The destruction of the imperial palace meant that their home was gone.
The Imperial Lord and the Queen had left. The soldiers and subjects of the ancient Celestial Court felt as if they had lost their parents.
The feeling of despair arising from the instant loss of everything was enough to make the strongest people break down and go crazy.
A few older soldiers cried their hearts out.
The immortal palace of the Celestial Court had been their home for a very long time. They were born here, and their parents died here. Their blood had long merged with this immortal palace. The feeling of losing their home and family was worse than death for them.
“Scatter and retreat? Where can I go?” An old soldier with gray hair and beard cried in misery. “I’m not leaving. Even if I were to die, I would still stay here, and my bones would rot here.”
“We’re not leaving!”
“Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“We’re going to live and die with the imperial palace.”
Many warriors were covered in bruises and cuts, and their eyes were burning with rage. They held their weapons tightly and roared loudly, and their morale soared like raging waves.
The general was standing at the gate with deep sorrow, anger and hatred in his eyes and a sad smile on his face.
“Ha-ha-ha, all right. I, Qin Zhong, and my bros in the Armored Battalion shall live and die with the imperial palace today. However, we have to leave and preserve our seeds. Li Mu, I have a Barrier-breaking Talisman for you. Take it. You are the youngest and most talented one in the entire Armored Battalion. Maybe you used to be timid, but you’ve done a very good job and killed the most enemies today. You shall pass the seeds of the Armored Battalion. Leave right now!”
As soon as the general finished speaking, a beam of warm jade light flew out of his hand and stuck to Li Mu’s body.
Before Li Mu could say anything, he felt he was engulfed by a burst of barrier-breaking power. He felt like he was about to fly out of here.
“No! I’m not leaving. Please let me stay. I can fight,” Li Mu roared desperately.
However, he was covered by the warm jade light and teleported away in the end.
At the last moment, before he disappeared, he saw that the closed gate of the camp was smashed open, and a five-meter tall Extraterritorial Demon with three pairs of arms and one-meter-long fangs rushed through the gate leading an army of Extraterritorial Demons like black tides…
The soldiers of the ancient Celestial Court guarding the camp were killed like wheat being cut. They fell into pools of blood one after another, but they remained in the state of fighting before they died, and none of them begged for mercy…
The strongest general went all out to protect his soldiers and killed countless Extraterritorial Demons. In the end, the five-meter-tall leader of Extraterritorial Demons killed him and nailed him to the execution platform with a long spear…
All that happened quickly in front of Li Mu’s eyes, as if it had been fast-forwarded.
“No!”
Li Mu couldn’t help roaring angrily.
Somehow he knew that what was happening here might be an illusion and had nothing to do with him. However, after he saw everything that had happened in no more than half an hour, he felt like he was fully involved in it and wanted to break free from the restriction of the Barrier-breaking Talisman, kill the enemy, and save people…
At this very moment, the leader of Extraterritorial Demons seemed to have noticed something. He looked coldly in the direction where Li Mu had disappeared.
Li Mu felt a chill running through him and felt as if he was frozen in 10,000-year-old ice. A terrifying burst of killing intent penetrated the void barrier and came straight at him…
“What terrifying power!”
Puff!
The burst of killing intent pierced through Li Mu’s shoulder. He spat out a mouthful of bright red blood.
He staggered and had blurry vision for a moment.
When he could see clearly, he was surprised to find that something even more incredible was happening.
He was still standing on the elevated execution platform in the abandoned camp. Beneath the execution platform, the corpses and remains of countless Extraterritorial Demons were piled up like hills. In the distance, there were large piles of corpses of the deceased soldiers of the ancient Celestial Court and the dead Extraterritorial Demons. Standing on the execution platform, he saw the broken guillotine and the general who had been nailed to the floor of the execution platform…
The sky was covered with dark clouds, appearing low.
The light was dim.
Gusts of cold wind were still blowing, and there were strange rustling noises around, sounding as if there were invisible ghosts marching forward in an orderly manner.
All the flames and smoke of war were gone.
“What just happened feels like a dream.
“I can feel the pain and the touch. Why does everything feel so real?”
The emotions and feelings seemed so real that Li Mu was still immersed in the grief over the death of those soldiers and his friends.
He glanced at the stupid dog at his feet and asked, “What happened just now?”
The stupid dog looked at him with disdain and said, “What happened just now? What’s wrong with you? I wanted to ask you about that. You spat out a mouthful of blood not long after you got on the execution platform. I wondered if it was because you spent so much energy copulating with that woman that you became too weak to get onto a platform. You’d better take some medicine to nourish yourself.”
Li Mu was confused.
“I felt that everything happened in about half an hour, but the stupid dog felt it was just a moment…
“Am I the only one who has experienced and seen the illusion?
“No, no, no.
“It was not an illusion.”
Li Mu stroked his chest with his hand. He could feel pain from the wound caused by the burst of killing intent from the eyes of the formidable leader of Extraterritorial Demons at the last moment before he disappeared. The blood that he spat out was the evidence showing that what he had experienced was not an illusion.
Finally, he performed the Xiantian Skill. The power of the golden runes circulated in his body and eliminated the burst of killing intent.
“If everything that has happened were an illusion, I wouldn’t have been injured.”
Li Mu knitted his brows. He couldn’t figure out what happened just now.
Suddenly, he thought of something and looked back.
He found the two dragons that flew away from the stone pillars on both sides of the guillotine had returned to their original positions and turned into carvings without any vigor. The black rings lay quietly in the grooves in their mouths without any changes.
He clearly remembered that when the illusion occurred, the two dragons soared into the sky, and the black rings in their mouths gave off dark light that covered the sky. He believed that everything was caused by these black rings.
He thought for a while, went over to the two dragons, and removed the two black rings from the grooves in their mouths.
The black ring in the mouth of the dragon on the right side was returned by him, and the black ring in the mouth of the dragon on the left was already there when he showed up.
He removed both of the black rings.
The two black Myriad Beasts Rings were almost identical in size, material, and weight. Even the writings engraved on their inner sides were exactly the same.
“These rings must have an extraordinary origin. When I was in another dimension, I didn’t see any stone pillars with engraved patterns of flying dragons on the execution platform, nor did I see any Myriad Beasts Rings in the mouths of these dragons. Did someone bring the rings here at some later point in time?”
Li Mu held the two Myriad Beasts Rings in his hands, lost in thought.
The stupid dog didn’t care about what Li Mu was thinking. He jumped off the execution platform and sniffed around, searching for something. He said, “The white bones all over the ground should be crunchy. However, they have been there for a long time. They might not taste as good as they were when they were fresh…”
Squeak! Creak! Creak!
The sound of the gate shaft turning rang out.
The stone gate with the patterns of ancient mythical animals, which had just closed automatically, was pushed open slowly.
“Hmm?
“Is someone coming?”
An idea flashed into Li Mu’s mind. He dragged the stupid dog and quickly retreated. Then, he hid behind a collapsed barrack in the distance, held his breath, and concealed himself.
He wanted to see who was coming.
Figures crisscrossed.
A group of people desperately rushed through the gate.
“Here we are. Ha-ha, this is the legendary place where the Extraterritorial Demons were buried. Legend has it that this place is where the Extraterritorial Demons and the army of the ancient Celestial Court fought the most intense battle and where the legendary imperial artifacts called the Heaven and Earth Rings were lost many years ago…”
“We’re finally here.”
“If we could find the Heaven and Earth Rings, the Ghost Clan would surely get one of them.”
“As members of the Thunder Clan, we want one of them too.”
“Ha-ha! That depends on what we can do. The two rings will have the power of imperial artifacts only when they are combined into one!”
Several figures walking in the forefront gave off strong auras of masters in the Deity Realm. They were all masters from the Ghost Clan and the Thunder Clan, which were two of the six major Divine Clans of the Celestial Court. Naturally, the lords of these two clans were also among them.
The successor of the Ghost Clan named “Ghost”, the successor of the Thunder Clan, and tens of elders of these two clans in the Deity Realm were also in the crowd.
Such a group of people was quite powerful.
As soon as they entered the abandoned camp through the gate, they began to search the entire camp for some specific purpose.
Li Mu watched them in secret.
“Could it be that the Heaven and Earth Rings mentioned by those people happen to be this pair of black Myriad Beasts Rings in my hands? Are they really imperial artifacts?”
Li Mu couldn’t believe it.
The people of the Thunder Clan and the Ghost Clan searched for their targets along the way. Soon, they found the execution platform.
“There is an undecayed body over here.” An elder of the Ghost Clan exclaimed in surprise when he saw the dead body of the general on the execution platform.
“Ha-ha, this dead body is a very precious material. It is really hard to come by even in a thousand years! As long as we can refine it, we can create the fiercest soldiers!”
“It is indeed a treasure.”
“It’s a precious material.”
The other masters of the Ghost Clan rushed over to the body excitedly.
The lord of the Ghost Clan was a dwarf with a head that was even larger than his body. He had delicate facial features. If face were the sole criterion, he could be considered a handsome man.
However, the ratio of the size of his head to that of his body was even higher than the head/body ratio of the big-head doll depicted in comic books on Earth. People who saw him would worry that his big head might break his neck.
“This is the corpse of a general of the ancient Celestial Court. Ha-ha-ha, this trip really paid off. This general must be a master in the Great Way Realm when he was alive. If we could dissect his corpse, perhaps we could get a scripture of the Great Way!”
The lord of the Ghost Clan stood in front of the general’s dead body and observed it carefully. The more he observed it, the happier he became.
“Hey, all right. Now that the Ghost Clan wants the corpse, the Thunder Clan will have the Heaven and Earth Rings. Let’s get what we want without delay…” Lei Cang stepped onto the execution platform and observed carefully. Finally, his eyes fell on the stone pillars on both sides of the abandoned guillotine.
However, before he could finish his words, the look on his face suddenly became serious.
“It’s too bad. The Heaven and Earth Rings are gone.” He found that the grooves in the mouths of the two dragons carved on the stone pillars were empty. He had a bad feeling about this.
“That’s impossible.” A practitioner who looked like a scholar couldn’t believe what he had heard. With a look of disbelief on his face, he walked out of the crowd of the Thunder Clan and said, “It is clearly recorded in the divine book of our clan that the Heaven and Earth Rings are right here…”
An elder of the Ghost Clan who was in the Deity Realm and specialized in studying the immortal palace rushed over. After a moment of careful observation, he closed his eyes and carefully calculated something with his fingers. Then, the look on his face suddenly changed. He said, “This is not good. Someone has arrived here before us and taken the Heaven and Earth Rings away…”
“What?”
“Who is it?”
“Chase him!”
“We can’t let the imperial artifacts fall into the hands of someone else.”
The faces of all masters from the two divine clans changed.
The middle-aged scholar from the Thunder Clan calculated something with his fingers and then said, “The aura of the Heaven and Earth Rings still remains in the air. I’m sure that the person who’s taken away the rings hasn’t gone far… No. He hasn’t left yet. He should be hiding right here. Everyone, be careful.”
Before his voice died away…
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
Strange buzzing sounds rang out.
The long blood-red spear piercing through the general’s dead body suddenly started vibrating at a high frequency. There seemed to be some kind of mysterious power that was about to burst out of the dead body.
The masters of the two clans immediately backed off and stared at the dead body vigilantly.
“Is it coming back to life?”
