Countless fiend snakes blasted through the air like a barrage of arrows, piercing through the spell arts to attack the fiends. A fiend general standing at the very front was the first to be swept up in the wave of fiend snakes, which crashed into him like a tsunami, and when the wave had passed, all that was left was white bones. They were like army ants—savage, cruel, fearless, and devouring everything in their path. With one charge, several dozen fiend generals had been slain, causing the other fiends to shiver in fear and the kings to be stunned.
Meanwhile, the attacks from the fiend kings fell upon that massive Blackwater Snake. The giant snake curled its tail around, bringing back the cloud of doom energy to block the spell arts. Palm blasts, flames, lightning bolts, torrents of water, and other various spell arts collided with the doom energy, and all of them were devoured. But in the end, the combined assault of 18 fiend kings was something that even extreme Yin doom energy could not stop, and in the end, the spell arts of eight of them were able to make impact against the snake before they were devoured. These attacks were not something an ordinary person could endure, and even the giant snake howled in pain as almost half of its body was blasted away. But there was no gore or blood, only tendrils of black energy.
In this first exchange, both sides had dealt severe damage to each other, and besides that, they had succeeded in stoking each other's anger.
The giant Blackwater Snake hissed, unleashing a powerful gale, and the fiends howled back and slaughtered the smaller Blackwater Snakes.
The bear king swung a paw, which grew to an immense size and grabbed several hundred small snakes at once. A savage smile appeared on his face as he snarled, "All of you, just die!" He squeezed, and there was a series of pops from his paw, after which copious amounts of black water flowed out.
The Whitebrow King turned into a hurricane, sweeping across the ground and sucking in all the fiend snakes in his path, after which the winds blew them apart, raining down inky black water over the area.
The Small Peach Queen gave a flirtatious smile as she let out pink petals that gathered together into a great torrent to attack her foes. In the beginning, it was rather like Yiyi's Silkheaven Net, but then the petals scattered into tens of thousands of peach blossoms, each one targeting an individual fiend snake like countless flying knives, slicing apart the snakes as they danced in the air. This required the mental power to control tens of thousands of petals at once, which was clearly something Yiyi wasn't capable of.
In comparison, the Ghostface King's methods were rather simple. With a roar, he assumed his original form, a green serpent with a most repulsive face. Shaking his head, he soared through the air, consuming countless snakes in the progress. Landing back on the ground, he patted his belly and said, "Ugh, these are hard to digest!" after which he threw up black water.
The fiend generals also used their various moves to kill as many snakes as they could, and finally, the great swarm of Blackwater Snakes started to thin.
But as that giant Blackwater Snake unleashed another fierce gale, thousands more fiend snakes appeared.
Sure enough, it was creating those small snakes.
Meanwhile, the cloud of Nether Court doom energy returned to the giant snake, and as it moved around its body, the snake's severe injuries were instantly healed. But if one looked closely, one would find that there was now less doom energy.
"Attack with as much as you can! Don't give it the chance to attack with the doom energy again!" the Ghostface King shouted.
The Nether Court doom energy was undoubtedly the strongest move the giant Blackwater Snake had. It could be used for both offense—eating away at creatures and converting them to ghosts—and for defense—devouring spell arts and rendering them ineffective. It could even be used for healing, rapidly restoring severe injuries.
Fortunately, while the extreme Yin doom energy was powerful, its weakness was that it was no spell art, but a kind of energy, so it couldn't move very quickly. It was this flaw that gave them a chance. Striking swiftly and forcefully would prevent the Nether Court doom energy from being used as a weapon and cause it to be slowly consumed, so it was undoubtedly the best choice.
The fiend kings were all veterans of the battlefield, so they didn't need long to identify and target their enemy's weakness.
The fiend kings and generals all began to attack the giant snake.
This was an unprecedented force, 18 fiend kings and several dozen fiend generals combining their powers. It would have been enough to have Fengshan shaking in its boots, but now, this mighty force was being used on a single snake.
Fierce winds, searing flames, explosive lightning, freezing ice, saber and sword energies, palm blasts and fist gales, and countless art relics blasted the black snake in the river.
While the fiend snake was powerful, in the end, it was still facing numerous fiend kings and generals.
Even a Violet Palace cultivator wouldn't have been able to singlehandedly fend off so many fiends. The Violet Palace Realm consisted of three tiers: Infant Tending, Deification, and Soul Projection. One would have to at least be at Deification in order to fight back against so many fiends.
The giant Blackwater Snake clearly hadn't reached this level, so it quickly became a punching bag.
Amid fierce flames, the snake roared in anger and misery. Spell arts exploded all over its body, after which the doom energy quickly healed its injuries, but rather than making it invincible, this formidable healing power only served to magnify its pain.
Its body writhed in the water as the fiends on the shore barraged it nonstop. Even though they were easily beating down the fiend, the fact that it could last this long was simply stunning.
It had long been known that the Nether Domain was one of the great domains of the Great Stellar Chiliocosm, its ghosts extremely powerful, second only to those of the Primordial Fog Domain. It now appeared that this was not a false reputation, for even this one Blackwater Snake was so formidable.
Of course, no matter how formidable it was, it was only one snake, and against all these fiends, only death awaited it.
Seemingly realizing this, the fiend snake suddenly threw its head back and roared.
The distant waters of the Blackwater River suddenly began to flow backward.
Normally, the waters from the Nether Domain flowed out of the passage and fell into a small lake at the bottom of the abyss before flowing downstream, forming the Blackwater River. The Umbra Cactus flower and the Blackwater Snake were both located in this lake.
But as the snake roared, the waters flowing out of the lake stopped and began to reverse their flow.
The fiends were all confused, and then they saw the ghosts dwelling within the river beginning to travel with the river on its way back upstream.
The fiends were horrified.
In fact, ghosts had been coming from the Nether Domain passage this entire time, but these ghosts all traveled down the river, rarely pausing in the lake, as if they were in a world parallel to the Blackwater Snake. For this reason, while the fiends had been beset by ghosts when making their way upstream, they hadn't been attacked by ghosts much at all at the source of the river.
But now, the river was reversing, and the ghosts were coming with it.
The ghosts coming out of the passage were no longer going downstream, instead remaining in the lake, and those that had gone downstream were coming back, returning to the source.
The ghosts rapidly gathered, floating up and down in the lake as they turned their eyes of ghostly flame to the fiends.
Their stares made the fiends shiver.
They hadn't forgotten the price they had paid to get here. That damned Sun Shuming had expanded the Nether Domain passage, causing the number of ghosts crossing over from the Nether Domain to reach absurd levels.
Now, it was the turn of the fiends to experience what it felt like to be bullied by numbers.
A ghost blazing all over with green flames rose up from the lake, gripping a scepter of white bone and mounted upon a phantom horse. It looked at the fiend kings and nodded its head in greeting. Its jawbones clicked together as if it was asking how they were doing.
This was clearly another ghost king.
Like the fiend kings, every ghost king was unique, and this was clearly different from the one they had killed earlier.
Of course, no matter what kind of ghost king they were, they all looked very creepy, their common traits being the disgust they generated with their ugly skeletal forms.
Raising its scepter, the ghost king roared, and countless ghosts surged out of the lake.
"Shit! Flying Wheel King, Rainbow Screen King, Illusion King, Red Cloud King, come and help me deal with the ghosts!" the Ghostface King shouted. "The rest of you, hurry up and kill that snake!"
Four fiend kings flew out, joining the Ghostface King in intercepting the ghosts, while the remaining fiend kings and generals focused their efforts on killing the giant Blackwater Snake.
But the snake was protected by the extreme Yin doom energy, and this alone served as a peerless defense, so killing it was easier said than done. As for the other five fiend kings, they were quickly overtaken by the "ghost wave" strategy, and despite their prodigious powers, the ghosts just kept coming.
The distant ghost king pointed its scepter at the fiends, and a black arrow shot at a fiend general and turned into yellow water. The fiend general's flesh rapidly began to slough off, and as that fiend general howled in terror, his body rotted away, and even his eyeballs rolled out of their sockets.
With a miserable scream, the fiend general turned into a white skeleton and collapsed.
But it was still not over. The moment the fiend general died, a dark phantom appeared over his corpse, appearing just like the fiend general in life. The fiend general looked at himself and seemed to realize something, throwing his head back and bitterly screeching. But this time, he made no sound. His eyes gradually began to lose their light, turning muddy and dull.
A sliver of darkness flew out of the Nether Domain passage, picking up the fiend general's soul and flying off. As it flew over the Blackwater River, the ghost king shrieked.
The darkness dissipated.
The ghost king waved a hand, and a sliver of doom energy flew out of the passage and struck the fiend general's soul. The fiend general's faded form solidified, and it landed next to the ghost king and prostrated to it.
A ghost had been born.
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