Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Does it really matter what Alice did in all this? —Perhaps it does for others who don't know her, aren't familiar with her, haven't worked with her, yet are caught up in her plans. But for Zheng Zha, it's not the case. Because he knows her, he's familiar with her, he's worked with her for a long time. And then he knows that even if he seeks an answer, it's meaningless.

In any case, I either wouldn't understand her plan, or even if I did, I would still do it without raising any objections. Therefore, questioning her about trivial matters in this urgent situation would be a complete waste of time. The reason I usually ask questions is simply to demonstrate my authority as captain, but now is clearly not the time to waste precious time.

Will Alice's plan be harmful to the team? — No.

[Would doing the opposite of Alice's ideas still fall into another of her plans? —Very likely.]

[If that's the case, then thinking about it is pointless. Besides...]

Zheng Zha raised his eyes, gazing at the massive gravitational tides caused by the falling star. Thick clouds of celestial remains, tens of kilometers long, scattered in circles like frightened birds, flying in terror towards the distant side of the planet under the interference of the crimson star. The gravitational constant on the chessboard of the gods also shifted accordingly.

He could clearly feel that new and immense power surging within him. This force, which should have been an external force, possessed an almost effortless fluidity in his willpower—he knew it was the Light of the Soul, and a fully formed Light of the Soul with its own independent characteristics. Hundreds, even thousands, of ways to utilize it awaited his verification in his mind.

It was a very interesting feeling, as if he had mastered the use of the Light of the Mind in the distant past but had forgotten it, only to have it completely resurface from the depths of his mind at that very moment. He knew this was not an illusion, because he knew that using this power came at a price.

The price was revenge, and the target of that revenge was the uninvited Lord of War. In a daze, he heard countless vampires whispering curses and venting their hatred. Then he realized that these whispers were not illusions.

Gods are not immortals, because gods are far more powerful than immortals.

God is inherently powerful, because fulfilling God's duties is the price of wielding power.

He looked at the crimson surface of the planet, and the challengers on the planet returned the same gaze.

“…I’m still not suited to thinking about trivial matters unrelated to battle,” Zheng Zha murmured, stretching out his hand, the crimson killing blade reflecting a sharp, deep red light.

"After all, it's the enemy—" He bent his right knee slightly, lowered his center of gravity, and with just the moment he was gathering his strength, he caused the gravity field within a radius of one hundred kilometers to reverse.

"—It's right there!"

The next moment! Centered on the wasteland where Zheng Zha was located, a total of one million square kilometers of land collapsed into pieces!

His form instantly reached the surface of the crimson star!

Instead of tearing through space to leap, he strengthened his physical body with the light of his mind and connected it with the ground beneath his feet, directly using a bouncing motion to propel his movement speed to one-tenth the speed of light!

All known, conventional weaponry paled in comparison to this sheer physical force. Kinetic energy was converted into potential energy, which then converged at the blade's edge. The crimson greatsword, aimed at the long-awaiting master of war, slashed straight down!

'boom--!!!'

Even thousands of kilometers away on the planet Disbod, the chessboard of the gods, the deafening roar echoed. Even without an atmosphere, the impact of the matter ravaged the senses of all mortals within the battlefield's perimeter. Half of the Skywing race, who had been waiting near the throne of the Lord of War, eager to share their master's burdens, were instantly shattered by the immense physical force. Even those who could barely withstand the impact, powerful beings like Azriel, were swept away thousands of miles by the gravitational surge, suffering severe internal injuries!

The red star that was rapidly falling toward the chessboard was abruptly stopped!

The continents collapsed, and clumps of matter, measured in units of gai, were violently hurled into the sky. Only then did the long trail of fire extending from the surface of Disbod catch up with Zheng Zha's speed and touch the planet's surface. Then, it continued inward.

The Earth's crust shattered! The asthenosphere burst open! Even the solid, thick mantle of the planet couldn't completely slow down the power of this slash. The instant the blade stopped, the entire crimson form had already torn open a massive rift a thousand kilometers deep from the point of impact!

The blade's momentum had reached its limit, its sharp edge pressed against the tip of the War Lord's raised left index finger. The next instant, the War Lord's left hand completely shattered into bloody foam, the disintegration rapidly spreading towards his arm and shoulder!

"The Avengers?"—a voice rang out. Zheng Zha's eyes narrowed sharply, and his still-unfinished sword strike shifted—

"It's Zheng Zha!"

His speed was incredibly fast, but even at that speed, he had to contend with the Lord of War's counterattack. Even the most enhanced naked eye couldn't keep up with his opponent's movements. However, he was able to use his extraordinary perception, gained from the Light of the Soul, to sense that a powerful punch was already upon him!

'Puff—'

As the blade and fist collided, more than two-thirds of Zheng Zha's body mass was torn apart into scattered atomic fragments upon impact. The next moment, the mass he lost was pulled back into his body and restored by the deep red light bursting from the light of his mind. At the same time, all the injuries on his opponent's body also disappeared!

"Very good, a strong one." — The voice rang out once more. And as Zheng Zha clearly recognized these words, the crimson killing blade in his hand had already clashed with the voice's owner thousands of times. Endless primordial matter and boiling lava sprayed and exploded wildly on the planet's surface with each clash, as if some life was about to hatch from this 'egg' on the planet's surface. Crimson cracks crawled across the red earth like a spiderweb!

"And you are completely different from those outsiders."

Silently, the killing blade clashed with those iron fists, harder than the blade itself, sixteen thousand six hundred times. The silence stemmed from the lack of a medium for sound to travel. The stillness was due to the fact that the disruptive energy was absorbed by both sides before it could even reach the outside. And at the sixteen thousand six hundred and first collision, the repulsive force of the impact of the same magnitude sent the two forces flying hundreds of kilometers apart.

What was once the Earth's mantle has become a gigantic void. The matter that was originally used to fill this void has been annihilated into a pure vacuum by the collision of energies. As he turned, ancient combat techniques surfaced from the depths of his memory. Zheng Zha easily grasped this terrifying technique, using the light of his mind as a medium to guide billions of positive and negative forces to erupt simultaneously between the gaps in his cellular communities.

Primordial Era, Creation of Heaven and Earth, Critical State. Only upon entering this state did he truly recognize his adversary—a burly man with eleven and a half pairs of wings. Twelve was on his left, Eleven on his right, and his will shone as brightly as a supernova about to explode.

"I am Artesius, the war on the chessboard." The male voice named Artesius was authoritative and filled with oppressive force. As Zheng Zha's aura surged, he reached out and made a grasping motion—

—The crimson celestial body was instantly stained with frost, and the blood-red fissures that had seemed about to overflow the earth's crust just moments before turned into a deathly bluish-black. The celestial core, constructed of molten iron and copper, was visibly spread with a grayish-white hue before extinguishing. And a giant sword, as if burning molten lava, appeared in the hand of the Lord of War!

This is the sword of God, the power of war, the true force that devours celestial bodies, transforming them into annihilating weapons. And only now, at this moment, can the greetings and warm-up be considered to have barely ended.

“I am Zheng Zha. Just think of me as a walnut on a chessboard,” Zheng Zha said softly. His already pushed aura to its limit burst forth once more. Scales resembling dragon scales and bat wings appeared one by one on his body. Blood-red scales crawled from his fingertips straight up to the edge of the deep red killing blade, transforming the killing blade into part of his body while forming a cycle with the surging positive and negative annihilation power, binding them all beneath the blood-gold dragon scales.

This is the divine form, also known as the true body of a deity. It is the Dao fruit formed after the light of the mind has matured. If he had the leisure, Zheng Zha might name it the Blood Dragon Transformation. And only now did he feel that he was on the same level as his opponent.

Then, the Crimson Blade was held slightly level, facing off against the molten star core sword.

— Soldiers need not speak; exchanging names is enough.

The next moment, boundless brilliance erupted from the frozen surface of the crimson star. Its structure crumbled and shattered from the inside out, breaking into countless fragments, numbering in the billions of tons. Accompanying the eruption and collapse of stellar matter and continental debris, crimson and golden threads intertwined and collided, falling into another star, a distant chasm of the planet Disbod, on the chessboard of the gods!

The war, from the very beginning, reached a stage that most of the previous participants were not even qualified to touch.

And a cataclysmic disaster of planetary scale then spread throughout the planetary system where the chessboard of the gods was placed.

..............................

Alice hovered lightly, about ten light-years away from the battlefield, a light-second above the surface of a gas giant. Looking down, she saw endless hurricanes and turbulent currents of mass. The earth there was composed of liquid hydrogen and helium, roughly the same as Jupiter in her solar system in terms of both size and parameters. As she landed there, she clearly sensed a familiar power.

Jupiter, also known as Jupiter, was the king of the gods in Roman mythology, ruling over the realm of the gods and the ruler of all nations on Earth. It is considered an incarnation of Zeus, and in some lesser-known texts, it is also seen as Satan.

This is not surprising, for the beast described in Revelation refers to Rome. And it is only natural that Rome, as the god-king, would be degraded as a demon in papal mythology. And it is precisely for this reason that this planet, shrouded in perpetual storms, is also the true lair of the dragon spirits. For the strongest and most ancient progenitor among all dragons resides here.

Ismir, the North Wind Dragon, is the 'Satan' abandoned by Alice. Because she did not want to bear the karma of Satan, she gave up using this familiar and mastered position to complete her advancement. And it is precisely because she chose to give up that she needs to settle this karma here now.

She gazed down at the starry sky, at the swirling clouds at the top of the firmament. She sensed no other weaker dragons on this planet. For the dragon spirits of this world shared some commonalities with the dragons of Tamriel.

One is all, and all is one. At the source of the bloodline, before the awakening of the proto-dragon, whose essence was Satan but who was bound by the persona of 'Ismir', all dragons could exist freely as independent individuals. However, while the persona of 'Ismir' bound 'Satan', it also granted it privileges, allowing it to devour many dragons like the dragons of Tamriel.

This planet is the main nest of the dragon spirits, and there are no living creatures left on it. In Alice's memory, she has indeed hardly seen any living dragons since the moment she arrived.

Because all the dragons have become one, and all the dragons are waiting for her arrival.

She continued to gaze down, waiting. The star, a thousand times larger than Disbod, had ceased its rotation. And she saw several enormous pillars of gas rising with a roar at the edge of the star field, like claws reaching towards the vast cosmos.

That wasn't a metaphor, but a realistic description. The enormous pillar of energy was indeed the claw of a dragon. And beneath her feet, the entire surface of the gas giant trembled and crumbled like a trembling eggshell.

A colossal claw extended from the planet's interior, followed by another. A liquid continent, the size of Earth's surface, detached from the planet's surface, revealing its inner dragon-like structure. The rate of peeling and disintegration increased rapidly, accompanied by a deafening roar that would be difficult to comprehend even with superhuman hearing. Then, a pair of enormous dragon wings, nearly an astronomical unit in size when fully extended, unfurled before Alice's eyes!

A dragon formed from a celestial body appeared in Alice's field of vision. Compared to the dragon's enormous form, the girl's figure was as small as dust. If she hadn't abandoned her Satanic identity, she could have become like this now, but now, it was time to settle the karmic debts!

“Hello, Satan,” Alice said softly.

And the dragon responded with a roar!

Chapter Ninety-Three: The Decisive Battle (Part Three)

Words cannot describe the scene at that moment, because even the light itself was swallowed up, annihilated, and turned into nothingness in this 'dragon's roar'. The pure breath, like the collapse of the void, directly destroyed the spatial structure within a range of nearly three light-seconds, and then the gravitational tide caused by the collapse of spacetime was born.

Destroy, tear apart, exterminate.

The vast ring of stardust, originally evenly distributed within two astronomical units outside of this 'Jupiter', was completely attracted, devoured, and then filled into the colorless, pure void by this immense gravitational tide. As mass converged with mass, and unstable space and decaying matter collided, within a minuscule instant when the timescale became imperceptible due to the gravitational tide, the pure void sculpted by the dragon's roar was completely obscured by the burst of light!

All colors returned to pure white. And the pure white radiance illuminated this void.

The next moment, a rift was torn open from the three light-second end of the pure white light tide, and a pale giant hand with a size of nearly 10,000 kilometers emerged from the rift!

It was a slender hand, a woman's hand. If any mortal object existed here, it would have been instantly and completely eroded by the Dao erosion the moment it saw it. As the first hand reached out from the void, a second one suddenly broke free from another crack in the tide of light. Then came the third, and the fourth!

The second dragon's roar arrived, but it failed to penetrate the astronomical void as the four arms tore through the air. With the turbulence of gravitational tides, the witch's exquisite and beautiful body and face were revealed. Four subtly different yet unified enormous faces extended from her neck. And like the crimson star-shaped dragon born from 'Jupiter,' Alice's divine form, equivalent to a planet, then appeared.

The dragon's roar was useless; the seven-headed crimson dragon then roared and flapped its wings, tearing space toward the witch's location. However, in a battle of the same level, there can be no second strike. As the spacetime structure crumbled again due to the mass shift in the celestial bodies, the eight eyes on the witch's four heads simultaneously focused their gaze on a certain point in the void!

The warp was abruptly interrupted, and the colossal creature that had been lurking in the void appeared right in front of the witch. The next moment, the giant raised its four arms high!

With four arms and four heads, she is Brahma, the creator of books. Her powers are creation and wisdom. And the instant her four arms struck down simultaneously, the power of creation constructed four divinely crafted weapons of equal stature between her fingers—a token, a water jug, rosary beads, and a scroll—four sacred objects. Through information transformation, these objects occupied four distinct domains: earth, water, fire, and wind. The power of these domains was further reduced to strong, weak, magnetic, and attractive!

Strong force, weak force, electromagnetism, gravity. The four most primal fundamental forces on the surface of the world were unified through her hands. And with the slamming down of her four arms, the space before her containing the seven-headed red dragon was completely submerged by the simultaneously disrupted four fundamental forces, stripping away the very prerequisites for the existence of matter in the universe. And immediately afterward, a chaos deeper than destruction engulfed the dragon!

Destruction is the opposite of creation, yet its essence is merely a manifestation of order. In the understanding of most mortals, destruction is simply the disruption of a tangible or intangible form of existence, rendering it ineffective and useless. Chaos, however, is the transformation of the form of existence of things, whether or not it is a prerequisite for destruction!

In an instant, the seven heads of the red dragon transformed into a strange structure resembling an abstract painting. This all-encompassing attack, penetrating deep into the cellular level, directly transformed these energy storage devices, each of which was originally equivalent to a miniature star, into soft mud and rocks made of silicates. Immediately afterward, the entire dragon body disintegrated into material dust under the stirring of the fundamental forces!

For those at the initial stage of the fourth tier, or any living being below the level of a true god, this attack would be utterly fatal. Once all the carriers have been annihilated, the will of the extraordinary life form will fall into eternal silence. This is why Alice never directly confronted a true god before reaching this stage.

However, the battle did not end there.

No, it's not the end; it's just the beginning of the battle. In Alice's observation, the dust particles that scattered in all directions at speeds far exceeding the third cosmic velocity did not simply dissipate. Instead, they remained intertwined and connected by an invisible and intangible bond. It was as if a faint melody was quietly rising from a distant place, and then this ring-shaped dispersion of dust particles condensed in space.

An invisible darkness silently emerged from the dust particles, resembling dark matter, yet exhibiting no detectable change in mass. The next moment, this invisible darkness materialized into tangible blackness, engulfing the endless dust particles and transforming them into a vast, surging river!

This is the River Styx, a substitute beyond dark matter, belonging to the next level of ability development in Alice's deductions. Its essence is the manifestation of the Light of the Mind, the result of applying and materializing its properties!

The river surged, ninefold waves sweeping across the stars, forming a vast, interconnected chain. It encircled the four-armed, four-headed form of the witch like a cage, and then from the waves of the River Styx, countless dragon heads emerged!

The dragon's head was ferocious, its massive maw overflowing with magical energy. At least ten thousand terrifying magical energies, enough to destroy an entire ecosystem in an instant, were poised to be unleashed. And they had blocked all escape routes!

[It was merely a remnant of the power I had discarded. I never imagined that, after absorbing the passage of time, it would spontaneously deduce a theoretically impossible spiritual light... Indeed, this karmic connection with Satan isn't so easy to accept.]

Even so, you are now nothing more than a puppet capable only of mechanical thought.

The colossal divine form standing amidst the stars joined its four arms, and the four fundamental forces governed by those arms collided violently. In the next instant, the strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational forces were re-evolved into earth, water, fire, and wind. These forces, amidst the destruction of the four divinely crafted weapons, returned to one, unleashing their purest power once more!

A miniature universe was born from the four palms of 'Brahma,' and the power wielded by the creator extended outward from it. The countless dragon heads that emerged from the River Styx were unilaterally isolated from 'Brahma' by the rapidly stretched spacetime before they even touched him. Then, within the three luminous divisions that served as the battleground, a phantom galaxy silently appeared, like a bubble.

The nascent universe covered the existing universe, and before the world's corrective forces began to operate and destroy or repel this new world, the physical and energy rules of this battlefield were completely altered under Alice's will.

The Styx River and its myriad dragon heads, formed just moments before, collapsed the instant they were created due to the shifting laws of energy flow. Alice had ruthlessly disregarded the second law of thermodynamics, rendering the Styx's spontaneous energy absorption from the outside futile. Although such a rule could only last for a fleeting moment before collapsing completely, it was enough for her to achieve her desired goal before that.

The materialization of the Styx River was destroyed, leaving only the pure spiritual light born from a mysterious cause. The next moment, the illusory galaxy, like a bubble, vanished completely. The newly born world rapidly collapsed inwards towards its origin, and in the process of collapse, it carried the Styx's spiritual light, now deprived of external energy supply, back to its origin!

Brahma's four hands then formed intricate hand seals, and the Light of the Mind, drawn to its origin by the world's self-destruction, was imprisoned in the center of these seals, enveloped by rings of runes. Deprived of external energy supply and its divine form as a vessel, the Light of the Mind within the restrained barrier still retained its immortal nature of denying entropy change, but in terms of combat, it was hardly better off than the true gods in the Lord of the Rings world who were dragged down from the heavens by the Cataclysm!

Struggling was futile, for repression had already begun. And the war, naturally, came to an end.

Alice was not surprised by this ending.

Because this battle, from the very beginning, from billions of years ago, even two eras ago, was part of her plan—she was the one who stripped Satan of his personhood in the world of the Ancient Scroll, she was the one who would seal Satan with Ismir's dragon body, causing him to fall into the flow of time. She even deliberately arranged for Zheng Zha and Sirin, who traveled through time to her era, to fight Ismir's vessel within the flow of time, in order to adjust the timing of Ismir's arrival. And Ismir's point of impact, the gas giant planet that became the dragon's nest, and even the planetary system located ten light-years away from the God's Chessboard—all of this was within her calculations.

The birth of the Styx Light surprised her, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. Throwing the Ismir Vessel into this point in time was part of her experiment to explore the divine forging process within the belief system. And when she reaped the rewards, having understood the balance of power from the very beginning, she naturally maintained complete control of the battle's rhythm from start to finish!

She won't lose. She wouldn't even make a move if she didn't have a 90% or higher chance of winning. How could she possibly lose?

But even if we don't lose, it only means we won't lose in this phase.

Brahma's eyes were fixed on the Styx Light of the Soul, trapped within the Four Seals and struggling incessantly. The barrier binding it swiftly transformed into an independent world. This time, she would crush it into dust from the outside as the world took shape. The trapped Light of the Soul had no chance of escape, but just as she was about to act, a strange voice suddenly appeared in her consciousness.

—【Why refuse?】The voice was soft and magnetic; the mere change in tone possessed an overwhelming persuasive power to distort the thinking of any mortal being.

“The burden of cause and effect is too heavy to bear,” Alice replied calmly. She searched her memories and compared the data, and then discovered that this voice was similar to the subtle melody that had suddenly appeared when the Light of the Styx first appeared. She immediately knew the result of her search.

—As expected, within her plan.

“I don’t want to become another ‘Satan,’ and I don’t want to be reduced to food for mythological archetypes before I even have the qualifications to become ‘Satan.’”