It had no eyes, yet its face wore a contented and gleeful smile.
Then, its body emerged, crawling slowly out of the altar, section by section.
"A being... blessed by an Evil God, who has completely fallen and ascended into a demon!"
Dragon Jade was the most knowledgeable of them all. The moment he got a clear look at the creature, he cried out in alarm, his voice filled with unprecedented shock.
However, that moment of shock was all it took.
Dragon Jade’s towering, heavily-armored figure suddenly went rigid. Then, as if all his strength had been drained away, he fell straight back, landing on the ground with a THUD.
His power armor went dead silent.
No matter how anxiously Nissan and Ning Jing yelled for him over the team channel, Dragon Jade didn’t get back up.
In an instant, a bone-chilling coldness gripped the hearts of the three remaining members.
"What happened?! Dragon Jade!"
Nissan roared.
"It’s a mental attack! Its Spiritual Power Index is horrifyingly high! It’s a killing technique based on an Illusion Skill!"
Ning Jing reacted the fastest. He immediately shouted a warning, "Dragon Jade’s vitals are still stable, he should be alive! He’s just been dragged into some deep illusion! Slaanesh Demons love to toy with their prey’s Will and obsessions!"
"Group up! Form a three-man Battle Array! We’ll use our Spiritual Fields to reinforce one another and resist its intrusion!"
Ning Jing quickly took command.
Qin Feng and Nissan unhesitatingly closed in on him. The three stood back-to-back, unleashing their power armors’ Spiritual Fields without holding anything back, attempting to build a solid line of defense.
But it was too late.
The Slaanesh Demon that had just crawled from the altar abruptly vanished.
The next moment, it appeared before Ning Jing without any warning.
It did nothing. It didn’t attack. It didn’t even exude any killing intent.
It simply "looked" at Ning Jing.
Its smooth, eyeless face still wore that eerie, gleeful smile.
Just from that single moment of eye contact.
Ning Jing’s gaze, once filled with vigilance and killing intent, instantly became vacant and blank.
He froze, as if he’d seen something he’d longed for his entire life but could never obtain.
Then, like a puppet on strings, he dazedly turned, raised the long whip in his hand, and began to slash manically at a nearby metal wall, over and over, as if venting all his strength upon its cold surface.
The second one.
"Don’t make eye contact!!"
Qin Feng roared in absolute fury, his eyes practically bursting from their sockets as he tried to warn his last teammate.
But it was too late.
The demon’s figure vanished again.
This time, it appeared before Nissan.
Nissan didn’t even have time to react before his eyes met that smiling face.
Then, the tower-like, lion-hearted giant collapsed to the ground with a THUD, slumping into a sitting position.
His heavy power armor trembled uncontrollably as suppressed sobs, filled with endless sorrow and regret, escaped from his helmet.
The third one.
In the blink of an eye, Dragon Jade, Ning Jing, and Nissan—the Fearless Warband’s three strongest Level 5 Powerhouses—were all incapacitated without suffering a single point of physical damage.
The entire battlefield fell deathly silent.
All that remained was the newborn Slaanesh Demon and... the last man standing, Qin Feng.
As Qin Feng became the last man standing on the battlefield, as his three comrades—who had once fought alongside him, as dependable as mountains—had "fallen" one after another in a silent, absurd fashion before that bizarre demon;
a deathly silence fell over the main command room in the Fearless Warband’s headquarters, millions of miles away, before a giant holographic screen.
A dozen or so planetary-grade, Ninth-level Martial Artists were present. These were powerhouses who had witnessed countless wonders throughout the Cosmos, whose minds were as solid as bedrock. Yet now, without exception, their faces were all shrouded in a grimness as heavy as iron.
"It’s an ascended demon of Slaanesh."
The voice of Battle Commander Feng Zhiyu broke the suffocating silence.
His voice was deep, yet it carried an undeniable authority that pulled everyone back from their shock.
"Not all Evil God’s Followers are created equal."
One of the most senior Ninth-level Martial Artists beside him, whose aura was the most profound, began to speak. It was as if he were giving a grim battlefield lecture to the younger generation present.
"At the lowest level are the so-called ’followers.’ You could say they are merely mortals ’permitted’ by the Evil God to conduct rituals. Just like those we just witnessed—the top painters who stood above all others in a Nest Capital, those brilliant addicts. They spent their entire lives merely to earn the ’privilege’ of pleasing the Evil God. The Evil God wouldn’t give them a second glance, let alone a blessing. At most, all they can obtain are a few crude, worthless, evil Fourth-level Killing Techniques that have been passed down through various channels."
His gaze swept across the devastated battlefield on the screen.
"Above them are those who can receive an Evil God’s ’blessing.’ They are either Demons of even more terrifying talent and a more fanatical Will; or, they are ’strivers,’ like Ascetics, who have finally managed to attract a sliver of the Evil God’s attention through a sufficient number of sufficiently cruel sacrifices."