Chapter 1968: Golden Needle Feast

Three hundred gold-robed believers had arrived. The silver-robed disciples and the weaker spirit offerers combined numbered over ten thousand. Even more than a dozen priests, who could truly command a faction of disciples, were present.

Normally, the dark forces would never gather such a large number of disciples for a single operation. The immense scale this time was due to Xu Yang's previous actions, where he single-handedly resolved border conflicts between two great empires. This prevented several areas, which were awaiting a large influx of life force for consumption, from receiving their vital energy supply.

Therefore, the master of the dark forces ordered all previously separated disciple factions to quickly assemble and head together to the Sea of Martial Gods. They intended to gorge themselves during this large-scale imperial war.

Unfortunately, they were unaware that the entire plan was within Xu Yang's calculations. The moment they decided to enter the Sea of Martial Gods, it meant they had become lambs to the slaughter.

In the dim night, over a dozen figures gathered simultaneously in the void. More than a dozen incredibly brilliant colored lights erupted under the guidance of their special cultivation techniques, coalescing into a central formation that commanded all their power.

Once this core formation was established, the other gold-robed believers, waiting to devour life force, began to gather their martial energy, following the trajectory of this powerful formation.

This was the first time Xu Yang had personally witnessed so many dark force disciples acting in concert. He quickly noticed that once the power of the dark force disciples reached a certain intensity, a fundamental transformation would occur.

The originally silver light actually began to emit dazzling golden specks. All the specks rapidly revolved around the core formation and the bodies of the dozen or so priests.

Eventually, these golden specks transformed into the purest death energy, like a dozen soul lamps guiding the spirits of the deceased, each hovering above the heads of the dozen skeletal priests.

While these dozen lights were simultaneously ignited, an incredibly dense aura of decay began to emerge at the very center of the formation. Xu Yang finally understood that these beings were able to consume the residual life force from corpses by using this decaying death energy as a guide.

This was equivalent to activating the death energy within corpses that still retained some life force, and then using this activated energy as the best medium to extract the life force from those corpses.

As time passed, more and more sea beast corpses began to rapidly shrink. The life force gathered throughout the process also began to materialize into primal cores.

Upon seeing this, Xu Yang smiled faintly. Ultimately, they couldn't escape this form of refining and consuming elixirs, which made things much easier.

As Xu Yang thought this, he began to gather power in the underwater space, swiftly summoning the Lingxu Divine Artifact. At the same time, Xu Yang extended his mental power, transforming the Lingxu Divine Artifact in his palm into countless golden needles.

He imbued each golden needle with powerful Light Law. After this series of operations, the powerful aura of each golden needle was capable of easily piercing the soul world of a corresponding gold-robed believer.

“Allow me to present you with a true golden needle feast!”

At that instant, countless golden needles instantly broke through the sea's surface, rapidly covering the dark force disciples above. Caught off guard, a considerable number of the weaker ten-thousand-year disciples had their soul worlds pierced on the spot.

After this successful attack, Xu Yang did not continue to assault the disciples who were gradually becoming wary. Instead, in the second round, he directed all the regrouped golden needles to target the newly refined primal cores.

It's important to note that these dark force disciples had worked all night, successfully extracting thousands of primal cores from the corpses. However, in the very next moment, Xu Yang, combined with his powerful spatio-temporal law, caused the time and space of the entire void battlefield to halt.

When these beings finally perceived the flow of time and space once more, the precious primal cores they had held in their palms had all turned into a handful of gray smoke and vanished.

Thousands of golden needles furiously destroyed these primal cores, utterly enraging the dark force disciples who had worked all night.

“This is outrageous! You damn coward hiding in the shadows, come out now!” The dozen priests screamed frantically. If it weren't for the fact that the core formation Xu Yang had established prevented them from leaving it, those priests would probably have overturned the entire sea at that moment.

Xu Yang, who was already prepared, immediately released a powerful burst of mental energy, prompting the leaders of the great empires to dispatch large armies. They quickly converged on the corresponding sea area and soon surrounded all the dark forces.

Only then did the dozen priests finally realize that the conflict among the great empires had been nothing but a ruse, its sole purpose being to draw out all their priestly power.

“Hahahaha! Well done, Xu Yang! You truly went to great lengths. To expose our plan, you spared no effort in orchestrating such a large-scale operation. I must admit, your plan succeeded. We are indeed exposed to the great empires’ forces, but what does it matter? Even if all our disciples perish here, a hundred years from now, the entire Ancient Martial God Path and even the entire Ancient Continent will be plunged into a true catastrophe. By then, the Supreme Master, who follows the will of the Almighty God, will finally awaken! Now, you can struggle as wildly as you wish. You can completely eradicate all of us puppets, but before long, more and more powerful puppets will emerge. This is the fated end that the entire main continent must face, and no one can change it.”

As the leader among the dozen priests finished speaking, he issued a very special command. More than a command, it was a powerful mark capable of resonating with the location of all disciples.

The moment this mark appeared, Xu Yang immediately noticed that the three purple jade crystals on his body simultaneously emitted purple light, seemingly resonating with this powerful mark as well. Terrifying power began to roar wildly, causing the entire Sea of Martial Gods to become turbulent with raging winds and towering waves.

Clearly, this power was undoubtedly the supreme force capable of destabilizing the entire Ancient Martial God Path region, and it was also the core for the revival of the Almighty God's consciousness.

“No! These desperadoes are going to burn their soul power to perish with all of us! Quick, defend yourselves!”

Tens of thousands of dark force disciples simultaneously burned their soul origins. That scene was absolutely unimaginable; the sky, the sea, everything in the entire world seemed to tremble amidst the blazing flames of burning souls.