Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

—【There are many places in Heaven and the Abyss, and the Primordial World doesn't mind having one more Lord of Myriad Changes among the Saints.】

"We have different paths, and many things become troublesome afterward."

—[The primordial world possesses the magnanimity to seek common ground while reserving differences, and your choice of 'Brahma' is merely jumping from one layer of cause and effect to another. The essence remains unchanged; why would you reject the kind hand that has repeatedly offered you assistance?]

"...Are you this patient with everyone who refuses to follow your path?"

The conversation ended there. The next moment, the complex barrier enveloping the Styx's spiritual light vanished completely without a trace under the suppression of the Four Seals. At the same time, whispers, like the rolling of water, echoed throughout this planetary system with one star and six planets.

—[I cannot arrive here at this time, but as long as my myth exists, or even in any world where it once existed, 'I' will inevitably exist once cause and effect are intertwined. Since you insist on refusing my investment and prematurely resolving this karmic conflict, then the 'I' in this world will fight you. If you win, everything will be over. If you lose, you will not die, but 'I' will destroy your divine authority and sever your Dao fruit.]

—【But you still had the opportunity to choose again at that time.】

Alice let out a soft breath.

She remained unsurprised. After all, they had dragged a sage down from the primordial world, belittled him, and attempted to devour him. Such a commotion, even with the intervention of a supreme god, could not have gone unnoticed by the primordial world, high above all the heavens. It was inevitable that 'Satan's' gaze would fall upon them; even if it wasn't on their side, the karmic entanglements of others would likely have attracted the sage's scrutiny.

What's meant to happen will happen sooner or later. Since there's no escaping it, it's better to detonate it at the right time. After all, there's already that guy who looks like Kororos who set a precedent; relying on the main god to prevent all prying eyes from the primordial world is simply unrealistic!

The colossal 'Brahma' spun in the void, its four all-seeing faces quickly pinpointing its desired target. In her extraordinary vision, a star twenty light-minutes away was collapsing inward at an incredible speed. And the true god named 'Satan' was being born within the Tree of Images of the Hunting Saints, centered on the Abyssal Mind Light catalyzed by the Dao Erosion!

The next moment, 'Satan' opened his eyes.

Chapter Ninety-Four: The Decisive Battle, Part Four

The dark River Styx surged forth from the dim sun, and the form enveloped by the River Styx rapidly collapsed from its initial stellar dimensions to a smaller size. When 'Satan' shed its dragon form and finally shrunk the true form of the deity, which had gathered all the energy of a star, into a tall, winged humanoid figure about six meters in height, its accumulated power finally reached a peak.

Creating a planet-sized true form is not difficult for a mid-stage fourth-tier powerhouse, as it simply requires expanding their existence scale. By allowing their body to absorb external matter and energy with the support of the Light of the Mind, they can infinitely enlarge their form. Essentially, it's not much different from creating a giant golem and then filling it with the 'pilot' of the Light of the Mind. Therefore, collapsing a planet-sized true form back to its normal operational size represents a higher level of application of the Light of the Mind.

Because the true form of a deity is not a balloon or a bubble. It is a solid entity, a physical weapon formed upon completion, possessing immense defensive and offensive capabilities, and internally equipped with countless functional devices. Even the most basic deity's true form is not fundamentally different from a celestial fortress cast from titanium alloy. Furthermore, compressing a deity's true form to the size of a mortal without diminishing its power is more than ten times more difficult than compressing the Earth into a glass sphere without harming even a single bacterium!

The theories and technologies required to complete this project are too numerous and complex to elaborate on here. In the multiverse, the ability to collapse a planetary-sized entity into a near-primitive form without diminishing its effectiveness can be considered the pinnacle of the true god stage.

Unlocking the four limits of the genetic lock refers to this stage. Aside from Zheng Zha, who had an unfair advantage, skipping the planetary true form stage and reaching the peak by relying on the Primordial Series and the Light of the Mind, the gods that Ex, Altshu, and Luo Ye tormented, as well as the now-appearing 'Satan,' are all in this stage.

And is Alice one of them?

The answer is—she's here now.

When 'Satan' manifested his full power by taking advantage of the sun's dimming light, Alice, standing twenty light-minutes away, wasn't just standing there foolishly watching. She knew very well that she couldn't interrupt this 'second transformation' of the descending saint's incarnation; she neither could nor would she. Because what she sought was to sever this karmic ties, and to do so required a desperate battle that demonstrated her will and reason.

So, what should we do?

With a slight thought from the girl, Brahma's four faces lowered their eyelids, and his divine form, originally comparable in size to a gas giant, rapidly collapsed inward under the influence of gravitational tides. The material structure that formed his true form quickly decayed and then evolved. Each generation of change was accompanied by an increase in size and a decrease in volume.

The first step is to transform the high-strength, self-healing alloy, supported by energy fields and runic structures, into dwarf star matter. This allows electrons to detach from the atomic nucleus, degenerating the matter into a degenerate state. The second step involves further inward collapse from this degenerate state, compressing protons into neutrons. Once the neutron star's golem-like form stabilizes, the even more powerful third step will begin.

She put into use the strong mutual material smelting technology she obtained from the Trisolaran civilization, allowing the true form of the neutron to continue collapsing inward. When the neutron disintegrates into quarks, gathers into a slurry, constructs an unobservable, absolutely smooth surface, and gathers all gravitational tides into one, the third step will be completed.

Alice opened her eyes.

At this moment, she is approximately 533 centimeters tall. Converted to a common ancient unit of measurement, that's one zhang plus six chi. The gravitational tides used to collapse her true body's mass are no longer effective and are completely contained within her. Furthermore, the numerous magical energy interference mechanisms within her body have been streamlined and consolidated, eliminating unnecessary functions and relocating them to more suitable areas.

This stage has likely reached its limit. Alice can now clearly feel that, with this physical form, she can move freely on the surface of stars, in spacetime rifts, and even on the event horizon of black holes. She doesn't need to prepare any spells, nor will these extreme cosmic phenomena harm her body. All she needs to do is wave her hand forward—no, she doesn't even need to wave her hand—she only needs to release the gravitational tides that are restraining her movement within her body, and the instantaneous burst of gravitational field will be enough to distort spacetime on a large scale, turning the earth within a radius of thousands of kilometers into dust.

Her power had reached a bottleneck in classical physics; beyond that, it was beyond the reach of purely materialistic realms. She felt that smashing the moon with a single punch wouldn't be a problem, and if she bombarded it continuously using combat techniques effective at this stage, destroying a planet wouldn't be too difficult.

But that's not enough, not nearly enough. There's only one chance to defeat 'Satan,' and the cause and effect must be completely settled in this Satan Hunting Ritual.

She had reached the limits of materialism she could attain, but the idealistic techniques she had acquired from Aichidra had only been of limited use. Her thoughts then coalesced, and her four arms, wielding the four seals, stretched outwards. The next moment, four miniature worlds created using idealistic techniques simultaneously appeared in her four palms, and after forming physical shells, they took the form of the four sacred artifacts she had previously possessed!

She probably couldn't exhale now. Because all her external organs were now just decorative, dispensable objects. But just when she thought she was ready, her opponent simultaneously crossed a distance of twenty light-minutes, appearing directly one light-second away from her.

A very suitable distance, a suitable distance for combat.

Without a word, the four divine artifacts on 'Brahma's' four arms simultaneously shattered. The pseudo-origin points formed by the collapse and destruction of the four miniature worlds, under the control of the four divine arms, rushed straight towards the location of 'Satan'!

A burst of blazing white light erupted, and a miniature white hole corresponding to the black hole suddenly appeared and pointed towards the space region where 'Satan' was located! However, in the next moment, the Styx River, which surged from the dim sun, flooded the entire battlefield shrouded in light.

White holes release matter and energy. The Styx River devours matter and energy.

All things vanished into chaos, and the rules, twisted wantonly by the loss of order, transformed the battleground into a viscous soup of mass, difficult to observe and interfere with. Countless celestial beings, some the size of stars, flashed and disappeared from within this soup. The celestial realm covered by the battlefield expanded outwards at a speed visible to the naked eye, even across light-years, quickly covering one-tenth of the planetary system!

One-tenth, thousands of light-seconds, billions of miles.

The war will continue, and victory or defeat may not be decided in a fleeting moment. Even upon reaching the level of a true god, the rules of combat between those at the transcendent level will not change. Since no victor has been determined in the first second, it is not uncommon for a battle to drag on for millennia in a realm where time itself has lost its meaning.

The intensity of this battlefield continued to escalate. Soon, it was progressing to a stage where even extraordinary beings in another combat zone ten light-years away could clearly perceive it. With the rules of matter and energy distorted, a distance of ten light-years would probably not require light to travel for ten years to reach.

No, perhaps even faster, much faster.

Because extraordinary beings don't need to see everything with their eyes.

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

"It's quite a spectacle..." On the other side of the two battlefields, in a corner of the God's Chessboard, while those unbridled true gods were unleashing their power throughout the universe, the anticipated third battlefield had already opened. As Altshu pulled the molten sword from the crimson star, the Moon Palace, equipped with a massive amount of war machines, collided with the goblin mothership. And as the star ten light-years away dimmed due to the arrival of 'Satan,' the two progenitors of giants, whom Alice had schemed against, entered their designated battlefield.

Ymir, the Frost Giant. Qua, the Sun-Chasing Giant.

Unlike those exaggerated individuals, Ymir and Qua, while also possessing the rank of True God, clearly had flaws in their power level. In practical terms, their arrival amounted to nothing more than two moving snow-capped mountains and volcanoes stretching hundreds of kilometers—the snow mountain giants crashed near the last mortal lair, engaging in battle with the Zhao siblings. Meanwhile, the volcano giants collided head-on with the massive hollow base rising from the Earth's core, and under Chu Xuan's command, were surrounded and overwhelmed by the fairy army left behind by Patchouli and the remaining digital reincarnators of the Central Continent Team.

On one side was a scene from a monster battle movie, and on the other, a performance of the wrath of the gods. Alice thoughtfully arranged the two battle zones at opposite ends of the world. As the earth trembled violently due to the battle between these extraordinary beings, with earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and hurricanes spreading everywhere, a certain reincarnator who had been assigned an extra mission left his own battle line and arrived on another continent that was still relatively stable.

Xiao Honglu rubbed his forehead, his eyes slightly closed. He had ended his observation and contemplation of the vast battlefield in outer space. His life level remained at the limit of the third tier, just a step away from advancement. Although he knew very well that he could become a transcendent being at any time, he felt he would probably have to wait a while longer until the right opportunity arrived.

The right time... What is the right time?

He didn't know, and he desperately wanted to know. This decision stemmed from something deep within him—perhaps intuition—that interfered with his thinking. He felt that if he could take this step at the right time, he might be able to skip the terrible initial stage of the fourth level, where he couldn't control himself due to fighting against cellular will and suppressing inner demons. He could reach the complete form of a true god simply by gathering the light of his soul.

He had a beautiful idea, but that was all he dared to think about for now. He had no intention of investing in the later stages of gathering spiritual light; after all, one must take things one step at a time. Even though he, Xiao, had lived for so many years, his height was still pitifully short.

[Alright, I don't need to waste too much time and energy on irrelevant things. Let me finish the task that Sister Alice assigned me first.]

Within his consciousness, a live broadcast of several battlefields on the God's Chessboard, based on a mental network, continued. On the Moon Palace side, an interstellar war was raging. Under the Moon Palace's cover, the combined forces of the Moonlit Race and the Mech Race clashed with the temporary alliance of Goblin and Forest Elf outer space fleets within a tenth of a light-second, or 30,000 kilometers of space. Lasers, high-energy rays, and plasma streams crisscrossed the area. Meanwhile, the 'Spirit Destruction Technique,' considered a trump card by the Forest Elf race and the 'Marrow Explosion,' a powerful attack capable of leveling a continent on Earth, and the 'Marrow Explosion,' considered an ace by the Goblin race, had already been triggered at least ten times!

The attack was incredibly powerful, far exceeding the scale of 'Ivan the Great'. However, with the support of the Moon Palace, Patchouli was like a drizzle. Ten star-like energy orbs emerged around her; she used one to neutralize the fleet's ultimate weapon, and another to wipe out half of the goblin and forest elf fleet. As the remaining eight orbs began to spin, the two deities finally appeared before her.

This is the battle situation in the Moon Palace, while on Zhao Yingkong's side, it's a spectacle of an ancient serpent battling a giant. The giant serpent Xiangliu, transformed from Zhao Yingkong, is locked in a fierce battle with the Frost Giant Ymir. The blood spurting from the giant's body during the battle is Zhao Yingkong's doing. While the ancient serpent and the giant are fighting, the mortals in the settlement seem to be able to do nothing more than wave flags and shout from within the protective barrier…

Xiao Honglu shook his head, glancing casually towards the Great Hollow. The battle there was equally unremarkable. Aside from Luo Gandao being forcibly stuffed into a giant robot by Chu Xuan and forced to fight Kua, there was nothing noteworthy. He couldn't be bothered to think about the outcome.

He opened his eyes, and was met with mountains of corpses, seas of blood, and an overwhelming aura of black death.

Alice's task for him was to kill as many orcs as possible, and since he wasn't needed on either the Great Void or the Mortal Habitat, he naturally devoted all his time and energy to this mission. Twenty seconds ago, he arrived near the largest known orc royal court on the continent, wiping out seven-tenths of the orcs within within ten seconds. He spent five seconds observing the battle in the sky, and then another five seconds slowly rubbing his head.

The mission was almost complete. And the ultimate authority of the orcs, the priestess's organization that controlled the priesthood, had appeared before him.

Chapter Ninety-Five: The Decisive Battle - Part Five

The Priestess's Agency is the orcish race's theocratic institution. While it's quite peculiar for a race without gods to have a theocratic agency operating parallel to the monarchy, it's clear that this dualistic governance approach cannot provide the orcs with sufficient defensive capabilities when a truly powerful enemy arrives.

When an irresistible natural disaster strikes, all systems and institutions become worthless waste. Ultimately, they are nothing more than bonds that unite the weak to fight against the strong. And in this world, the weak have never been able to overcome the strong.

Weakness is weakness, and being unable to win is being unable to win. This is not an obstacle that can be overcome by willpower or momentum, because willpower and courage are also taken into account in the comparison of strength and weakness. Therefore, when time and distance are no longer sufficient for wisdom and strategy to take effect, the weak will inevitably perish under the blows of the strong.

These are the rules, these are the principles. This is the undeniable order.

When Xiao Honglu stepped over the corpses and pools of blood of the orc kings, princes, and the royal guards' most loyal soldiers into the orcs' last line of defense, this natural justice was once again revealed through his hands.

"Personally, I don't really like this kind of work of slaughtering races. So I will try to be as decisive and efficient as possible when I do it. Since your death is already inevitable, if you can cooperate a little, it will be a win-win situation for both of us."

Xiao Honglu spoke calmly, and as he continued taking a step, he seemingly casually waved his hand to the side. However, this simple wave unleashed an extremely compressed, blazing wind blade that slashed through the air. Immediately afterward, the powerful orc warrior who had been hiding atop a temple pillar, attempting to leap down and assassinate him, was torn into dozens of pieces of varying sizes in mid-air.

Thick blood mist spread everywhere, and he could clearly smell the fear and determination permeating the air. More orc warriors roared and charged at him from within the witch's temple, having activated their Bloodlust state. However, without exception, they were all bound by telekinesis before they could even get within three meters of Xiao Honglu, and were then compressed into lifeless spheres or cubes.

"Ah, it seems you've chosen to resist... I'm not surprised, after all, if our positions were reversed, I would also choose to fight to the end. But it doesn't matter, because your actions still benefit me in achieving my goal in the shortest possible time." Xiao Honglu nodded slightly. He then casually unleashed even more powerful magical energy, unleashing a bloodbath among the orcish ranks.

Battle, relentless battle. Battle, a one-sided massacre—long ago, Patchouli of this era had already passed on all the information related to the orc race to Xiao Honglu of this era. He knew very well that the strongest among the orcs was merely a warrior with an A-level enhancement and a third-tier gene lock. Having lost their perception of elves, they were destined to be unable to develop powerful magical devices that conformed to the current worldview; in other words, the strongest individual among them was equivalent to the ultimate power possessed by this race.

The fact that the orcs are ranked last among the fifteen races is not a joke. Just as in the martial arts world, there are only wrong names, not wrong nicknames. If the orcs possessed a secret weapon capable of defeating any other race, they certainly wouldn't remain at this rank. Because on this chessboard of the gods, the elves' use of technology is equivalent to mathematics, physics, and chemistry in a typical mechanical civilization. And a nation completely ignorant of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, on Earth, would probably only be found among the primitive islands near the equator.

Yes, if the first six of the fifteen races are equivalent to developed countries on Earth or certain 'self-proclaimed developing countries', then the last eight can be categorized into various large and small powers in the Third World. The status of the Orcs, after the change of generations, would be equivalent to some primitive tribes in Africa or on isolated islands. The highest level of attention they can receive is only this level, slightly better than that of wild animals without any vested interests.

Ah, that's right. If the beastmen are considered primitive humans, then the mortals of this world can be categorized as wild animals with little economic value. For a powerful race that prides itself on intelligence, wild animals that cannot be used as luxury materials or have delicious meat are not considered targets for large-scale hunting. But for primitive humans, anything with flesh can be considered food.

In the past, Patchouli had uploaded a report. It mentioned that, based on collected information, in the thousand years before the arrival of the Reincarnators, approximately 100,000 mortals died each year for various reasons. Of these, only 5% died in battles between powerful races, 20% died from mindless demons and severe weather. The remaining 75%, or 75,000 people each year, died at the hands of the most widely distributed native inhabitants of this continent—the Beastmen.

Seventy-five thousand people a year, seventy-five million people in a thousand years. And from the time humanity first existed in this world, from the time when many powerful races began to fight each other, to the present day, how many more than seventy thousand years have passed?

When Xiao Honglu entered the orcish royal court, he could clearly distinguish human bone features from the building materials of the surrounding houses. He could smell human flesh in the meat sold in the orcish market. He could also clearly detect clues in the air about various skull-like artifacts, bone tools, weapons, and even large livestock farms used to raise 'a certain type of meat'. He could even sense freshly fried liver inside the stomach of the first orcish warrior who attacked him.

If he were Alice, he would likely have been able to clearly see the bloodthirsty aura descending from the heavens and clinging to every orc the moment he arrived in the vicinity. Perhaps it was for this reason that the wise men, just minutes after arriving in this world, reassigned their colleagues, either to work on infrastructure projects in the vast underground caverns thousands of kilometers deep, or to venture into the wilderness (like the man surnamed Zheng), to deal with those demonic species whose cannibalism no one would consider abnormal.

He is not Alice, so he cannot see. But even if he cannot see, it does not prevent him from unleashing calamity and death upon the orcs gathered there.

Strong is strong, and weak is weak. Once even the strongest warrior among the orcs, who lacked advanced magical techniques, was shredded to pieces by the spatial storm he unleashed from his cards, there were naturally no other significant variables in the remaining stages.

The one that lurked in the shadows to assassinate them was crushed into a cube using telekinesis.

The blood-red creature, attempting a direct assault, was reduced to ashes by mental and magical lightning and fire.

Even those mutated orcs marked as requiring special attention in Patchouli's intelligence, who, like giant gorillas, could grow stronger with each battle, were no exception. He could simply use the same method he employed against the Southern Flame Continent team in The Lord of the Rings, summoning a thousand spell knives with cards to completely annihilate these powerful warriors.

As he walked from the outer shrine of the priestess's organization to the inner shrine, all the male orcs with powerful combat abilities had already perished before his eyes. A group of orc war priestesses, whose elite strength surpassed even that of the king's personal guard, attempted to escort several important figures to escape through a side passage, but he detected their presence using his mental scanning abilities, comparable to those of a superhuman.

"I think it's better if you don't add extra workload for me." Xiao Honglu shook his head and snapped his fingers. The next moment, a bolt of lightning struck down, burying the secret passage and the escapees inside underground. The land then began to ripple, and just as the buried war witch tried to break free, a huge meteor suddenly fell from the sky!

No, not just one. But one after another, and after seven meteors struck in succession, the area where the secret passage was originally located had been transformed from a valley into a basin. The raging shockwaves, carrying modulated high-intensity radiation, easily destroyed all life within a ten-kilometer radius of the shrine to the witch.

Only then did Xiao Honglu refocus his wandering attention and place it on a small hall not far in front of him, the last place in the witch's organization where life was still present.

"Please stop! We... are no longer a threat to you." A graceful, mature fox-eared priestess spread her arms to block his way, while behind her stood a dozen or so young orc girls huddled together, trembling. They must have been apprentice priestesses recently selected for the priestess organization. When Xiao Honglu looked at them, one or two of the poor little ones even fainted from fright.

The Orcs are a fascinating race. The males resemble strong, upright animals, while the females are like ordinary young women with beautiful faces, slender figures, and some bestial features. Sometimes, the females are even mistaken for ordinary people, which doesn't contradict their practice of using ordinary people as food and materials.

Xiao Honglu had known about this for a long time, but he didn't care. He wasn't into animal ears, and he had killed countless genuine mortals. Naturally, he wouldn't waver in his work because of such slight differences in aesthetic taste.

However, when he shifted his gaze from the young witches to the mature witch standing before him, trembling with tears streaming down her face as she struggled to straighten her back, his eyes involuntarily twitched violently.

It was so similar, so incredibly similar. Her expression, her tone of voice, her posture, her face, her movements… the fox-eared witch before him was almost identical to a woman who had left a deep impression on him. He felt as if he had returned once more to that mental hospital—that ward, that fire, and that foolish woman who braved the flames to rush in, determined to save him even if it meant being engulfed in fire!

How stupid! When a natural disaster strikes, saving your own life is enough. Why waste your precious life on that brat? Doesn't she know that brat would rather die than see her hurt even a little?

I don't think this is a coincidence, Alice.

Xiao Honglu blinked, a fleeting look of complex emotions flashing across his eyes.

"Whether you threaten me or not is meaningless. I simply came here and simply want to kill all of you orcs," the boy, who looked to be twelve years old, whispered. It was unclear who he was speaking to.

"Then, then at least spare the children, okay?" the fox-eared witch pleaded, taking a pitiful step towards Xiao Honglu. "They don't understand anything, they haven't done anything. I don't care what I become, the other beasts don't care what they become, but at least the children... give them a chance to grow up, okay?"

Her tone was mournful, her voice sincere and poignant. She had only taken two steps toward Xiao Honglu when her legs gave way and she knelt down, tilting her head back, two lines of clear tears streaming down her pretty face.

Few men could harden their hearts when faced with the pleading of such a pitiful beauty, especially when all she asked for was a trivial matter.

However, Xiao Honglu was an exception.

His experience of playing Gwent for millennia in the wizarding world echoed in his mind. Then, the essence of the ideas he had gained from that experience clearly appeared in his heart.