Chapter 375: Insects Smelling Honey

The celestial beacon of descending wrath pierced every corner of the fractured minor plane.

From hundreds of miles away, the crimson-and-violet thunderhead burned like a lighthouse of absolute destruction, and with it came the insatiable, blinding greed of the surviving cultivators.

“A heavenly artifact has unsealed!”

“Move! If we reach there first, then there will be no one to obstruct us from getting the ultimate inheritance of Desolate Asura Realm!”

Cultivators across the barren obsidian plains abandoned their skirmishes, their medicine gathering, and their cautious scouting.

Like ravenous locusts drawn to a wildfire, hundreds of figures ignited their movement talismans, flying swords, and shadow-stepping arts, hurtling across the desolate wastes toward the blood-red beach.

A brutal, frenzied massacre followed in their wake.

When hundreds of desperate Foundation Establishment and Early Golden Core practitioners converged on the same narrow valleys and jagged canyons, reason evaporated.

Clang! Splat!

A rogue cultivator who dared slow down was cleaved in two by the blazing broadsword of a Crimson Lotus Empire cultivator.

Ahead of them, three sect elders’ descendants from the Great Venomous Empire unleashed clouds of bone-dissolving corpse mist into a packed ravine, slaughtering dozens of slower cultivators just to clear a path.

Screams, severed limbs, and boiling blood paved the rocky trail leading toward the shore.

In their frenzied minds, every rival cultivator was one less hand reaching for the divine treasure.

Within half an hour, the first wave of elite cultivators breached the final mountain ridge overlooking the scarlet coast.

Among the foremost stood Princess Yue Lingxi of the Glacial Moon Empire.

Draped in pristine, frost-patterned battle silks that fluttered in the violent gale, a pair of ice-carved crescents hovered around her slender wrists.

Beside her were four elite Early Golden Core royal guards, their frosty aura holding back the chaotic bloodlust of the gathering crowd.

Princess Yue Lingxi raised her delicate hand, halting her retinue at the crest of the cliff, exactly three li away from the blood-red dunes.

“Your Highness, why do we halt? The treasure is right down on the shore!” a guard urged, his eyes burning with desire.

“Silence, fool!” Yue Lingxi commanded, her crystalline voice sharp as an icicle.

Her brows knit tightly as she stared at the boiling vortex above.

“Look at the heavenly lightning descending upon that sandbar. That is not a mere relic awakening, that is pure Heavenly Dao Retribution. If a single one of us crosses into the tribulation perimeter, the Heavenly Dao will judge us as conspirators and drop double the retribution lightning onto our heads. We would turn to ash before we could even touch the relic!”

Behind Princess Yue Lingxi, other powerful scions and elite core disciples from neighboring empires skidded to a halt along the jagged cliffline.

Dozens of heavily armed rogue experts and battle-hardened demonic cultivators gathered along the ridge, their breath catching in their throats as the suffocating pressure bore down on their chests.

None of the veterans dared cross the invisible threshold of celestial wrath.

The sheer density of the chaotic heavenly laws churned the ambient Qi so violently that none of them dared release their Spirit Sense toward the center, doing so would risk having their fragile spiritual consciousness shredded to pieces by stray lightning arcs.

From several li away, veiled by the swirling crimson dust and thick ionic haze, the desolate shore remained a blurry, indistinct silhouette.

They could see the violent epicenter, but not the man standing in its heart.

Yet, amidst the frenzied greed, a handful of fools lost all rational restraint.

“Get out of the way! The divine treasure is mine!”

Three late Foundation Establishment rogue cultivators, blinded by the prospect of claiming a world-shocking artifact, broke past the cliff’s perimeter.

Howling with maniacal laughter, they ignited their movement talismans and leaped down toward the blood-red dunes.

They did not even manage a second stride.

CRACKLE— BOOM!

The wrathful vortex above registered the trespassers instantly.

Three needle-thin arcs of stray violet lightning flicked lazily from the outer edge of the storm clouds, descending like the indifferent gaze of an ancient executioner.

PFFT!

There were no screams.

There was no time for blood to spray.

The three cultivators, along with their low-tier protective treasures and defensive talismans, were instantly atomized at a molecular level.

Not a speck of bone, blood, or ash remained, erased from the face of the world in the span of a single millisecond.

A deathly, suffocating chill swept through the hundreds of cultivators watching from the ridge.

The remaining hotheads violently reined in their mounts and skidded backward, cold sweat instantly soaking their inner robes. No one dared take half a step forward.

Yet, despite the terror, the calculating greed in their bloodshot eyes only burned hotter as they anchored their gazes to the desolate red shore below, waiting like hungry wolves for the storm to run its course.

Down on the scarlet sands, Shen Yu’s acute senses caught the distant, wet echoes of slaughter and the thick scent of charred vitality carried on the gale.

‘Insects smelling honey,’ he thought, a cold, amused sneer curling his lips.

Shen Yu was no reckless novice.

The lightning storm obscured him for now, but the moment the tribulation dissipated, the barrier would fall.

Hundreds of ravenous wolves would descend upon the crater to claim whatever divine artifact they believed was resting here.

In his current state,bearing the lingering strain of his shattered soul, fighting an entire army of Foundation Establishment elites and Early Golden Core scions simultaneously was foolish.

Worse, to let them witness his true identity would be a death sentence.

The moment the outer gate opened, the Nascent Soul monsters waiting outside would dissect his soul to unravel the secret of his.

Shen Yu circulated his refined Qi through his marrow.

Crack… snap…

His skin rippled like disturbed water.

With a sequence of dull, shifting pops, his skeletal frame widened, his delicate, ethereal contours coarsening into the sharp, rugged, and brutal visage of Ni Tian.

The divine, peerless golden gleam in his irises dimmed, retreating beneath a murky veil of deep, predatory crimson.

In his arms, the head sized beast egg trembled violently.

The delicate spiderweb fissures tracing its dual-colored shell glowed with intensifying Yin-Yang radiance, but the inner primordial beast had yet to break free.

It pulsed like a heavy, living heart against his chest, thumping in a frantic, demanding rhythm.

The cracked shell greedily drank the excess elemental Qi pouring from Shen Yu’s pores, shuddering with raw anticipation for the celestial baptism about to fall from the heavens.

High above, that bizarre, mocking pink blush on the clouds evaporated in an instant, almost as if the vast will of the sky itself were desperately struggling to suppress a surge of chaotic emotion.

In its place rushed back the pure, vindictive wrath of the Heavenly Dao.

The celestial vortex spun with such violent, grinding friction that the surrounding mountain ridges groaned under the crushing spatial drag.

BOOM——!

The heavens ripped wide open.

The first bolt of Violet-Abyssal Tribulation Lightning detonated from the eye of the storm, hurtling downward like a colossal pillar of cosmic execution meant to purge the taboo Tenth Layer and the slumbering primordial anomaly from existence in a single strike.

Shen Yu stood tall upon the scarlet sand, naked, blood-drenched, and utterly unyielding beneath the descending apocalypse.

Clutching the unhatched egg tight against his ribs with one arm, he bared his sharp teeth to the blazing firmament, his crimson eyes burning with tyrannical arrogance as he rasped.

“Come.”