Bai Jinsheng, an expert who’d once stood at the very pinnacle of the God Race, had now disintegrated into dust and scattered to the winds.
The other great emperors gasped inwardly. They had no words to describe their shock. God Emperor Zhou Wu, meanwhile, stared intently at the Master of the Laws and her cold profile. His eyes flashed with greed.
“The Grand Dao of Time.” He clenched his fists. This was the first thing he’d wanted with such intensity since usurping the Five Elements Great Emperor’s celestial fate.
“Jinsheng!” Bai Mingli’s eyes reddened, and his expression filled with murderous intent.
It was already impossible to preserve the Bai Family. In the face of so many star bearer’s collective assault, his clansmen were nothing. The star bearers could wipe them out effortlessly.
Add that to the Master of the Law’s clear bias, and the various great emperors’ enmity for them, and their fate was clearly sealed. They were doomed to extinction.
In that case, Bai Mingsheng didn’t want to give up and die a coward’s death.
He had to kill her!
He had to kill the Master of the Laws!
“You dare attack me?” After finishing off Bai Jingsheng, the Master of the Laws smiled indifferently, but she didn’t so much as turn to look at him. She simply pointed behind herself.
“Time Stop!” The result was as expected: Bai Mingli froze in mid-air, his vicious attack unfinished.
However, he’d chosen a different strategy than Bai Jinsheng.
He didn’t even try to break through the bonds of time. Instead, he…..
“He wants to self-destruct.”
Bai Mingli was sealed, so they could see it clearly: he’d swelled up, and his skin was starting to split. However, due to the frozen flow of time, his blood had yet to burst through.
Beneath his split skin, his divine power had transformed into bundle after bundle of golden light.
The self-destruction of an imperial-level ruler could destroy both heaven and earth. The great emperors immediately started placing light barrier after light barrier, while the various star bearers all retreated back to the Star Altar’s barrier. The remaining yao servants all returned to the Yao-Sealing Pagoda. The cultivators of the Profound Pavilion, meanwhile, hid behind their light barriers.
She tried her utmost to call upon the power of the surrounding Laws, but to her shock, the power was in turmoil.
Self Destruction!
Bai Mingli planned to explode every last drop of power he had, so he held nothing back. In doing so, he broke through the Laws in the surrounding space.
“…..” Maddened, Bai Mingli’s lips quivered, but no one could tell what he was trying to say. Only the Masters of the Laws, who were right in front of him, could glean his meaning from the shape of his lips: “Let’s all die together!”
Boom!
Explosive, intense divine power swept over Spirit City.
The great emperors cried out in unison, “Condense!”
Bai Mingli held nothing back. The great emperors clenched their teeth and poured everything they had into their barriers.
The collision between the overflowing divine power and the light barriers went on for dozens of seconds.
At that moment, Ye Rong’s heart clenched. She gazed into the distance.
This had happened so suddenly that all their barriers were spur of the moment, haphazard creations. She wasn’t certain whether Ye Zichen, who was still absorbing starlight like mad, was within their radius or not.
The starlight had disappeared.
She looked in a circle, but so no trace of either Ye Zichen or the starlight he was absorbing. The other great emperors looked over too….
“Zichen!” Ye Rong practically went mad and dashed out from behind the barrier to search for him with no regard for the lingering explosive power of Bai Mingli’s self-destruction.
“Ye Rong!” The other experts knit their brows and watched her leave, seemingly with no concern for her own safety. Xuan Ji frowned, then followed her.
“Where exactly is he….” the Bai Family estate was already nothing but a lifeless pile of corpses, but all the bodies belonged to Bai Clansmen. Bai Mingli’s explosion wasn’t something ordinary rulers, diviners, and sky supremes could take. The people of the Star Altar and Profound Pavilion didn’t even need to take action; in the end, Bai Mingli had wiped out his own people.
Ye Rong frantically searched the sea of corpses. Whenever she found one that resembled Ye Zichen, she’d rush over to verify it.
“Ye Rong, don’t panic.” Xuan Ji searched alongside her. She’d just done a search through the survivors, those hiding behind the barriers, and didn’t see any sign of Ye Zichen. If he’d been unprotected during the explosion just now, things didn’t bode well for him.
Xuan Ji stopped searching. Just now, the other great emperors had searched for Ye Zichen, trying to see if he was among their ranks.
After a brief discussion, they all shook their heads.
Suddenly, Ye Rong heard exasperated laughter appear behind her. “Wah, what are you crying about? Aren’t I right here, alive and well?”
When she heard that familiar voice, Ye Rong froze, then whipped around and saw Ye Zichen. He was still missing an eye and an arm, but he was looking right at her and smiling.
The youth on the unicorn and the lady Master of the Laws were beside him.
“Zichen.” Ye Rong pulled him into an embrace. Xuan Ji and the others looked over, and when they saw Ye Zichen standing there all in one piece, they froze.
Just now, despite their joint efforts, none of them had sensed so much as a whiff of his presence. He…. just where had he popped out of? Then they noticed the two Masters of the Laws standing beside him.
Did the Masters of the Laws save him? The great emperors were all wondering the same thing.
“My child, oh, my child….” Ye Rong hugged him close and wept so hard she could barely speak. Ye Zichen used his only remaining arm to hug her back, a foolish smile on his face.
Ye Zichen gently wiped away her tears. When Ye Rong saw his ruined eye and the stump of his missing arm, she felt a twinge in her nose.
She clenched her teeth and brushed her fingers over his missing eye. “Trust me. Your mother will definitely find a way to recover your arm and eye, good as new.”
“It’s fine. I’m just happy to be alive.” Ye Zichen pressed his lips into a smile.
“Star Lord Ye, don’t worry. The Hermit Emperor is currently visiting the Sea of Innocence. So long as we request his aid, your honored son will be good as new in no time,” said Xue Yang. He and the other great emperors walked over.
Ye Rong turned to the Master of the Laws and said, “Your Excellency, the Master of the Laws, thank you for saving him!”
“Don’t say that. Your son saved me and my junior brother, not the other way around.” The Master of the Laws waved away her expression of gratitude.
The great emperors and major powers looked over at Ye Zichen. In the face of so many top experts' collective gaze, Ye Zichen felt a bit nervous. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do anything special. It was the Yao-Sealing Pagoda. When that Bai Family geezer was just about to blow himself up, I regained consciousness, and when I saw that none of you were protecting me, I hurriedly broke off my connection to the starlight and hid myself within the Yao-Sealing Pagoda. While I was at it, I took these two with me.”
“While you were at it?” the Master of the Laws put her hands on her h.i.p.s and berated him. “That’s not what you said while we were inside. Didn’t you say you went out of your way to save me? Ye Zichen, I didn’t realize you were this type of person. Men! I can’t trust anything you men say, can I?"
“Of course I saved you on purpose.”
Ye Zichen and the Master of the Laws glared at each other. As they watched this play out, the emperors’ expressions grew strange.
“Do you two know each other?”
“Hmph, who knows him? Knowing him is like eight lives worth of bad luck,” said the Master of the Laws.
“No, knowing you is….” Ye Zichen’s lips twitched.
Before he finished his sentence, the Master of the Laws cut him off. “What about me? I worked myself to the bone for you even after becoming a Master of the Laws and had to endure intense punishment back in the clan because I helped you. Here I thought that, after returning to the God Realm, I wouldn’t run into you anymore. Now here you are again! How could I possibly be so unlucky? Why do I keep running into you? You’re like a lingering, malevolent spirit!”
“I ascended to the God Realm like a normal person. How does that make me a ‘lingering, malevolent spirit’?” Ye Zichen couldn’t help but fire back, “Nevermind that. Earlier, when you were dragged back to the clan for punishment, it really was because you helped me. I’m still grateful! But just now, didn’t I save you too? Didn’t I save your life? If I hadn’t intervened, wouldn’t that explosion have killed you?”
“How is that remotely comparable?”
“Of course it’s comparable!”
The two of them argued with increasing vigor. The great emperors glanced at each other.
