CHAPTER 51: GOD OF QI AND DAO!

The God of Darkness remained silent, but he was going through the same pain.

His veins doubled in size. His fingernails grew to an inhuman length, thick and jagged... but still, he said nothing.

It didn’t take long. Soon, everything was back to normal.

The black veins were gone, and the God of Darkness now looked calm and composed, his anger buried.

The God of War, however, was still seething—muttering curses under his breath. His temper, as always, refused to die down. But he could control it. Eventually.

Once Ileus finished establishing the servant bonds, he snapped his fingers and gave them a single command.

"Go and level up."

With that, all nine gods vanished without a trace.

---

But instead of returning to the temple, Ileus looked out into the distance.

Then he spoke—his voice calm.

"Come out. I know you’re there."

Out of nowhere, the crystal previously seen inside the temple slowly emerged from hiding.

It floated into view, glowing faintly in the darkness. It was silent... its very aura trembling. It was scared.

"Go back to the temple. Someone’s coming."

In half a second, both the crystal and temple disappeared. The temple sealed shut, and a vast formation surrounded it like a protective shell.

Then—

A maniacal laugh echoed through the air.

"God of Mana! I never thought a day would come when you would infuriate me so much."

The voice came from a figure dressed in a robe of gold and silver silks. His jet-black hair was tied back in something that resembled a ponytail. He looked young, handsome... and dangerous.

There was something about him—just looking at him was enough to stir fear in the heart of anyone nearby.

Qi swirled violently around him, forming whirlwinds of divine energy. His face remained that of a young man in his early twenties—but the pressure he exuded was ancient... and terrible.

"But you must be truly foolish," he said, his voice now low and cold, "You think that your puny little formation could stop me?!"

"You’ve committed a crime... and your punishment will be worse than death."

As he spoke, a massive scythe materialized beside him—stretching more than a hundred meters in length.

It thrummed with power, overflowing with Qi—pulsing like it had a will of its own.

But it was firmly under the control of a single being:

The God of Qi and Dao.

Soon, the scythe was engulfed in red-hot flames. Within minutes, the entire area had descended into chaos.

To the God of Dao, killing Ileus was a trivial matter. His current action wasn’t even taking anything from him.

The Qi in his dantian and meridians hadn’t decreased—not even by the tiniest amount. Not even a minuscule part of it. That alone showed how powerful he truly was.

He was confident that even with minimal techniques, Ileus would be overkilled.

If it had been normal fire, that would’ve been different. But this flame—this fire—was First Rank in the hierarchy of flames.

Only he and the God of Alchemy were capable of wielding it. Aside from them, no other god had the qualifications to manipulate or control the unique and destructive power of this flame.

As soon as the dark red fire appeared, the temperature within a 200 to 300-meter radius around the scythe skyrocketed instantly.

The air itself boiled as the temperature surged to more than 100,000° Celsius!

Just 500° is enough to kill a normal person. The temperature rising to 1,000° could overkill a mortal instantly.

No mortal can survive such heat unless their body had been tempered—or they were a cultivator.

A cultivator can easily create a Qi barrier to shield themselves from extreme heat. But that was where the problem began.

What placed this fire above the other two hundred known flames... was just how dangerous it truly was.

It was corrupting, devouring, chaotic, and destructive. That was what made it terrifying.

The heat it produced was corruptive. So much so, that after forming a Qi barrier, instead of shielding you from the heat... the barrier itself would feed the fire.

The heat would absorb the Qi barrier—turning it into more of that same hot flame. And in doing so, it would make the surrounding temperature even hotter than before.

It was like trying to shield yourself from fire using plastic. And we all know what happens when plastic meets fire.

So instead of protecting you, it becomes part of the destruction. Almost the same concept.

And there... above the chaos... the God of Dao and Qi—Deus—stood hovering in the air. Completely unaffected by the intense temperature around him.

Destroying this place? Killing its occupants? That was nothing to him. He could destroy galaxies with a snap of his fingers—how hard could this possibly be?

The burning scythe rose higher—as if held by an invisible hand—and then began to descend with terrifying speed. From the looks of it, Deus also possessed the power of telekinesis.

The speed at which it descended made it appear like teleportation to the eyes of mortals. Within seconds, its fiery blade reached the barrier that surrounded Ileus’s temple.

And sure enough—destruction followed.

The barrier exploded into countless fiery fragments that fell from the sky like burning meteors.

The temple itself erupted—shattered into tiny blocks of its original divine material.

One should know: Ileus’s temple was over a thousand meters tall.

The scene became total chaos. Large and small fragments rained from above, alongside waves of scorching fire.

Even the tiniest ember from this fire was deadly.

Each one carried heat well over 10,000° Celsius. At that temperature, a mortal wouldn’t just die—they’d explode on contact.

After the destruction, Deus noticed something that left him confused.

There was no one in the temple.

’How did he escape my sense? Was I too focused on the destruction to notice?’

But even with that uncertainty, Deus wasn’t worried. As long as they were still in this galaxy, he could find them in seconds. All he had to do was spread out his spirit sense—and their location would be exposed, no matter where they were hiding.

He immediately spread his spirit sense.

The moment it activated, his perception expanded a zillion times. He could now detect the tiniest movement of an ant galaxies away. Even the smallest organism at the far edge of this galaxy couldn’t escape him.