Four of the five hovering islands that made up the five main halls of the Nightshield sect had been torn apart and crashed down into the dark ocean, swallowed by the waves. But even so, no one was able to hear a single sound during the entire process, the sky-shattering roar of the gray bolt of lightning had temporarily deafened everyone present.

The people of the Nightshield sect were frozen in place, their gazes locked onto the flickering bolt of lightning that still scarred the sky, an eternal reminder of just what sort of power a scourge could carry. Even the two senior disciples were frozen in place, their feet unwilling to move as their gazes slowly swept their surroundings, taking in the emptiness that the grand Nightshield sect had become.

Liang Chen was sprawled out on the ground only a short distance away from the peach-colored flag and the green interspatial ring that Chen Dairong had left behind after vanishing from existence. His right arm was completely gone all the way up to his shoulder, his spear lying on the ground while still crackling with a few arcs of lightning. He was spewing up vast amounts of blood, a man-sized pool of it already forming in front of and around him.

He only had to bear the power of the attack as it moved through his body and entered the spear, but even then it was still too much for him to bear. His organs and veins were in a horrible state right now, his lungs and his torn open stomach flooding with his own blood. The final attack carried a risk he was well aware of, he knew that there was a chance that he couldn't withstand the force of the attack and suffer horribly from it.

But it was a risk he had to take, Chen Dairong had to die and she had to do so in one attack so that she couldn't get the chance to heal. And his attack had done just that, erasing her from existence and also allowing Liang Chen to properly test out the power that was born when he stacked multiple versions of the Dragon Lord's Three Steps.

Now that he was 100% certain that he could stack the steps onto each other, it was practically the same as adding three new steps to the Dragon Lord's Three Steps. The memories his birth parents planted into him didn't mention anything about anyone stacking multiple steps together, the Sebettu revered the Heaven Devouring Dragon too much to think about altering the supreme technique he left for them.

As such, Liang Chen momentarily guessed that he might be the first person to discover this ability of the Dragon Lord's Three Steps. As he thought about it, his thoughts wandering while he was vomiting up blood, it couldn't really be called the Dragon Lord's Three Steps now that he had basically added three new steps to it. As such, he decided that he might as well change the name a little, temporarily settling for calling it the Dragon King's Six Steps. He also felt somewhat curious, could he continue to stack the steps onto each other? Was it possible to go all the way to nine steps, maybe even further?

Liang Chen vomited up a particularly sour mouthful of blood, his wandering thoughts quickly snapping back to the situation around him. His eyes weakly raised to the sky, a bloody smile spreading on his face when he saw that flickering yet eternal bolt of lightning. The strongest attack he had ever launched, a proof of how far he had come, how long the road he had walked so far was. but it wasn't enough, not yet. The Sealing God Empyrean would certainly be able to easily handle such an attack, the Nine Star Demon God would probably be able to deal with it even easier. He needed more strength, the road ahead of him was still long and thorny.

He stretched out his left arm, his fingers digging into the blood-soaked earth and dragging him forward. He crawled forward using his left arm, his legs didn't seem to be willing to listen to him right now so he could only rely on his remaining arm to carry him forward. The peach-colored flag was only three steps away from him but it still took him an entire minute to crawl to it. The people from the Nightshield sect were luckily still completely entranced and shocked by the flickering bolt of lightning so none of them stopped him before he reached the flag.

He grabbed hold of the flag, which had already lost its owner when Chen Dairong died. He didn't need to insert any Qi into it, he was drenched in so much blood that the flag almost became covered in it the moment he touched it. The blood sank into the flag and bound it to Liang Chen, personalizing it much like he had to personalize his interspatial ring after receiving it in the Mystic's Hidden Realm, it was a process all powerful items required.

The flag flashed with light and then sank into Liang Chen's body, a 3-d image of the planet suddenly appearing in his mind. He could see a further 999 flags made from orange jade scattered all around the planet, forming the array that sealed the bloodlines and Qi of almost all the living beings on this planet. He could also see every living being currently on the planet, they were all marked as small dots of light radiating very faint energy.

He could even see a dot that radiated the same energy as Yumao, a person radiating an unknown energy currently seemingly riding on his back. Liang Chen checked his own position, but to his surprise, he was unable to see a dot for himself, it seemed like the array had been unable to mark him. He didn't detect anyone with the same energy as Yan Ying so he guessed that he might have been taken away by Yan Ling and the Nine Star Demon God, if he too was dead he felt certain that Yan Ling would have rampaged across the entire planet right away.

The flag he absorbed was the core of this grand array, the key used to control it all, absorbing it gave Liang Chen the ability to control the array as he pleased. This was the result he expected even before he grabbed the flag, he had expected it ever since Chen Dairong first spoke about it. Liang Chen was just about to fully activate the grand array when a familiar voice rang out in his mind from the flag.

"Not even Little Rong was enough, even with the grand array supporting her? Ha~h, you are far more of a monster than I feared, Liang Chen. You know, I really want to admire you, I really do. You crawled your way up from nothing and forged your own path forward, growing stronger at a rate so startling that you even shocked me. But why did you have to have that cursed blood flowing in your veins, why did you have to be born from that vile race?"

Liang Chen had heard this voice several times before during the trials of the Mystic's Hidden Realm so he knew who he was talking to right now, the Sealing God Empyrean himself. Liang Chen couldn't feel any energy coming from the flag, but giving it a closer inspection allowed him to feel a very faint trace of Anima Essence on it.

From the looks of it, the Sealing God Empyrean left a very faint trace of his soul energy on the flag so that he could keep an eye on Chen Dairong, she was one of his disciples after all. But the Anima Essence was already very weak due to how little it was and the distance between it and the Sealing God Empyrean, the best it could do was project the Sealing God Empyrean's voice into Liang Chen's mind. The voice of the Sealing God Empyrean rang out in Liang Chen's mind again but he cut it off, his voice practically dripping with blood.

"Liang Chen, for the sake of the universe, would you be will..."
"Shut up. Talk, talk, talk, that's all you and your people ever do. Each and every one of you just keep going on and on about the universe won't allow this, it won't accept this, you are a monster, you won't be accepted. You all keep talking as if you know me, know all my plans and my desires. Fuck you, fuck your beliefs, and if the universe really is as you say, then fuck the universe. You took my sister from me, you robbed my wife of practically her entire family, I am done with talking to you and I don't care about your reasoning. Sealing God Empyrean, I will kill you, and not a damn soul in this Sphere of Existence can stop me. I will tear open your throat and watch you choke on your own blood, so you'd best prepare, for I am coming for you."

Liang Chen drew upon a bit of the power from the grand array and used it to crush the Anima Essence that the Sealing God Empyrean had left behind. His breathing was heavy and the blood vessels in his eyes had burst open, but his bloody gaze was so chilly and determined that it resembled the edge of a knife.

Back when he first left the Mystic's Hidden Realm, while he thought that it would be nice to punch the Sealing God Empyrean for carelessly dragging so many innocent people into his trials, he hadn't really thought about killing him back then. But after everything that the Sealing God Empyrean had done here, killing his sister and Lei Qiang, one of Liang Chen's few friends, as well as the entire Storm Wolf sect, Liang Chen had long decided that he was someone that had to die.

After crushing the Anima Essence on the flag, Liang Chen activated the grand array, indiscriminately sealing the Qi and bloodlines of everyone on the planet, except for Yumao of course. The two senior disciples of the Nightshield sect came tumbling to the ground after their Qi was sealed, but Liang Chen didn't bother with them and instead started drawing the energy of the grand array into his body to heal his wounds. But his wounds turned out to be far more severe and special than he first thought.

Even with the support of the grand array, he still needed an entire three hours to heal the wounds on his organs and veins, but the problem was his right arm. The bloody stump had healed, but his arm didn't regrow in the slightest even after three hours had passed. It was his right arm that had to endure the worst of the attack, as it was in his right arm that it started to fully bloom into splendor before entering the spear.

A grim guess quickly formed in his mind, there was a good chance that the law of the void had run rampant in his arm and might have completely erased it. If that really was the case, then the number of ways that Liang Chen could heal his right arm was very limited, he could only think of two ways right now, and neither one could be accomplished quickly.

He could only let out a deep breath and open his eyes, which had closed the moment the 3-d image of the planet appeared in his mind. His gaze landed on the Nightshield sect disciples, which had been too scared to flee after all their Qi and bloodlines became sealed, they simply stood there like stiff puppets as they fearfully looked at Liang Chen.

Liang Chen stood up and walked over to his spear, picking it up with his left arm and returning it to his body. But as the spear dissolved into blood and entered his body, a somewhat strange scene took place. The dissolved spear made its way to his right shoulder and then started to extend and change shape, forming a new arm to replace his lost one. The new arm was even covered in a thin layer of skin, looking just like a normal arm.

Liang Chen hadn't heard anything about the Bloodwind weapons having a function like this, his eyes flashing with interest as he looked at the arm. He tried to call out his spear, the new arm vanishing as it immediately flashed to his left hand and formed his spear. He then called back the spear, which once again moved over to his right shoulder and formed a new arm.

Liang Chen then tried moving this new arm, but it felt just like his normal one, if a bit stiff right now. He let out a short breath, this meant that as long as he didn't bring out his spear he would still have two arms to use, which would help greatly in a fight. Of course, he also realized that this was far from perfect, the new arm was quite a bit worse than his actual arm.

The first problem was that while he could channel his Qi into and through this new arm, it moved far slower than when he did so through his actual arm, it almost felt like the metallic-arm was clogged up. The other problem was that the new arm didn't have any sensations, he couldn't feel anything from it, making it hard to gauge how much strength he was using when grabbing something, it also made it hard to know if there was an attack that landed on it. But at least it was something, it would make do for now.

He turned his attention back onto the fearful Nightshield sect disciples, his eyes narrowing slightly as he swept his gaze over them. He raised his left arm after a few seconds, a few arcs of gray lightning crackling around his hand as he pointed out with a finger.

The gray lightning around his finger resonated with the flickering bolt of lightning in the sky, several new arcs crackling out from it and striking down on several of the people from the Nightshield sect. Including the two senior disciples, about 400 disciples were struck by the gray lightning and evaporated, unable to even put up a defense since their Qi was sealed.

All the people he killed were those that had shown their killing intent against him or even participated in the capture of his sister, they were people he could not keep alive. He glanced at the rest of the disciples, several of which had already collapsed to the ground and even pissed their pants, but he didn't act against them, simply turning away and heading for the spatial array that would take him away from the Nightshield sect. These people hadn't shown killing intent against him so he was fine with keeping them alive.

Liang Chen quickly left the Nightshield sect and started moving, running at his fastest speed. He managed to use the grand array to send a very short message to Yumao, telling him to meet him at the site where the Storm Wolf sect used to be. But there was one location that Liang Chen wanted to check out on the way there, so he ran to get there as fast as possible.

With his speed, as well as utilizing the spatial arrays that still remained from the other sects, he quickly reached his target, the Floating Rose nation. Liang Chen had been to this idyllic island a few times in the past, mostly when he went to or left the Storm Wolf sect. But the island had changed greatly since then, almost completely unrecognizable.

practically everything had turned bone-like in both color and texture, two large black-gray tentacles rising up from the shore and wiggling slightly as they stretched across the island. Liang Chen felt a very familiar sensation coming from these tentacles, it was the same sensation as the one that the Void Born blood gave him when he first saw it. Liang Chen couldn't even begin to guess how some of the Void Born blood had ended up on this island, but he was thankful that he noticed it thanks to the grand array, it could easily have become a disaster if he didn't discover it.

He walked over to the two tentacles, which were actually rather close to each other, and placed his left hand on one of them. He closed his eyes and interacted with his bloodline, prodding it awake and fully activating it. Just like he did back in Green Rivers city, Liang Chen sucked in the energy of the tentacle, causing it to rapidly wither and shrink, turning into a drop of blood that entered his palm and became part of his bloodline.

He moved on to the second tentacle after he finished with the first one and repeated the process, placing his left palm on the ground once he was done. He extended his senses into the ground to check for any other traces of the corruptive energy but let out a breath of relief when he didn't detect any more of it. With this, the corruption would stop spreading, he could only hope that the island would one day return to its former splendor.

He entered the destroyed and decayed city after he finished this task, heading over to the spatial arrays that were luckily still mostly intact. He tried to activate a few of them, but the ones closest to the Storm Wolf sect headquarters didn't work so he had to settle for one that would bring him to a spot rather far away from the sect.

When the array teleported him away and he finally got to see the state of the sect with his own two eyes, rather than on the 3-d map of the planet, he couldn't help but let out a soft breath. The split mountain and everything within several hundred kilometers around it was simply gone, all that remained of the Storm Wolf sect was a massive basin that had a completely smooth surface.

Liang Chen sat down at the edge of the basin, letting his gaze drift across the vast emptiness while he waited for Yumao to arrive here. Yumao's speed was just as fast as Liang Chen, but he could fly freely so he could move around much easier, allowing him to reach the ruins of the Storm Wolf sect after only three days.

Liang Chen opened his eyes when the sound of flapping wings entered his ears, standing up and turning around. He raised his head and looked at the incoming Yumao, finally seeing the unknown person that was standing on his back. And the moment Liang Chen saw that black-haired and emerald-eyed figure, he felt the entire world turn red in front of him.

Before he even realized it, he had already stepped forward and charged into the air at his fastest speed, arriving on top of Yumao like a bolt of lightning. His right arm moved on its own, smashing a heavy punch into the side of the person's, Qing Lan Yong's, head and knocking him down from Yumao, sending him crashing into the ground. Liang Chen stood on top of Yumao, his expression grim as some blood dripped down his clenched right fist.

"YOU! IT WAS YOU, YOU TOOK THEM FROM ME!"