Chapter 1236: Procurement Team, Reporting for Duty

Chapter 1236: The Provisioning Squad Reports for Duty

The starry void trembled!

At that very instant, the seaweed’s body reached the zenith of its unfurling. Even with the aid of dozens of Ascended cultivators battling alongside it against the gods, the chasm in power between them…

rendered any semblance of balance impossible.

Thus, almost the moment Xu Qing and his companions struck, the seaweed’s temporal delay reached its limit. With a thunderous roar, its barrier shattered.

Vast fronds recoiled and scattered across the starry expanse.

Even those Ascended cultivators, who had poured every ounce of their strength into the fight, now bore grievous wounds and were forced to retreat.

Consequently, the previously isolated region opened wide—and the gods who had been held at bay surged inward without hesitation.

Yet… the moment they charged in, each god’s divine soul shuddered violently.

They no longer remembered that their supreme commander, the Apex God-Pedestal, had once been two.

In their understanding, there was only one.

And that one now lay in utter ruin!

Strange totems had sprouted across His skin—mountains upon mountains.

These were the Distant Peaks, embodying the weight of Constitution itself, sealing Him with the crushing force of ten thousand summits!

Around His body coiled burning iron chains, each blazing with the light of Order and radiating the authority of Heavenly Principle, as if unleashing judgment ceaselessly.

From His chest, flesh had gathered and bloomed into a massive eye!

This eye pulsed with malevolence, threaded through with blood-red veins—it was Zhou Zhengli’s Constitution made manifest, suppressing the god’s soul and severing all paths of spirit!

On His back bloomed a crimson flower—the manifestation of Li Mengtu’s Constitution.

And piercing straight through His heart was a broken sword.

This blade had skewered the core of the God-Pedestal clean through.

Greed and madness erupted without end.

Beyond these afflictions, curses from the Poison Prohibition coiled around Him like tendrils of black mist, constantly gnawing at His being, inflicting unbearable agony.

Moreover, an endless cacophony echoed eternally in His ears and mind—a dissonant symphony of torment, weaponizing sound itself to scourge His every thought.

Simultaneously, His divine blood flowed in reverse, steadily draining His vitality and causing His condition to wither further.

But most crucial of all was the iron tally embedded in His brow!

Xu Qing possessed two such tallies.

One he had left behind on Wanggu Continent, where the Vajra Sect’s ancestral elder served as its vessel-spirit, guarding Zi Xuan in his stead.

The other had been forged for him in the Fifth Star Ring by a disciple of Immortal Sovereign Jiuan, infused with Xu Qing’s own Constitution—allowing it to traverse the layered cosmos and resonate with him across countless timelines!

Within it also dwelled particles of Heavenly Principle Dust, granting this tally immense hierarchical weight—

a weight that even quasi-immortals revered!

Thus, this second tally could truly be called the mightiest Constitution-artifact currently in Xu Qing’s possession!

Moreover, it bore inherent Non-Interstice properties—no outsider could wield it!

Hence, its insertion did not merely bind—it sealed spacetime itself, casting this Apex God-Pedestal beyond the flow of time, outside the fabric of existence.

Utterly suppressed!

Then, as the iron tally embedded in His brow flared brilliantly, the Apex God-Pedestal vanished instantly before the eyes of all assembled gods—

imprisoned within the Non-Interstice!

This sight struck the gods with overwhelming shock. After a brief, stunned silence, Xu Qing and his comrades swept their murder-laden gazes across the battlefield—and the war reignited with renewed ferocity.

This had been their plan from the outset:

First subdue the God-Pedestal, then strike with overwhelming momentum!

When facing gods, never show fear!

If you do not fight, remain still—but once battle begins, you must kill with unstoppable momentum.

Especially now, more than ever.

For even though Xu Qing’s group had neutralized the Apex God-Pedestal, the overall disparity in strength remained vast.

Thus, this battle demanded dominance—not just in power, but in will!

Primordial gods lacked emotion, yet they retained the primal instincts of life itself—

the desperate yearning for survival, the instinctive recoil from death.

To truly resolve this crisis, Xu Qing’s group needed to awaken that instinctual terror of death within these gods.

In that instant, fiercer combat than before erupted across the starry void.

Gradually, crimson stained the heavens.

Divine blood and mortal blood refused to mingle, each spreading in its own tide.

The stench of carnage permeated the void.

Slaughter transformed this place into a hellscape.

Shrieks of agony, roars of fury, wails of despair—alongside the clashing of arcane arts, divine techniques, Constitutions, and divine authorities—all rose ceaselessly in this domain.

They fought like madmen!

Both Li Mengtu and Yuan Shan Su were drenched in blood, grievously wounded, having exhausted every reserve of strength.

Yuan Shan Su especially—his face pale as paper, his Constitution flickering unstably.

Zhou Zhengli fared no better—in fact, worse.

Blood streamed from all seven orifices of his head; Xie Lingzi’s body trembled violently, his life-flame dimming as if vast reserves of vitality had been siphoned away.

Xing Huanzi too—his chains of Order had lost their luster, yet he stood defiantly, refusing to fall.

Qian Jun Biyi staggered midair, barely able to maintain flight, his usual stream of curses now reduced to labored breaths.

Exhaustion, compounded by injury, crashed over them like relentless waves.

All around lay not only divine corpses but also severed limbs and fragmented remains of Ascended cultivators.

Yet… the slaughter continued.

Xu Qing moved like an emissary of death—wherever he passed, carnage followed. The eruption of his Spacetime Constitution, manifesting countless localized realities, rendered him a nightmare incarnate to the gods.

But even the most terrifying nightmare must eventually end—and Xu Qing’s group’s exhaustion hastened that awakening.

Fortunately… the instinctual dread of death arrived faster still.

Once nearly half the gods had fallen, the survivors’ innate aversion to death surfaced from the depths of their souls.

Their commander captured, their ranks decimated—at last, one god silently retreated, vanishing into the void.

Seeking advantage and avoiding harm—that is the instinct of all living things.

And gods are no exception.

If those two Sovereign Altars still stood at their peak, they might yet command the higher gods through sheer divine authority—but now… the coldness inherent in divinity itself had led Them to depart.

Thus, swiftly, the second god vanished.

In the time that followed, such occurrences grew frequent; one by one, the deities of this place drifted away.

The ferocity of battle gradually waned, its scale shrinking ever smaller,

until at last, silence settled over the battlefield.

Not a single god remained.

Only Xu Qing and his companions stood amidst the starry void, their bodies and spirits alike drowning in boundless exhaustion—and their numbers… had plummeted drastically.

Look closely—no mistake here!

They were no longer fifty-some.

Fewer than twenty remained.

Each bore grievous wounds.

Yet despite this, every survivor radiated an aura of killing intent, and crimson fire smoldered in each pair of eyes.

They had walked with Xu Qing from the beginning: first through the Hun Tian cosmos, then plundering Source Essence together, suppressing the Divine Prison as one, and finally entering this battlefield side by side.

They had not followed those Ascended who chose to leave, but instead pledged themselves to Xu Qing.

Now, those who lived were tempered like blades forged a hundred times—each one sharp, each one lethal!

Gazing upon them, Xu Qing fell silent for a moment, then spoke in a low, hoarse voice:

“We go!”

At these words, Xu Qing abandoned the borrowed body of the Mud Fox, turned, and shot toward the distance in a blur.

The others said nothing, but moved without hesitation, transforming into streaks of brilliant light that trailed behind him.

From afar, they resembled a pack of wolves—

vanishing with Xu Qing into the starry expanse.

And so time flowed on.

Fighting in the Left Flank Warzone raged on, growing fiercer by the day. Deities from other sectors continued pouring in, while hidden armies of cultivators emerged one after another.

The central region of the Left Flank Warzone became a true meat grinder.

Cosmoses once anchored by Dao Banners crumbled into dust.

Legions of gods lay strewn as corpses.

Countless cultivators perished alongside them, buried beneath the same starry sky—including those Ascended who had earlier abandoned Xu Qing’s group.

Ascended beings were indeed seeds—but in this war, even seeds meant little.

Only those who survived and matured were true heirs.

The dead? Mere false sprouts.

Thus, the bloodlight radiating from the central Left Flank Warzone grew ever brighter, until it blazed like a torch in the night, drawing every eye and thought toward it.

Both sides seemed, in varying degrees, to inch closer to their goals.

Compared to the grand theater of war, the disappearance of those two Sovereign Altar peaks became insignificant—even the evasion and near-destruction of that small divine squad mattered little now.

Before such brilliance, dust went unseen.

So no one noticed that along the edge of this ever-brightening radiance, Xu Qing’s exhausted band had already melted into the darkness, quietly slipping away.

Slowly, they neared the boundary between the central Left Flank Warzone and its front lines.

The closer they drew, the more desolate the starry void became—and the thinner the alien essence grew.

Until at last, when they sensed the alien essence around them had vanished entirely, the aura of Immortal Qi once again enfolded Xu Qing and his companions.

Ripples stirred in everyone’s eyes.

They had broken free of the central warzone.

They had stepped into… the Left Flank’s frontline sector!

Far ahead, they could see the barrier formed by cultivator arts standing tall before them—

vast beyond measure, stretching endlessly, shimmering with resplendent light.

“At last… we’re out,” murmured Zhou Zhengli, his eyes now dark crimson, his injuries severe.

The others were no different. Seeing the distant cultivator barrier, they all let out a faint sigh of relief.

Looking around, the starlight here shone brilliantly—because the Dao Banners of this region still held firm, banishing alien essence and saturating the air with rich Immortal Qi.

For Xu Qing’s group, this abundant Immortal Qi offered vital replenishment amid their grievous wounds.

Yet clearly, true safety remained distant. Thus, after only a brief respite, they pressed onward without delay,

hastening toward the immense barrier woven from cultivator arts.

An hour later, just as they neared the barrier, a vast, solemn will—steeped in dignity and authority—spread outward from within it, instantly enveloping Xu Qing and his companions.

Accompanying this will came a voice tinged with surprise:

“Who approaches?”

The words echoed like thunder within their minds, halting them all in their tracks.

Xu Qing stepped forward and spoke in a low tone:

“We are a squad from the Jiuan Heavenly Treasury Division, bearing Source Essence gathered under the decree of the Jiuan Immortal Sovereign—to deliver it to the frontline warzone!”