Just as Yizhe finished speaking, the man cloaked in darkness—floating alone before countless powerful and famous figures of the Celestial realm—slowly raised his eyes.
The moment the Rulers met those dark, obsidian eyes—with vertical purple slits—they froze like statues as a tremendous weight suddenly descended upon them.
The air seemed to solidify, crushing down on their shoulders. Those weaker than the seventh stage of the Celestial Rank cried out as their balance gave way midair, as if their power had been stripped from them, and their bodies plummeted from the sky.
A terrifying crimson Celestial aura coiled around the owner of those obsidian eyes, dense and suffocating. Yet no one present felt awe, nor the natural instinct to submit to someone far stronger. Instead, there was only fear—raw and absolute—as if they had been cast into a bottomless abyss with no hope of ever reaching the light again.
At that moment, everyone’s hearts sank.
A single glance was enough to unnerve them—what would happen when this dark being attacked? They would be finished!
The middle-aged woman floating behind Yizhe saw the power surrounding Azazeal and, utilizing the unique law of calculating possibilities, foresaw her own future where everyone around her died fighting him. She let out a scream, lunged for Yizhe’s collar, and vanished into the distance with him.
"RUN!"
Her shout snapped the Rulers, who were still midair, barely keeping their balance under those dark eyes, out of their daze.
One of the two old men following Yizhe shot off after her, and almost instantly, all the Rulers who had joined them in search of Kyle, driven by the greed to obtain a part of his power when he died, did the same.
Those remaining were dumfounded, their minds filled with shock and disbelief. How could Yizhe and the Rulers following him—the supposed strongest Rulers, who had built their own hierarchical authority over the realm, commanded complete respect from all who lived under their rule, oversaw the ancient temple, and owned powerful territories—abandon their duty so easily?!
They, who had no influence or only small, weak clans of their own, were still here!
This was the moment to step forward, to combine their strength and confront the man who had stepped out of the shadows before he could harm the Celestial realm.
Yet here they were—running away. How could they be so blind to the lives of the weaker Celestials who depended on them, obeying the countless good and bad rules they had established across the realm!
It was true that the obsidian-eyed being seemed very formidable and terrifying.
However, in the end, he was just a single individual—no matter how formidable—if they all came together, they surely would have had a better chance to defeat him!
After all, if they didn’t stop him now, the entire Celestial realm—and all who lived within it—would be in grave danger!
But instead, these so-called strongest Rulers chose to run at the first sight of danger. These damn cowards!
The angered Rulers, seeing Yizhe and his followers vanish, barely had a moment to properly curse or condemn them when a low, hoarse laugh echoed through the air.
"Hehe."
The laugh was followed by a low, insidious whisper that seemed to ring in their minds.
"Run... yes, run!"
Everyone trembled at the low sound. The once-bright space dimmed in a moment, swallowed by darkness as if the very void obeyed his voice. At that moment, some of the brave present tried to strike, only to be flung back as if their power meant nothing.
Those Celestials, weaker than the seventh stage, who had fallen earlier, screamed as tiny, thread-like tendrils of darkness, linked to the natural law of death, surged out from the land surrounding the mass of darkness still trapped within the barrier. The tendrils seized their bodies as they tried to escape.
They used their power, but no matter what or how strong the natural laws they evoked, it dissolved into air before their wide eyes.
Amidst the chaos, someone gritted their teeth, using their lifespan to amplify their power temporarily, and invoked a powerful law to engage Azazeal, shouting directly into the minds of everyone around him.
’Fight this man with me! The weak should leave and call for more people! Nathaniel—right, Nathaniel, find him! He would surely help, even if to further solidify his status!’
At his words, the remaining Rulers jolted, then sprang into action. Some, like Yizhe and his people, fled after seeing Azazeal’s power, but those who stayed followed the middle-aged man who charged at Azazeal for the sake of the realm they ruled. Like him, they also sacrificed their lifespans.
In the end, amidst the sounds of cries, the number of Rulers who charged at Azazeal after the middle-aged man wasn’t even ten, not even one tenth of the number present when Yizhe and his followers were there.
Yet all those who remained were the ones who had reached this far through their own power. They rarely interfered in the matters of the realm or with Celestials weaker than them, always minding their own business.
The middle-aged man at the front was prepared to be flung away like the others who had attacked Azazeal earlier, but who would have thought Azazeal wouldn’t even bother with him or those coming at him?
Instead, he reached out his hand into the air, tearing through the void, smiling eerily to himself. In the next moment, everyone who had fled the scene was dragged back from the torn space like puppets and then slammed to the ground violently. Instantly, dust and debris exploded everywhere as Yizhe and those who were dragged back cried out, their faces filled with disbelief.
The middle-aged man attacking Azazeal, though startled, saw a fleeting opportunity to strike him, noticing he was momentarily distracted. But just as his attack was about to hit, dark tendrils erupted from Azazeal’s body, snaking through the air with blinding speed and ensnaring everyone still in the air. They were all frozen in place, unable to move a muscle. The tendrils even sealed their mouths shut, leaving only their wide, fearful eyes to witness what was coming.
Just like them, every Celestial in the surroundings was silenced and trapped.
Azazeal finally let go of the soul in his hand. It fell lifelessly behind him as he walked toward Yizhe and his people.
"Run... but can you run from me?"
His eyes were empty as he grabbed the neck of the nearest Ruler, lifting the man’s entire body into the air with a wide smile.
As he strangled the Ruler bit by bit, as if savoring the process before everyone’s eyes, the middle-aged man finally noticed the soul that Azazeal had been holding for so long. At first, it was just a casual glance, but when he recognized the shape of the face, his already pale expression lost its remaining color. His trembling old voice echoed in the minds of everyone nearby.
’It’s... Nathaniel... it’s actually him!’
Just as the middle-aged man finished, he watched with a ghostly expression as the soul fallen behind Azazeal—the soul of one of the strongest Celestials in the Celestial realm, the one nearest to the End—slowly scattered into dust, its last light consumed by the darkness around it before silently fading into oblivion, never to exist again.
Many things finally became clear to the middle-aged man and those still able to think.
Why so few had been informed about the ancient realm this obsidian-eyed man had emerged from. Why Valance had suddenly gone crazy and started a massacre. It was all because Nathaniel and the greedy group of Rulers who followed him had discovered this old realm and hidden it from everyone else, intending first to hoard its resources.
But in the end, it seemed they were no match for the being they had awakened within that realm. Valance and the others had become his puppets and were slain by the Rulers themselves, while Nathaniel fell under the control of this powerful being.
Although these Rulers weren’t entirely accurate in their prediction—since they were all unaware of the enmity between Azazeal and Nathaniel, and didn’t realize that Azazeal was no ancient entity, but merely someone who had consumed a treasure and then reached the End—their predictions were enough to give them a rough understanding of the situation.
The struggling Ruler in Azazeal’s hand lost his breath, his body turning cold as his soul was mercilessly dragged out of his body before being shredded into tiny pieces. At that moment, the law of death swept in all directions, and the sky above the Celestial realm started cracking as if it were about to fall. Ultimately, even the barrier Kyle had created to confine the mass of darkness cracked and shattered before the shaking pupils of those seized by the dark tendrils.
Yizhe roared inwardly as he watched the darkness closing in on him and everyone else, powerless to act. Unable to speak, he screamed in his mind that he didn’t want to die! He was still so young... younger than many of the people around him! He still hadn’t had enough time to enjoy life...!
Why, why did he have to die?!
Why?!
If he had known this was going to happen, he would have long since fled to the Lower Universes to hide, like the spineless Rulers who had escaped after failing to kill Kyle!
They were all already terrified and utterly helpless against a single body of Azazeal.
So when the pitch-black darkness erupted, spreading in all directions and enveloping their bodies, and they glimpsed the violent battle unfolding at the center of it all, their last remnants of hope also extinguished.
They couldn’t see clearly, but they could make out a zigzagging icy-blue hue being relentlessly assaulted by multiple streaks of red. No shockwaves radiated from their collisions, as the cold aura absorbed every blow head-on, containing the overwhelming dark power of the battle so it wouldn’t spill outward. Sparks of energy crackled with each strike, briefly illuminating the violent struggle raging at the heart of the chaos.