Chapter 838: Wrath of the Dragon

Chapter 838: Chapter 838: Wrath of the Dragon

The Emperor’s voice echoed with the might of an ancestral thunder, making everything around him tremble. Space inside and outside the command tent seemed to warp beneath the pressure of his aura. Servants, elite guards, and every army member present in the camp fell to their knees with their faces pressed against the ground, unable to withstand their sovereign’s rage.

Aurelius turned slowly, locking a burning gaze onto his subordinate.

"Anything to say, Vorian?" asked Aurelius in an icy tone that sliced through the air.

"My Lord...", stammered Vorian, feeling his knees threatening to give way beneath the imperial mana pressure as he fought to maintain composure. "I do not know what is happening... I had no idea..."

"You say you knew nothing?" The Emperor took a step forward, causing the stone ground beneath his boots to fracture. "You proposed the location yourself. The date, the time... I entrusted everything for this operation to you, and yet everything went wrong? You had better have a good explanation for this, Vorian, before I execute your entire bloodline right here and now."

Vorian swallowed hard, feeling the chill of death brushing against his neck. The lie he had crafted was crumbling before the Emperor’s judgment.

Vorian began stammering incoherencies, stumbling backward with wide eyes.

"My Lord... the map... the intel... I only... the spies must have leaked the route!" babbled Vorian as his mind collapsed. Realizing that the Emperor’s gaze grew more lethal by the second, he clenched his teeth in desperation. "If there is no other way... so be it!"

With a motion, Vorian pulled a small vial from his robe and shattered it against the floor. A crimson mist enveloped his body as he unleashed his Dao Heart to its maximum. A destructive aura flared through the tent as Vorian drew his blade and delivered a sweeping slash aimed at the Emperor’s neck in a desperate strike.

Aurelius didn’t move. He didn’t draw his sword, nor did he assume a defensive stance.

The Emperor simply huffed. ℯℯ𝑙.

An invisible shockwave erupted from his body in every direction. Vorian’s blade ground to a halt millimeters from his skin, freezing solid in mid-air alongside the crimson mist and the energy radiating from his attack. The entire command tent turned into ice.

"So you ascended to the True Spirit Physique Realm...", said Aurelius, looking at Vorian’s frozen blade with disdain. "You hid it well. However, if this is what you relied upon to stand against me... I can only say that you are an imbecile."

Vorian felt terror radiating from the Emperor. He had no idea what realm of cultivation his sovereign had achieved, but he realized in an instant that the gap between them was so immense he could barely stand firm on his feet.

Aurelius delivered a simple backhand slap. His hand barely seemed to move, yet before Vorian could process the trajectory, the impact shattered his cheek. The traitor’s body shot backward at terrifying speed, tearing through the command tent and hurtling through the air until crashing into a mountain miles away.

Before the shattered rocks could settle, the Emperor teleported directly above the fractured peak.

With a gaze filled with disdain, Aurelius slammed Vorian straight into the ground with a strike. In that exact moment, an ancestral dragon’s roar echoed across the firmament, obliterating the mountain whole in a blast of golden light and carving out a crater miles in diameter.

At the bottom of the abyssal crater, Vorian lay with nearly every bone shattered and his armor pulverized, coughing up blood.

Aurelius raised his palm slightly. Without needing to touch him, a golden gravitational force lifted Vorian’s dying body into the air, suspending him directly before the Emperor while the fractures in the earth spewed heat.

"Tell me why...", demanded Aurelius in a deep voice that caused the bedrock to rumble.

However, before the traitor could articulate an answer, space tore open behind Aurelius. Three blasts of pure mana erupted from the distance at blinding speed. The strikes were so devastating that they warped the spatial realm, hitting the Emperor squarely in the back in a detonation of light and fire.

The dust and shockwaves cleared. Aurelius, whose imperial robe barely bore a slight fray thanks to his barrier, turned with composure.

Emperor Garrick of the Radiant Sun Empire advanced at the lead, riding atop a majestic Golden Eagle whose spread wings spanned hundreds of meters, radiant with flashes of sunlight. To his left, cloaked in gloom, Emperor Kellan of the Eternal Night Empire observed with cold eyes from atop a three-headed Black Crow that exhaled spectral miasma. Completing the formation, Emperor Theron of the Divine Wind Empire stood erect upon the back of an ancestral Green Crane, whose wingbeats generated gusts of wind capable of slicing through mountains.

Theron gazed down at Vorian, who hung bloodied and helpless in the air, and offered a smirk.

"So you were discovered, Vorian...", said Emperor Theron. "We thought your charade would last a bit longer, but it seems you underestimated your lord’s intuition."

"A pity," chimed in Kellan with a cavernous voice from the shadow of the Black Crow. "Though your trap to dispose of the Void Amethyst brat worked, your role as a mole within the Golden Dragon’s high command has come to an end."

Garrick adjusted the reins of his Golden Eagle and locked an imposing glare onto Aurelius, as the bird unleashed a piercing screech that shook the heavens.

"Aurelius," declared Garrick. "Your empire has resisted long enough at this pass, but with your army weakened and your finest pieces off the board, your era has come to an end."

Aurelius released Vorian’s limp body, letting him drop like a rag into the bottom of the crater. The Emperor of the Golden Dragon drew himself up to his full height, allowing his golden aura to soar into the firmament like an indomitable pillar, confronting the three sovereigns and their giant Guardian Beasts without taking a single step back.