Chapter 1242: Raising Head to Gaze at the Bright Moon

Chapter 1242: Gazing Up at the Bright Moon

It truly was corpse-looting!

Over the past three months, Xu Qing and his companions had already distilled hard-won experience.

Live harvesting, though ideal, proved too slow to scale due to countless constraints. Thus, they focused intensely on refining corpse-harvesting techniques—a skill far better suited to the chaos of battlefields, where corpses were most abundant.

Of course, if a more tempting target presented itself—still breathing—they’d simply kill it first, turning it into a corpse… then harvest it.

Thus, in these three months, Xu Qing’s group had dramatically accelerated their corpse-harvesting speed.

Now, on this colossal battlefield, they unleashed their full prowess for the first time without restraint—delivering an impact so visceral, so overwhelming, that all who witnessed it stood utterly stunned.

Not only did the other looting squads atop the mountain gape in disbelief, but even the cultivators fighting on the battlefield felt their spirits stir, their pressure noticeably easing.

Yet balance governed war. The relief granted to the cultivator side translated directly into intensified pressure upon the divine beings.

Now, while locked in mortal combat with cultivators, the gods also had to constantly guard against sudden ambushes and corpse-looting raids.

From a distance, Xu Qing’s nineteen-member team moved like vultures, hearts as ravenous as wolves, yet bodies as spectral as ghosts. Scattered across the field, they resembled nineteen serpentine blades, poised to pierce through the heart of battle.

Wherever they passed, corpses withered, weaker deities crumbled.

Even formidable gods, if caught off-guard for but an instant, faced imminent death.

Naturally, attention toward them swelled rapidly.

Some divine beings, driven by instinctive fury after being ambushed, abandoned their clashes with Nianlin Army cultivators altogether—turning instead to hunt down Xu Qing’s group.

Yet it must be said: among these ascended ones, those who survived thus far were no weaklings, especially adept at preserving their lives.

Whenever confronted by an invincible god, they instantly fled by whatever means possible.

In open terrain or one-on-one duels against powerful deities, their survival tactics might prove insufficient—but here, amidst the swirling chaos of war, everything changed.

Their intervention injected fresh uncertainty into the previously deadlocked battlefield.

Though initially minor, this disruption snowballed like an avalanche, growing ever more formidable until it became a force that could no longer be ignored.

Even when the divine commander swiftly issued divine decrees, striving to stabilize the front and reinforce encirclements, results remained meager.

Xu Qing’s group was simply too slippery—strong enough to threaten, yet always evading superior foes, ambushing the weak, and harvesting every corpse they encountered.

Especially Xu Qing himself—he pushed this approach to its absolute extreme.

His targets were exclusively Divine Flame-tier deities. With his quasi-immortal cultivation and terrifying Primordial Immortal Embryo power, such gods often fell with a single strike.

If he couldn’t immediately harvest a corpse, he simply stored it away.

He treated the battlefield as a jungle, slaughter as hunting.

And this—this was precisely what Xu Qing had excelled at since childhood.

Amidst this carnage, even Mud Fox grew stirred, secretly unleashing divine arts to siphon fragmented divine authorities from fallen gods.

Even Little Shadow awakened from slumber, greedily sensing the alien essences and divine flesh permeating the air.

Instinctively, it radiated waves of hunger and exhilaration.

With Xu Qing’s silent consent, it stealthily spread across the ground, then erupted suddenly from multiple directions to pounce upon grievously wounded deities.

Seizing this moment, the Nianlin Army commander issued an unhesitating decree:

“All Nianlin forces—final assault!”

His voice thundered across the battlefield, igniting a surge of momentum. Exploiting the chaos and shifting tides, he launched a full-scale offensive.

He himself charged forward, aiming straight for the opposing divine commander atop the God Altar Peak.

“Kill!”

In an instant, the entire battlefield plunged into greater frenzy.

On distant mountaintops, professional looting squads watched, hearts pounding with desire.

Among them stood the old man who’d once taught Xu Qing corpse-looting techniques. His face twisted into a snarl before he gritted his teeth and roared lowly,

“We’re going in too!”

With that, he blurred forward, leaping into action.

Yet some looters hesitated, blurting out nervously,

“But… the rules…”

“To hell with your damn rules! If we don’t move now, there won’t even be fur left to snatch!” the elder bellowed, accelerating straight toward the fray.

Behind him, the rest steeled themselves and surged forth.

Though their entry lacked the lethal precision of Xu Qing’s group, it still added fuel to the fire—further tilting the battlefield’s balance.

The final battle had truly erupted.

Booms and shrieks filled heaven and earth.

All around, nothing existed but slaughter and corpse-looting.

Amidst this maelstrom, Xu Qing’s figure remained as ghostly as ever—darting through chaos, striking ruthlessly, leaving no survivors.

Mud Fox thrilled; Little Shadow exulted.

In a single step, Xu Qing appeared beside a peak-tier Divine Flame deity. The god’s expression contorted in horror, body jerking backward—

—but in the next instant, Xu Qing’s right hand slammed onto its crown.

Primordial Immortal Embryo energy detonated. Mud Fox seized divine authority. Little Shadow surged upward, devouring flesh and blood.

In a heartbeat, this deity—who would have commanded worship across countless clans on Wanggu Continent—had its Divine Flame extinguished, its divine authority stolen, and nearly half its corpse devoured by Little Shadow.

The remainder Xu Qing swiftly stored away for later harvesting.

Having finished, Xu Qing licked his lips. The haul was undeniably rich—but still insufficient.

Divine Flame essences fell far short of his cultivation needs. Lifting his gaze, he scanned the distance, eyes locking onto a distant clash—his pupils flickering with dark light.

There, atop the God Altar Peak, a quasi-immortal peak expert battled another at the same realm.

A life-or-death duel between commanders.

The divine commander clashing with the Nianlin leader radiated overwhelming divine aura—his divine arts capable of reshaping heavens and earth, twisting wind and cloud, emanating crushing pressure.

And the essence leaking from him… was utterly irresistible.

Xu Qing narrowed his eyes, sending a mental message to Mud Fox and Little Shadow. Then, his body blurred—not toward the fight, but in the opposite direction—vanishing into the chaotic battlefield.

There…

Mud Fox released alien essence, enveloping Xu Qing, gradually erasing his immortal aura, replacing it with something foreign.

This was concealment of presence.

Little Shadow swiftly returned, cloaking his physical form.

This was concealment of flesh.

Meanwhile, Xu Qing’s Temporal-Spatial Edict rippled outward, shrouding his very soul.

This was concealment of spirit.

In such meticulous ways, he incrementally diminished his own presence.

Until at last, upon this very battlefield, he quietly and imperceptibly... vanished.

Simultaneously, the clash between the opposing commanders reached its critical nexus, both the pinnacle Sub-Immortal and the pinnacle Divine Platform unleashing their strikes in the most brutal, desperate fashion.

For the goal of that pinnacle Divine Platform divinity was to break free; if successful, whether to alter the tides of war or to flee the battlefield, it would serve its ultimate interests.

Yet the objective of the Nianlin Army's Sub-Immortal commander was to bind him here by sheer force.

The tide of the battlefield currently favored the cultivators, meaning that as long as he pinned down this Divine Platform commander, time alone would tilt the scales of victory entirely in their favor.

Consequently, the duel between them was naturally fraught with horrific violence.

Each exchange was almost a mutual trading of grievous wounds.

Amidst deafening rolls of thunderous roars, within the blinding glare of immortal spells and divine arts, and beneath the tempestuous storms that convulsed heaven and earth, their respective injuries deepened, growing increasingly severe as the lethality of their engagement intensified.

They resorted to their ultimate trump cards.

The Divine Platform commander’s final resort was the supreme eruption of its divine authority, coalescing into a brilliant white sun.

Yet what it radiated was not scorching heat, but an absolute, marrow-chilling frost and the breath of death itself.

Upon closer inspection, one could discern countless agonized faces within that sun, uttering shrill, piercing shrieks, their features universally contorted in torment.

While the two titans clashed in a lethal gamble of mutual destruction, an obscured figure within the chaotic battlefield was silently and stealthily drawing near.

Closer and closer he crept.

Soon, the distance separating them narrowed to a mere thousand feet.

But at that exact moment, the Divine Platform commander—whose upper body was humanoid while its lower half consisted of roiling black mist—suddenly whipped its head around, a cold, detached glare in its eyes.

Lifting its right hand, it actually split its unfolding trump card in two, transforming it into twin pale suns.

One remained to obstruct the Nianlin Army commander, while the other shifted its trajectory, hurtling abruptly toward a certain sector of the battlefield a thousand feet away.

It all transpired too quickly.

In an instant, that terrifying white sun materialized a thousand feet away, detonating with sudden fury.

White light swept across the expanse, obliterating the void, crumbling laws, and distorting everything in its path.

This included the figure forced out from concealment within that very zone.

It was Xu Qing.

He attempted to resist, yet it was entirely futile; this eruption of divine authority from a pinnacle Divine Platform was unimaginably horrific, the passing white light crushing all existence.

Thus, Xu Qing’s revealed form contorted rapidly, turning into a bloody blur in the blink of an eye, beginning to fracture and shatter apart.

At the critical juncture, a look of grim resolve flashed in Xu Qing’s eyes, and his soul leaped from its vessel, retreating violently to evade the catastrophe, but almost the moment he fell back, several divinities suddenly charged from his surroundings.

They rushed straight for Xu Qing.

Striking with their full, unbridled power.

A thunderous roar erupted to shake the heavens, echoing in all directions and drawing a multitude of gazes.

And so, before the eyes of both factions, Xu Qing’s soul, just like his physical form, fractured into pieces and collapsed entirely!

This sight instantly turned Zhou Zhengli and the others' eyes crimson as they let out anguished roars, charging toward this location at frantic speeds from their respective positions.

Meanwhile, Xiao Ying manifested as a shadow, emitting waves of frenzied emotion as it lunged toward the Divine Platform commander.

Lunging alongside it was the Mud Fox, its eyes burning with a matching madness as it transformed into a streak of divine light, hurtling toward the Divine Platform commander.

Furthermore, the commander of the Nianlin Army seized this opportunity, his immortal art erupting to form a crimson moon that shed a vast canopy of red light, which then transformed into an overwhelming swarm of red moths that bore an eerie, chilling aura, descending to suppress the Divine Platform commander.

For a moment, the battlefield was bathed in blood-red light, crimson moths fluttering wildly as the world blazed with brilliance.

A profound crisis of life and death surged violently within the heart of the Divine Platform commander.

Fixing its gaze squarely upon the Nianlin Army commander and the sky filled with red moths, its body retreated abruptly as its hands struck its own form repeatedly, enacting a secret art.

Its frame withered instantly, exuding an aura of profound weakness—the heavy toll of the secret art.

Yet its latent potential was forcefully stimulated, gathering within its core, causing a white light to rise from its entire body as though it were transforming itself into a sun!

At this moment, it was at its absolute weakest, though this would be short-lived; it understood that once the solar transformation succeeded, it possessed the confidence to severely wound the Nianlin Army commander.

By then, though it would be further overextended, it could use that advantage to create the opportunity and time needed to escape.

Now, as the white light shone resplendently, the sun within its body was on the verge of supplanting its divine form.

But right at this instant, a shocking mutation abruptly occurred!

The empty void behind its back suddenly rippled like crumpled paper, manifesting a wave of distortion.

This distortion expanded rapidly, enveloping the firmament and causing the sky and earth to change color, utterly bizarre and unsettling.

That was the ripple of space!

That was the flow of time!

That was, moreover, the overlapping of space and time!

A hand gripping an iron skewer, in an incomparably swift and unnaturally bizarre manner, abruptly thrust out from that overlapping of space and time!

It appeared directly before the neck of this Divine Platform commander, who was currently in a weakened state!

With lightning speed, an exact angle, and a thoroughly practiced technique, it slashed ruthlessly across its throat.

The sharp edge bared its full lethal might!

Slicing through divine skin, severing flesh, snapping divine bone, and piercing right through!

The chime of a bell echoed immediately in its wake, sounding like a funerary knell.

This scene was jarringly abrupt; even though the Divine Platform commander realized what was happening, it no longer had the opportunity to counterattack or evade.

For that iron skewer was exceedingly sharp, its material extraordinary, and the hand gripping it possessed an unimaginably terrifying strength.

Most importantly... the one assassinating it was of no meager cultivation; even if inferior to its own, the gap was not substantial.

He possessed the qualifications to engage it in direct combat.

And when such a person launched a sneak attack... it was naturally devastatingly sharp!

Thus, in the next breath, its eyes widened, and as the world spun, it actually beheld its own headless torso being engulfed by the Nianlin Army commander's immortal art of crimson moths.

That torso, faintly visible, seemed to lack a head!

Divine blood was erupting skyward from the neck, blending into the crimson light!

Furthermore, its tearing divine soul was also sliced open by the iron skewer, cleaved in two.

Until the crimson light and eerie moths completely shrouded the divine body, the moths boring into the flesh to destroy everything!

And all of this, including its consciousness, was rapidly receding in its current perception.

Only... it was not the body that was receding, but its head!

Its head was being held by a hand, speeding away through the air!

As its consciousness blurred into darkness, it finally caught sight of the person carrying its head.

It was a young man clad in black robes stained with divine blood, possessing a mane of purple hair and a countenance of striking beauty.

His gaze grew even colder, sharper.

It was precisely… the corpse-looting cultivator he had annihilated before!

“You…”

A hoarse voice issued from Its mouth—barely echoing through the air—when, in the next instant, the seal descended.

Its world plunged into utter darkness.

The battlefield fell instantly silent.

High above, Xu Qing’s figure, holding a severed head as he strode away, seemed frozen in time—now the sole focus of every eye.

The one destroyed earlier had been another version of Xu Qing from a different timeline, a decoy he’d used to conceal himself. The one who now appeared was his true self.

At that moment, beneath the heavens, amid the gods’ terror and the cultivators’ awe, Xu Qing halted midair and raised high the sealed head in his grasp.

He spoke not a word.

Behind him blazed crimson clouds like a blood-red moon.

Below, on the battlefield, thunderous cheers erupted in an instant—

And then… the cultivator army surged forward like a tidal wave, overwhelming, unstoppable, sweeping the divine hosts into oblivion.