Chapter Seventy-One: Ogavin

Unperturbed, Qiankun accepted their salutes, then turned to Tarosa and Dilin, saying, “Tarosa, Dilin, you are both already mid-level gods, so you have no need for godheads. I won’t give you any. Dilin, your child cultivates the laws of Destruction, but I only have a single water-element lower god godhead here. Dilin, you’ll have to find a way to get a suitable godhead for your child yourself in the future!”

“It’s really not so easy to acquire a Destruction-type godhead,” Dilin admitted with a hint of helplessness.

“Enough, the ten years are almost over. Let’s just wait for Lord Beirut to arrive,” Qiankun said, closing his eyes once more to resume his meditative cultivation.

Seeing this, Tarosa, Dilin, and the others exchanged glances and dispersed to mind their own affairs. The High Priest, the God of War, and Hisai were all busy refining their mid-level god godheads, while Tarosa and Dilin, already mid-level gods, found themselves with rare leisure, chatting amiably together. Their cultivation no longer pressed with the same urgency.

Time slipped quietly by, and before long, the ten-year mark had arrived. Suddenly, the entire Necropolis of the Gods trembled slightly.

“Hm?” Qiankun and the others were all startled awake, turning their heads in confusion. In the distance, a passage shrouded in black light appeared out of nowhere. From within it strode a man with long black hair, a black beard, clad in flowing black robes—the undisputed strongest on the Yulan Continent, Beirut.

Qiankun and the others rose at once, saluting him respectfully. “Lord Beirut!”

“The ten years are up. You may all leave the Necropolis of the Gods now,” Beirut said, his gaze passing over the group before he looked at Qiankun with a smile. “Heh heh... Qiankun, I must congratulate you. You’ve had quite the harvest this time, haven’t you? The High Priest and the others owe their good fortune to your presence.”

...

Months earlier, on the sixteenth of January, year 10044 of the Yulan calendar, a great battle between divine-level powerhouses erupted at the lower reaches of the Yulan River, near the border between the Roan Empire and the Yulan Empire, at the Bosha Dike. On one side was the divine powerhouse Beaumont; on the other, the divine-level warriors of the Yulan Plane led by Linley, Olivia, and Desri.

From the very outset, Qiankun’s earth-element divine clone, who was then enjoying himself at Biyu Paradise in Baruch City, capital of the Baruch Empire, sensed the conflict.

Several of Qiankun’s divine clones had always remained hidden, cultivating in that miniature interdimensional space. This time, he had emerged for some fresh air after cultivation, only to learn of the Grand Magus and countless ordinary Yulan Continent folk who had been slain, their souls refined into golden soul elixirs. Previously, Qiankun had been so focused on training that he’d overlooked these events. By the time they unfolded, it was too late for him to intervene, no matter how much he wished to.

Qiankun had sensed the battle at Bosha Dike, but made no move to interfere. Linley and his companions faced no real danger. In fact, it was Olivia’s sword that had cleaved open the dike, unleashing many powerful beings from the planar prison and making the Yulan Plane a far more interesting place.

Soon, the battle ended. The instant the Bosha Dike was breached, Qiankun’s divine sense could clearly feel the surging auras of the many strong beings pouring out. Relative to all those imprisoned in the planar prison, they were but a small fraction. Yet their arrival changed the balance of the entire Yulan Continent.

It wasn’t long before, in Baruch City, while Qiankun’s earth-element divine clone was still enjoying the pleasures of Biyu Paradise, he sensed a formidable aura rapidly approaching the city.

“Ogavin has arrived?” Leisurely sipping his wine, Qiankun’s earth-element clone murmured softly, set his cup down, and with a shimmer vanished from the window.

Just as he took to the skies above Baruch City, he saw, suspended above the palace, more than a hundred figures. At their head, a white-robed man, smiling, radiated dazzling white light, like a blazing sun in the heavens. The endless white radiance, searing and terrifying, distorted and blurred the very air as it cascaded toward the palace below.

“Ogavin, a mid-level god, acting so wantonly... to slaughter innocent mortals? That I cannot allow.” Qiankun’s earth-element clone, with a mere thought, gathered earth-elemental energy from the world and formed a massive ochre-colored shield, blocking the holy light spreading from above.

Sizzle... The holy radiance seared against the shield, making it tremble but failing to break through.

“Hm?” Ogavin’s smile faded. With a flick of his wrist, he produced a massive white sword and slashed down. The huge white blade cleaved into the ochre shield, shattering it at once. Ogavin’s eyes sharpened as he glared at Qiankun’s floating form in the distance. “Who are you? How dare you interfere with me, Ogavin!”

As Qiankun’s earth-element clone drew closer, he smiled and replied, “Ogavin, is it? I am Qiankun. I happened to be in Baruch City these days, taking a break. I’m on good terms with Hog and Linley, the founders of the Baruch Empire. Naturally, I can’t just stand by and see you destroy this place. So, I advise you to leave now, lest we come to blows and spoil the peace.”

“Leave? That depends on whether you have the strength to force me,” Ogavin sneered, then became a blur of white light, sword in hand, slashing down at Qiankun.

The sword light sliced cleanly through the air, and in a blink, the spatial fissure was upon Qiankun. Yet Qiankun’s earth-element clone did not dodge. He drew a black greatsword, and with what seemed a casual swing, met the attack head-on. With a resounding clang, Ogavin’s entire body shuddered. His eyes went wide in terror as his aura instantly diminished.

Swish—a sound split the air. From Ogavin’s corpse, as his aura faded, a fiery red figure seized a white-glowing godhead, grabbed one of the four lower gods at Ogavin’s side—his son, Kingsley—and vanished in a streak of flame beyond the horizon.

“Decisive, and fast enough to escape,” Qiankun’s earth-element clone remarked with a smile, then turned his gaze on the three remaining lower gods under Ogavin’s command and the nearly one hundred Saint-level warriors. Still stunned by the sudden turn of events, they had yet to recover.

Qiankun’s eyes swept over them, and the three lower gods shuddered awake. With unspoken agreement, they each shot off in different directions, trying to flee.

“Escape? Do you think you can?” With a laugh, Qiankun’s earth-element clone activated his godly domain, instantly restraining the trio and drastically slowing them. With a shimmer, he closed in and killed them in quick succession, collecting their godheads, divine artifacts, and interspatial rings, before turning to the nearly one hundred Saint-level warriors, also immobilized by his godly domain.

Facing Qiankun’s gaze, the Saint-level warriors could not help but reveal expressions of despair. Without godhood, mortals before a god were nothing but pitiful ants.

At that moment, a streak of azure light flashed across the sky and swiftly approached, materializing into a robust young man in a deep blue robe—Linley himself.

“Lord Qiankun? Weren’t you with the God of War and the others in the Necropolis of the Gods? How could you...” Linley was both surprised and delighted to see Qiankun’s earth-element clone.

Catching Linley’s astonished look, Qiankun’s clone laughed. “Ha ha... My wind-element clone and original body went to the Necropolis, but what you see now is my earth-element clone! I happen to be in Baruch City. When I saw trouble brewing, I lent a hand. Linley, you don’t blame me for meddling, do you?”