke, His voice still majestic and dignified, without any “near-death escape” relief.

“I know, no need to remind me!” Huang’s voice carried obvious regret and pain.

Then, He asked somewhat like holding a hot potato:

“Do you have any way to deal with him? Though it seems his descent to the world is greatly restricted.”

As He spoke, a figure appeared out of thin air above Huang’s head, green robes billowing as the Nation-Stabilizing Sword in his hand brimmed with overwhelming energy, distorting the air as it slashed forcefully toward that horn.