Chapter 143: The Eclipse Cage and the Blood Baptism (Part 6)
The silence in the fourth spatial void box was not the absence of sound; it was the crushing pressure of thermal annihilation.
Within this five-hundred-square-meter cubic prison, forged by Samael Morningstar's [Absolute Authority of Micro-Space], the air was no longer a breathable gas but had become a scorching plasma. The marble floor no longer existed. It had melted within the first two seconds of isolation, transforming the arena into a bubbling lake of lava, of a yellow and white color so intense that looking directly at it burned the retinas.
And floating in the center of that hell, like an ancient god emerging from the core of a dead star, was the Guardian of Magma.
He was not a Stage 4 or Stage 5 Saint. He was a Stage 6 monster.
A being who had refined fire and rock for three thousand years. His skin was no longer flesh, but incandescent black basalt furrowed by fissures radiating nuclear light. He wore no armor, for his body itself surpassed the hardness of divine metals. Around him, space warped, unable to withstand the immense amount of thermal energy his Soul Core passively radiated.
Facing him, suspended over the ocean of lava thanks to small platforms of metallic Qi conjured in an emergency, were the five youths chosen to kill him.
The Supreme Execution Squad.
Kael Morningstar (Sequence 1), the Sovereign of the Crimson Sword, stood at the front. His dark red hair billowed in the updrafts of heat. His face was a mask of absolute concentration, his hand resting on the hilt of his heavy sword. To his right, Cedric Morningstar (Sequence 4), the Emperor of Seals, had his eyes closed, desperately processing millions of runic calculations per second, his brain literally smoking under the strain of maintaining his shields against the Stage 6 heat.
To the left, pure speed awaited. Maren Morningstar (Sequence 15), the Silent Thunder, cracked his neck, small blue sparks leaping from his teeth. Beside him, Rowan Morningstar (Sequence 12), the Sharp Cyclone, vibrated with hyperactivity, his feet barely touching the platform, his body already phasing out of reality. And in the rearguard, the anchor of the abyss: Nylas Morningstar (Sequence 16), the Event Horizon, surrounded by a dark miasma that devoured the light of the magma.
"Five Half-Saints?" The Guardian of Magma's voice was a volcanic roar that vibrated the youths' bones, drawing blood from Rowan and Maren's ears. "You are not even in the Saint Realm. You are scum who haven't touched the Laws. You have killed my younger brothers, I felt it. But the gap between Stage 5 and Stage 6 is the abyss between heaven and earth. I will not murder you. I will evaporate you."
The Guardian slowly raised his massive arm. He made no hand seals. He chanted no spells. A Stage 6 Saint needs no rituals. His will is the law of the world.
[Sovereign Domain Saint Art: Gehenna of the Core Sea].
The ocean of lava beneath them did not erupt; it inverted. The gravity of the spatial box obeyed the temperature. Hundred-meter-high lava tsunamis rose from the four walls of the box, curving towards the center to close a dome over the five dragons. It wasn't normal magma; it was World Core Fire, capable of disintegrating Middle Saint-Grade artifacts in seconds. The heat was such that the youths' blood began to boil within their own veins.
"Cedric!" roared Kael.
Cedric was already weaving. The Emperor of Seals opened his eyes, now turned into two beacons of deep sapphire light. His fingers moved at a speed that defied biology, creating threads of golden and platinum light. [Emperor of Seals Manual: Instantaneous Array Weaving].
In the face of the magma tsunami closing in on them, Cedric materialized eight simultaneous three-dimensional runic disks, splicing them together to form a barrier. And he didn't stop there. He used his [Transmutation of the Golden Structure]. His mercury bloodline infected the surrounding Qi and the barrier itself. Solidification of Laws. He imposed the rule of Supreme Metal over temperature.
The immense wave of magma crashed against Cedric's array.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The impact was cataclysmic. Cedric's ears bled instantly, and a stream of blood gushed from his nose. His eyes were about to burst. For a Half-Saint to contain the raw attack of a Stage 6 was like trying to stop a bullet train with bare hands. Four of the eight arrays disintegrated in the first millisecond. But the Supreme Metal resisted long enough to cool the vanguard of the attack, creating a hollow tunnel in the middle of the lava dome.
"You're dead if you stay still!" bellowed Cedric, coughing up blood. "My array won't last three seconds!"
They didn't need to hear it twice.
Maren and Rowan, the two fastest entities in the entire Legion, disappeared.
Maren activated his [Codex: Steps of the Lightning God]. His biological body completely disintegrated, transmuting into a stream of pure cyan electrons. Through the tiny tunnel created by Cedric, Maren traveled at the speed of lightning. He didn't "run" toward the Guardian; he arced like an atmospheric discharge, reappearing directly on the left shoulder of the rock giant.
Rowan, for his part, activated [Zero Friction Glide] and [Wandering Cyclone Step]. He completely eliminated air resistance from his body. He became a translucent blur, a supersonic stride that surfed directly over the burning lava wave without getting burned, thanks to the millimeter-thin vacuum layer separating him from matter. Rowan appeared in the Guardian's blind spot, to his right.
The Guardian of Magma snorted with disdain. Speed? What good was a fast fly if it couldn't pierce the mountain?
"[Voltage Fangs]," bellowed Maren, his hands wreathed in blue plasma vibrating at millions of hertz.
"[Flurry of a Thousand Cuts]," whispered Rowan, his Chakrams turned into invisible vacuum edges.
Both attacked simultaneously, unleashing fifteen hundred strikes in the span of a second. Maren aimed for the giant's optic nerves and neck; Rowan directed his vacuum bursts at the knee and elbow joints, seeking the points where the natural rock armor had to bend.
But Stage 6 was despair-inducing.
Sparks flew in all directions. The vacuum cuts bounced off. Maren's lightning punches managed to slightly crack the molten rock on the Guardian's shoulder, but the immense heat radiating from the elder melted Rowan's vacuum and dispersed Maren's electricity.
The Guardian felt no pain. He felt annoyance.
With a casual motion, so fast it defied his colossal size, the Guardian swatted the air. He didn't hit Maren or Rowan directly; he struck space itself. The air collapsed under the Stage 6 physical pressure, generating a hyperbaric shockwave.
Maren and Rowan were blown away like ragdolls. Rowan coughed up blood in mid-flight, the shockwave rupturing his eardrums despite the protective vacuum. Maren suffered a short circuit, his electrical form destabilizing and forcing him back into his flesh-and-blood body as he fell toward the ocean of magma.
But before they could touch the lava, darkness claimed the space.
"Fall."
Nylas Morningstar clenched his fists from his platform. The Demon of the Abyss opened his [Chronicle of the Event Horizon].
Beneath Maren and Rowan, two small Null Points appeared. Instead of crushing them, gravity inverted (Negative Repulsion Flight), halting their fall and gently launching them backward.
But Nylas's true target wasn't his brothers. It was the god.
Nylas aimed his hand, wreathed in the immense demonic energy claw of the [Underworld Slash], directly at the chest of the Guardian of Magma.
"[Gravity Well: Crushing Singularity]."
Nylas didn't multiply gravity by two or ten. Knowing what he was up against, Nylas burned a hundred years of his own vitality and collapsed the limit of his Codex. He multiplied the gravity in the exact space of the Guardian by five hundred.
The air around the Stage 6 giant darkened abruptly, curving inward as if a black dwarf star had been born in his sternum. The descending G-force was so catastrophic that the ocean of magma beneath the Guardian sank into a perfect crater fifty meters deep, compressing the lava until it turned into dark diamond.
The Guardian of Magma, mid-taunt, was dragged downward. His immense rock legs crunched horribly. For the first time, the god fell to one knee. His arms, which he tried to raise to cast a spell, suddenly weighed millions of tons.
But the difference in realms is cruel. The Guardian, his face disfigured by rage, forced his Soul Core. His red aura erupted, physically fighting against gravity. He was standing up. He was breaking the singularity by sheer brute force.
"You... will not... rise!" roared Nylas, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets. His nose, his ears, and his tear ducts burst with black blood. His own skeleton began to micro-fracture from the feedback of keeping a monster of that caliber anchored. [Abyssal Demonic Energy Marrow]. Nylas's Miasma clung to the Guardian's body, trying to drain his fire to feed the gravity.
But Nylas was losing. The Guardian raised his face with a murderous smile.
"Pathetic effort, insect."
"He's not doing it to kill you, you stone idiot," echoed a cold, metallic voice above the Guardian.
Cedric Morningstar hadn't just stood by watching. While Nylas held the titan, Cedric had jumped straight into the gravity crater. His brain, processing through the [Fractal Consciousness Network], had analyzed the structure of the Guardian's molten rock as he fought against the singularity.
He landed directly on the Guardian's immense back, ignoring that his boots and the skin on his legs were beginning to melt from the contact heat. Cedric dug both hands into the Guardian's shoulders.
"[Transmutation of the Golden Structure: Rule of Supreme Metal]."
The Guardian laughed. "Do you think you can transmute my sacred fire? I am pure magma!"
"I'm not going to transmute your fire," Cedric said, his blue eyes gleaming with mathematical madness. "I'm going to transmute your cold skin."
Due to the immense pressure of Nylas's Gravity Well, the Guardian's magma blood flow had slowed in the outer layer of his body. The basalt rock on his surface was slightly cooler, solid. Cedric injected the entirety of his Qi, pushed to the limit by the risk of death, to impose the Law of Metal on the elder's natural armor.
The black rock of the Guardian's body began to shine with a sickly silver color. The volcanic obsidian was forcibly transmuted into Divine Tungsten.
The Guardian realized his mistake too late. As he tried to move, he discovered his own body had become his prison. Cedric had converted the giant's outer layer into a metal shell of absurd density, sealing his joints.
And as the finishing touch, Cedric interlaced his hands and stamped an immense golden rune onto the giant's metal nape.
"[Chained Thermal Suppression Array]."
The Guardian roared, trapped within a statue of his own body, while Cedric jumped backward, the skin on his palms completely burned and raw.
"NOW, KAEL!" shouted Cedric in mid-air.
Kael Morningstar, the Sovereign of the Crimson Sword, had not drawn his blade during the entire battle. He had remained on the farthest platform, eyes closed. His body was surrounded by an [Aura of Incandescent Void]. Lotus petals made of red ash fell around him, devouring the air.
Kael's [Heart of Eternal Forge] had been beating in unison with the chaos. During every second the Guardian had radiated his Stage 6 heat, during every magma tsunami, during every fire explosion, Kael had been breathing in that heat. He had been absorbing it, channeling that infinite thermal energy into the sheathed edge of his immense heavy sword.
Kael opened his eyes. They were no longer golden; they were two pools of concentrated sunlight. His dark red hair floated like real fire.
He took a single step, and the space beneath his foot folded.
"The crown is too heavy for a false god," whispered Kael, his serene and absolutist voice resonating throughout the void box despite the roar of the magma.
The Guardian of Magma, feeling primordial terror, forced the expansion of his Stage 6 Core. The tungsten metal Cedric had imposed upon him began to melt, red and dripping. Nylas's gravity began to yield with the sound of breaking glass. The elder was about to break free.
Kael gripped the hilt of his sword.
"[Sword Sutra of the Infernal King: Flame of Purgatory]."
Kael's scabbard exploded into ash. Upon drawing, a steel blade did not emerge. A blade of dark golden plasma with black edges emerged, of a heat so incomprehensible that the lava beneath Kael cooled and turned black, because the sword was stealing all the temperature from the environment.
Behind Kael, the immense and terrifying silhouette of a six-armed Infernal King was projected into the burning air, holding an illusory sword that synchronized with Kael's movement.
Kael didn't jump. He used the [Phantom Gale Slash]. The sound died. Kael's physical image remained on the platform, but he was no longer there.
He appeared directly in front of the Guardian, suspended in the air at eye level.
The Guardian of Magma broke the tungsten seal. One of his immense magma arms broke free. In an act of pure Stage 6 desperation, the elder threw a punch the size of a house directly at Kael's body, faster than thought.
A normal cultivator would have tried to dodge or use their sword to block. But Kael was the Sovereign. And a sovereign never retreats.
Kael lowered his free arm, without the sword, and took the direct impact of the Stage 6 fist on his own left side.
The crunch of Kael's ribs pulverizing echoed like gunshots. The magma fist charred Kael's tunic, burned the skin, fat, and muscle of his left abdomen and chest, leaving his scorched internal organs exposed.
But Kael didn't go flying. His eyes showed no pain, only a cold, divine resolve.
The Crimson Dragon bloodline activated in his darkest moment. [Liquid Metal Blood]. The blood that gushed from Kael's catastrophic wounds came out at volcanic temperatures, instantly melting together with the Guardian's magma fist and rapidly cooling, turning into unbreakable divine steel.
Kael had used his own shattered body as an anvil, anchoring the Guardian's fist to his own ribcage so the giant couldn't flee or dodge. They were bound in death.
The Guardian opened his eyes in absolute panic, trapped by his own victim.
Kael raised his sword to the sky.
"[Solar Slash: Judgment Day] intertwined with [Sovereign's Slash]."
The ultimate attack descended.
There was no visible slash. The world simply split in half.
An immense and colossal vertical column of golden and black plasma fell from the vault of the spatial cage, piercing Kael and the Guardian alike. The attack didn't seek to burn physical matter. It was a "Combustion Judgment." The sword completely ignored the Guardian's volcanic skin, his rock density, and his energy shield. The [Sword Intent: Awakening of the Edge] guided the blade toward the causality of the elder's existence.
The sword decapitated the enemy's "Doubt" and sentenced his fate.
Kael's blade sank into the skull of the Stage 6 colossus, descending down the center of his face, through his neck, collarbones, chest, and spiritual core, cleaving him into two perfect halves.
The moment the sword split the elder's Soul Core, the [Flame of Purgatory] ignited. The parasitic black fire recognized the gigantic supply of Stage 6 Qi and devoured it from within.
The immense Guardian of Magma had no time to scream, explode, or beg. His body, cut in half, ignited from his own veins in a dark fire. The plasma explosion that followed was not outward, but an implosion toward the center of the cut, creating a momentary "Black Sun" that consumed the giant's remains until absolutely nothing was left. No ashes, no slag, no soul. Only a dark void in the burning air.
The Black Sun dissipated, and silence returned to the void box.
The Guardian's corpse had disappeared.
Kael Morningstar, freed from the anchor of the fist, plummeted to the ground. He didn't fall into magma. The impact of Judgment Day had vitrified the floor, turning the lava into a smooth, dark crystal like an obsidian mirror. Kael crashed against the crystal with a dull thud and bounced, landing on his back.
The victory was theirs. They had assassinated a Stage 6 Saint. They had defied the laws of heaven and won.
But the price exacted by the dead gods was brutal and grotesque.
Nylas Morningstar, who had sustained the singularity, was lying on his side, convulsing. The gravitational feedback had collapsed his own bone structure. Both his legs and his left arm were twisted at impossible angles, splintered internally. His eyes were bloodshot with black blood, and he breathed with a suffocating bubbling sound; his lungs had been partially crushed by his own power.
Maren lay a few meters away, motionless. The Silent Thunder had suffered a massive systemic overload. His pale skin was furrowed with burns in the shape of dark, smoking electrical branches. His nervous system was so fried from channeling voltages beyond his realm that his limbs twitched erratically. He was temporarily deaf, blind, and mute, his brain trapped in an agonizing static storm.
Rowan, the arrogant and swift Cyclone, was on his knees, banging his forehead against the obsidian crystal as he desperately gasped for air that didn't exist. The prolonged Oxygen Exhaustion from moving in the friction vacuum against the heat of the lava had burned the walls of his lungs and trachea. He was drowning in his own arterial blood, which spurted from his lips with every cough.
Cedric, the tactical genius, was leaning against a void wall. The Emperor of Seals had the palms of his hands flayed down to the white muscle from touching the Stage 6 rock, but the worst part was his mind. A steady stream of bright red blood trickled from his ears, nose, and eyes. The Fractal Consciousness Network had overheated to the point of causing cerebral micro-hemorrhages. Cedric stared into the void, unable to formulate a single coherent thought, his mind in an emergency reboot that would keep him incapacitated for months.
And in the center of the dark crystal, the Sovereign.
Kael was alive, kept in the mortal world by the stubbornness of the [Heart of Eternal Forge]. But his body was a canvas of mutilation. His entire left side, from his lower pectoral to his hip, had been ripped away or burned down to the exposed bone by the colossus's punch. He wasn't bleeding, because the immense temperature of Judgment Day had cauterized the crater in his abdomen.
Worse yet, his right arm, his sword arm, was unrecognizable. The hilt of his heavy divine sword had literally fused with the bones and flesh of his palm due to the incomprehensible heat of channeling a Black Sun. The meridians in his right arm were calcined, black as dead coal. Kael would never wield a sword the same way again without a celestial reconstruction.
Kael slowly turned his head, looking at the dark ceiling of the spatial cage. His breathing was shallow, painful, a crackle of agonizing embers in his lungs.
But in his golden eyes, now free of plasma, there was no regret.
His burned lips curved into a half-smile—savage, exhausted, and victorious. He had gambled his life against the laws of the universe, and he had won. The Morningstar Legion had shattered the pride of the immortals.
Samael's void walls flickered and vanished. The box dissolved, reintegrating them into the air of the mountain range, beneath the purple clouds and the light of the hidden moon.
The four Supreme Guardians of the Purple Light Sect had been massacred.
But rest did not exist for monsters.
As the shattered bodies of the Sequences fell onto the main arena, a deathly howl, high-pitched and spectral, tore through the firmament high above them.
At the very top of the Veil of the Eclipse, where the darkness was so dense it suffocated the soul, an immense scythe and an orb of blue fire illuminated the night. The true hunt, the battle between the deity of shadows and the Stage 8 Hidden Elder, the last pillar of the Sect, had just reached its climax.
Samael Morningstar, from his throne suspended in the Citadel, leaned slightly forward, resting his elbow on the obsidian armrest. His left eye shone with Infinite Mental Calculation, registering the survival of his "children" with a cold, proud, paternal demeanor.
"You have fed the pups, decadent sect," Samael murmured, his voice caressing the night breeze with promises of annihilation. "Now, watch as my Hound eats your god."
The attention of the world rose toward the sky, where the Shinigami awaited.