Countless bolts of lightning rained down from the heavens, shattering the catapults and blasting the mountain pass to pieces.
The dragons in the sky swarmed down, unleashing fire, ice, thunder, and violent gales.
They unleashed everything they had.
Against such might and fury, the Gui tortoises stood no chance of stopping them.
The Red Dragon held the line from high above the tribe.
The Gui Tribe was instantly defeated and fled in panic.
Their defenses might have fared better against other strange beasts that could not fly.
But against dragons, which swooped and glided down to unleash their divine abilities, they were utterly helpless and routed in an instant.
Within minutes of the battle starting, half of the thirty-plus Gui tortoises lay dead.
The people of the Gui Tribe all fled to the entrance of the Gui God's cave, weeping and begging.
“Lord Gui God, save us!!”
“Lord Gui God, we can't hold out any longer!!”
“Please emerge and save us, Lord Gui God!!”
Yet no matter how they cried out, the Gui God refused to show itself.
Little did they know, after the terrifying existence in the sky had spoken that single word, “Burn,” with a majestic divine pressure that rumbled like wind, fire, and thunder, the Gui God had been completely frightened out of its wits and dared not step outside.
It had sent its familiars to fend off the enemy, only for them to be defeated in an instant.
This only deepened its terror, prompting it to begin digging into the earth to escape.
The tribe and its familiars were merely external possessions; if they were lost, they could always be replaced. But if it lost its own life, then all would be gone.
The Gui God understood this perfectly.
It frantically dug through the dirt in the dark cavern.
Before long, the dug-up soil blocked the cave entrance.
Seeing her people facing a devastating disaster while the Gui God refused to appear, Gui Li knew they had reached their limit.
While dispatching people to check on the Gui God, she fell to her knees and begged for mercy.
“Lord Dragon God, please forgive our disrespect! We had no intention of making an enemy of you! We were truly set up by vile people!”
“Our home has suddenly met with a great disaster, and we were only trying to defend ourselves. Please, look into the truth!”
“Yes, Lord Dragon God! We are not vassals of the Tai tribe. They are the ones who set us up!”
The rest of the Gui Tribe cried out after her.
“Please spare our lives, Lord Dragon God!!”
“Please look into the truth, Lord Dragon God!!”
Moments ago, they had been at the cave entrance begging the Gui God to emerge; now, they had all turned around, kneeling to beg the Dragon God for forgiveness.
Haoyuan's dragons could understand human speech. Having driven the Gui Tribe to a dead end and killed or injured most of the Gui tortoises, they hesitated to take the next step. They stopped their assault, watching the tribe with hungry, menacing eyes.
Still hidden in the clouds, Haoyuan frowned when he saw that the Gui God had yet to make an appearance.
“Are you really going to abandon your believers and familiars?”
He did not fully understand the relationship between tribes, familiars, and deities in this era, and had assumed the Gui God would definitely show itself.
But soon, he overheard the conversation between Gui Li and the priestess.
“Holy Maiden! Lord Gui God dug a tunnel and fled!!”
“Holy crap!!”
Without listening to another word, Haoyuan whipped his tail and flew straight out of the dense layer of clouds.
The sudden movement whipped up a violent gale, sending the tribespeople tumbling over one another.
When they looked up and saw an enormous dragon descending from the sky, their legs turned to jelly from sheer terror, rendering them completely unable to move.
The moment Gui Li saw the Dragon God emerge, his golden eyes locking onto the mountain, she snapped out of her stupor and screamed with all her might.
“Run!!”
Even before the words had fully left her mouth, and while the others were still utterly bewildered, a blinding blue and white light began to flash between heaven and earth.
Their eyes widened in sheer horror.
Looking up once more, they saw a terrifying thunderstorm crackling and swelling within the Dragon God's maw.
“Run!!!”
With that final, desperate scream, the Gui tortoises and the people of the Gui Tribe scrambled to escape in all directions.
Boom!!!
The scale of the sound was beyond description. Even the sound of a bolt of heavenly lightning striking right beside one's feet could not compare to its deafening roar.
The sheer thickness of the lightning was suffocating, and the blinding brilliance of its light was searing to the eyes.
Crash!!!
A deafening explosion erupted between heaven and earth.
The massive mountain that the Gui Tribe depended on for survival shattered and split wide open.
Boulders cascaded down like a divine punishment, forcing the Gui tribespeople to scramble beneath the massive bodies of the Gui tortoises for shelter.
Their wooden homes and structures were instantly leveled.
A dense cloud of powdered stone filled the air like a localized dust storm, sweeping over everything and coating the entire area in a stark grayish-white.
It looked as if a heavy snow had fallen.
Si He stared blankly at the scene, feeling that the power of a deity was truly terrifying.
With but a single thought, heaven and earth shifted.
Tai Shan and Tai Xie were utterly dumbstruck.
They had indeed harbored a secret desire to test the Dragon God's strength.
But for the Dragon God to split a mountain in a single strike—it felt more like a true god of thunder than any thunder deity they had ever heard of.
The power of the Dragon Ancestor was truly beyond comprehension.
Having split the mountain, the air was choked with dust, turning everything into a hazy gray.
It slightly obstructed his vision.
Haoyuan opened his mouth and inhaled. The thick shroud of dust swirled and surged like a tempest, rapidly funneling and gathering before being sucked entirely into his mouth.
In an instant, the world cleared, and the bright sky was revealed once more.
Everything was pristine and clean, as if washed by a heavy downpour.
The Gui tribespeople, buried beneath the stone dust, could hardly believe their eyes.
Using the Gui tortoises, they had survived the falling boulders and the swirling dust, only to find themselves buried alive by the thick, snow-like accumulation of stone powder. Just as despair was setting in, the Dragon God had sucked all of it away.
They were able to breathe again, beholding the world once more.
In that moment, they looked up at the Dragon God with nothing but absolute awe and dread.
What a terrifying power.
With but a single thought, he could rewrite the face of the earth.
Si He's breathing grew heavy.
The Dragon God was even more powerful than she had imagined.
As for Tai Shan and the others, their terror had only deepened.
This Dragon God possessed a force that seemed capable of swallowing mountains and rivers. If it wanted to, could it swallow the entire earth?
At the thought of such a terrifying prospect, they could not help but shudder.
They could only hope the Dragon God would never harbor such a notion.
The divine ability Whale Gulp Dragon Inhale had grown significantly stronger, allowing him to vacuum up all the stone dust almost instantly.
A clear, massive cavern opening was revealed before his eyes.
Beside it lay piles of freshly excavated earth.
Haoyuan slithered over and peered inside, finding that the entrance was blocked by dirt.
He pondered briefly, then opened his mouth to inhale once more, drawing the loose soil into his mouth like a torrent.
Within a few breaths, the dirt blockage was gone, with only occasional specks of dust flying out.
His golden eyes suddenly gleamed with a brilliant light as he probed deep into the dark cavern.
Deep inside, he saw a giant tortoise. Its appearance was similar to its familiars, but its head was adorned with horns, giving it a much more ferocious look, and its shell was of an even purer, more translucent white-jade texture.
Felt by his gaze, the creature's massive body shuddered, instantly freezing in paralyzing fear.
Haoyuan opened his mouth and spat, sending a streak of brilliant White Flame shooting into the cavern.
After confirming that the White Flame had successfully engulfed the Gui God, Haoyuan withdrew his gaze and turned to leave.
Once wrapped in White Flame, the fire would never extinguish until its target was utterly destroyed.
Deep inside the dark cave, the Gui God had never imagined that its fated crisis of life and death would be this horrific.
The moment the flames licked its body, even though the temperature was unbelievably intense, it had initially thought it still had a slim chance of survival, since it possessed the ability to absorb and consume fire.
Yet the instant the fire touched its flesh, it erupted with savage fury, incinerating its shell and hind legs in a fraction of a second.
It was instantly thrown into a panic.
It desperately unleashed its divine ability to swallow fire.
But the temperature of the White Flame was far too extreme for its body to bear. The moment it swallowed the fire, its pristine white-jade body glowed bright red, like a piece of burning charcoal.
In this moment, it finally understood what it truly felt like to be burned from the inside out.
Previously, it could only imagine such a feeling, as no ordinary fire had ever been able to bypass its defenses.
Even if it did not consume the fire, ordinary flames could never hope to scorch its hard white-jade shell.
But now, as the cruel, violent heat of the fire bloomed from the depths of its being, it clearly felt the agonizing torment of being scorched and melted away.
Even more terrifyingly, it felt its very existence rapidly fading alongside the burning and melting of its physical form.
It felt as if an invisible entity had opened a massive, unseen maw, savagely tearing away and devouring its soul bite by bite.
Before its consciousness plunged into total darkness, a tidal wave of dread washed over and completely engulfed it.
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