Hearing the shouts, the little girl on the whale's head immediately climbed onto its back and looked down. The moment she saw Li Tongyun, she leaped down from the sky, landing precisely on the hull of the mirage tower. She threw herself into Li Tongyun's arms, crying loudly, "Sister, I thought I'd never see you again! I told you I wanted to come quickly, but Uncle Qingji insisted we wait!"
Most people in the Otherworld are seeing Shinguji Maki for the first time. They have only heard of her before. Qingchen also has a very cute little apprentice, but they don't know what she looks like.
Li Shu glanced at the Yamata no Orochi wreaking havoc on the Phoenix not far away, and at the giant whale that reigned supreme in the sky, then looked at Maki, whose tears had soaked Li Tongyun's clothes: "It's hard to connect the two..."
Once the giant whale reaches its full size, its wingspan is hundreds of meters. Even an airship looks like a docile toy or a sesame seed on a pancake in comparison.
At that moment, a missile struck the whale's flank, but the missile only exploded into a burst of fire and did not cause any real fatal damage to the whale.
It would simply blast a small piece of the whale's skin off, without even affecting its flight.
But then came the mournful cry of a giant whale from the night sky. It flapped its wings, and the gale-force winds caused all the airships that came near it to flip up and down, making them difficult to stabilize.
Bingzhu stood atop the highest point of the Mirage Tower, his back hunched over like that of a decrepit old man.
He gazed at the night sky, and in an instant, 365 long halberds materialized, like an ancient army's arrow formation, shooting into the sky in a matrix pattern.
One after another, long halberds were pinned to the airship, some even piercing through the airship's most vulnerable tail section!
The 192 shikigami forming the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons actually overwhelmed the entire air force fleet of Phoenix City.
At this moment, Qing Ji also came out of the Mirage Tower: "Don't linger in the battle. Phoenix City's air force is already crippled, and there's no point in continuing. Let's leave here as soon as possible. I have a bad feeling about this."
The Fate Master has yet to appear, and the old monsters in those golden coffins have also vanished without a trace.
This doesn't make any sense at all!
Qing Ji said, "I will open the Shadow Gate and leave now."
Li Changqing looked out of the battlefield: "It might be too late."
...
...
Outside the battlefield, an extremely old white man, dressed in a black robe, stood atop the mountain peak, with more than a dozen virtuosos standing respectfully behind him, their hands clasped at his sides.
Beside him lay a newly opened golden coffin.
They stood atop the mountain, watching helplessly as the giant whale and the Yamata no Orochi appeared out of nowhere and utterly crushed the Phoenix City air force fleet.
The giant whale in the night sky gave people a sense of invincibility, as if humans were exceptionally small in its presence.
The old man sighed, "I've only been asleep for a hundred years, yet my family has such an enemy. No wonder you woke me up."
The bizarre and fantastical spectacle of the hundred ghosts roaming the night concealed the deep-seated fear of the fortune teller.
"You may all step back. Use the forbidden object to seal off this place, so that no one has a chance to leave. My life has been used here, which is quite fitting," the old man said, taking out an orange-yellow amber from his pocket.
However, what is sealed in amber are not insects such as scorpions and mosquitoes, but miniature versions of mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, aircraft carriers, killer whales, and fighter jets.
These things, which are not even from the same era, are all shrunk into a palm-sized piece of amber.
Among them were strange objects, such as a longsword, a cup, a poster, and a brush, all of which were forbidden items that the Fate Master had sacrificed to contain this forbidden object.
If no sacrifice is made, the lake will immediately expand and devour everything within a ten-kilometer radius; it once swallowed a village on the western continent because of this.
The old monster, the Fate Master, emerged from the golden coffin, slashing open his palm and letting Amber greedily suck his blood.
He held amber in his hand, standing facing the battlefield.
But then the amber began to expand, and in almost a single breath, it enveloped the old man, making him a new specimen inside the amber!
Even Zero didn't know that the cost of using this forbidden object was not just sacrificing one forbidden object every year, but also sacrificing the life of a demigod when using it!
The forbidden substance: 'Freezing time'!
In an instant, the amber grew rapidly, like a tsunami crashing onto the land, but the temperature dropped to minus 100 degrees Celsius in a flash. The waves and pedestrians on the shore were all 'frozen' in the amber in an instant!
In an instant, within a mere ten seconds, the entire area within a ten-kilometer radius was enveloped in orange-yellow amber, as if the whole world had become a 'specimen' frozen in time.
The Great Tengu was trying to escape while fighting, but he suddenly froze. He was still in the position of having his wings spread in the amber, but his expression and wings were all frozen in the previous moment.
The Yamata no Orochi was also sealed in amber, retaining its ferocious and terrifying appearance.
The giant whale, suspended in the sky, seemed to have returned to the deep yellow sea, standing still in solitude and desolation.
The damaged Qingshan, Fenghuang, and Zhutian ships were also sealed inside.
This forbidden object, hidden and nurtured by the Fate Master, has today transformed the area within a ten-kilometer radius into a giant piece of amber!
More than a dozen fortune tellers watched from hundreds of meters behind the old man, completely unaffected. One of them said, "Our ancestor completed the seal at the cost of his life. No one in the battlefield should be able to leave. The threat is gone. Ten years later, the amber will return to its normal size, and then we will come back to contain it again."
The fortune teller sealed the golden coffin and used a cup of poisoned wine to prolong the life of his ancestor. In the end, he sacrificed his remaining life to a forbidden object, sealing away the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts!
In this battle, the ultimate goal of the Fate Master is not the Aoyama-go or the Soten-go, but the Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) by Jingūji Maki!
The charlatans turned and left, disappearing into the night.
There are still three copper rivets within a radius of twenty kilometers that need to be retrieved. Some of them were eaten by the gold-hunting beasts of the Forbidden Tribunal, leaving only three that are barely enough to seal the space. They cannot be discarded.
...
...
Inside the Ginkgo Manor, Qing Ji was panting heavily, still shaken. Beside him were Xiao Tongyun, Shen Gongji Zhenqi, Li Changqing, Li Shu, Lao Wan, and other people on the airship.
This was the last person Qing Ji could respond to within those ten seconds.
Li Changqing asked in confusion, "When the Fate Masters make a move, they should be fully prepared. They have methods to seal space, but it seems to be useless against you. You can still use the Shadow Gate."
Qing Ji smiled and said, "Before Qing Chen went to the Western Continent again, he probably knew that he no longer needed the forbidden items, so he left them all in the Ginkgo Manor."
Qing Chen knew that if he did not become a god, these forbidden items might fall into the hands of the Western Continent after his death. If he became a god, he would no longer need any forbidden items.
From that moment on, nothing in this world could affect him anymore.
This is also why Qing Chen did not rashly attempt to break through the spider web barrier when the Arbiter sealed the space with copper rivets, because the outside world of the Three Realms was no longer in his hands at that time.
At this moment, the power outside the Three Realms, in Qing Ji's hands, has produced an effect that even the Fate Master could not have imagined.
However, even though they had escaped death, no one was happy.
Li Changqing knew that three thousand Li clan soldiers were forever trapped in amber, while Maki stared blankly into the distance at those shikigami... who were retainers of the Minamoto clan.
The giant whale was an ancestor in disguise.
All of this was forever preserved in that battle.
Chapter 984, The Disappeared God Generation Yunluo
Zhongyuan, located 370 kilometers north of City No. 18, is a place originally known as an alluvial plain, named after the ice jams of the Chunlei River.
In winter, ice forms on the surface of the Chunlei River. In spring, the ice gradually breaks apart, and the river water pushes the ice shards onto the riverbank, making the riverbank look like shimmering fish scales.
At this moment, on the alluvial plain, a piece of amber with a diameter of ten kilometers stretches across the land. Giant whales, Yamata no Orochi, mirages, fujoshi, airships, and three aerial fortresses—the amber seems to have frozen time, turning everything into a museum of war.
At the edge of the lake, Duke Storm stood silently. The aged king looked at the Virtuoso on the lake's edge and said, "This is my father, your grandfather. He slept in the golden coffin for 38 years just for this day, using his life to forge a new era for the Virtuoso family. He did this, and I will do this, and you will do this in the future. My Virtuoso family has grown step by step from the chaos of the world to where we are today, half by God's perspective and half by the willingness of generations to sacrifice themselves. All of this has given us a foothold in this world."
“Understood, Father,” Duke Storm replied calmly. “I will do everything in my power for the family.”
The elderly King Roosevelt stroked the edge of the amber: "Go, with the forbidden queen ant and two hundred thousand orcs, to the place of destiny I saw last, the final battlefield. The kingdom is yours, and the world will be yours too."
"Father, where are you going?" Duke Storm asked.
“Jianmen Pass.” King Roosevelt turned back and smiled. “That is where my destiny lies. I will help you resolve the last hidden danger.”
Duke Storm turned and left without hesitation, boarding a nearby airship and returning to his Storm Sky Fortress.
Beneath the aerial fortress, countless werewolves were surging about, tall, muscular, and with sharp claws and teeth.
These orc soldiers have completely lost their own minds and only obey the Storm Duke's orders under the control of the Queen Ant.
Further north, the Storm City Land Army is driving a tidal wave of slaves along the way, with soldiers injecting the strongest men with newly produced gene serums.
They completely disregarded the required time intervals for the gene-enhancing drugs, administering injections every two days and supplementing them with auxiliary drugs, turning these people into beasts without any regard for the harm caused by the side effects.
Those slaves who died from the side effects of the potion were thrown directly into the orc army to become their marching rations.
Wherever the orc army went, corpses littered the ground, a scene of utter devastation.
The Storm cruiser moved slowly through the sky, not heading south, but straight towards the forbidden land of No. 001, the direction that fate had pointed them in.
...
...
In the Ginkgo Manor of City No. 5.
Li Shu said solemnly, "In this battle, only 17 members of the Li family survived by sheer luck. Jinguji Maki's Night Parade of One Hundred Demons was also sealed by that strange forbidden object. We paid such a heavy price. If the result is not good, then what is the meaning of this battle?"
"Is this the result you wanted?" Li Changqing looked at Zero: "The Li family is willing to sacrifice for this war, but I need to know whether the result after the sacrifice is what we expect."
“What if it’s not what you expect?” Zero asked with a smile. “No one can see the end of fate now; the timeline has been stripped away. Li Yunshou, the head of the Li family, doesn’t know if his decision is good or bad, nor does he know if it will help him win. But this is his last attempt.”
Zero changed the subject abruptly: "After I came to the Eastern Continent from the Western Continent, I first went to City 10. I heard everyone talking about that terrifying rat swarm... Actually, I also experienced the same biological pollution, which is what you call the ivy disaster."
The crowd looked at each other in bewilderment. In fact, no one was ever sure of Zero's identity. Most people only knew that she was a robot from the Western Continent, but they never expected that her identity was so profound!
The ivy disaster occurred during Ren Xiaosu's era and can be considered the first true biological contamination in the history of superhumans. At that time, an entire fortress was swallowed up by ivy on the wasteland. The ivy used human blood as its own sustenance and indiscriminately killed the entire city's population.
So, could this Zero be the AI that destroyed the Second Era of the Eastern Continent?
But wasn't it said that she was already eliminated in that final battle?
Zero continued, seemingly oblivious to everyone else, "At the beginning of that disaster, if humanity had united to burn down half the city, they might have survived. But no one organized, no one was willing to sacrifice, no one was willing to step forward, and ultimately the city fell. This rat infestation is different; it's far more ferocious, yet 6 million people survived. Now I ask you, during that disaster, did the Kunlun members like Iodine, and those members of the parent-teacher association, ever think, 'We did this because we were certain we would win'?"
Li Shu was stunned.
Zero shook his head and said, “No, they didn’t know if they could win either, but they still did what they had to do. When you start to know the future, you lose a lot of things, such as your courage, fighting spirit, and confidence. You don’t know your future either, but you beg others to give you an answer, such as you want to know ‘can we win?’ ‘can we survive?’ You want to know a very definite answer. But I will tell you clearly that this time, there is no answer to fate.”
Li Changqing calmly said, "I understand. We will continue to obey your orders. We will see the outcome of our fate ourselves... or let others see it for us."
“That’s right.” Ling said with a smile, “The only difference between my opinion and that old man from Ginkgo Mountain is that I think you should stop waiting for Qingchen’s return. Whether he is alive or not, you should treat him as dead from this moment on. If the fate of tens of millions of people needs one person to save them, how tragic would that be for those tens of millions of people? You must save yourselves.”
The group exchanged bewildered glances. Lately, everyone had been waiting for Qing Chen, as if everything would be alright once he arrived.
Gradually, his fighting spirit was worn away, as if he would definitely lose the war if Qingchen didn't come back.
They no longer believed they could win the war on their own.
Zero asked, "Have you ever thought about how much Qing Chen has already done? Before he got sick, he thought about how to buy you time every day. Even when he was terminally ill, he still made a trip to the Western Continent to try to sabotage the Fate Master's plan to awaken the old monster. If he has done so much and you still don't have the ability to win the war, then what is the point of your existence?"
Li Changqing asked thoughtfully, "Do you think we can win this war on our own right now?"