Cain effortlessly suppressed an elite force of over a hundred men all by himself. He didn’t even need to lift a finger; the blood fiends he summoned were already suffocating them under their overwhelming pressure.
Witnessing this, Aria gritted her teeth. Her sapphire-blue eyes were overtaken by a brilliant gold. Her entire demeanor grew sharp, radiating supreme majesty.
She closed her eyes, her hands clasped in prayer, as countless rays of light gathered around her.
Two pairs of pristine white wings unfurled from Aria’s back. Clad in heavy armor, her mithril cross transformed into a massive, weighty greatsword. She planted the sword’s tip on the ground, looking like an angel descended to earth.
“Judgment of Holy Light!”
From the sky above, countless burning swords of sacred flame rained down like a storm. The holy, purifying power instantly cleansed the blood-soaked earth within a hundred-meter radius, allowing everyone to catch their breath.
“So powerful!”
“As expected of His Holiness the Pope! Such a divine miracle is beyond anything that false god could hope to match!”
Aria raised the greatsword, its point still aimed at the ground.
Nuns gathered around her, chanting hymns.
This was the first time since the battle began that Cain regarded the situation with a serious look. A colossal sword of holy light now hung suspended above his head, its sacred pressure dispersing even the blood mist shrouding the area.
“A Sword of Divine Retribution, fueled by a decade of life force?” Cain chuckled. “How interesting. Do you hate me that much, Your Holiness?”
“Filth like you has no right to exist in this world!” Aria’s hatred burned as she recalled the days when the vampires kept the villagers like livestock. Her rage made her pour in even more of her life force; this single strike would cost her twenty years of her lifespan.
“Do you not know that existence itself implies reason? We vampires have been despised by the world since our inception, yet we endure to this day precisely because your god permits it.” He looked down upon the group from the Inquisition, his tone pointed.
Though furious, Aria did not lose her reason. She smiled mockingly.
“Don’t worry. After today, your vampire kind will be wiped from the face of the earth. Attack!”
Chains of holy light bound Cain as the hundred-meter sword in the sky began its slow, inevitable descent.
Cain watched the tiny, ant-like figures below who sought his life with an amused expression.
“Let me show you insignificant creatures what divine wrath truly is!”
He easily shattered the chains binding him, along with the restraints placed by several master-level wood-element ability users.
Before anyone could react, he shot like a bolt toward the descending sword of holy light.
The moment he collided with the colossal sword, the tremendous shockwave completely obliterated the castle.
The scattered purifying energy completely dispelled the blood fog that had shrouded the sky. For the first time in many days, the group saw daylight again.
“It hit! It hit him! That old monster went crazy and got himself killed!”
A few young awakeners couldn’t help but cheer, but the seasoned veterans remained on high alert. They refused to believe Cain was dead so easily.
Suddenly, everyone’s vision went dark. An overwhelming sense of mortal threat, impossible to resist, assaulted them.
A crimson ghostly hand slowly materialized in their field of vision, emanating a terrifying, bloody aura.
Despite their power, they found themselves utterly incapable of resistance, forced to watch death approach.
At the critical moment, a fiery phoenix streaked across, engaging the ghostly hand in combat.
Ling Xiaoxiao had made her move. She had chosen this moment, when his soul was momentarily projected, to strike, aiming to trade injuries with him.
The sinister aura surrounding Cain was unlike anything she had encountered before, yet its depth and power were undeniably profound. After observing Aria’s attack, Ling Xiaoxiao made a snap decision, choosing this risky gambit to confront Cain directly.
This was a battle of souls, between a shape-shifting spirit beast who had cultivated for a millennium and a vampire progenitor who had become a “god.” Even a human powerhouse like Aria found it difficult to intervene.
“Attack Cain’s physical body!” Ling Xiaoxiao commanded. The group immediately concentrated their firepower, launching attacks toward Cain’s body a hundred meters away.
However, the bloody energy emanating from Cain’s form was bizarre and unpredictable. All elemental attacks were corroded and devoured, and getting close was simply out of the question.
Currently, only three of the seals on Ling Xiaoxiao’s body had been released. In the past, she had sealed her own cultivation and split her soul into seven fragments, imposing seven seals upon herself to maintain her sanity. It was only after meeting Xueji, who used the power of the moon at the dawn of the spiritual resurgence, that the third seal was undone.
If left to her own devices, she had no confidence she could remain rational after breaking the seals.
Therefore, although her current soul’s strength was terrifyingly high, in front of Cain, it was like a deathly still, riddled with holes.
“So, the Guardian of Huaxia, even you could not conquer time. You compromised with time, and thus became this half-dead, half-alive wretch.”
The two ghostly hands merged, transforming into a bat that fought back and forth with Ling Xiaoxiao’s soul.
But only Ling Xiaoxiao knew: if this continued, she would be scattered into nothingness long before Cain’s power waned.
The fiery phoenix’s talons tore through the ghostly bat’s wing membrane, while the bat’s fangs pierced the phoenix’s wing. If not for Ling Xiaoxiao’s innate Chongming bloodline, which naturally suppressed such evil entities, the situation would have been even worse.
‘Live well, Xiao Ji.’
Ling Xiaoxiao had been fighting Cain for six hours. The damage to her soul was causing her consciousness to blur. The image of Xueji appeared before her eyes. In the hallucination, Xueji smiled brilliantly, her white hair dazzling under the sunlight. She opened her arms, welcoming Ling Xiaoxiao.
‘Xiao Ji, I have to go now.’
“Come quickly. You’re so tired already. Let them figure it out themselves. Let’s go~”
She reached out and strangled the hallucinatory “Xueji,” whose face contorted in disbelief.
“Of all people, you had to impersonate her!” Just as her soul was about to extinguish, it suddenly blazed with renewed fury.
“What are you doing?!” Cain, sensing the shift in her aura, felt a primal danger. His soul struggled frantically.
But the fiery phoenix gripped him tightly, forcibly tearing away a fifth of his soul.
Even then, she didn’t intend to stop. The phoenix transformed into a blazing sun, radiating light in all directions.
Ling Xiaoxiao was going to burn her very soul to ashes, taking Cain with her into oblivion.
“Sister Ling, no! You can’t die!” The powerful, dignified Pope now looked as hysterical as she had thirty years ago.
She hated herself for being unable to keep Ling Xiaoxiao, hated that she still needed to be protected by her.
She rushed forward to intervene but was violently flung back by the force of Ling Xiaoxiao’s soul.
“Why… why can I never do anything?” She punched the ground, tears falling freely.
Just as Ling Xiaoxiao’s soul began to crumble, a streak of blue light shot toward the battlefield like a meteor.
On the verge of dissipating, Ling Xiaoxiao confronted her true feelings.
In her memories, she had taken the form of a bird. From the moment Xueji was born in this life, she had watched his growth from afar.
‘He’s such an introverted child, nothing like my master. And in this life, he’s even a boy,’ Ling Xiaoxiao had thought.
Yet, despite herself, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the boy, silently watching over him.
When she was left battered and on the brink of death by lightning tribulation while trying to break a seal, she instinctively found her way back to the boy’s window.
The boy carefully cradled her in his arms, just like that girl a thousand years ago, tending to her with gentle care.
‘Xiao Ji, in the next life, I’ll cling to you again.’
“Xiao Ji, I lo—”
BOOM!
The blue meteor crashed into the spot where Ling Xiaoxiao was.
“Ling Xiaoxiao! I’ve come for you!”