Trials of the Abyss

Tap!

Pang Jian abruptly halted his retreat.

"Xie Xiwen" smiled invitingly.

"Come here."

Wisps of smoke drifted around her like a dreamlike mist. Her sinister power spread outward from the giant hand, seeping into her surroundings.

Crack!

The cold, hard ground split open like a sharp blade had been driven into it, forming jagged fissures as stones exploded outward.

Her smile remained unchanged, but her eyes let off a strange, demonic light, like two bottomless wells that drew in any who dared to gaze into them.

Pang Jian locked eyes with her.

Her smile widened.

The black turtle scute on Pang Jian's chest started to actively absorb his blood essence, snapping Pang Jian's clouded mind back to reality.

Stopping himself mid-step, he turned and fled, not daring to look at "Xie Xiwen" again.

"I have important matters to attend to. I don't have time to chat with you," Pang Jian rejected coldly as he ran away.

In the blink of an eye, he had put a hundred zhang between him and "Xie Xiwen," visibly disheveled as he retreated.

"Xie Xiwen's" smile faded into a slight frown.

"Go," she softly commanded.

The dead members of the Star River Alliance around the altar, including Shen Lei and the two Spirit Condensation Realm elders, stood up in stiff, unnatural movements.

Their hollow eyes lacked human emotion and shone with a silver radiance.

They chased after Pang Jian, slow at first, but gradually speeding up until they became streaks of dazzling meteors.

Having witnessed the sinister nature of the arachnid Outer God, Pang Jian could not help but glance back after fleeing a great distance.

Shen Lei and the others were racing toward him like shooting stars as their piercing howls sliced through the air.

Pang Jian immediately activated the scute's Earth Dive ability and vanished underground, watching as the reanimated members of the Star River Alliance sped by from deep beneath the earth.

An Outer God must have possessed or inhabited Xie Xiwen, Pang Jian thought grimly as he hid underground.

Strange phenomena seemed to be occurring all over Spirit Offering. Crumbling altars, collapsed statues, and broken carvings that had been dormant for millennia were now reawakening one after another.

Gods from unknown places had turned their attention to the ancient ruins in Spirit Offering, peering into the restricted area from afar.

Every cultivator in Spirit Offering had to beware of these Outer Gods' scrutiny and guard against their malevolent intent.

All it took was one wrong move for these entities to kill them.

The Abyss will descend into even greater chaos.

Pang Jian shook his head in silence.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Massive grayish-white stones floated in the sky above Pang Jian.

The massive stones constantly crashed into each other like they were trying to merge into a single structure but were missing some essential binding force.

A beautiful yet sinister face with silvery white hair floated among the colliding stones, radiating an evil power that rippled outward and allowing the God to observe the restricted area from its distant location.

Deep underground, Pang Jian cursed.

The God possessing Xie Xiwen had already driven him to hide in fear, and now another, even more powerful one had arrived.

The Outer God above him turned its attention to the reanimated members of the Star River Alliance.

The God's broken spider legs started to pull back as if tugging at the very fabric of time.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The God's outward spreading power tainted the reanimated cultivators from the Star River Alliance, and they rushed toward the God like moths to a flame.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Shen Lei, the two Spirit Condensation Realm elders, and several others burst into clouds of bloody mist.

The dense bloody mist enveloped the detached spider parts and gruesome flesh regenerated at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Parts of its body and face fused together.

Pang Jian, still underground, stared up in shock.

The Gods in Spirit Offering aren't allies! he realized.

As expected, the God possessing Xie Xiwen let out a soul-rending screech in the distance.

The arachnid Outer God showed no fear when it heard the threatening cry and instead grew even more excited.

Whoosh!

It shot across the sky above Pang Jian with its remaining broken limbs, heading directly for the God possessing Xie Xiwen.

Crash!

A cataclysmic clash erupted in the distance as two terrifying wills and powers collided fiercely.

The ground sank, the sky trembled, and destructive divine power surged like a tidal wave, sweeping across everything in its path.

Pang Jian could feel the earth-shaking force seeping into the depths of Spirit Offering from where he was hidden underground.

He hastily went deeper, reaching the thirty-zhang limits of his Earth Dive ability in hopes of avoiding the incoming shockwaves.

He poured blood essence into the black turtle scute, activated the defensive properties of his Illusory Bone Realm body, and summoned his green protective shield, bracing for the aftershocks.

Streams of corrosive light and specks of grayish-white radiance collided and moved through the ground, carving out tunnels through the earth as they went.

The web-like tunnels spread out, expanding in every direction

Boom!

Pang Jian's green protective shield shattered instantly.

The two terrifying forces finally reached Pang Jian, subjecting him to immense pressure as they fought.

His body and face contorted with the crushing force.

If not for the sturdiness of his reinforced bones, the overwhelming pressure alone would have shattered his skeleton and torn him apart.

The blood vessels in his chest burst, and Pang Jian quickly realized that even the underground was unsafe.

Whoosh!

Gritting his teeth, he escaped to the surface and fled in panic without a single glance backward.

He clicked his tongue in astonishment.

They're way too powerful.

He knew these were not the Gods' true forms, and this battle only showed a fraction of their divine power.

However, even this small display was enough to carve out a maze of tunnels deep underground.

If their true bodies were to truly manifest here, their battle would tear apart Spirit Offering, and possibly even the entire Dark Abyss Continent.

Perhaps beings as powerful as True Gods could also break apart the fragmented lands.

A sense of awe filled Pang Jian, but he dared not turn back for fear of feeling the full force of the two Gods' power.

He had a strong feeling that, if he had not fled as he did, and even a hint of their power had touched him, the two mysterious entities would have become aware of a living being hiding deep underground.

They would then drag him out from the ground once the battle ended.

If he had not escaped when he did, he would have surely died.

***

An hour later, the arachnid Outer God hovered over Pang Jian's previous hiding place. It scattered star-like grayish-white lights and sent them deep into the ground.

It scanned the ground below with cold, indifferent eyes, searching for energy it could absorb.

The grayish-white lights were extensions of its divine consciousness and could penetrate a hundred zhang into the ground.

The lights then spread outward.

Finding nothing, the God frowned, and its divine consciousness surged.

Rumble! Rumble!

The ground shook violently.

The grayish-white lights bore countless holes into the earth as they returned to the God's body.

It was like enormous wells leading to the earth's core had been dug.

After hovering for a while, the God drifted away.

At the massive hand-shaped altar, only a seated skeleton wearing the robes of the Star River Alliance remained.

The genius of the Star River Alliance had long since died, and the arachnid Outer God had defeated the God possessing her.

***

Pang Jian continued to roam Spirit Offering.

He carefully used the bronze pendant to extract strands of divine consciousness to help the pupa complete its metamorphosis and become a true Bee Sovereign.

Two days later, he condensed another strand of divine sense within his sea of consciousness.

One hundred and thirty-one strands!

Pang Jian noticed his sea of consciousness had also expanded in conjunction with the new milestone.

The space within his sea of consciousness had grown much wider.

Unexpectedly, his divine sense's capacity for mental and spiritual power had also surpassed its previous limit as each of the one hundred and thirty-one strands of divine sense had grown longer.

Pang Jian realized Ye Fei from the Black Valley Sect had been right.

Every additional ten strands after achieving one hundred strands represented a new threshold.

Surpassing one hundred and thirty strands was an exceptionally difficult barrier!

Crossing it had brought forth new, extraordinary changes.

Six days later, Pang Jian's total strands of divine sense had reached one hundred and thirty-six strands. However, his sea of consciousness did not expand further, and the strands of divine sense did not lengthen.

At this point, he could no longer find anything in Spirit Offering from which to extract divine consciousness and no new Gods appeared either.

One day, a broad beam of sword light shot skyward, like a waterfall flowing in reverse.

A sword intent powerful enough to tear through the heavens burst from the silver sword light.

From afar, Pang Jian watched as a massive silvery white sword struck down a God with black wings!

The black-winged God unleashed waves of black divine flames in an attempt to escape the pursuit of the silver sword but was still felled with a single strike.

The God crumbled to dust before it could even hit the ground, leaving no hint that it had ever existed.

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