Chapter Ninety-Three: Ninefold Berserk Battle, Defying the Heavens!

When Yu Tian reached the center of the great hall, he finally stopped and looked around.

With a faint sigh, he said, “The fall of Sect Master Cuili this time has filled both Hall Master Huang Yuetian and me with shame. Please allow me to explain the course of events in detail.”

He paused, steadied himself, and went on. “On this expedition against the otherworldly stronghold of North-Reject City, Huang Yuetian, Cuili, and I led the troops. At the very start of the assault, we ran into the so-called technological weapons of that other world, and our casualties were severe. Afterward, I personally made a sortie, but the enemy’s Overlord Blade arrived with reinforcements. I was no match for him in direct combat. Then Cuili and Huang Yuetian rushed over as well, but they were each defeated by Overlord Blade’s dirty tricks.

“After that, we sealed the Dark Veil and rested in North-Reject City, waiting for another chance to strike. But the enemy’s Overlord Blade sent a squad to dig into the Dark Veil. That squad was weak, and everyone in the city felt insulted. So we sent a team of eight-rank venerables to wipe them out, only to fall into an ambush laid by the enemy’s tenth-rank martial emperors hidden underground. They were slain to a man. After that, the enemy’s tenth-rank martial emperor challenged us openly.

“He forced us into battle. Huang Yuetian, Cuili, and I then sent five tenth-rank experts to fight him while we held the line behind them. Huang Yuetian’s archery is second to none in the Dark Realm, and he drew his bow from the rear to guard against any accident. But we never expected the enemy’s Overlord Blade to have no shame at all. He had already hidden himself around the battlefield, and in an instant he wiped out the five tenth-rank experts. To rescue them, we left the city to fight Overlord Blade. Yet once we were all outside, another eleventh-rank powerhouse appeared.

“According to the intelligence report, it should have been that fist master who had been badly wounded and retreated to the rear in Dragon City. In the blink of an eye, we were ambushed. Cuili took Overlord Blade’s full-force strike head-on, and then that eleventh-rank expert struck from the shadows as well, so that she fell on the spot. Huang Yuetian and I were both grievously wounded as well.”

Yu Tian slowly laid out everything, but he did not reveal a single word about his own impulsiveness or his underestimation of the enemy.

There was no choice. At this moment, he was already in a rather awkward position. If he were to admit that the chain of failures had all begun with his own mistakes...

Just thinking about it made Yu Tian’s blood run cold.

In the past, things had been different. Whether to fight or not, whether to win or lose, he could still make the call.

But now the Dark God was on the verge of awakening. If it were discovered that everything had been delayed because of him, then he probably would not even be able to keep his life. To let his own actions hinder the Dark God’s revival was a crime no one present could bear.

The Dark God’s name was something everyone in the hall had grown up hearing. He was the only being in the Dark Realm to transcend the twelfth rank.

The world had changed.

The Dark God had vanished for three thousand years, and now that he was about to awaken, the status of people like them would vanish along with him.

...

At the same time, in the relic at North-Reject City.

Yang Fan lay in a huge bathtub, surrounded by a dark green liquid.

He soaked in it with a face full of agony, his lips tightly sealed, his face flushed red, his whole body trembling uncontrollably.

As always, anything produced by the system was bound to be top quality, and top quality was always a miserable ordeal.

This time was no exception. The moment he stepped into the bathtub, the numb, stabbing pain had not stopped for an instant.

What had begun as itching had turned into a pain that pierced straight to the marrow. If he had not been through this several times already, he truly would not have been able to endure it.

Even while bathing, Yang Fan was silently circulating his inner energy.

Battle Frenzy of the Nine Heavens.

A defensive art.

Guarding Heaven.

Guarding Heaven was not a conventional defensive battle art. It was a body-tempering cultivation method.

It used the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to temper his sinews, bones, and skin, and then strengthened them again after nourishing them with blood and vitality.

According to the normal path of cultivation, first- and second-rank practitioners used blood vitality to nourish the meridians, bones, and skin throughout the body.

But after the third rank, cultivators seemed no longer to care much about the strength of the body. Instead, they pursued energy-based battle arts that could unleash greater power.

Battle Frenzy of the Nine Heavens was different. It was a comprehensive method of full development, from offensive arts that split the nine heavens, to movement arts that trampled the nine heavens, and finally to defense: Guarding Heaven.

This was an all-inclusive package.

As the energy began to circulate and the torrent surging from his dantian spread through his body, following the route of Guarding Heaven and combining with the body-tempering liquid to nourish his flesh, the original stabbing pain began to lessen.

With the full unfolding of Guarding Heaven, the piercing pain grew lighter and lighter, until it reached a level he could fully accept.

Yang Fan felt both shocked and delighted. This was the first time something from the system had not knocked him unconscious.

But he was not happy for long before worry began to creep in again.

If the body-tempering liquid was no longer bringing him pain, would that mean its effect was weakening? Would Guarding Heaven and the liquid conflict with one another and cancel each other out?

The more he thought about it, the more unreliable it seemed. Just as he was about to stop circulating Guarding Heaven and let the body-tempering liquid refine him on its own, the pain that had already faded suddenly returned.

This time, the agony rose like a stormy tide, surging instantly beyond what he could endure.

Just before he lost consciousness, one thought still echoed in Yang Fan’s mind: as expected, he had been thinking too much. The system would never let him off so easily.

As Yang Fan fainted, the dark green liquid in the bathtub also began to clear little by little. Bit by bit, the green faded away, leaving only clear water surrounding the unconscious Yang Fan.

...

Two days later.

Earth, Huaxia.

The Kunlun Mountain region.

The fifty-meter bronze giant ape had been brought up from the underground space. After this period of fermentation and investigation, the scientific expedition team had also carried out a full-range scan of the bronze statue.

Everything was normal.

In the end, the only conclusion anyone could reach, however helplessly, was that the bronze statue had nothing to do with the earthquake and avalanche in Kunlun Mountain.

As for the origin of the underground space, that was truly impossible to trace. Who knew in what era, or under what power, such a thing had been built beneath Kunlun?

As more and more personnel arrived, overseas intelligence agents more or less got wind of it as well.

The authorities also began slowly lifting the lockdown around the Kunlun Mountain region.

To everyone, it all looked like a farce. Although the fifty-meter bronze statue was astonishing, the relic was still at war, and the state of humanity remained unclear.

No one thought to ask what value this statue might have.

Those who knew about the war in the relic had no mind to think about it, and those who did not know were not qualified to think about it.

When the statue, sealed beneath the snowy mountains for who knew how many years, finally set foot on the ground, and when the first beam of sunlight shone upon the giant ape’s head, something no one had expected happened.

The statue began to tremble violently upon the land of Kunlun, as if something inside it were about to break free.

“Doctor Chen, what is happening?”

One of the expedition leaders looked at the old man beside him, who was already in his sixties, and asked.

The old man stared in horror at the massive statue before him, muttering under his breath, “What is going on? What is going on?”

Just as the expedition team was thrown into chaos, one of the soldiers stationed at the perimeter shouted at the top of his lungs, “Run! Avalanche!”

The words had barely fallen when the already quiet Kunlun Mountains changed once more.

Countless masses of snow slid down from every peak, ridge, and slope, converging like rivers flowing into the sea, then crashing straight toward the bronze statue.

Everyone still there was plunged into despair.

Watching the surging wall of snow rush toward them, there was no chance of escape.

Doctor Chen glanced at the still-shuddering giant ape, and his heart filled with unwillingness.

A bronze relic had emerged after a thousand years, and before there had even been time to study it or trace its origins, it was already about to be condemned by heaven.

Whenever a treasure comes to light, there is bound to be a great calamity. What Doctor Chen had never expected was that he himself would become the innocent bystander caught in its wake...