Against the Gods (Web Novel)

Crimson Destruction’s eyes reopened. They were closed temporarily, and it took an excruciating amount of time to reopen them, but the infinite butterflies trying to seal his eyes shut were ultimately unable to extinguish the divine glow within.

“Petty tricks are petty, Devil Queen!”

“No matter how powerful your disturbing soul is, it cannot never compare to a Dragon God’s! Now be crushed alongside your ignorance and arrogance!”

His divine aura erupted like a thousand suns, and the infinite sea of molten lava soared into the sky. He only had one plan, and that was to burn all of the black petals in the sky to dust.

The divine soul of a Dragon God was neither complicated nor strange. They had only two things going for them—absolute force and indestructibility—but it was always enough.

The black petals had been conjured using an incredibly high level of dark soul energy, but they were nothing before the power of Crimson Destruction’s soul.

When the blazing suns and molten lava made contact with the black butterflies, the latter only managed to endure for a couple of breaths before they started extinguishing one by one.

His roar shook the soul sea, and his soul destroyed everything violently. The petals kept winking out like popped bubbles until their blackness no longer dominated the sky. Even the darkness in the Devil Queen’s soul sea was receding little by little.

Back in the physical world, Chi Wuyao’s floating hair started looking a little messy. The black butterflies flying around her started flapping slower and slower, and her long eyelashes were trembling uncontrollably.

On the other hand, her opponent, the Crimson Destruction Dragon God, didn’t even move a muscle. His expression never changed from the beginning until the end.

A perfectly expected outcome… The Pure Dragon God thought to herself.

A frog in the well who had never witnessed a Dragon God’s divine soul in her life dared to claim that her devilish soul was unparalleled in the world? Hilarious!

The Pure Dragon God shifted her eyes to the two Witches Chi Wuyao had brought with her. Throughout the battle, she had kept a close eye on Jie Xin and Jie Ling just in case they decided to attack the Crimson Destruction Dragon God from behind. Sneak attacks were beneath the dragon race, but the two Witches hardly qualified as dragons.

The blazing suns and molten lava worked faster and faster. The dance of the devilish petals grew chaotic, and Chi Wuyao’s soul sea trembled uncontrollably. The more petals that burned, the closer her soul sea approached the point of complete collapse.

If her soul sea was destroyed, it would take a very long time to regenerate it. In fact, it might never recover.

Her true body started shaking violently. The black butterflies surrounding her were gone before anyone realized it. Even the black mist that permanently shrouded her appearance thinned to the point where her bloodless face occasionally peeked through the gaps.

She struggled and fought with all she had, but her efforts were ultimately futile. In the end, a single petal was all that was left between their soul seas. It slowly fell toward the gigantic dragon beneath it.

Its dark glow was almost completely gone. Its aura bespoke of grayish despair.

“I warned you that this would be the most regretful decision you ever made in your life. This is the price of your arrogance and ignorance.”

The Crimson Destruction Dragon God didn’t destroy her final light immediately. From the beginning, his voice had carried a mix of scorn, ridicule, and even a small shred of pity.

He found it beneath him to destroy the final light, so he simply allowed it to fall on his soul body. It would automatically disintegrate when it touched his body anyway. This act, or rather lack thereof would be his final mercy to the Devil Queen.

The petal’s fall was agonizingly slow and weak. It took a very long time for it to land on the Dragon God’s soul body. When it finally did, Chi Wuyao broke her silence and said—

“Is that so?”

—and the petal abruptly transformed into a twisted shadow.

JEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Violence, pain, hatred, insanity, bleakness… it was impossible to describe all the emotions behind the scream. The only thing he knew for certain was that his soul felt like it had been dropped in an icy hell of fear all of a sudden.

Fear… an emotion so unfamiliar that he had nearly forgotten it was a thing.

The devilish shadow pounced toward the dragon like a beast. It was only a meter or two long, and it seemed impossibly tiny before its adversary. That didn’t stop it from plunging its sinister claws into the dragon’s head.

SHRED!

It defied all common sense. Not only did the shadow manage to pierce the dragon’s head, it had caused a black mark that spread all the way from the top of its body to the bottom.

“UAH!”

The pain of a torn soul hurt far worse than a body could. And so the Crimson Destruction Dragon God let out the most bloodcurdling scream he ever had in his life.

But even the pain of his soul being torn apart was nothing compared to his shock, a shock that had nearly torn his faith in his strength in half.

His soul… the divine soul of the strongest Dragon God in the world… was sundered in one hit!??

“Wh… what!?” On the other side, the Pure Dragon God nearly lost her own mind to shock.

Pain and shock filled the Crimson Destruction Dragon God, but his retaliation was swift and deadly. He gathered all of his soul energy and sent it toward the tiny shadow.

An enraged Dragon God was absolutely terrifying be it in the spiritual world or the physical world. The tsunami of soul power shook, twisted and warped the dark shadow again and again, but it refused to be shaken off no matter how much punishment it suffered. Like a mindless beast of hell, it dug deeper and deeper into the Dragon God’s divine soul.

Shred, rend, tear, and tear some more...

“GRAH… AAAAAAAHHHH… UAHHH…”

The Pure Dragon God could hardly believe that the scream had come from the Crimson Destruction Dragon God himself.

His soul rocked like a sundering heaven, and his attempts grew more and more violent. In the end, he even tried attacking himself in an attempt to rid himself of the terrible shadow. He couldn’t. Like a maggot in his bones, it simply refused to be shaken away.

The Crimson Destruction Dragon God screamed, and the Pure Dragon God trembled. At this point, they both had realized that that single wisp of soul that looked like it could be scattered by a breeze was far stronger than a Dragon God’s soul… so strong, that it shouldn’t even exist in the current world.

The dragon god race’s bodies and souls were equal in strength. Right now, they were literally the strongest beings in the entire Primal Chaos. They absolutely had the right to look down on all other living beings in the world.

If they must have a divine soul that was comparable to a soul of a Dragon God, then Shui Meiyin’s Divine Stainless Soul might be the only one that fit the category.

However, the Dragon God Realm never imagined that a soul that far transcended theirs would exist in the lowly region of the dark, the Northern Divine Region! A wisp that used to belong in the devilish soul of a primordial Devil Emperor!

The Nirvana Devil Emperor’s soul!

The stubborn wisp of a soul had roamed the Northern Divine Region endlessly in hopes of searching for a host that was compatible with it, and it had succeeded right before it was about to vanish completely. That was how the infamous Devil Queen and the Soul Stealing Realm came to be.

Simply put, the soul was a tiny wisp, but it still belonged to a tier far higher than the Dragon Gods.

The Crimson Destruction Dragon God’s soul was as big as the devilish’s soul was tiny, and the latter absolutely eroded the former like a steel needle swimming amidst a sea of rotten wood. The Dragon God tried everything he could to resist, but the devilish soul kept attacking until his soul body was literally full of holes.

Finally, the fear of having his soul literally torn to pieces exceeded his pride. He stopped struggling altogether and withdrew his soul domain as best he could.

Not even in his wildest dreams did he imagine that he would be forced to escape with his tail between his legs one day. He would never be able to wash away this humiliation for as long as he lived.

He didn’t know yet that it would be far harder than he imagined to achieve that.

The awe-inspiring, seemingly omni-potent aura and roar from before were long gone.

The molten lava of his soul disappeared bit by bit. The entire soul domain looked like it would crumble at any moment.

Crack!

Shred!

Crack!!

Black mark compounded upon black mark. So much of the soul had been torn out that it didn’t even look like a dragon anymore and he failed to wipe away black scars that marred his body no matter what he tried.

There was an explosion, and finally, the Crimson Destruction Dragon God’s soul domain and Chi Wuyao’s soul domain were disentangled by force.

“UAH!” Pain distorted the Crimson Destruction Dragon God’s features as he stumbled back. His now open eyes looked both angry and confused.

On the other side, Chi Wuyao also opened her eyes and charged toward the Dragon God. She fired a pillar of black energy straight at his chest.

“GAH…” Despite groaning in pain, the crimson Destruction Dragon God responded with a swipe of his own claws and attempted to crush the approaching energy into nothing.

Physical body and profound energy wise, he was inferior only to the Dragon Monarch.

However, right before his claw was about to make contact with the black energy, a black light suddenly flashed across his pupils. Then, he felt as if a pitch-black blade had cut his damaged soul in half.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAA”

His screams shook space, and his energy crumbled on its own. Chi Wuyao’s attack easily knocked aside his claw and hit his solar plexus.

The Crimson Destruction Dragon God was strong, but not even he could withstand a direct hit to the solar plexus. His chest caved inward, and the impact sent him flying backward.

As it turned out, he had broken free of his soul sea and his soul battle with Chi Wuyao… but he hadn’t shaken off the influence of the Nirvana Devil Emperor’s soul at all.

“Big brother!”

At this point, only a complete fool would continue clinging onto their pride and maintain the integrity of the duel or whatever. The Pure Dragon God dashed toward Chi Wuyao in an attempt to strike her down.

However, two pitchblack figures reached her first before she could try anything.

They were of course Jie Xin and Jie Ling.

The Pure Dragon God frowned at the surprising level of speed and power displayed by the duo, but she reacted immediately and fired a wave of draconic energy at them.

The Witches’ weapon was a pair of identical black swords. When they swung them, a pair of flawless black energy beams emerged from their weapons, cut through the draconic blast, converged at a single point and finally stabbed toward the Pure Dragon God’s forehead with deadly power.

The Pure Dragon God was stunned yet again. It wasn’t their perfect synchrony that shocked her, it was their impossibly vast devilish energy.

Although the news that the devil people who were at Divine King realm or above had gained the power to conceal their energy had public knowledge for a while now, the explosiveness of the twin Witches’ power still shocked her greatly.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. When the twin Witches easily shredded her draconic blast into pieces, her hundred thousand year-long experience immediately informed her of a terrifying truth:

She could beat one of them with ease.

But two of them could beat her just as easily!

The Pure Dragon God whipped her sleeves and sliced the space in front of her in half, forcing the dark blast to stray away from its trajectory. However, the Witches suddenly threw their swords into the space, and the weapons split into four shorter blades before attacking a vital spot each.

Divine weapons of old usually carried great power. On the other hand, devilish weapons of old usually surprised first-time foes.

Shred!

Four pitch-black scars ripped across space. They looked like black ribbons that were nailed onto a blank canvas.

The Pure Dragon God disappeared from the intersection point of the black energies and reappeared five kilometers away. Then, she looked down on her right hand.

There was now a two-inch long gash in her plain white sleeve.

Fury entered her eyes as she extended her arms and summoned her full aura. However, she didn’t get a chance to vent it before the Crimson Destruction Dragon God’s blood curdling scream pierced her eardrums once more.

BANG! BANG! BOOM!

The Crimson Destruction Dragon God staggered backward again and again under Chi Wuyao’s assault. During a moment of darkness, Chi Wuyao abruptly teleported closer to him and destroyed his protective energy with a three hundred meter-wide vortex before landing a direct blow.

The resulting explosion transformed into a literal river of darkness.

PUUU

Blood—dragon blood—escaped the Crimson Destruction Dragon God’s throat like crazy.

It had been so long since he saw his own blood that he had forgotten its color and even its taste. And of all the places it could possibly be spilled, it just had to be the filthy space of the Northern Divine Region.