Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Zheng Zha didn't understand, and he was always too lazy to figure it out. He only knew that when Altshu burned everything, the 'Revenge' divine spark attached to his body also burned in sync, as if in resonance. Then, an overwhelming amount of energy, which he couldn't even perceive himself, surged into his body from all directions, and then he subconsciously slashed forward.

He didn't know what he had struck, but he felt he had struck something—a feeling he had experienced not long ago, leaving a wound on the Lord of War. And now the same feat was being repeated in his hands.

Where am I? — I don't know. All I see is darkness. Even the concept of 'darkness' has ceased to exist. There is no light, no sound, no touch, no change.

Everything was nothingness, emptiness. He couldn't feel his hands, his feet, his soul, or his body. Even the flow of energy and the existence of the light of the soul were beyond his perception. At this moment, all he could perceive was himself.

There was only 'I', and nothing else. A sense of familiarity seemed to emerge, and then he recognized something else besides 'I'.

I am fighting.

I'm fighting someone.

I... am swinging the knife in my hand at Altshu.

The moment he realized this, a solemn and majestic voice suddenly rang out in his ear!

—'Information about the main god is being revealed to characters in the storyline; reward points are being deducted and calculated... Please immediately eliminate all those currently aware of this information.'

There's no mistake, this is the voice of the Supreme God. The Supreme God's declaration. It's a warning from that great being, a warning about the leakage of secrets by reincarnators that hasn't been mentioned for a very, very long time—Zheng Zha had almost forgotten that such a rule existed in the reincarnation world. And when he recalled this rule, a question, a bit of confusion, involuntarily arose in his heart.

Who... am I revealing information about the Main God Space to?

His thoughts raced, and then in the next moment, or rather, the instant the concept of 'the next moment' surfaced in his mind, his question was answered.

Zheng Zha's vision stabilized again, and matter and concepts reappeared in his consciousness. He was astonished to find himself back in the private company before entering the Main God Space, and once again, he was just an ordinary white-collar worker!

Wait, why did I use 'again'?

A thought swept through his mind, and the next moment he clearly perceived that the power of the fourth-order gene lock was fully manifested in his cognition. He could clearly perceive the changes in the life of every living thing in the office building where the company was located, feel the operation of the geomagnetic field beneath his feet, and his will then spread outward, and all the changes in the sky and the ground were reflected in his eyes!

Extreme distance and extreme proximity were no obstacle for him. With the power of a true god once again under his control, he could not only observe the subtle changes in airflow hundreds of kilometers above the ground, but also clearly see the blood flow and cellular function of a white-collar worker he had some prior acquaintance with sitting at the desk next to him. He saw the man stand up, turn to him, and then smile and invite him—

"—Brother Zheng, how about we go grab a couple of drinks at 'California Summer' later?"

Zheng Zha remembered exactly what had happened, and he remembered it with exceptional clarity. Because in his memory, he had joined the Main God Space precisely within these past few days!

And the next moment—

The entire office building shattered with a deafening roar! An invisible force spread outwards, moving everyone who would have been crushed by the debris to the safety of the open streets. And as the terrified crowd screamed in panic, Zheng Zha, who had once again unfurled his crimson dragon wings, clearly saw a radiant figure in the sky with eleven and a half pairs of wings spread out!

"Oh? Is this the time when you rose to prominence? Zheng Zha, I didn't expect that it would only take you such a short time to transform from an ordinary person to someone who stands shoulder to shoulder with the gods."

The Lord of War's voice, devoid of any discernible emotion, rang clearly in Zheng Zha's ears. And an energy mass, powerful enough to instantly vaporize the continent beneath Zheng Zha's feet into atoms, reached its breaking point in Altshu's hands!

"Give me—" Space-time distorted, and Zheng Zha, still wearing a suit, teleported in front of Altshu the instant the energy burst forth!

"Get out of my world!"

His punch turned the entire sky crimson, and the intense heat that naturally dissipated from his rage caused the ground temperature to rise by five degrees and the atmosphere hundreds of kilometers above to burn!

'boom--!!!'

A massive hole was blasted through the atmosphere, and a white line stretched from the Earth's surface all the way to the Moon. A huge sword, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, silently materialized in Zheng Zha's hand. As the lunar surface cracked open with a spiderweb-like network of fissures, he had already teleported to the far side of the Moon. His powerful slash, aimed at the white trail that was about to shoot out from the lunar back, was enough to tear the Moon apart!

"Primordial Era - Creation of Heaven and Earth!"

The world before him shattered like a broken mirror with that single swing of his sword, and in the next instant, everything before him suddenly changed!

Everything observable vanished, and when it reappeared, he found himself once again on the divine chessboard of Disbot. The density of spirits in the atmosphere was less than a tenth of what it had been at the start of the battle!

"I was born the strongest, and because I am the strongest, I am lonely. Because I am lonely, I created the Skywing race."

Artes' voice came from not far away. He was astonished to find that this divine chessboard was actually from the ancient times when birds sang and flowers bloomed, and all things flourished. A group of winged girls with wings on their backs, who were as bewildered as infants, had just been created out of thin air by Artes at this point in time. The Lord of War, who had just completed the creation project, casually picked up a giant iron sword from the side.

The next moment, swords clashed. The peaceful and prosperous chessboard of the gods was torn apart by immense force, and a destructive frenzy spread across nearly half the planet in an instant!

"Not an illusion?" Zheng Zha said in a deep voice—he suddenly realized that his lips should not actually be moving, because what he had just said was merely the thought in his mind!

The battlefield shifted thousands of kilometers the instant those four words were uttered. Half the planet's inhabitants perished, the earth tilted, volcanoes erupted, and turbulent tides pounded the shore. Countless clashes of swords and blades raised the temperature within the atmosphere to a level unbearable for ordinary mortals. And with a powerful upward slash from the Lord of War, Zheng Zha, along with approximately three hundred tons of celestial matter, was hurled into outer space!

"It's not an illusion, nor a memory. What appears here is our past. And all thoughts and ideas are echoes of the heart." As Zheng Zha left the chessboard, Altshu struck out of thin air, shattering three hundred tons of stellar matter into dust. However, Zheng Zha casually interfered with gravity, causing the dust to coalesce back into a giant shield made of dwarf star matter. The shield was completely annihilated by the next divine strike, but the longsword pierced through the sword's momentum, leaving a shallow cut on Altshu's shoulder.

"A battle that takes place online?" Zheng Zha frowned slightly. "Without a source, it seems that the only way to determine a winner is to continue this battle until the very end."

The world shattered once more, and in the instant it stabilized, Zheng Zha found himself aboard a ship in an alien world. Here, he encountered Chu Xuan for the first time. For the first time, he used the gene lock in actual combat; for the first time… he witnessed the black blood flowing in the hearts of those he had once presumptuously considered companions.

However, there were very few people present. He didn't see Chu Xuan, Ba Wang, Ling Dian, Zhang Jie, or Zhan Lan. He didn't even see Li Xiaoyi or Li Shuaixi—all he saw were a few blond extras whose names he had long forgotten, as well as some minor men and women. He himself was wearing a Reincarnation Watch, but the watch's interface was completely blank.

“You can understand it this way.” Altshu’s voice rang out again, and the next moment the starship containing the Xenomorph was split in two from head to tail. Zheng Zha frowned, and with a casual flick of his wrist, he moved the new reincarnated humans and the surviving humans on the ship into one or two relatively intact, sealed escape pods. Then the escape pods operated, and the ship wreckage containing the Xenomorph was swept away to dust.

"Continuous travel between different worlds? So that's how you became stronger. So there are so many worlds beyond this one."

Artesius casually blocked Zheng Zha's continuous slashes, and the two immediately engaged in a new round of battle in the vast void. The asteroid containing the Engineer's spaceship and the original alien egg was the first to shatter in the aftershocks of the clash, and the battlefield then spread wildly throughout space.

"You seem puzzled by not seeing your companions? That can only mean that your companions will either grow to the point of being independent of the timeline in the future, or they are currently being protected by a powerful being of a higher rank than you and me—is it that wristwatch? It seems you are not entirely free after all, Zheng Zha."

"Enough talk, Artesius!"—A flash of blade, and the battlefield abruptly halted.

The two intertwined and crashed into the nearest star, whose light immediately dimmed. The next moment, the world's outer shell shattered once more. Zheng Zha returned to the God's Chessboard and saw Altshu isolated in the heavens.

"This is the first time I've realized I'm not free. Because Kororos and Ismir, these outsiders, have arrived today, and my powers are completely ineffective against them." It glanced at the surrounding void. The Lord of Time and the North Wind Dragon, who should have been fighting it at this time, were nowhere to be found. The next moment, because of this momentary distraction, it was kicked to the moon by Zheng Zha—the Moon Palace was shattered, and most of the Moon Song Clan were killed or wounded. However, the Lord of Thunder Moon, who should have been slumbering deep within the Moon Palace, was nowhere to be seen.

Alice isn't here, which is to be expected.

Despite taking a heavy kick, Altshu wasn't bothered by the setback, as it didn't hinder it much. It casually drained the Moon Palace's energy to heal its injuries. It then summoned a giant rock sword to deflect Zheng Zha's blade strike.

The spatial structure was destroyed once more, and when it was rebuilt, the two sides were already on another star. The fire-like star, which was destined for destruction in the future, suffered once again at this moment. Large chunks of stellar matter were torn into fragments of varying sizes by the crisscrossing sword energy and blade light, and then the star's core withered once more.

"So I started thinking from that time on... why I was named Altshu, why I was born to rule war. Why am I the strongest because I am the strongest, and why, even if the amount of divine essence is the same, my power is far superior to those of the many gods I have slain?"

The sword and blade clashed once more. The sword shattered, the blade broke, but Altshu's voice still echoed as the world crumbled.

“I don’t understand, and I don’t understand why I never cared whether I understood or not before. However, the battle with Kororos was meaningless; it was just a fleeting afterimage. The battle with the North Wind Dragon also didn’t ignite my passion, because it had its own nemesis. And that nemesis was not me.”

The echoes lingered, and Zheng Zha found himself back in the desolate world of Death and Apocalypse. His companions were nowhere to be seen; the Great Library, along with the last remaining mortals, was somewhere in outer space, while the endless angelic legion had vanished completely, as if it had never existed in the first place.

"So you really want to know an answer. You really want to know who you really are?" Zheng Zha said in a low voice, raising the blade of the crimson killing blade that he had taken back into his hand.

“Yes, and I believe you can solve this puzzle for me. Because of you and me…” Altshu’s form fell like a star, and the re-collision of swords caused a small flower, composed of flames and clods of earth, to bloom on this barren land. The petals then blossomed, and the yellowish-brown wasteland transformed into a crimson expanse of flames!

"...So similar!"

The battle was still ongoing, with no clear winner. Zheng Zha understood what Altshu meant, and he also knew that Altshu didn't actually expect a verbal response from him.

The warriors' words were not spoken, but clashed with swords. The so-called Lord of War… in reality, desired nothing more than to fight a bloody and satisfying battle like a warrior. Only in this way could it understand its own heart. Only then could it know the true meaning of the war it commanded…

The world shattered once more. This time, what appeared before the two was a divine chessboard devoid of outsiders and reincarnators other than Zheng Zha. The planet, destroyed multiple times along the timeline, was restored to its original state once more, while the two combatants stood at opposite ends of the chessboard, their swords and blades facing each other from afar.

"This time, let's settle this." — The same thought echoed from both sides simultaneously. The warriors' eyes met, their wills completely understood each other. All energy converged in the sword, all will was entrusted to the blade, and then—

"Divine Strike—"

"Primordial Era - Creation of Heaven and Earth"

The enormous chessboard of God turned gray in that instant, and when the concept of color reappeared, the two were already standing back to back in the place where the other had been.

The next moment, countless sword marks appeared on Zheng Zha's body, and his body broke apart and reassembled again and again.

Altshu slowly turned his head to look at the knife wound that ran from front to back on the right side of his body.

"So, I only have eleven wings on my right side?" he muttered to himself. The next moment, fragments of powerful beings, resembling luminous feathers, began to fall from his wound.

The world shattered and then reformed once more. The two who had emerged victorious finally returned to the correct timeline.

Chapter 100 - The Decisive Battle - Ten

Zheng Zha opened his eyes. As he felt his strength and injuries heal, he also witnessed Altshu's defeat and death. This long battle had finally come to an end, and Altshu's complete annihilation was still a few words away.

Zheng Zha let out a soft breath, his gaze towards the slowly dying Altshu filled with the joy of victory and the mutual respect between warriors. A trace of power, not his own, was peeled from the largest wound, and he sighed softly, "In your final moments, you became stronger than before."

This wasn't a victor's humility towards the loser, but rather a statement of an established fact. In the final clash of swords, Zheng Zha clearly sensed that he had glimpsed a key to reaching a higher level. However, while his progress was immense, Altshu's was even greater. In the final 'divine strike' as its power waned, this former master of war clearly had one foot already in a higher realm. Yet, before that realm could transform into power, the outcome was already decided.

While it is natural for the strong to bully the weak, the powerful can still be defeated by the weak due to luck and cunning. Although intelligence and luck can be considered part of power, victory or defeat cannot be judged so simply.

While Altshu has indeed become stronger, if he could have achieved that strength even a millisecond or a microsecond earlier, he would have one foot in the fourth level of mastery, capable of observing the myriad worlds with his mental light. This would undoubtedly give him an overwhelming advantage in this battle. Once he stabilizes his realm, he could even put up a fight against Kororos and Aichidra from this world's timeline. He might still lose in the end, but at least he could make a move before that defeat.

However, he could not obtain that one microsecond. Because in the instant when both sides were fighting with all their might on the timeline, the flow of time itself in the objective universe had already lost its meaning—he was destined not to obtain that one microsecond of time that transformed the virtual into reality, because before the outcome was decided, time itself did not exist at all.

He was destined to fail, destined to die, and then, before his death, he witnessed the brilliance of a higher realm.

More fragments drifted down around him, and he slowly turned his head toward Zheng Zha.

“Yes, I have become stronger.” The former Lord of War clenched his fist lightly, and fragments crumbled outward from his fingertips. “This should be the first time I have become stronger through my own battles and training, instead of being driven by that War Godhead and thus becoming ‘the strongest because I am the strongest’... I should thank you, Zheng Zha, because you are the first person to let me feel the joy of battle and growth.”

His gaze passed over Zheng Zha and turned to the void.

"But I should also hate you, because you made me see the truth of all this... The Reincarnators, the Tree Barrier, the Hunter Saint's Cage, and that silver giant serpent perched atop the sky... It turns out that everything is an illusion, and all things are nothing more than a chessboard in the hands of you outsiders."

Zheng Zha raised an eyebrow, neither confirming nor denying. Although he couldn't understand a single word Altshu said, he tentatively placed the blame on Margot Lloyd in his mind. However, he was already used to being schemed against by his companions, so while he had doubts, he wasn't surprised.

Artes easily saw through Zheng Zha's doubts.

"You don't know either?... Well, at least this way, it's still a fair fight." He shook his head, took a deep breath, and the next moment, his constantly cracking hand plunged into his own chest!

An endless radiance seemed to burst forth from his body, only to shatter in the instant it overflowed. A power Zheng Zha could not comprehend clashed and roared within Altshu, and faintly, a toad-like roar echoed resounding through the heavens!

No, that's not a toad. It's some kind of creature similar to a toad, but completely different. Suddenly, a vast and incomparable full moon appeared in Zheng Zha's eyes. On the moon was a palace, and a three-legged behemoth standing in the palace was silently roaring as it crumbled!

That's the Moon Toad! Originating from the original myths, it accompanies Chang'e along with the Moon Toad, and in some unofficial histories, it is even regarded as the incarnation of Chang'e!

The next moment, the phantom disappeared, leaving only Altshu standing tall with a huge hole in his chest!

He looked at Zheng Zha, a faint smile appearing on his lips.

"Don't worry about it, this is the reward that the winner deserves. Although everything is an illusion, at least this battle is real to me."

"Do you think so, Zheng Zha?"

The next moment, his form completely disintegrated. Countless fragments also disintegrated and shattered in space, ultimately becoming meaningless clumps of matter and residual energy. Interstellar winds swept by, and the high-energy radiation of space quickly erased even this last trace.

Arthas, the Lord of War, finally met his end at this moment. From this moment on, all the original gods in this world were destroyed.

The age of the gods has ended. At the top of the chessboard of the gods, the most powerful piece has been lost.

Zheng Zha's momentum began to weaken, and only then did two streaks of light fly in from afar and directly enter the magic ring on Zheng Zha's finger. Accompanied by a warm sensation spreading from his fingertip to his whole body, Zheng Zha's aura, which had fallen with the loss of his 'Revenge' divine status, stabilized. The power belonging to the true god's status was completely in his hands, and his further insights remained.

The battle was won, and the victors reaped the rewards.

Zheng Zha, now victorious, stared at the traces of Altshu's disappearance. Several seconds later, he let out a long sigh.

“You’re right, this is a real battle. The winner lives, the loser dies. For both of us, it’s a brutal, uncompromising war with no room for interference or holding back. Winning this war is my honor.”

“Alteshu…”

His gaze shifted, sweeping over the location of the Moon Palace and the two giant battlefields on the God's Chessboard. When he realized he no longer needed to intervene, he turned his gaze beyond the stars, watching another war unfold in a star system ten light-years away.

And the final battle belonging to this universe is about to be decided.