Elven cultivators

"Who is it?"

Elder Jinna's voice was filled with rare shock, devoid of his usual composure and calmness.

At this moment, the oppressive aura permeating the entire council hall was like a winter chill, making everyone feel a chill run down their spines.

They subconsciously tried to mobilize the power of the laws, but the power that was once as easy as their own was now like being immersed in viscous asphalt, becoming sluggish and difficult to flow smoothly no matter how they tried to urge it.

That familiar feeling of stagnation...

The orc leaders quickly realized what was happening, and their expressions changed.

"Demigod!"

Gormash looked grave.

There are very few demigods left on the Dawn Continent. The only ones who would appear here at this time, and who would make no attempt to conceal their malice, are the demigods of the undead faction.

It wasn't the Pale Hand Charon; he was all too familiar with the aura of this undead lord.

It's impossible for the giant whale Morocco to be involved either.

There's no sea within a thousand miles of Bloodhowl Fortress; its massive form couldn't have approached silently by land. Could it be the Stonefall Titan Graax or the Frostbone King Igni?

But aren't those two guys on the central and western defense lines?

How did you end up here?

Or perhaps, it was that one?

The thought of this possibility sent a jolt through Gormash's heart.

He didn't say the name aloud, but instead walked towards the fortress wall with a stern face.

The orc elders followed suit.

The moment they stepped onto the city wall, everyone's gaze froze.

A figure was silently hovering in mid-air directly in front of the fortress.

The jet-black armor covered his entire body without a single gap. The empty darkness beneath the helmet seemed to devour light. There was neither a face nor pupils, only a bottomless void.

Just by hovering there quietly, it gives people a heavy sense of oppression.

Even though they had never seen it with their own eyes, at this moment Gormash and the others understood that the being before them was the Lord of the Abyss, who commanded the six great lords to conquer all directions for him. The Black Emperor!

In an instant, everyone's heart sank.

Since the outbreak of the Scourge, the Black Emperor has never left the Abyss. Very little is known about him except that he can command the six lords to fight for him.

This alone is enough to make people speculate about his strength in countless terrifying ways.

Such a being suddenly appearing before them, how could they not be surprised and suspicious?

"Isn't the Black Emperor always staying in the Abyss? Why is he here?"

"Now is not the time to talk about that. The important thing is, what do we do?"

"What else can we do? This guy is clearly up to no good. We should just fight him."

"That's right. No matter how powerful the Black Emperor is, he can't break through our defensive formation system on his own."

This statement eased the tension in everyone's hearts slightly.

Bloodhowl Fortress has been in operation for thousands of years, and its magic array defense system has been reinforced generation after generation, making it as solid as a rock.

Please visit [website address] to see the latest chapter! Address: dEqixs.oRg Even if legendary gods came, it wouldn't be easy to break through in a short time.

As long as they hold their ground and don't come out, the Black Emperor can't do anything about them.

Just as everyone was regaining their composure, a series of hurried footsteps suddenly came from the end of the stone steps inside the city wall.

A messenger rushed up the city wall in a panic, knelt down on one knee before Gormash, and cried out urgently, "Great Warchief, urgent military report from the front! Stonefall Titan Guracx and Frostbone King Igni have suddenly appeared at the front lines and joined forces with Pale Hand Kalon, launching a three-pronged attack. Our defenses are in dire straits in many places. Elder Sullivan has sent word that they are on the verge of collapse and requests immediate reinforcements from the fortress!"

The moment the words left his mouth, a deathly silence fell over the city wall.

The fleeting sense of hope that had just arisen in everyone vanished instantly.

"Weren't Lax and Igni on the western and central lines? How did they end up on the northern line?" Elder Kinna asked incredulously. "What were the intelligence-gathering guys doing? Why didn't they give us any warning?"

The messenger said in a hoarse voice, "The two undead lords only brought a small group of high-ranking troops to infiltrate the area, bypassing the outer scouts. By the time we noticed something was wrong, they had already joined up with the Pale Hand."

The orc elders exchanged bewildered glances, their expressions turning ashen.

Gormash seemed to have thought of something, and suddenly closed his eyes. A powerful and majestic spiritual force spread out from him, like an invisible tide spreading in all directions.

A moment later, he opened his eyes, his face even more somber than before.

"The surrounding space has been sealed off; it must be the Black Emperor's doing." The orc elders' expressions changed, and they hurriedly used their sensory abilities to investigate. After a moment, their expressions also changed.

Just as Gormash had said, the surrounding spatial structure became stagnant and solidified under the corrosive influence of the deathly aura that enveloped the entire city, and Bloodhowl Fortress's connection with the outside world was completely severed.

"Quickly check if the teleportation array is still working," Elder Jinna said hastily.

Soldiers immediately left, and soon returned with the result they expected.

The teleportation array is malfunctioning.

Although it was expected, the hearts of everyone present sank to the bottom upon hearing the news.

The atmosphere was frozen solid.

Everyone knew that a small group of high-level troops was nothing; the real threat came from the two undead lords.

Previously, the undead lords fought independently and were not under each other's command. Bloodhowl Fortress only had to face one undead lord, so although there was pressure, it was still within its tolerance range.

But now, suddenly, two more undead lords have appeared.

With the three undead lords joining forces, the pressure on the front lines will inevitably increase dramatically.

The crucial point was that the Black Emperor was blocking the entrance, preventing them from supporting the front lines at all; the situation had deteriorated to an extreme degree. Rexxar turned his gaze to Gorgrusher and broke the silence: "Warchief, what should we do next?"

Gormash's face was ashen, and he remained silent.

Clearly, the unusual alliance of the three undead lords was on the orders of the Black Emperor.

What puzzled them was why the Black Emperor, who had previously shown no interest in the war, would suddenly intervene this time.

After a long silence, Gormash finally spoke, his voice low and somber: "We must defeat the Black Emperor and then immediately reinforce the front lines."

"Otherwise, once the front line is breached, the undead army will advance unimpeded and besiege the city. With the Black Emperor joining forces with the three lords, plus millions of undead legions, Bloodhowl Fortress probably won't last long."

Everyone understood this principle, and their expressions turned solemn.

Without another word, Gormash stomped his feet on the ground and transformed into a streak of intensely bright golden-red light, shooting into the sky and instantly streaking across the fortress like a meteor hurtling backwards towards the Black Emperor who stood suspended in the void.

On the city wall, the orc elders all looked up, their eyes fixed on the golden-red trail.

No one followed.

They all knew very well that the battle between demigods was not something a saint could interfere with; forcibly participating would only become a burden.

High in the sky, Gormash stopped about a hundred meters from the Black Emperor. Golden-red flames silently swirled around him, scorching the stagnant, cold air around him into distorted ripples. "Black Emperor, what is your purpose?"

Gormash's voice carried far into the sky, piercing through the churning gray clouds.

His response was the Black Emperor's indifferent and low voice.

"Surrender, or die."

The condescending tone in his words made Gormash narrow his eyes.

"What's the difference?" he scoffed. "In the end, aren't you all just turning into ghosts?"

The Black Emperor's voice remained calm, devoid of any emotional fluctuation: "I can allow you to retain your original racial identity and not undergo the undead conversion ritual."

Gormash was slightly taken aback.

He re-examined the figure in front of him and then noticed a detail that he had previously overlooked.

Although the Black Emperor was surrounded by a dense, almost tangible, fluctuation of the laws of death, he lacked the cold, decaying aura characteristic of the undead, making him completely different from beings like the Pale Hand.

Could it be that the Black Emperor is not an undead, but merely uses his control over the laws of death to command the undead army?

Gormash harbored a secret suspicion. However, this thought was fleeting and did not help the current situation in the slightest.

"The word 'surrender' does not exist in the dictionary of Bloodhowl Fortress."

Gormash refused.

The moment he finished speaking, the golden-red flames on his body suddenly surged, transforming into a vast curtain of fire that swept towards the Black Emperor.

Wherever the flames passed, the air was scorched, creating layers of twisted patterns. Even the rubble on the ground below turned red, melted, and flowed into dark red lava in the heat.

However, when the fire curtain reached about three zhang in front of the Black Emperor, it was as if it had hit an invisible and intangible wall. The flames at the edges swirled and slid to both sides, and it didn't even burn the edges of his armor.

The Black Emperor neither retreated nor dodged.

He simply raised his hand that was holding the sword slowly.

The sword was entirely black, with a thick and heavy blade. There were no inscriptions or runes on its surface, except for a very faint grayish-white mark in the center of the spine.

The black sword fell silently, without even creating a tiny ripple of energy.

But just as the sword fell, Gormash's pupils contracted sharply, and a sense of crisis from the depths of his soul exploded throughout his body.

Almost instinctively, he raised his arm to block, and golden-red flames condensed into a thick, wall-like fire shield in front of him. Layers of fiery currents intertwined and wove on the shield's surface, like a barrier forged from flames.

The next instant, the black sword struck the center of the fire shield.

The dull thud seemed to explode from deep within the eardrums.

The surface of the fire shield first showed a layer of grayish-white patterns. These patterns spread rapidly along the veins of the flames, like ice patterns that suddenly freeze on a lake in winter, gradually draining and solidifying the flames until they shattered.

The burning fire shield, beneath that dark sword arc, was like a weathered stone wall, peeling away inch by inch, shattering, and turning into countless gray-white fragments that scattered into the wind.

Before the laws of death, even flames, which originally had no concept of death, were destined to perish.

boom!

Gormash's body plummeted toward the ground like a meteor, creating a thunderous whooshing sound.

The meteor stopped abruptly when it was less than ten meters from the ground, defying all logic.

The flames dispersed, revealing Gormash's figure.

The armor on his right arm had cracked open with a long gash, the edges of which had an abnormal grayish-white hue, like iron that had been eroded by time for hundreds of years.

An ancient-grade magical artifact was reduced to scrap in a single exchange. Ignoring the pain, Gormash looked up at the motionless figure high in the sky, his eyes filled with uncontrollable horror for the first time.

The power of this sword strike is far beyond what the Seal Bearer or Crown Shaper could achieve.

Even among all the known demigods from the five major powers, there was no one who could so easily defeat him with a single sword strike.

Critical moment!

Only those on the critical point can possess such terrifying power!

On the city wall, the orc elders witnessed this entire scene. Their mouths went dry, and they were speechless with shock.

They had expected the Black Emperor to be strong, but they hadn't anticipated that he would be this strong.

Is this the Lord of the Underworld?

Gormash gritted his teeth and soared into the sky once more.

Golden-red flames enveloped his entire body, making him appear like a burning meteorite, hurtling towards the Black Emperor with the power to scorch mountains and boil seas.

But each charge was easily blocked by the black sword, which then forced him back.

If Anton were here, he would see that the Black Emperor's control over the laws of death had reached a state of profound simplicity and formlessness. Each of his attacks lacked dramatic force, yet carried an irresistible sense of impending doom, chilling all who beheld them.

Anyone could see that the two sides in this battle were not even on the same level.

In a short while, the golden-red flames enveloping Gormash's entire body had thinned considerably, and spiderweb-like cracks covered his shoulder and breastplates.

Just then, the Black Emperor suddenly swung his sword upwards with both hands.

Although they were nearly a hundred meters apart, Gormash suddenly felt the whole world go dark for a moment.

It seemed that only that black line extending diagonally upwards remained between heaven and earth, like a sharp blade cleaving the world from within, severing all light, sound, and temperature.

Then time stopped.

A faint cracking sound rang out, like ice breaking layer by layer under the early spring sun.

Gormash froze in mid-air, his pupils still filled with horror and disbelief, his body already neatly split open from the midline.

Blood gushed out, casting a dark red arc in the twilight.

The two severed pieces of the body fell to the ground with a dull thud.

The Black Emperor slowly sheathed his sword, the tip pointing towards the ground. His gaze pierced through the thick defensive barrier of Bloodhowl Fortress, landing on the bloodless faces on the city walls.

The city wall was deathly silent.

The orc elders stared blankly at the Great Chieftain's corpse outside the city, their heads buzzing and their minds completely blank.

They never expected that the Great Chieftain, a demigod, would be killed so easily by the Black Emperor.

They didn't even have a chance to escape back to the fortress.

The power displayed by the Black Emperor made everyone feel powerless and desperate from the bottom of their hearts.