Divine Emperor of Death

Chapter 5042 Entering A Bastion City

In the airspace of the Ethereal Lumina Tree, an obsidian palace arrived, causing countless heads within the Bastion Cities to turn.

Just from how it appeared in the airspace without making much of a sound or breaking space, they knew the people inside must be ones they shouldn't trifle with.

They saw a few people descend, their figures cloaked in black hoods as well as different kinds of masks that greatly obscured their features. There were as many as ten of them, making them intrigued.

It didn't seem like a powerful faction for them to be obscuring their features and coming out in fewer numbers? They even shelved the flying palace into their spatial ring, making them amused. Some people in the Bastion Cities sighed lightly since these people didn't seem to be heading to their Bastion City, but to the Eighth Bastion City.

They felt it was a pity.

Davis and the others descended and strode towards the giant walls.

At this ground altitude, the sight of the Ethereal Lumina Tree was blocked by the walls.

They didn't come to a pause, but the speed of their stride decreased a bit as they felt it was a pity. They suppressed the urge to ascend and inevitably get the attention to themselves before nonchalantly continuing to the city gates.

There were huge character '8' imprinted on it in the Sky Word Language.

But their gaze wasn't on the gates but to the sides where corpses lined up the pathway, covered in straw mats. The smell was bad. They haven't even buried them or cremated them yet, according to the customs and traditions. They seemed to be abandoned corpses, but not.

Davis even spotted a few people sitting beside the corpses and crying incessantly.

Some of them were actually ghosts, but the normal people didn't seem to notice.

Expanding on the pathway, there were many shacks, as if it were a slum area. Clearly, these people hadn't been able to get into the Bastion Cities and had formed their community outside the walls, forming rows and rows of shacks and buildings to be near the truly powerful cultivators inside the city and feel as safe as possible.

Even then, it seemed like they hadn't managed to avert a disaster.

"Should have been a different anomaly than a magical beast tide that caused them to die like this…" Davis said softly.

"Judging from the deathly yin aura emanating from them, it should be the work of a powerful ghost," Jaiyan commented.

The moment he said this, some of the ladies reacted quite interestingly.

Davis noticed Lereza quivering ever so lightly while Laphria Rinmei momentarily paused before continuing to walk. He also recalled Nyoran, who would jump at the mention of ghosts even though she had been a Ghostly Crow. She truly made him feel amused by her antics, but right now she was also sleep-cultivating.

She had earned it, considering she had worked hard for the Davis Family for a long time by going to the Nether Dimension and then opening a dimensional portal to help him overcome the threat of the Venerable Knights by bringing Illumina with her.

Davis would never forget this favor.

But Davis wasn't thinking about this at the moment. He carefully surveyed the corpses with his powerful soul sense.

"So if a ghost killed them, they would release deathly yin aura faster?"

"Yes, a ghost isn't an entity that should be staying in the living realm. They are causing disturbances in fate and cause negative energy to emerge, which corresponds with the yin aura of corpses and causes it to turn deathly."

Davis was happy to know this since he needed deathly yin aura to upgrade Yama.

However-

"Interesting, if they aren't treated as Divergents for causing such a disturbance in fate, then are they considered natural disasters?"

Jaiyan nodded, "It's the same with truly influential figures who hold the heaven and earth of the realm in their hands. As the greatest example, if the Celestial Transcendent descends and changes the fate of a person or even an entire power or region, for that matter, they wouldn't be designated as a Divergent but treated as a natural disaster or a blessing."

"…" Davis knew this should be the case, but what kind of bullshit was this?

Could it be that he had to earn some kind of license from the heavens?

In that case, the Heavenly Blight Hall's plan to bring the heavens to the table might actually have some significance.

However, Davis was inclined to believe that it wasn't the heavens that were treating them as such but the universe and its fate sea. If the movements of countless people were pebbles tumbling over, then the movements of entities like the Celestial Transcendents were like mountains crumbling and changing landscapes.

There was no reason for it to consider them outside influences, unlike the Divergents, who intrinsically broke the laws of the universe.

Davis had also heard from the Seraphim Ancestor how the heavens had shaped the universe when it created the Primordial Souls.

From a barren, vast, dark, and empty universe to a universe seething with life and a complete set of laws and limitations, but he guessed this also had various aftereffects that resounded throughout the universe, outliers that didn't conform to these laws or limitations.

Davis was starting to believe one such effect was the emergence of Divergents, and why they were treated like cancer cells that needed to be gotten rid of.

At the same time, he believed the term Divergents didn't merely apply to these existences, as he also heard of Divergent Stars.

He had accidentally killed a Storm Divergent who practiced Astral Cultivation, but this Storm Divergent was connected with a Divergent Star and even possessed a cursed artifact stemming from a terrifying Will that seemed not to be a part of this universe, or at the very least, was not a part of the Three Layers. These mysterious things were also considered entities of divergence and were subject to destruction from the heavenly and universal authorities.

Davis went silent while contemplating, and Jaiyan didn't continue.

Both of them knew that they shouldn't be discussing this at length since it would lead to incurring karmic burden.

But unlike Davis, who wasn't afraid as he had the utter confidence to conquer his overwhelming tribulations, Jaiyan was still careful. He knew the heavens had every right to hate him since his physique was in direct confrontation with its authority!

Quickly, they reached the vicinity of the gates when they saw a crowd and heard people shouting.

"City Lord, please help us!"

"There's a murderous ghost attacking us ordinary cultivators. If it keeps absorbing the vitality of these people and keeps growing, then even this city might not escape!"

"Please open the gates and let us in!"

The people clamored for help, but there was no response from the other side.

A bit of probing allowed Davis to see that these cultivators barely even reached the Autarch Stage. Most of them were still at the Monarch Stage, with a minority of them at the Sovereign Stage. From this, it could be seen that they were not people from major powers or even minor powers for that matter, since minor powers in the Upper Realms all at least had one Empyrean or an Autarch.

There were many mortal settlements in an Upper Realm as well, but they were most present in controlled lands, backwoods, or deserted lands where the heaven and earth energy were naturally sparse. Immortal and transcendent cultivators wouldn't go out of their way to disturb them since they were of no benefit to them.

In fact, some cultivators took a liking to role-playing as kings, so they would go out of their way just to have a mortal kingdom under them. However, most wouldn't dare to go far since it went against the Common Laws of the Galaxy. Wasn't it for this very reason that the Divine Exalt Path was banned?

Nonetheless, no matter how these people clamored, no one opened the gates nor even gave them a response.

The guards at the front of the gates and even on the walls were full of disdain.

But at this moment, the gates opened as it was lifted up.

"…"

The clamoring people suddenly went silent, and a few smart ones even began retreating, afraid that they would be skewered to make an example out of.

However, the ones who swaggered out pushed these people out of the way and headed towards Davis.

"Where are you people from? Do you want to join our Eighth Bastion City? In that case, let's not make it difficult for each other."

Saying this, a fat black-robed man extended his hand out. When he grinned, he even appeared to possess a set of silver teeth and golden fangs.

Davis wanted to laugh, but he knew this was a physique known as the Metal Crunching Teeth Physique. He didn't doubt this person could consume metals like Melluca could, making it extremely difficult to deal with such a being.

Behind the fatso, there were more people who looked at Davis's group with a faint hint of ridicule.

These people shouldn't be trifled with just because they came in a Exalt Grade Palace?

So what? There were countless rich cultivators who relied on their ancestral property to get here just so they could find a place to settle in the Bastion Cities underneath the Ethereal Lumina Tree. They more or less got here, but who could say that they might not meet a bad fate midway?

There were countless cases of robberies as many made their way here at the wake of the desolate air calamity, and the guards were spread thin, and they had already bribed the ones at the gate, so they were emboldened.