Starting as a Grandmaster, all of my cultivation techniques are at max level.

"Then please, Your Excellency, enlighten me."

The two figures vanished from the spot at the same time.

The next second, a visible spatial ripple exploded in the very center of the void, and the seven colors collided violently, as if two stars were colliding head-on in the chaos.

A massive storm swept through the gray-white void, and void rifts appeared simultaneously from all directions, only to be quickly mended by the power of the world itself.

Two almost identical figures intersected, collided, separated, and then intersected again in the void.

They attacked without holding back, yet with terrifying control. Every bit of power was kept within the limits of the void's capacity, neither wasting a single ounce nor weakening it in the slightest.

"good."

An hour later, Xia Jin shook her slightly numb palms, a look of satisfaction flashing in her eyes.

"Those moves just now, the power was already eight-tenths of what I had mastered, and the sharpness contained within them... was even three-tenths more ferocious than I expected."

The avatar looked at Xia Jin and smiled slightly. The seven-colored halo around its body slowly subsided, but its aura was more refined and harmonious than before the fight: "My foundation is far deeper than mine. I used my full strength just now, but you only used seven-tenths. It seems that this body will need quite some time to catch up with my realm."

"What's the rush?" Xia Jin said with her hands behind her back. "We are one. You've only just advanced to the Mythical Realm and need to get used to it slowly. Once you've fully mastered this power, your strength won't be much weaker than mine."

As she spoke, Xia Jin's gaze swept across the void, her smile deepening. "This place is very stable and undisturbed; it's a perfect place for long-term cultivation. We don't lack time for now, so I'll stay here with you to help you adapt to this power!"

"That's wonderful!!"

Xia Jin nodded, about to speak, when suddenly her brows twitched slightly.

In that instant, a very subtle fluctuation of energy came from a great distance, piercing through the barrier of the void and entering his perception.

Xia Jin's avatar paused slightly.

Almost simultaneously, a glint of light flashed in Xia Jin's eyes.

Their eyes met, and without a word, the shared perception from their souls instantly made them understand what the other had sensed.

"Hmph!... It seems they're about to make a move over there too," Xia Jinhua said in a deep voice.

Xia Jin did not answer immediately, but turned her head slightly, her gaze seemingly piercing through layers of space, looking towards the boundless sea that stretched across the ends of the earth.

After a long while, he withdrew his gaze, the smile on his face fading slightly, replaced by a faint killing intent.

"Yes, at most three years, their teleportation array will be fully completed. At that time, that will be the time for them to make their move."

"They think they're gods, that they can hide from everyone, but unfortunately, I already knew the location of that teleportation array. However, I don't intend to destroy it, otherwise, my attempt to lure them out will have failed."

Xia Jin's avatar looked at him: "It seems you already have a plan!"

In the third year since the founding of the Heavenly Alliance,

The Heavenly Alliance's headquarters is filled with spiritual energy.

In the courtyard in front of the central hall,

Zhou Suxin was sitting on the veranda, flipping through a book.

Leng Yuexi stood in front of a few flowers and trees in the corner of the courtyard, carefully placing a newly picked purple exotic flower into the white jade vase in front of her.

Su Xuanji leaned against the stone railing not far away, playing with a dark green jade pendant in her hand, lost in thought.

The three women were all busy with their own things, but they got along very well.

Xia Jin lay on a recliner under a peach tree, her gaze sweeping over the figures of the three women, her brows softening unconsciously.

He would quite like this kind of life if it could continue indefinitely.

Suddenly, his brows furrowed sharply, and an extremely terrifying killing intent flashed by!

The killing intent appeared and disappeared extremely quickly, so quickly that it seemed like an illusion.

The three women present were very familiar with Xia Jin. Although there was a huge gap between their cultivation levels and Xia Jin's, the change in that instant made their gazes fall on Xia Jin at the same time.

The atmosphere in the courtyard instantly shifted from peaceful to tense.

"...Husband?" Leng Yuexi gently placed the purple flower into the vase, tilting her head slightly, her tone tinged with uncertainty, "Just now...what happened?"

Zhou Suxin also stood up immediately. She walked to Xia Jin and stared intently at the lingering coldness between his brows. Suddenly, as if she had thought of something, her expression changed.

"Could it be..." Her voice lowered, but the gravity in it was undeniable, "that the Dark Land... is stirring again?"

Upon hearing this, Leng Yuexi and Su Xuanji's expressions changed almost simultaneously.

The Land of Darkness. Beyond the Boundless Sea.

The source that Xia Jin had mentioned several times, and which even he had to treat with caution, had remained silent for the past few years, as if it had completely disappeared. But all the high-ranking members of the Heavenly Alliance knew that it was merely the calm before the storm.

In this universe, the demon race and the human race are all under Xia Jin's control. Only the dark source on the other side of the Boundless Sea may pose a threat to Xia Jin.

This forced them to pay attention to the source of the darkness.

Although Su Xuanji didn't speak, her hesitant expression clearly showed that she also wanted to know the answer.

Xia Jin slowly stood up, her gaze fixed on the dark, indistinct horizon.

His expression had completely returned to calm, but something surging beneath that calm made the three women feel a strange unease.

He nodded, but his tone showed no sign of worry.

"That's right, I did notice their movements for a brief moment just now."

"Hmph!! At first I thought they were scared. They haven't made a move for the past few years, not even a single test. I even wondered if the source of darkness was being held back by something."

A cold smile slowly crept onto his lips: "I didn't expect you to give me such a surprise today."

He withdrew his gaze and looked at the three women in front of him, his tone becoming more serious: "Since they have already taken action, we naturally cannot turn a blind eye."

"You all stay here, I'll take care of those guys!"

But before he could finish speaking, Zhou Suxin suddenly stepped forward, her gaze fixed intently on his eyes.

"No, my husband."

Zhou Suxin's voice was soft, but firm: "This matter shouldn't have been borne by you alone before. The three of us are also members of the Heavenly Alliance, and we also want to participate in the battle."

Xia Jin frowned slightly, about to speak, when Su Xuanji interjected, "That's right. We've been in seclusion for so long, isn't it all for this day?"

She stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with Zhou Suxin, a fierce fighting spirit gleaming in her eyes: "These past few years, we've honed our skills day and night, finally breaking through with great difficulty. If we haven't even experienced a decent battle, wouldn't all this cultivation have been wasted?"

Leng Yuexi also put down the vase in her hand and walked to the side of the two women. She didn't say much, but just stood quietly next to Zhou Suxin and Su Xuanji. Her clear eyes looked at Xia Jin, without pleading or coquetry, only with a kind of persistence.

The three women stood side by side, their eyes meeting. The unspoken understanding and determination between them made Xia Jin pause slightly as she was about to speak.

He remained silent for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the faces of the three women one by one.

Finally, he sighed softly.

The sigh carried a hint of helplessness.

Nowadays, whether it's humans or demons, besides these few people, who dares to speak to me like that?

"Very well! However, if battle breaks out, you will follow behind the main army."

He didn't refuse again, but his tone became more forceful, his gaze settling on the three women's faces one by one. "Don't force yourself. If you encounter danger, leave the battlefield immediately. I don't want to see any of you get hurt."

Zhou Suxin nodded slightly, a smile appearing on her lips: "Don't worry, husband. We know what we're doing. Besides, with your help these past few years, our strength is not what it used to be. We can't deal with those above the Saint Realm, but we can certainly hold our own against those below the Saint Realm."

Xia Jin didn't say anything more.

He glanced at the three women one last time, then abruptly turned around, raised his hand, and swept it away.

A seven-colored streak of light suddenly bloomed in the courtyard. At the other end of the streak of light was a vast gray void and a boundless sea with turbulent undercurrents stretching to the ends of the earth.

His figure paused slightly in the light, then stepped in and disappeared.

……

Boundless Sea, East Coast.

This vast ocean stretching to the edge of the universe has always been a desolate wasteland.

The black seawater was like a frozen abyss, without even a ripple, while the gray mist on the surface was clearly swallowing up all life around it.

However, at this moment, the Dead Sea, which had been silent for countless millennia, is now boiling violently.

The seawater surged wildly from the center to both sides, revealing the dark, deep seabed below.

On the seabed, a huge teleportation array is slowly appearing.

The array's patterns seemed to be carved from the bones of some unknown behemoth, each line gleaming with a dark, eerie green light and exuding a nauseating, decaying stench.

The light from the teleportation array grew brighter and more intense, and the eerie green pillar of light shot into the sky, piercing the clouds and staining the entire gray sky with a sickly green hue.

Then, the first figure stepped out of the teleportation array.

It was a monster made entirely of black bones, over three zhang tall, with limbs as thick as pillars, two rows of barbed bone spikes growing on its back, and a single, scarlet eye on its head through a vertical slit.

With each step it took, the seawater beneath its feet made a "sizzling" corrosive sound, and the black seawater was evaporated into large swaths of gray mist by the aura emanating from the bones.

Then came the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth...

Countless figures poured out of the massive teleportation array like a black torrent, never-ending, though they were all different in shape.

Some were covered in wriggling black carapaces, each with a strange, half-open eye.

Some are composed entirely of translucent dark red flesh and blood, with countless tiny blood vessels faintly visible pulsating within them;

Some resembled the forcibly pieced-together remains of some rotting behemoth, with thick, foul-smelling black liquid flowing between the skeletons.

It's completely unimaginable that these monsters all came from that dark origin.

Moreover, each monster exudes a suffocating sense of oppression.

The oppressive force did not come from the strength of spiritual power alone, but from the alien aura emanating from the depths of darkness that was incompatible with this universe.

It was as if they shouldn't exist in this world at all; with every breath and every movement they made, they were silently eroding the surrounding space itself.

The air around them twisted and deformed, and the seawater beneath their feet turned into inky black mud wherever they stepped.

The gray sky was squeezed lower and lower by the rising chill, as if the entire sky was shrinking back in fear before them.

That atmosphere slowly spread as more and more figures emerged.

The creatures within a hundred miles had already sensed something was wrong immediately and were frantically fleeing into the distance.

However, the monsters did not give chase. They simply stood silently in place, like a silent army from the abyss, waiting for something.

At the very front of that black torrent, a unique figure slowly emerged from the teleportation array.

It was a humanoid being completely wrapped in a dark red robe.

The red robe completely concealed his figure, revealing only his eyes. Those eyes had no pupils, only darkness.

Behind him, dozens of fist-sized eyeballs floated in mid-air, slowly rotating.

Dozens of eyes slowly rotated, each looking in a different direction, like dozens of independent observers taking in everything in this world.

The figure in red robes stood on the beach, his bare feet stepping on the black mud. A faint hissing sound came from where his feet touched the ground, and a few wisps of smoke rose from them.

He slowly raised his head and looked up at the gray sky.

Those dark, pupil-less eyes narrowed slightly, as if sensing everything in this world—the sound of the wind blowing across the sea, the panicked flight of creatures in the distance, the faint fluctuations of spiritual energy in the air…

He took a deep breath.

The movements were extremely slow, as if savoring some exquisite wine. His chest rose and fell slowly, then returned to normal.

Then, he slowly and with great satisfaction exhaled that breath.

"The air here..."

"It's so fresh and sweet!"

He turned his head slightly, and dozens of eyes behind him moved in sync with his movement, all looking in one direction—the direction of the Heavenly Alliance's base.

"It's a hundred times better than that forever decaying, forever dark homeland..." he murmured, a greedy glint in his dark eyes. "I really want to... swallow this whole world up."

The dark army behind him stood silently, countless eyes all fixed on the same direction, like a pack of wolves eyeing their prey, poised to pounce.

On the other side of the Boundless Sea, in the far distance as far as the eye could see, a seven-colored light was shining from the horizon.

Like the rising sun at dawn, like a sharp blade being drawn from its sheath.

Fearless, they charged headlong into this dark torrent.