Chapter 1288: Starry Sky Troublemaker

Chapter 1288: Stellar Hit-and-Run

The Fourth Stellar Ring, war still raged.

Now, within a grand cosmos of the Fourth Stellar Ring, a relatively small-scale battle erupted.

The cultivators’ side belonged to the Fifth Stellar Ring’s Right-Wing Lingtian Legion, tasked with the final cleansing of these thousand-plus cosmoses.

Opposing them was a divine clan that once dominated these thousand-plus cosmoses.

This clan had once wielded immense power, possessing over ten True Gods, formidable indeed, yet nearly all their True Gods perished under the Fifth Stellar Ring’s Central Army’s overwhelming advance, shattering the clan into fragments.

Only scattered remnants hid in shadows, slipping through the net.

Now, these remnants had gathered, detected by the Lingtian Legion, hence this cleansing battle.

Yet… though the tide favored the Fifth Stellar Ring, not every clash ended in victory.

Some surprises inevitably arose.

Such surprises usually occurred in smaller skirmishes, thus barely affecting the grand tide.

Like now, this cleansing battle held a surprise.

This divine clan had concealed two True Gods!

Their appearance turned the tide against the Lingtian Legion, whose commander was merely a Summer Sovereign.

Thus, the slaughter intensified, fiercer than before.

Across the starry void of this cosmos, the scene was grim.

Surveying the battlefield, the legion of one hundred thousand cultivators suffered heavy casualties.

Their Summer Sovereign commander, though straining to hold back the two True Gods, was already spent, her essence drained.

Worse, divine wards sealed the surroundings, muffling all vibrations and severing divine thoughts, cutting off any plea for aid.

Even if the gods triumphed here, it would scarcely alter the grand tide; other cultivator legions would inevitably hunt them down later.

But for the Lingtian Legion, this battle… was a life-or-death cataclysm.

“No escape…”

Amidst the starry void, the commander wore cracked celestial armor, her beauty sharpened by battle, radiating martial grace.

She was no elder Summer Sovereign, but one newly ascended a century past.

Now, her armor lay in tatters, her face pale, grievously wounded, besieged by two True Gods.

Those two True Gods appeared grotesque beyond measure.

One stretched ten thousand zhang tall, no humanoid form, but a colossal serpent, its body woven from divine skulls, embodying death itself.

Where it passed, waves of alien essence surged, its death god-mark blazing within its divine breath.

The other was a pulsating sphere of viscous, oozing flesh.

The toxic slime it shed formed star-rain, spiraling into a vast vortex that engulfed the area.

Within that vortex bloomed countless black plum blossoms with human faces, a horrifying sea of flowers.

Under their assault, the woman faltered. Blood spilled as she unleashed her Sovereign Edict, barely resisting before staggering back.

Witnessing her subordinates’ carnage, the gods’ frenzy, sensing the cosmos’s severed silence, resolve hardened in her eyes.

Her right hand lifted; her cultivation flared, igniting divine-annihilating force that erupted outward.

Summer Sovereign power surged violently.

Cosmic waves rippled; starry skies thundered.

The two True Gods, seeing this, recoiled.

They too were not at full strength, wounded gravely despite surviving the cultivators’ onslaught.

As they retreated, the woman hesitated not. Silver light blazed across her form; her raised right hand severed itself. Flesh burned instantly, refining onto the arm bone.

Her arm bone bore her Summer Sovereign power, channeling her entire Sovereign Edict into a silver sickle, searing toward the distant void.

She gambled all—her bone and Edict—to pierce a breach, sending her divine thought for rescue.

Only thus could salvation emerge from this doom.

Yet as the silver sickle neared the void, the skull-bodied True God blurred, appearing instantly where the sickle blazed.

Eyes cold and cruel, it opened its maw and swallowed the silver sickle whole.

Though its form shuddered violently, skulls shattering, it refused to relent, grinding the Edict within the sickle to dust, dooming her desperate gambit.

Seeing this, the woman sighed inwardly, resolve flashing in her eyes as she prepared to pay any price.

But then!

A fragrance of grass and trees suddenly filled the cosmos, spreading in all directions.

It drew every cultivator’s gaze, every god’s dread; even the two True Gods trembled, turning with the Summer Sovereign commander toward the void.

There, the void rippled. Every barrier, every seal, grew brittle and shattered in an instant.

A bridge woven from starlight and spirit-plants emerged, descending into this cosmos.

This sight sent shockwaves through every living being on the battlefield.

Especially the thick aura of divine essence accompanying the bridge—cultivators swelled with renewed hope.

The gods, however, recoiled in terror.

More striking still, a figure stood upon that bridge.

With each step, terrifying pressure radiated from the figure. An astonishing aura shook heaven and earth as its features sharpened, imprinting upon every cultivator’s sight.

One glance revealed the truth!

“True Lord Xu Qing!!”

The Summer Sovereign woman’s eyes narrowed. She recognized Xu Qing, felt the Sovereign Lord’s power upon the bridge, and sensed the dense aura of destiny trailing him.

Beside her, the two True Gods hesitated not—they fled instantly!

They knew not Xu Qing, but sensed the bridge’s terror and the thick god-slaughter aura radiating from him.

That aura, forged from countless divine deaths, marked a slayer.

Though his cultivation level seemed below Summer Sovereign, one who amassed such slaughter and commanded such a bridge was no ordinary foe.

More crucially, the severed silence was broken; their hiding place exposed.

Yet as they retreated, Xu Qing’s eyes flashed cold. He stepped forward.

The bridge beneath his feet surged outward.

Stars shattered; void churned.

Terrifying force, world-shaking, descended before the skull-bodied True God.

The bridge arrived instantly, hurtling toward the god.

The god’s mind exploded with unprecedented peril. A roar tore from its throat as it recoiled desperately, seeking escape.

Simultaneously, his divine power surged forth, even as his body withered away, channeling every fragment of his divine essence.

Yet no matter how He evaded, it availed Him nothing.

This was not Xu Qing’s strength alone, but the deathblow he forged by borrowing the fading bridge’s might.

As if harnessing the Sovereign Immortal’s wrath!

Where it swept, it reduced all to dust and ruin, crashing into the True God.

Amid the thunderous roar, the True God trembled violently, His form collapsing in an instant, His divine soul disintegrating in a breath.

Utterly… body and soul annihilated!

Thus, the bridge, having fulfilled its duty of conveyance, dissolved into shimmering silver motes, fading into nothingness.

At the same moment, Xu Qing’s cultivation erupted with a thunderous surge, the pinnacle power of a quasi-immortal rising like a tidal wave, rending countless layers of time and space, birthing innumerable overlapping cosmos.

As if ten thousand immortals manifested, with a single step, all moved as one.

Striding suddenly toward the other True God!