Chapter 377: The Beginning of Total War
Boom!
The shadow burst forth, tearing through the air. Lufas sensed the abnormality, but it came so suddenly that he had no time to dodge.
In an instant, he—and the Imperial officers trapped along with him—were all bound by the Hands of Shadow.
His strength was extraordinary. Even while bound, he could immediately tear through the shadowy restraints. But the others were not as capable.
One Imperial officer, who moments ago had been fantasizing about striking Bai Fu from behind, now had his face flushed the color of pig liver.
He felt like he was about to explode.
The Hands of Shadow coiled around his body, draining his strength while tightening with an earth-shattering force.
He struggled with all his might, but instead of breaking free, he shattered his own bones.
“Save me, Lufas! Quick, save me!”
The terrified cries echoed again and again within the Predestined Celestial Sphere.
Lufas, who was dodging frantically, glanced downward.
Damn it.
What he saw was nothing short of a vision from hell.
On the ground, countless Hands of Shadow writhed like black flames blazing within the depths of the underworld. Those ensnared by them looked as if they were suffering the punishment of hellfire.
Twisted bodies. Agonized faces.
The sight stunned Lufas.
Save?
Save your damn selves!
Lufas immediately withdrew his gaze and continued evading.
The Predestined Celestial Sphere was powerful, but given enough time, he could still break it open and escape.
Seeing that Lufas paid them no heed, the Imperial officers completely broke down.
At first, they shouted toward Bai Fu, insisting this was all a misunderstanding.
When no response came, they called out to their comrades in the Imperial Fleet, even to the Supernova Warband and Titan Industries.
But still—no one answered.
It wasn’t that those outside refused to respond—
Bai Fu had blocked their communication altogether.
No matter how much they shouted, their voices could not penetrate the Predestined Celestial Sphere to reach the outside world.
Of course, during all this, Demetri quietly lent a hand.
When the Predestined Celestial Sphere and the Hands of Shadow first appeared, the reinforcements from the Three Universal Civilizations, unaware of the truth, had wanted to rush forward to help.
But Demetri stopped them.
“They’re in league with the Original Pact! Their plan was to cooperate once the war began, to strike from within and without and crush us in one blow! Saint Bai Fu and I saw through their plot long ago. We lured them into a trap. Don’t bother helping them—Saint Bai Fu will deal with them herself. Right now, our priority is resisting the Original Pact’s all-out assault!”
Demetri’s status was high not only within the Empire but also in both the Supernova Warband and Titan Industries.
With him saying that, the others immediately abandoned the idea of rescuing the trapped officers and instead began cursing them.
Damn, these people are really vile!
After that, those trapped within the Predestined Celestial Sphere completely lost all hope of survival.
They started with curses—
cursing Bai Fu, cursing Lufas, cursing the Empire, cursing Odoacre, and finally even cursing Ignaz.
Then came collapse.
They wailed, regretted, despaired—their screams twisted and darkened, but it was all useless.
In the end, they could only watch helplessly as the Hands of Shadow crushed them one by one—
transforming their deaths into Bai Fu’s experience points.
“At last, some peace and quiet… now I can—wait, what’s that!”
Lufas widened his eyes.
He saw it—a towering Giant God suddenly descended within the Predestined Celestial Sphere.
He recognized this god. Bai Fu had once relied on it to hold off the Supreme God’s disciples.
“To kill me, you even brought that out?”
Lufas gritted his teeth.
Unbeatable.
His strength was indeed formidable, but compared to the Supreme God’s disciples, the gap was still obvious.
They could overpower this Giant God—if he fought it, he’d be the one getting crushed.
He had to escape—no matter if he was wounded, even gravely wounded.
As long as I live, there’s hope.
Bai Fu’s focus was clearly on fighting the Original Pact’s offensive.
If he could just break through the Predestined Celestial Sphere, he might survive.
With that thought, Lufas concentrated most of his energy on attacking the Celestial Sphere, lowering his guard against the Hands of Shadow and the Ethereal God-King.
It was a sound plan—
but a fatal mistake.
He never expected that the current Ethereal God-King was no longer the same as before.
And truly, that wasn’t his fault—
Who could’ve imagined that even someone at Bai Fu’s level could grow so much stronger in just half a month?
Until the Ethereal God-King’s colossal claw descended upon his head, Lufas didn’t realize how grave his miscalculation was.
Buzz!
The claw struck, straight down on his skull.
In that instant, Lufas went completely blank.
The searing pain shattered his will.
He found himself unable to move—the blow had robbed him of control over his own body.
No matter how he struggled, no matter how he roared, he couldn’t move an inch.
At that moment, he felt like a spectator—
a viewer outside the screen, forced to watch as the Ethereal God-King brutalized his body, powerless to do anything but panic.
What kind of ability is this?!
Lufas was terrified.
He could feel death’s shadow looming closer than ever.
“Bai Fu, I was wrong! I was wrong! I shouldn’t have colluded with the Original Pact! Let me live—I’ll tell you a secret, something you’d never imagine!”
You were wrong?
Bai Fu let out a cold snort.
And then came that famous line.
“You want to tell me that the leader of the Original Pact… is none other than Emperor Ignaz of the Rebirth Empire, right?”
Bai Fu’s voice spoke through the Ethereal God-King’s mouth.
Lufas’s expression changed drastically. “You… how do you know that?!”
“Rest in peace.”
The Ethereal God-King stopped speaking and resumed spinning him like a top.
It went on for a full half minute before Lufas finally regained control of his body.
But it was already too late.
The last round of the Ethereal God-King’s assault had left him severely wounded.
Worse, he was a Void lifeform trapped inside the Predestined Celestial Sphere, unable to unleash even half his full power.
Crippled, injured, and restrained—how could he possibly fight?
The longer he fought, the more agitated he became; the less confidence he had, the more desperately he pinned his hopes on the Original Pact crushing Bai Fu.
Yet no matter how long he waited, the Original Pact never arrived at Origin Star.
Despair. Collapse. Total breakdown.
Under the Ethereal God-King’s relentless pounding, Lufas’s condition worsened to the point that he couldn’t even match an ordinary Transcendent.
Then—Fei Ye and Jin Lu entered the scene.
Bai Fu had no need for the small boost in experience from delivering the killing blow, so she left that chance to Fei Ye and Jin Lu.
Their homeworlds had both been destroyed by Lufas’s hand; their hatred could only be resolved through his death.
Though Lufas was already on the brink of death, he still refused to give up struggling.
Especially when he saw the Ethereal God-King halt its attack and Fei Ye and Jin Lu step forward—
This—this was his chance!
His plan was to wait until they got close, then strike suddenly—using a special technique to catch them off guard.
As long as he controlled Fei Ye and Jin Lu, he could survive.
But he still underestimated how far Bai Fu had opened up.
Special technique?
What special technique could he possibly have in front of me?
Just as Lufas was about to move, Fei Ye immediately took control of him.
“After all this, you still haven’t seen the situation clearly?” she said.
“Y-you… how could you…”
Lufas was so shocked he could not form a sentence. He could not imagine how Fei Ye had deduced what move he intended to use—he had never even used that trick before in front of Bai Fu.
“Go obediently and die!”
Fei Ye and Jin Lu no longer bothered to toy with Lufas.
Lufas’s mentality had already collapsed; as for bodily pain, for someone of his rank it was nothing.
The two of them finished Lufas off without fuss, completely erasing his body and leaving only the Void Sovereign Core that Lufas had painstakingly obtained.
Staring at the empty ground, Fei Ye and Jin Lu exchanged a look.
It felt like waking from a dream.
“Let’s go to Bai Fu. She needs us now.”
“Mm.”
…
In truth, Bai Fu did not urgently need Fei Ye and Jin Lu’s help at that moment.
The Original Pact had presented a massive offensive formation, but relatively few of its forces actually launched close-range assaults; they had been relying mostly on long-range attacks.
The reason was that they were waiting for Lufas and Demetri to act.
Ignaz was no fool—did he not recognize what kind of man Lufas was?
He would not recklessly charge forward and give Lufas an opening.
What he most wanted to see was Lufas succeeding in a sneak attack on Bai Fu and then being turned into a grievously wounded carcass—so he could comfortably reap the rewards.
Of course, he knew that was difficult, so he placed greater hope in Demetri.
“Leader, it’s been almost ten minutes. Why hasn’t Lufas moved?”
The Fate-Weaver looked at Ignaz in puzzlement.
Ignaz frowned.
Ten minutes and still no action from Lufas—this was indeed odd.
“Send him a message!”
The Fate-Weaver flinched. “What if the message was intercepted?”
Ignaz sneered. “If the message was intercepted, even better—then he’ll have to act!”
Good grief, of course it was you.
The Fate-Weaver complied at once.
To their surprise, there was still no response to that message, and no change from the Origin Star’s side.
“What’s going on? Did Lufas deceive us—he didn’t actually betray Bai Fu?”
“Impossible. If Lufas were that honest, he wouldn’t have ended up in this wretched no-one-cares situation.”
“Then… did something happen to him?”
Ignaz nodded.
It was possible.
But it didn’t matter!
He had never pinned all his hopes on Lufas. If Lufas had indeed been caught, perhaps that was for the best.
With Bai Fu’s attention fixed on Lufas, she would be even less likely to notice Demetri, the insider.
Heh heh.
Bai Fu—this time I’ve prepared four dishes for you. Can you withstand this four-hit combo?
…
Bai Fu did not know whether she could withstand Ignaz’s fourfold assault; she only knew that the coming exchanges would be impossible for the Original Pact to withstand her moves.
“Lufas is dead, and everyone on Origin Star has been fully evacuated. Now is the time to kill the people of the Original Pact.”
With those words, Bai Fu unceremoniously unleashed all of her power.
It was a force so mighty that everyone who sensed it shivered involuntarily.
“What is—”
In an instant, all eyes in the starfield near Origin Star turned toward where Bai Fu stood.
Those far away could not tell exactly what was happening.
But those close by began to shriek.
Something was wrong—very wrong. Bai Fu’s power was completely abnormal!
The frontline Original Pact transcendents and warships quickly tried to turn tail and flee; the forces behind them, not yet aware of the situation, could not get out of the way in time, and the two groups collided.
Amid the chaos, the towering divine body summoned by Hei Fu led the Ethereal Realm field and the Hands of Shadow onto the battlefield, severing their escape routes completely.
Meanwhile, Bai Fu launched a ferocious assault from the opposite direction.
Bai Fu and Hei Fu’s pincer strike alone made the Original Pact forces scatter in panic, and the reinforcements sent by the Three Universal Civilizations did not stand idle either—they immediately joined the battle and pummeled the beaten dogs.
After a brutal beating, the Original Pact suffered devastating losses: numerous ships were blown to fragments with no chance to fight back. The stronger transcendents held out a little longer, but only for a brief, futile flurry.
Faced with Bai Fu and the Majestic Divine Body’s front-and-back onslaught, their HP and reserves were laughably insufficient.
“Requesting support—urgently request support!”
“If the leader doesn’t arrive, we’ll all die here!”
One distress message after another was sent to Ignaz’s current location.
At first, Ignaz thought his communication systems had been bombed by a mechanist hacking assault.
After reading the messages, he went stunned.
Then, immense rage surged up.
“We were deceived by Bai Fu!”
At this point, how could he not see that Bai Fu had hidden her true power?
Earlier, when the Tiger-headed Man and the others launched their attack, Bai Fu had been fully capable of wiping them all out—but she hadn’t, precisely to cause misjudgment and make them relax.
As expected, they had been fooled.
In this round of contact, the Original Pact lost nearly a quarter of its transcendents—a grievous toll.
“Kill her—everyone with me, kill her!”
Ignaz could no longer sit idly.
He immediately issued orders to everyone, including the Rebirth Empire, to carry out a full purge of the Garden of Silence.
He had not gone far when a Giant God descended from the sky and blocked his path.
Just as Ignaz was about to act, his eyebrow twitched.
He sensed it: the Tear of the Cosmos had successfully fused with a living entity and was moving at high speed—Demetri’s side had succeeded.
Heh heh.
Ignaz sneered and looked up at the Ethereal God-King standing in his way.
“Bai Fu, since you like to play, I will play a proper cat-and-mouse game with you!”