Across the known universe's history, a total of 13.9 billion years had passed since its birth.
Over that immense stretch of time, countless powerful civilizations of every imaginable kind had risen and fallen. In the end, the ones who stood at the very top of the universe and received the worship of innumerable civilizations were the humanoid races nurtured by the Shenhe civilization…
But not every civilization in the universe had enjoyed the same fortune as those humanoid races. At the edge of the known universe, far from the Milky Way, the Styx Galaxy was home to an ancient civilization that had lived out its days in isolation. Tracing its origins back, it had already existed tens of thousands of years ago, all the way back when the Angel civilization had first been born. And yet after all those tens of thousands of years, they remained ignorant and chaotic.
That was until one utterly ordinary scholar overcame countless hardships and arrived there. His name was Karthus. He granted wisdom to those ignorant creatures and gave those chaotic beings a name, the Taotie.
That was how the new Taotie civilization came into being. They believed that the great god of death, Karthus, would grant them eternal protection. They were willing to offer everything to the god in their hearts, including their weak and utterly worthless lives. They were a race born because of a god.
In the empty void of space…
A dense mass of warships, enough to seem capable of surrounding the entire solar system, lay anchored in the dark. They were waiting, waiting for the command of their chief god Karthus. The moment he gave the order, they would drive their starships forward and crush the entire solar system beneath their feet…
Even though their advance force had already perished after angering one of the gods on that remote planet in this backwater star system, they still felt no fear. The Taotie knew that their god would step in and clear away whatever stood in their path.
Until…
A tall figure suddenly appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of the Taotie fleet.
Before the Taotie could even react, two crimson-gold beams burst from the man's murder-filled eyes. In a single instant, the starship in front of him was torn clean in half.
The moment the ship split apart, tens of thousands of Taotie soldiers, along with the air escaping from inside their armor, were hurled out of the vessel and into the vacuum of space.
Faced with the deadly freezing cold of the void, those Taotie soldiers instantly became drifting statues of ice, all life gone from their bodies.
"So you really are planning to wipe them out?"
Yan flew up behind Jovian, who was still unleashing heat vision without pause, and asked.
Because Yan was using encrypted dark-energy communication to speak with Jovian, the two of them could still converse even in the vacuum of space. But for Jovian, dark-energy data exchange was too cumbersome. He had a much better option.
"Of course. They pissed me off."
Jovian's voice rang directly inside Yan's mind.
"Hm?"
"You've got telepathy too? Don't tell me you can just read whatever people are thinking?"
Yan had not expected Jovian to be able to shove words directly into someone else's head. That also meant he possessed the means to break through the mental barriers of the Angels and peek straight into whatever they were thinking.
"Only surface-level thoughts."
Jovian answered Yan's question in an infuriatingly vague way. He never explained just how shallow "surface-level" really was, leaving Yan to imagine the worst herself.
"Heh…"
Yan rolled her eyes. She could obviously hear the problem with that answer. She had no patience for that kind of slippery half-answer.
"These Taotie belong to the Styx civilization. They serve Karthus. If you kill all of them, you'll be completely crossing Karthus."
Yan looked Jovian up and down, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly. She clearly found what he was doing interesting.
"Isn't that exactly what you wanted to see?"
"And it proves I really have nothing to do with Karthus."
Jovian knew exactly what Yan was thinking. She would have loved nothing more than to see friction spark between him and Karthus so the Angels could profit from it.
"You really are impossible to fool…"
Yan was refreshingly direct about it and did not even try to hide her intent.
"So how do you plan to do this?"
She asked what method Jovian intended to use to destroy the Taotie.
"Watch closely."
"Give me five minutes."
Jovian held up the five fingers of his right hand toward Yan.
The next second, he turned into a streak of light and vanished from in front of her…
Boom!
Moving like light itself, Jovian instantly tore through the massive warships in front of him, one, two, three, four…
As his speed kept climbing, each ship exploded from the inside out the instant he passed through it. He was moving so fast that the ships were being destroyed faster than their internal atmosphere could even vent into space, causing catastrophic internal detonations. A massive wave of heat engulfed each Taotie warship, and in a single instant tens of thousands of Taotie were consumed by an endless sea of fire.
By the time countless warships had burst apart and bloomed like flowers in the void, not even thirty seconds had passed.
"Enjoying the fireworks?"
Just as Yan stood there with her arms folded, recording everything happening before her, Jovian's deep voice rang through her mind once again.
"Not bad."
Yan turned her head and looked at Jovian, who had somehow appeared at her side with his hands behind his back, and gave a slight nod.
"Why did you leave that one ship alone?"
Yan pointed at the only warship in the void that had not yet become wreckage.
"Simple. The Taotie king is on that one. You save the main course for last."
The moment Jovian finished speaking, a purple light flared open in front of him.
He stepped through the portal and vanished from Yan's side.
"Yet another teleportation ability I've never seen before."
Yan raised a brow as she watched him use it. She had already seen him display more than one type of teleportation, and that only made her even more curious about how many powers Jovian actually had.
Inside the last Taotie warship…
Jovian walked in with his hands behind his back as calmly as if he were strolling through his own backyard.
"Bastard! I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do…"
The Taotie who had already seen through the windows that their great army had died in flames and become cosmic dust charged at Jovian with weapons in hand.
The only answer they received was a series of crimson-gold beams.
One after another, the Taotie were sliced apart as though by an impossibly sharp kitchen knife. The crimson-gold light carved them into chunks in an instant and kept going, continuing to erase those brave, hopelessly charging Taotie soldiers without pause.
Inside the control room…
Through the monitors, the towering Shi Hao watched Taotie soldiers die one after another beneath those crimson-gold beams. He clenched his fists, his heart overflowing with rage.
"Bastard! Bastard!"
Bang!
Roaring in fury, Shi Hao smashed the machine in front of him to pieces with a single punch. His rage instantly turned the screens into a mess of static and broken pixels.
"Your Majesty Shi Hao, please calm down…"
Shi Hao's advisor, an older-looking Taotie, stared at the furious king who had just destroyed the ship's controls and could only feel fear and helplessness. He understood Shi Hao's anger, because just moments ago, the overwhelming majority of the Styx Galaxy's army had been wiped out by that humanoid god.
"You want to fight? Fine!"
"Come on then! Who says I'm afraid of you?!"
"I am a warrior of the great Karthus! I fear no one!"
Shi Hao roared in fury, his gigantic mechanical body rumbling as he shouted.
As a member of the Taotie race, he had never once felt secure growing up. He had spent his entire life chasing strength, even going so far as to turn himself into a machine. But after obtaining that terrifying power, when faced with truly great gods, he still felt unbearably small, just like now, unable even to save his own soldiers.
Boom!
Just as Shi Hao was venting his fury in an attempt to cover up his own weakness, a deafening blast rang out.
The heavy metal door exploded inward.
Still wearing that faint smile, Jovian stepped through the ruined doorway with his hands behind his back.
"You! You monster!"
Shi Hao pointed at Jovian and roared in rage.
Jovian's face darkened at the finger pointed toward him. He did not like people pointing at him.
A flash of crimson-gold light blazed.
In an instant, Shi Hao's mechanical arm flew into the air, spinning several times before dropping to the floor with a clatter.
"I don't like people pointing at me."
Jovian stared at Shi Hao and spoke one word at a time.
"You…"
The mechanical pupils in Shi Hao's eyes contracted violently. He was clearly furious, yet he could not force out anything meaningful.
"You killed so many of my people, and now you walk in here like you own the place. Aren't you afraid of angering my god Karthus?"
Shi Hao took a moment to steady himself, then glared at Jovian and demanded an answer.
"Hahahaha…"
"You really want to know whether I'm afraid of your god Karthus?"
"Don't make me laugh. In the entire known universe, how many chief gods actually take that stinking little scholar who calls himself the god of death seriously? Only you idiots in the Styx Galaxy, you Taotie, really treat that death god like he's treasure…"
Jovian flicked his hand, and a chair appeared out of thin air behind him. He sat down, crossed his legs, and looked at the pathetic trash of the Styx Galaxy with naked contempt in his eyes.
"You, you ignorant fool, you have no idea how powerful my god Karthus truly is!"
"The moment my god Karthus gets serious, he'll wipe you out and avenge us Taotie, avenge our fallen fearless warriors!"
Shi Hao glared at Jovian in fury, clenching his one remaining fist, resolved to offer up this final act of devotion to the great god of death.
"Your god Karthus isn't even worthy of smelling my pet's fart!"
Jovian laughed at Shi Hao's words. He had originally planned to let Shi Hao carry a message back to that fraud Karthus for him. Now, though, there was no need. Shi Hao did not get to live.
Snap.
Jovian lightly snapped his fingers, and a purple portal opened in the ceiling of the ship.
"Ahhh!!!"
The next second, a crocodile clutching a giant axe came crashing out of the portal and slammed face-first onto the floor.
"Cut him down."
After doing all that, Jovian did not even move from his chair. He simply sat there with one leg crossed over the other and gave the summoned crocodile-man three calm words.
"You got it! My axe has been itching for a swing!"
The moment he received the order, the crocodile grabbed his giant axe and hacked straight at Shi Hao, who was already missing one arm.
Crack…
With one clean strike, the great Taotie king Shi Hao was split neatly in half by Renekton.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Ptui! Ptui! Ptui!
"What is this junk? Can't even eat it…"
After chopping Shi Hao in half, Renekton scooped up the broken pieces from the floor and shoved them into his mouth. He chewed for a bit, then spat all the scrap metal back out, looking thoroughly disgusted.
"Boss! This stuff's not edible!"
Renekton looked at Jovian and complained about what he had just tasted.
Jovian kept smiling, clearly too lazy to bother with the idiot croc.
Sniff, sniff.
When Renekton saw Jovian was ignoring him, he scratched his head, then lifted his nose and sniffed hard.
"Got it…"
His eyes suddenly lit up, as if he had caught the scent of something unbelievably delicious.
"Where is it…"
"Found you…"
Renekton's eyes gleamed as he searched the room, until his gaze locked onto Shi Hao's military advisor.
"Hehehe…"
"Big hunk of meat!"
Staring at the elderly Taotie elder in front of him, Renekton opened his blood-soaked jaws. Drool dripped from his mouth one drop at a time onto the floor.
"Get ready to be Uncle Renekton's dinner!"
He shouted as he raised his giant battle axe and charged at the completely terrified old Taotie.
"All right, Renekton, your job is done."
But just as Renekton leaped high into the air, a purple portal opened in front of him, and Jovian's calm voice rang in his ears.
"No, Master, wait…"
Renekton did not even get to finish before his body dropped through the portal.
Whoosh!
At the same time, the purple portal vanished from the room.
Thump.
Once the old Taotie advisor realized Renekton had disappeared, he finally gave out and collapsed onto the floor, shaking uncontrollably.
"Take a message to your god Karthus for me. The solar system is mine. If he sends trouble here again, I'll feed him to the crocodile. Understood?"
Jovian looked down at the shivering Taotie on the floor and asked.
"Mmm! Mmm!"
The Taotie nodded over and over, too terrified to force out a single word.
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