this infinite world

Far, far from the orc and dwarf armies, in a cave in a mountain range, a group of people collapsed to the ground. Judging from the divine wristwatches worn on their right hands, this group was the only Reincarnation Squad that hadn't yet appeared in this battle… the Celestial Squad!

Despite being the strongest of the three teams, the Celestial Team was in exceptionally poor condition, practically everyone was severely injured. Not only were they all unconscious, but a beautiful woman wearing glasses lay supine in the center of the cave, bleeding from all seven orifices; only her barely perceptible breathing proved she was still alive…

"Cough... Xiao Niaoren, treat everyone."

After an unknown amount of time, a suppressed cough broke the silence in the cave. A young man wearing a silver metal mask moved slightly, and after three attempts, he managed to speak from beneath the mask: "Check Tianyi's condition first. As the mental controller of our team, she suffered the most direct mental impact. We need to act quickly..."

"Damn it, do I need you, you idiot captain, to tell me? If I could move, I would have done it already..."

Upon hearing this, a hoarse curse suddenly came from another Celestial team member, face down and submerged in a pool of blood. This young man, with a long whip wrapped around his waist... a truly long whip, twitched slightly.

Surprisingly, judging by the amount of blood this young man had lost, he could have died three or four times over. Yet, his voice was stronger than that of the silver-masked youth who was the team leader... As he spoke, Xiao Niaoren, who was cursing and swearing, actually used his arms to prop himself up and, pale-faced, "pull" himself out of the pool of blood.

"Damn it, this is a huge loss. I never expected to encounter such an undeserved disaster. Fortunately, I have the holy blood I had accumulated before..."

As he spoke, Xiao Niaoren shook his head unsteadily and took out a few drops of "holy blood" stored in a glass bottle from his spatial bag.

The sacred blood was incredibly crimson, emitting a dazzling yet not blinding light in the dim cave. Though it was only a tiny drop, it contained extremely strong life force, pulsating slightly like a living thing, clearly a rare treasure.

"Damn, it took three worlds to accumulate just over ten drops of holy blood, and it's all been used up here. I wonder how long it will take to replenish it..."

Although Xiao Niaoren said he felt heartbroken, his hands moved without slowing down. With a flick of his wrist, three drops of bright red holy blood pierced the air and landed precisely on Tianyi's lips.

Strangely enough, the beautiful woman with glasses, known as "Heaven's Will," was breathing very weakly, appearing almost like a vegetable, having completely lost her own consciousness. But the so-called holy blood seemed to dissolve into her lips without her needing to be swallowed.

When the first drop entered, Tianyi's deathly pale lips visibly turned rosy; after the second drop seeped in, her faint breathing immediately became steady; and when the third drop dissolved, even her tightly furrowed brows relaxed... Although she was still unconscious, at least her life was temporarily saved.

"Fortunately, the situation has stabilized..."

Before Xiao Niaoren could even breathe a sigh of relief, a black figure that extinguished all light rose from the depths of his mind. Immediately, the firelight on the rock wall was suppressed by an invisible force, shrinking into a pale, fist-sized ball of light, and even the shadows cast into the surrounding darkness began to writhe eerily…

"Grass!"

Seeing this, Xiao Niaoren immediately cursed loudly, no longer caring about whether it was a waste or not. He immediately flicked his fingers and merged the remaining holy blood into the body of the Heavenly God team member next to him... After everyone's breathing became steady and the surrounding shadows subsided and they stopped moving, the young man finally let out a long breath and slid to the ground as if he had lost all strength, leaning against the rock wall.

"Damn it, that scared the hell out of me! What the hell is this thing? It even has this kind of mental pollution attached to it?"

Xiao Niaoren's voice carried the relief of surviving a disaster, but also an unspeakable pang of heartache. He looked at the empty glass bottle in his hand and sighed, "Now there really isn't a single drop left."

"Aren't consumable items meant to be used?"

After being infused with the holy blood, the celestial captain wearing the silver metal mask was in much better condition. He managed to get up from the ground, drew a gleaming silver Japanese longsword whose blade sometimes solidified and sometimes became ethereal, as if it were wandering between reality and illusion, and began to practice tapping and striking it in the shadows of the cave.

"clang--"

Strangely enough, even though the shadowy area was completely empty, a clear metallic clang could be heard whenever the silver blade touched it. A few wisps of spiderweb-like black energy were also forced out by the blade's light, twisting and dissipating in the silver glow.

"You're really talking without any sense of the pain!"

Watching his captain hammering and tinkering like a prospector, Xiao Niaoren grinned and gave him the middle finger. But he also knew that when it came to clearing away these "foreign objects" that were more of a mental pollution than a physical one, his captain's Zanpakuto was more effective, since the weapon was surprisingly good at "cutting down the invisible."

Each time the silver blade swept across, invisible black mist was driven out from the cracks in the rocks, from the top of the cliffs, and even from the shadows of the team members. When the last shadow was illuminated, the chill that had shrouded the cave for so long receded like a tide, and even the breathing of the Celestial Team members became noticeably lighter... Soon, everyone except Tianyi, who was still unconscious, woke up and sat together around the burning campfire.

"Sorry, it was my mistake this time."

Unexpectedly, the silver-masked youth who was the team leader spoke in a sincere manner, bowing his head to his teammates and apologizing, "If it weren't for the mistake in my plan, none of us would have been injured, and 'Heaven's Will,' the controller of mental power, wouldn't still be unconscious..."

"Stop spouting nonsense, Ling Xin!"

Seeing his captain's behavior, Xiao Niaoren couldn't stand it and immediately cursed, "No one expected this to happen... Who could have known that a simple test would turn into this mess?"

Don't be fooled by Xiao Niaoren's bluntness towards his captain; this is simply how the two usually interact. One plays the good cop, the other the bad cop; one is a smooth talker, the other is cold and sarcastic, yet they complement each other perfectly.

After all, the members of the Celestial Team were all captains who rose through the ranks from other teams, and they were all proud and arrogant, so it was normal for them not to submit to each other. Even Adam, a captain who had almost complete control over his subordinates, still had troublemakers like Luo Yinglong under his command... And within the Celestial Team, only Xiao Niaoren was on the same level of strength as Ling Xin, and their relationship had always been like that.

"What was that just now? Captain, what was that just now?"

Unlike Ling Xin's composure and Xiao Niaoren's nonchalance, the other members of the Celestial Team were unable to remain calm. The terrifying figure from before was deeply etched in their minds, unforgettable… As soon as Xiao Niaoren finished speaking, a young man with thin threads wrapped around his hands exclaimed in terror. Upon closer inspection, the young man's entire body seemed to be covered in traces of thin threads, as if he were made entirely of them.

“Control your Devil Fruit ability, Wang Wu.” Ling Xin’s voice came from under the mask, cold as metal: “If this continues, the ‘awakening’ state you just comprehended will get out of control again.”

After reminding Wang Wu, Ling Xin paused for a moment, his silver mask gleaming coldly in the campfire, before sighing and saying, "If I'm not mistaken... that was a saint."

"A sage?" "What? How is that possible?"

"Captain, you haven't made a mistake, have you? This..."

Ling Xin's words were like a bomb dropped on a calm lake, creating endless ripples. The members of the Celestial Team were filled with doubt, fear, and disbelief... Even the usually carefree Xiao Niaoren looked at Ling Xin with suspicion, his long whip at his waist tightening unconsciously, as if the former had said something unbelievable.

"It can't be wrong."

Ling Xin sighed. Although his voice was not loud, it had its own power, suppressing the noise and doubts of everyone else: "I am currently at the initial stage of the fourth level of the Gene Lock. I am only one step away from overcoming my inner demons and awakening the light of my soul. Naturally, I have corresponding guesses about the strength of this stage."

"In my opinion, even a fourth-tier advanced level cultivator could not possibly injure me so severely from such a distance with just the mental shockwaves from the Mind Chains... Only a true saint could possess such power!"

—The moment the words were spoken, the entire room fell silent.

A saint—a terrifying term. They are beings who transcend mortal life, truly transcendent and saintly. Destroying the heavens and earth is but a flick of the wrist; seizing stars and the moon is as easy as a leisurely stroll…

Everyone knows that there is an insurmountable gap between the fifth-tier saint and the fourth-tier saint; they are super life forms that ordinary people cannot even imagine. If what Ling Xin said is true, and he, with his meager abilities, could actually face the power of a saint and still escape with his life, then it would truly be an auspicious sign that his ancestors' graves were emitting auspicious smoke…

"But if I'm not mistaken, that saint was... swatted away at the end, right?"

Just as the only sound within the cave was breathing, so quiet you could hear a pin drop, someone in the Celestial Team suddenly spoke, instantly making the atmosphere even more tense. In the mental scan of the Celestial Will, the saint who seemed poised to destroy the entire world appeared to have been attacked, even the remaining effects of which had been largely dispelled. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have been able to so easily escape with such minor injuries…

"Who exactly was that mysterious figure who sent the saint flying?"

"That's the crux of the matter..."

Ling Xin sighed and looked up at the dark stone wall above him: "I don't know either."

For a moment, the expressions of the members of the Celestial Team varied, except for Ling Xin, whose face beneath the silver mask was filled with turbulent emotions...

—Chu Hao, my younger brother, as the captain of the Arctic team, you were at the center of the battlefield at that time…

—What kind of extraordinary encounter did they have?

……

"What is the main god's mission for this event?"

Even if you casually slap a saint away, life and the journey must go on.

As the dwarven caravan continued its journey toward Lonely Mountain, Yang Yun, who had acted as if nothing had happened, suddenly seemed to remember something and turned to Chu Hao beside him, asking, "I don't think I've asked you about this yet."

"...Follow the dwarf prince Thorin Oakenshield to the hidden back door of Irubor."

After hesitating for a moment, Chu Hao decided to tell Yang Yun about his mission to become the main god.

After the team battle, the restriction that the main god "cannot reveal the existence of the main god space to plot characters" has been lifted, and Chu Hao does not think that Yang Yun is a so-called "plot character": "In addition, if any of the three teams in this team battle completes any one of the following three tasks, all teams will be able to return to the main god space ahead of schedule."

"The first is to kill the dragon Smaug; the second is to obtain the Heart of the Mountain, the Arkenstone; the third is to obtain the One Ring."

"There are quite a lot... I didn't have such lenient conditions back then. It seems that the 'God' has really relaxed the restrictions on you reincarnation team members."

After hearing Chu Hao's explanation, Yang Yun smiled enigmatically: "So you want to coerce these dwarves and turn them into your allies against the Celestials, instead of completing the three side quests... That's understandable, but it's a bit conservative."

Upon hearing this, Chu Hao's heart skipped a beat. He tentatively asked, "Could it be that Yang Yun, you..."

"No, I won't help you, because that would really be breaking the rules."

Before Chu Hao could speak, Yang Yun preemptively rejected his nascent idea: "Battles between the Reincarnation Teams should be handled by the Reincarnation Teams themselves. It is only when external forces want to interfere in this game that I will step in."

As he spoke, Yang Yun ignored the thoughtful Chu Hao and looked towards the dwarven army in the distance, which was also the destination of the various reincarnation teams: the Goblin Kingdom. However, what he saw was not distance or weather, but the entanglement of fortunes that was difficult for ordinary people to see, and the threads of cause and effect converging from all directions.

Among these causal lines, some were as crimson as blood, some as black as ink, and some as green as a carpet. The largest of these causal lines, however, was a merging and converging golden torrent, seemingly stretching across the sky. Magnificent and awe-inspiring, it illuminated all directions, just like the dazzling gold he had once seen, bearing at least 80% similarity to the golden statue of the central Buddha of Vidyaraja…

"After all, the appearance of a saint is far from the end..."

Turning his gaze away from the distance, Yang Yun's eyes became more serious.

"On the contrary, this is just the beginning of a grand drama." (End of Chapter)