Waves surged across the surface of the Forbidden Sea as Xu Qing and the Captain went back toward Sea-Sealing County. All of a sudden, Xu Qing stopped in place and looked off into the distance. He felt like he could hear a voice in his mind, and could just barely make out some images floating in front of him. Unfortunately, the images were blurry, like runny ink.

When Xu Qing suddenly stopped in place, the Captain looked over in surprise. Then he followed Xu Qing’s gaze off into the distance. He didn’t see anything.

Curious, he asked, “What’s going on, little Ah Qing? Did you see something?”

Xu Qing didn’t respond at first. After seeing Xu Qing just looking blankly off into the distance, the Captain was about to ask another question. That was when Xu Qing’s expression returned to normal.

Realizing he was looking in the direction of the Nightspirit Region, he said, “It seems like something is calling out to me. Something I originally assumed didn’t exist.”

***

On the Nightshade front lines, a violet moon descended, casting violet light in all directions, and causing the previously bright canopy of heaven to suddenly dim. Down below, all living beings trembled as the violet light grew stronger. At the same time, a terrifying aura spread from the violet moon. From a distance, it looked like the violet moon took up about half of the sky. Cultivators on both sides of the conflict could look up and see all the various craters and depressions that covered its surface. A huge stone stele could be seen on the violet heavenly body, shining with shocking, dazzling light.

A godly aura caused heaven and earth to distort. It blurred the world as clouds of mutagen rose up, within which could be seen innumerable violet worms that seemed to phase back and forth between illusory and corporeal.

Down on the battlefield, King Heaventide and his subordinates were deeply shaken. Many gasped for breath, and many trembled physically.

On the Nightshade side, the priests in the violet robes looked more pious than ever, and they raised their voices exuberantly. The other Nightshades also started to get excited, and one by one, they dropped to worship the violet moon. To them, the arrival of the violet moon indicated that their god hadn’t abandoned them. They…still had a god!

In contrast, King Heaventide was struck as if by countless bolts of lightning. He was a Smoldering God, so he knew how terrifying actual gods were. What was more, he knew that his own battle prowess didn’t qualify him to even fight back against a real god.

“How could this be?? Don’t tell me Crimson Mother woke up? No, that can’t be. They weren’t chanting about Crimson Mother. They mentioned Violet Lord! I’ve never heard of this Violet Lord before. Could he be an embodiment of Crimson Mother? Or maybe some ancient god nobody has heard of before?”

King Heaventide was particularly shaken considering that he could sense how true and real this violet moon was. The pressure it exuded, and the mist of violet threadworms, couldn’t have been more real.

This really was like the arrival of a god! The fluctuations and the feelings became a tempest in his heart, raging out of control. Without any hesitation, and without any regard for the lives of his subordinates, he found himself thinking of only one thing: run away! He had to run away before this Violet Lord arrived. That was his only chance to survive.

Gritting his teeth, he shouted, “Withdraw!”

Turning, he shot off into the distance at top speed. He was a Smoldering God, and as one of the eighteen heavenly kings leading the fight against the Nightshades in this war, he had no desire to die.

As he well knew, humankind was bringing the fight to the Nightshades from over a dozen directions. As the war was fought over two huge regions, each heavenly king was in charge of one line of offense. In other words, a defeat here wouldn’t be a fatal blow. It would make things a bit more difficult in his attempt to earn the emperor’s approval, and for Seventh Prince’s plans to become the true leader of the Holytide region. But compared to dying… those things seemed trivial.

In the shortest of moments, King Heaventide vanished from beneath the violet moon. After he was gone, the subordinates he’d left behind looked around with bitterness and despair before following him. Unfortunately, they were also aware that the chances of them escaping from a god were minuscule.

The Nightshades didn’t take advantage of the moment to launch a counter attack. After finishing with their chanting, they withdrew from the battlefield under the cover of the violet moon.

Time slipped by slowly but surely. Eventually, the Nightshades were long gone. King Heaventide’s forces were still in retreat, yet they seemed confused, as… they hadn’t seen any god at all. In fact, the violet moon above was starting to ripple and fade into nothing. Apparently, it had done little more than release some mutagen. It had not been as deadly as its aura and pressure made it seem like it would be.

Apparently it was… as unreal as flowers in a mirror or the moon in the water. In fact, it wasn’t long before the violet moon disappeared altogether, and everything went back to normal.

King Heaventide’s subordinates looked around in confusion. However, it didn’t take long before people realized what had happened. They… had been tricked! There had never been a god on the way. It was simply an illusion.

However, that realization shook them to the core. Then, rumbling filled the sky as King Heaventide returned. He was scowling deeply, and his eyes burned with rage. His baleful aura couldn’t have been more intense as he raced along at top speed. He had fled on instinct, but after getting a certain distance away, he realized that something was off. After carefully checking behind him, he realized that the violet moon was gone. As of that moment, he realized that he… had fallen into a trap!

Eyes bloodshot with fury, he glared off into the distance. There, he saw the fleeing Nightshade army with their seventeen high priests. Were it not for his big mistake in judgment, that army would already have been wiped out. And the seventeen priests that had been his main target would be dead. At that point, he would have accomplished his mission in the war.

He would have heard the approval of the emperor, and Seventh Prince would have acquired the Holytide Region as his personal fiefdom. And in the end, he would have returned triumphant. But then this unexpected turn of events occurred.

Under the eyes of all present, he had fled in fear from the Nightshades. It was a humiliation. An outright humiliation. That thought caused his fury to burn. Some of it was because of the terror he had felt, and some of it was because of how much face he had lost.

King Heaventide immediately issued new orders.

“Everyone, heed my command. Chase down the Nightshade stragglers. Kill any Nightshade cultivators you come across. All of them! Leave none alive!”

His subordinates did not respond with the same excited fervor as before. The sight of King Heaventide turning and running away left them with very mixed feelings. However, the orders came from a Smoldering God, so they had no choice but to comply.

That said, the deputy general in charge of the immortal skills couldn’t help but fly up to King Heaventide. Lowering his voice, he said, “Heavenly King, the immortal skills can’t reach that far. We need more time. Chasing the enemy now will be risky….”

King Heaventide’s face was as cold as ice as he looked at the deputy general. “Are you refusing to obey orders?”

The deputy general bowed his head. “Your humble servant would never.”

“Then get moving!” King Heaventide shouted in a voice as loud as heavenly thunder. The army immediately surged into motion to chase after the fleeing Nightshades.

King Heaventide led the charge.

However, things didn’t go very well. The Nightshades were relying primarily on teleportations to make their escape, so pursuing them meant constantly tracking the lingering teleportation signals. And thus, after three days of pursuit, King Heaventide’s forces found themselves deep inside the Nightspirit Region, surrounded by thick, dark fog.

Clues they had come across on their journey seemed to indicate that the Nightshade army were preparing to make their last stand, and that included the seventeen high priests.

King Heaventide looked out into the fog for a time. Upon sensing the fluctuations of teleportations, his eyes shone with determination and he issued more orders.

Before long, he and his army were racing through the fog. The fog seethed as it swallowed them up.

Seven days later, the fog in that part of the Nightspirit Region churned. Rumbling sounds rose into the dome of heaven. And then a deafening boom echoed out, accompanied by a huge mushroom cloud. 𝐟𝗿ee𝘄o𝘃el.𝐜o𝚖

A group of bedraggled figures stumbled out of the fog, led by King Heaventide. He no longer looked as awe-inspiring as before. His eyes glittered defiantly, but his armor was smashed and his complexion wan. He was clearly wounded, and was bleeding all over. His subordinates were all in the same condition, being severely injured and extremely weak. As for the size of his army… only one in ten had survived. Ninety percent of his forces were not coming back.

Looking back at his subordinates, his heart burned with fury. Then he thought about what happened after they raced into that fog, and his fury rose to such a high level that blood sprayed out of his mouth.

First the Nightshades summoned an illusory god to startle me, making me lose face and lose the initiative. Then, allowing anger to surpass reason, I chased them past the range of the immortal skills to this spot. The immortal skills were what prevented the Nightshades from detonating weapons with large areas of effect. As it turned out, they had domain treasure fragments here that they could detonate at will.

King Heaventide felt deep regret. Considering how badly he was injured, he was now worried about what else the Nightshades might have planned. Gritting his teeth, he focused on getting to safety.

After reaching the border of the Holytide Region, he had his army set up camp. Then he stewed in his defiance, rage, and regret as he tried to decide how to explain all of this to the emperor.

It was at that exact same moment that he was finally given a few jade slips that had been sent by Seventh Prince. The first one was a message explaining that the High Commander had gone missing in Sea-Sealing County, and that Sea-Sealing County had refused to send further troops. The second one notified him that Sea-Sealing County had some Dawning Suns, and that Seventh Prince’s garrison had been wiped out, resulting in severe casualties. Those two jade slips caused killing intent to erupt in King Heaventide. However, he now had a way to explain this disaster to the emperor.

It was all Sea-Sealing County’s fault. Because they didn’t send reinforcements, he wasn’t able to fully deploy the immortal skills in time to foray into the Nightspirit Region. That left his army somewhat stranded, and thus led to the big defeat.