I immediately shot a whistle arrow to signal the Black Banner to retreat, while telling Asena's team to help them. I asked Erik to change his direction and attack the Skeleton General. Then, I reshaped the Needles of Falling Rain into arrows and began shooting at this giant. With the increasing weight from the needles, he started to crumble to his knees like falling rain. When Erik saw this, he also threw his sure-hit spear, Gungnir, at the Skeleton General.
I rode in to finish him, switching to my twin Iron Whips. The animated corpses on the way were destroyed by my sheer force, some slowed to a stop after being touched by the Silver Moon, while others were incinerated and burned to ashes by the touch of the Golden Sun.
The twins also had an effect on the mind, though not much on these mindless corpses. The Silver Moon has a gentle Lunar Aura that slows a living creature's thinking process and upon contact their metabolism lower and lower, making them appear to freeze in place. Meanwhile, the Golden Sun has a bright Solar Aura that overstimulates the senses of living things, making our movements appear different from reality. When a living thing is touched by it, their metabolism accelerates, causing it to combust from the inside.
Before Erik and I could reach him, he tore his armor off with his power, creating a big explosion. His armor became shrapnel. Erik swayed his spear to create a kind of energy shield to protect his Beasts. I also used my icy crystal-like Frozen Storm Shield to reflect and freeze the area in front of me. What I worried about was the Black Banner, but it seemed like they were doing fine. Just in time, Laozi led the Scholars in combining their power to use the Eight Trigrams Formation, accelerating the shrapnel's speed to the maximum before instantly slowing it down to a near-complete stop. Xiao Feng and Yu Zhen used their combined powers to knock most of it down, while Asena shot multiple Curve Whirlwind Shots to help reflect other debris.
The Skeleton General no longer had armor, but he looked stronger somehow. That's when Erik yelled, "He's begun to absorb energy from the evil spirits we've been destroying for a while now! Retreat, everyone! Attack, but don't finish them off! Let the Great Deities deal with this giant skeleton!"
Erik had to use his power to bring our dead warriors back in the form of a Dark Region to prevent them from being absorbed by the Skeleton General. He then ordered them and other Dark Region warriors to protect the Black Banner.
It seemed the skeleton had begun to grow and regenerate its muscle, which was really bad for us. I called all the Needles of Falling Rain back and was about to combine all of my Divine Instruments.
That's when someone announced, "All the colors are here now! Use the energy of this land to activate the Four Symbols!"
I absorbed energy from the land just as the voice suggested. Suddenly, the patterns of the Four Mythical Creatures began to appear in the sky, then started to take shape into real creatures. The muscles of the Skeleton General seemed to stop growing for a while before it continued by starting to absorb the energy from the earth.
"Shit! Kris brings us, the other Great Deities and this giant skeleton into your realm now! Cut it off from reality!" Erik nervously asked.
I scanned the area and found five of Great Deities including me. So, I immediately brought us and this evil colossus being into my Divine Realm, the Heaven. The sun shone upon the area of Xin'an again, and the Skeleton General seemed to be confused.
The voice that suggested we use our power began to yell, "Die, you freaking skeleton!" The man in red clothes swung a plow down from the sky, intending to use it as a weapon. I looked closely and found something extraordinary, he had two small bumps that were almost like little horns on his forehead.
The Skeleton General was hit in the skull. It began to crack and burn, but it wasn't enough to bring him down. I got down from Barsa's back and sent him to a safe spot while Michelle suddenly appeared right beside me. So, I ordered her to forbid the Vengeful Spirit from absorbing any more energy and to assist us as much as she could.
As I rushed toward the Skeleton General, the land beneath him started to break apart and trap him there. Giant vines began to grow from beneath and started to control him. After I saw Cynthia from afar, I spoke loudly to everyone, "Attack with everything you've got! This is my realm, not the earth!"
The Red Emperor jumped back from the skull, ignited a small spark and sent a huge fire from both of his hands to burn down the Skeleton General. He then summoned his plow back, turned it into a long pipe and lit it up to smoke. His flames didn't extinguish, they kept spreading from the skull downward.
Then the man in the golden robotic suit took a wide powerful stance with his left foot forward, his boots digging into the ground as the suit's internal struts locked into place. He braced huge futuristic rifle against his shoulder. At the moment of firing, jetpack thrusters on his back and legs ignited, providing a precise burst of counterthrust. A thunderclap of energy erupted, but the suit and its thrusters absorbed the immense force, leaving him almost perfectly still. A flash of light tore through the air, leaving a brief, shimmering trail as the shot hurtled toward its target.
The rounds surprisingly were anti-matter particle shots. It's unclear how he could analyze the information so quickly, but the rounds specifically aimed to destroy this evil bone structure, by starting a chain of reaction. The remaining mass of the Skeleton General began to convert into energy at a rapidly speed, making it look like a series of explosions.
Even though its physical form had already exploded, its spiritual form seemed to remain. Erik threw his spear from Sleipnir's back, which passed through the smoke and absorbed some of its energy. Meanwhile, I had already combined all my Divine Instruments into one shiny lance.
The Lance of Seven Stars was a single piece of divine metallic alloy that contained all aspects of my power. It was basically the Thundering Sword with an extended handle that long enough to use as a lance, imprinted with a seven-star pattern on both sides of the blade.
I coiled my body, drawing the spear back until my muscles were taut and singing with energy. With a roar, I unleashed a powerful thrust that sent the weapon flying at impossible speed. The lance became a blur, a searing line of force that screamed through the air, creating a vortex of wind and sound. All of my aspects swirled inside, from lightning bolts and rain to snow. This maelstrom of light and darkness, which I called the Sky Shatter, didn't just fly—it was a bolt of divine will aimed with the single purpose of striking down its enemy.
The spiritual form of the Skeleton General finally tore down. I ordered Michelle to absorb the energy it left behind. I was pretty sure they were Time Travelers, so I spoke with the other Great Deities in English, "Ladies and gentlemen! We don't have time to introduce ourselves yet, the battle is far from over. Can you all stabilize yourselves in the air for a while?"
We started to levitate, before I wrapped us in my energy to send us back to our world. They were still fighting, but we now had more Beasts from the west led by Cynthia and Southern Deities who followed the Red Emperor. We were still outnumbered but in terms of fighting power, it was now more or less a better match against the living corpses.
"Huangdi is here! All the Emperors are here! Kill them all!" someone spoke.
It seemed they truly believed in Yellow Emperor, I had to admit his power was something else. He reconfigured his rifle into a pair of dual pistols before continuing to fly to the middle of the battlefield. With his jetpack, he spun around, unleashing a continuous torrent of laser fire from the pistols that sliced through many of the soldier corpses.
Then the Red Emperor announced, "Use the Spirits of this Land!" He flew south, binding himself with the Vermilion Bird. A fiery tempest of crimson energy wrapped around him, and he unleashed flames across half of the battlefield, a raging fire that didn't extinguish but kept spreading and consuming the corpses.
Meanwhile, Cynthia bound herself with the White Tiger Spirit. She became a living white tempest as she moved around the field, using multiple Wind Slashes to shred the standing corpses with blades of cutting wind.
Erik also controlled Sleipnir to stomp the northern area with the power of the Black Tortoise. The ground trembled and buckled underfoot as he used his spear to call forth blackened water from his Underworld. It sucked them in and drowned many in a spiraling, watery grave.
Finally, I flew east and binding myself with the Azure Dragon. I felt a jolt of raw power surge through me as the spirit merged with my form. Using the Seven Stars as a conduit, I called upon a lightning storm that just flash across the battlefield by my own will. Cracking thunder split the sky and a maelstrom of searing light and raw energy rained down from above, obliterating the remaining spirits and finishing the battle.
The sounds of celebration mixed with the fading roars of the Beasts. We moved toward the Two Emperors in the middle of the battlefield, greeting each other as we converged.
"I am Jiang Xu, an agriculture student from Beijing," the Red Emperor said, introducing himself first. "And this is Huang Yi, a former aerospace engineer from Xi'an." After the introductions, he invited everyone to his Personal Space for a celebration party.
In front of us were large, cultivated crop fields in the middle of a vast, dry and barren landscape. Their unnaturally vibrant green defied the desolate world around them. At the very center stood a sealed biosphere of reinforced glass and polished steel, designed to withstand extreme temperatures and atmospheric pressure.
It wasn't merely a garden, but a high-stakes scientific project. Normally, the solar arrays on its domed roof would feed a central power system that kept the environment perfectly balanced, while automated sensor drones collected data on plant growth. But instead of electricity, a sense of Jiang Xu's energy filled every system of the compound.