Chapter 420 Killing is Salvation (5400)

"He cares..."

Muttering softly, repeating Tang Yuan's words, Gu Zechuan raised his head, somewhat lost in thought, looking at Su Zhou amidst the thunder in the sky above.

At this moment, the wind howled, and the spiritual power within thousands of miles was gathering towards the southwest. The spiritual energy in the heavens and earth, as if summoned, surged wildly towards the Zhenling Tower City, even forming a huge vortex of clouds in the sky.

Inside the Zhenling Towers, hundreds of thousands of souls were returning to their positions. They returned to their bodies, restarting their flesh once again, and then opened their eyes, looking up at the sky with cold gazes.

Su Zhou held a long spear, standing high in the sky. In his eyes, there were millions, even tens of millions, of soul lights lighting up—each seven-story Zhenling Tower contained nearly two hundred thousand souls. Now, in this vast coastal land, one hundred and fifty Zhenling Towers were activated simultaneously, and the spiritual energy gathered from nearly thirty million people blotted out the sky, even coalescing into a dazzling pillar of spiritual energy that pierced the heavens and earth.

[--High-risk target detected, requesting spiritual power infusion--]

[--Target's strength is extremely powerful, far exceeding the predicted range, requesting to load advanced divine abilities--]

Amidst the spiritual light filling the sky, only a small number of soul lights could be considered profound enough to bear sufficient power. But in an instant, combat information from the distant Celestial Devil Main Matrix was loaded. One after another, basic spells representing the foundation were recorded into these profound souls, and then sequentially formed six exceptionally complex and equally powerful divine abilities!

'Yuanjue Heavenly Person Path', 'Youwei Human Path', 'Weyi Asura Path'!

'Nanhue Animal Path', 'Mingluo Hell Path', 'Zhiwang Hungry Ghost Path'!

Hearken to the Three Good Paths, Experience the Three Evil Paths!

The fundamental inheritance of immortals and gods, one of the most powerful divine abilities in the world, the six major branches of 'Six Paths of Reincarnation' were loaded simultaneously, granting all the Celestial Devils present who could withstand these divine abilities, allowing them to break through the boundaries and achieve the Commander Realm!

In an instant, the spiritual light filling the sky became even more dazzling.

Squinting his eyes, Su Zhou looked down at the one hundred and fifty Zhenling Towers that were being activated one by one. The vast spiritual power converged within them. These towers were like beehives, and countless Celestial Devils swarmed out from them—but the most dazzling were the more than a hundred streams of powerful divine ability light!

At this moment, they were flying rapidly towards Su Zhou!

The youth didn't care in the slightest. He just stared at these 'people' with expressionless faces and ice-blue light flashing in their eyes. He gazed at their faces, and then couldn't help but think.

--If these Qingqiu people hadn't been invaded by the Celestial Devils, hadn't been stuffed into the Zhenling Towers by these monsters, their bodies hadn't been used as batteries to produce spiritual power, and their brains and souls hadn't been used as wetware to simulate reincarnation.

Then what kind of life and future would they have?

In any case, it definitely wouldn't be called happiness.

Freedom and the future were inherently unrelated to happiness and enjoyment. Leaving the immortals and gods, leaving the Central Divine Court, and without spiritual power, losing all these conveniences, even the humans who remained on Earth lived extremely difficult lives, needing to develop civilization from scratch—although the last batch of immortals and gods left Earth only thousands of years ago, the true collapse of immortal and divine civilization had gradually begun tens of thousands of years ago.

The Qingqiu people, like the Earth people, had to start from scratch in the primitive era after losing the creations of spiritual energy civilization such as Taoist magic treasures, and gradually grow. Only in this way could they grow into a strong, independent, and autonomous civilization.

And such a process definitely couldn't be called happiness… They needed arduous struggle, step-by-step, down-to-earth development, using sweat and even blood to open up their future.

But now, it was all gone.

They didn't even have the right to suffer…

Once again, Su Zhou closed his eyes, and then opened them.

He didn't look at the many Celestial Devils who were attacking him fiercely, but instead looked at the ruins of the Zhenling Towers beneath him—in the culture tanks there, there were many corpses of infants and children, all of whom had been killed by him—killed well! Their souls had long been invaded and annihilated by the Celestial Devils, and their bodies had been turned into tools for the other side to fight and reproduce.

Rather than let human bodies be domesticated like livestock, allowing wisdom and souls to be so disgraced, it would be better for him to turn them all into nothingness in thunder and fire!

At this moment, the enemies were already close at hand. Accompanied by the whistling that tore through the sky, attacks that were either vast or sinister were blasting towards Su Zhou. The sharp edges of blades flashed, and the spiritual light of Taoist magic was dazzling.

It could be seen that a Celestial Devil with seven tails was enveloped in blood-colored light, and then constantly enlarged in mid-air—while condensing a 'Dharma Idol', it also gave birth to four huge scarlet spiritual energy arms behind it, and each of its arms wielded completely different tyrannical magical artifacts.

The derived divine ability of the Weyi Asura Path, 'Six-Armed Gara Image', could transform people into giant war weapons dozens of meters high. If their strength was sufficient, hundreds of meters wouldn't be a problem. Although this giant image wasn't large, it was currently tearing through the atmosphere at nearly ten times the speed of sound, charging towards Su Zhou.

As the blood light condensed on the magical artifact flickered, the surrounding air burned fiercely, plasma splashed, and the vast destructive spiritual power was enough to shatter a small mountain.

On the other side, a six-tailed Celestial Devil enveloped in pure light had become the darling of all the spiritual energy in the heavens and earth… Heavenly Person Cycle? Far more than that! The monster that had obtained the 'Yuanjue Heavenly Person Path' divine ability was rapidly transforming into a true Heavenly Person.

With a thought, the surrounding spiritual energy would transform into various terrifying spells. Whether it was thunder, heavenly fire, or divine wind, they were all generated in mid-air with a single thought, and then combined into terrifyingly powerful spells. All of this seemed to not require the use of its own spiritual energy at all.

And the next moment, these terrifying spells, enough to destroy towns, whistled through the spiritual energy and attacked Su Zhou, one after another, like a never-ending tide.

The offensive was far more than that. At the same time, there were also hundreds of Celestial Devils who might not necessarily be stronger, but were definitely not weak, launching similar combined attacks on Su Zhou.

The light wheels of the Six Paths faintly appeared in the heavens and earth. The atmosphere exploded violently under the combined attack of the Celestial Devils. Mid-air was filled with various explosions, flashes, extreme heat, and impacts, illuminating the dark heavens and earth as bright as day.

Even the Zhenling Tower beneath Su Zhou couldn't withstand the aftermath of these attacks. It slowly collapsed under the shock of the rolling shockwaves, and a small earthquake spread along with the rising dust.

Hundreds of Commander Realm—even if they were Celestial Devil copied and pasted divine ability modules, even if they were the crudely manufactured internal spiritual energy structure, but the Commander Realm was still the Commander Realm. Such a large army cluster of human immortals and martial artists was a vast force that no one could ignore.

But they were wrong.

Boom! A clap of thunder. Just as Su Zhou's figure seemed about to be swallowed by the endless combined attacks of the Celestial Devils, accompanied by a flash of lightning, a spear point arrived first, piercing through the vast spiritual light formed by the Celestial Devils' combination!

Buzz!!!

The low humming sound only began to spread outwards long after the flash of light. Su Zhou's thrust tore apart the Celestial Devils' array. The tide of white shockwaves separated their cluster like a god splitting the sea, and a cylindrical vacuum zone disappeared immediately amidst the ear-piercing roar of air rushing back in.

The Six-Armed Gara at the forefront was pierced in an instant. Amidst the ear-piercing sound of metal tearing, a huge hole about twelve meters wide appeared in the center of its Dharma Idol. The true body protected in the center was left with only its lower body, and all the magical artifacts it tried to block with were shattered. Cracks appeared on the Dharma Idol—a moment later, as this Dharma Idol completely collapsed and dissipated, the half-body of the seven-tailed Celestial Devil, its life aura completely extinguished, fell from the sky like a stone.

Boom boom boom boom boom—at the same time, the attacks of the other Celestial Devils followed, bringing flames, gales, and lightning. They bombarded Su Zhou's body, erupting into dazzling spiritual energy light streams, but the powerful spells that were enough to flatten city blocks and tear apart hills were all blocked by the semi-transparent spiritual energy shields with triangular spiritual patterns flickering around the youth. Not even his clothes could be burned.

Their attacks couldn't even break through the Azure Armor shield, let alone Su Zhou's body.

Then, the silent Su Zhou moved. He took the initiative to rush towards the numerous enemies. The long spear in his hand transformed into a deadly viper. Each seemingly unremarkable thrust would pierce through the divine soul of a Celestial Devil. In just one second, the corpses of four Commander Realm Celestial Devils fell to the ground.

They were wrong.

Because the opponent they chose was Su Zhou.

If the Commander Realm Celestial Devils had overwhelming physical performance against the Transcendent Realm cultivators, then Su Zhou, who was at the peak of the Commander Realm and only one step away from the Overlord, also possessed all-around performance that completely overwhelmed them.

He didn't even need to use techniques—Su Zhou only needed to swing the long spear in his hand like a club, and all the Celestial Devils who tried to besiege him could only be blasted away, their tendons broken and bones shattered!

The divine soul attack of the Mingluo Hell Path? A mud cow entering the sea, meaningless.

The curse and witchcraft of the Zhiwang Hungry Ghost Path? That also required breaking through the power of will shield. Su Zhou himself didn't know how to curse himself.

The weakening of luck and reduction of thinking ability of the Nanhue Animal Path?

Ignoring whether it could take effect or not, Su Zhou didn't need any luck, skill, or wisdom to deal with them in the first place. He could kill them all blindly with an empty brain.

In addition, there was the spiritual energy blockade of the Heavenly Person Path, the martial arts spiritual techniques of the Human Path, the killing arts of the Asura Path… all of which were meaningless. It was as if Su Zhou didn't have a heavenly person cycle, wasn't good at martial arts, and hadn't killed enough people. All of them were useless attacks.

Like a divine dragon charging into a school of fish, as Su Zhou drove the Azure Armor, urging his long spear to wave around with the wind, countless broken bodies fell from the sky like stones in the sea every second from the cluster of Celestial Devils that filled the sky, or incomplete corpses were blown away.

If it were a human army, they would probably have already collapsed at this time, but this was, after all, a cluster of Celestial Devils. After the Commander Realm Celestial Devils, there were still cloud-like Transcendent Realm Celestial Devils rising from the ground, intending to join the battle. Many ants could kill an elephant.

On the ground, Tang Yuan and Gu Zechuan were breaking out of the encirclement—although most of the Celestial Devils were attacking Su Zhou, some Celestial Devils were still attacking them. However, relying on Tang Yuan's spiritualization to avoid attacks, and Gu Zechuan's agile skills as a battle-hardened armored warrior, they quickly solved the most troublesome enemies, fighting and retreating all the way to the mountains in the suburbs.

It wasn't that they weren't worried about Su Zhou, but worrying was useless. Anyway, as long as the battle was still going on in the sky, it meant that Su Zhou was still in pretty good shape… More than just pretty good! Just the increasingly thick dark clouds and roaring lightning represented that their boss was in good condition at this time, killing hotly!

However, when the two broke through to the final juncture, Tang Yuan and Gu Zechuan stopped at the same time, and then stared blankly at the sky.

Not just them.

In the distant depths of the Lianyi Sea, in the deep seabed cavity, the black-haired nine-tailed Qingqiu person also watched this scene, and then showed an expression of 'surprise' that was difficult to suppress.

Because they saw that an extremely huge Divine Tree phantom was slowly rising behind Su Zhou.

--Thunder as branches, flames as leaves, the blue-white spiritual light illuminating the heavens and earth, the Divine Tree, as vast as a mountain, took root at the bottom of the cloud layer, growing backwards towards the earth—in the crown of the reverse-born Tree of Wisdom, countless light spirits holding flaming swords shuttled back and forth on the branches, beheading the numerous, weak attacking Celestial Devils.

Standing in the center of the Divine Tree phantom, holding the World Tree spear high, the youth seemed to be calling out the power of the true Divine Tree through this Divine Tree weapon!

"No way, when did Minister learn this trick?!"

Tang Yuan was extremely shocked. He certainly knew that Su Zhou's weapon was made from the branches of the World Tree, but could he summon the Divine Tree image to attack the enemy based on this alone? How could it be so simple! Lin Chengde, who was a Divine Tree inheritor next door, also needed to prepare a position for a long time before he could drive the Divine Tree Dharma Idol to attack. How was Su Zhou, a divine dragon, related to the Divine Tree?!

Wait, speaking of which, the World Tree was knocked down by the Black Dragon? No no, not this… the Panlong also wraps around trees or pillars… also wrong!

Let's not talk about what historical origins the Divine Dragon and the Divine Tree have. The most important thing is that this Divine Tree doesn't look like the World Tree at all!

"Wait… hide quickly!"

Unlike Tang Yuan, Gu Zechuan didn't know what the Divine Tree meant. He only knew that an extremely powerful force was gathering in the World Tree spear in Su Zhou's hand. All the thunderbolts bursting out in the sky were striking towards the top of this spear, gathering the majestic power of the heavens above it, making the fox people shudder.

"No matter what kind of future it is, whether it is arduous or miserable, whether it is successful or glorious, you will not see it."

At this moment, Su Zhou looked at the cluster of Celestial Devils rushing towards him like dark clouds with a compassionate gaze. They were unintelligent and unconscious, had no fear, and had no ideas of their own. They simply acted like zombies, obedient to various established rules, even slightly inferior to AI.

But such monsters were born from the Celestial Devils eroding the souls of humans who originally had a bright future.

Thinking like this, he tightly grasped the spear in his hand and murmured to himself, "You are already dead—from the moment your souls were corroded by the Celestial Devils."

"But even so… even if your souls have been invaded by the Celestial Devils, even if you have turned into monsters, I still can't bear to give up."

Because he cared, he couldn't ignore them.

A torrential rain fell from the sky, and black dark clouds shrouded the world. Su Zhou could see that this was some kind of world-changing spiritual method. This mysterious method was contained in the rain and dark clouds. One day, it might cover the entire planet and become a world of its own, perhaps truly transforming into the Six Paths of Reincarnation and eroding the Bingzhu seal.

And now, in the dark heavens and earth, under the flickering lightning, many Celestial Devils still flew silently, launching attacks on the youth mechanically.

He could smell the scent of human blood, the scent of Qingqiu people's fur being scorched, and feel the heat, coldness, paralysis, and impact brought by the spiritual power. He could also feel the scattered light spots when the souls collapsed and hear the sound of flesh being torn apart.

The huge Divine Tree phantom swayed its branches, and the blue-white spiritual light was like a flame, igniting half the sky, causing countless Celestial Devils to fall like rain as they approached.

And amidst this spiritual light filling the sky, on the ruins of this collapsed Zhenling Tower, Su Zhou sighed and then raised the Divine Tree spear in his hand—the lightning gathered, and had already transformed it into a pure Thunderbolt Divine Spear. The youth held this authority representing judgment in any mythology.

"Too tragic," he said, as if pronouncing a sentence.

Then, he waved the hand holding the thunder spear and threw it towards the earth.

A flash of light fell, and then there was a roar.

----Boom!!!!

Accompanied by a flash of light as strong as the sun, terrifying heat spread. At the moment when the divine spear struck the earth, a bowl-shaped energy shield rapidly expanded, and then shattered.

The violent shock wave swept around the Zhenling Tower City. Tang Yuan and Gu Zechuan, who were hiding, swallowed their saliva and felt the terror of this strike.

A grayish-white mushroom cloud slowly swelled from the earth, straight into the dark clouds in the sky. Blue lightning crisscrossed within the clouds, and faint thunder rumbled.

Rising with it were tens of thousands of ice-blue soul lights.

Those were the countless Celestial Devil souls that had been annihilated by Su Zhou's full-force strike.

These souls should have dissipated and turned into nothingness, but the Divine Tree phantom, manifested from the spirit of the Tree of Wisdom behind Su Zhou, shook its branches and swept them towards these souls, gathering them all onto itself and hanging them on the branches.

For a time, it was as if countless ice-blue tender buds had grown on the branches of the Divine Tree, appearing crystal clear.

——Rather than let these souls dissipate in the heavens and earth, or be recycled by the Celestial Devils back to their 'Six Paths Dream Realm', it would be better for him to recycle them…

Perhaps one day, he could erase the Celestial Devil's imprint on them, 'convert the Celestial Devils', and allow these souls to be reborn?

Don't say it can't be done. Things always have to be done to know the result.

And that was Su Zhou's purpose.

In the Southwest Zhenling Tower City, more than a hundred Commander Realm Celestial Devils at the forefront had all vanished, and most of the Transcendent Realm Celestial Devils had also been injured and destroyed. The remaining numerous awakened, Spirit Opening Realm Celestial Devils were still wandering on the ground… These were only the 'combat-use prosthetic bodies' that were intact and had spiritual power talents.

In the other one hundred-plus Zhenling Towers, there were tens of times, even hundreds of times, more 'Qingqiu people' who were imprisoned in culture tanks with incomplete bodies.

They, too, were waiting for 'redemption'.

"There's still a lot to do. This is only one-thousandth of it."

Lowering his head and eyes, Su Zhou's gaze was calm. He murmured softly, and there seemed to be flames burning in his eyes.

The youth recalled the divine spear, and then turned into a stream of light. The next moment, accompanied by the shock waves caused by the supersonic vibration, surging waves of blood suddenly rose in the cluster of Celestial Devils on the ground.

Spiritual light scattered, and the phantom of the Divine Tree mercifully lowered its branches, receiving the souls of these Celestial Devils and incorporating them into its body.

Slaughter was salvation.

The work of recycling souls had only just begun.

--On this day, Su Zhou, the Minister of the New World Exploration Department of Zheng Guo, and the captain of the Faraway, led two soldiers to attack the Qingqiu Celestial Devil Zhenling Tower City, and greatly defeated the Celestial Devil army.

Completely slaughtered the devil crowd, thirty million.

Seeking a monthly ticket~

Tang Yuan/Gu Zechuan: The Minister and I jointly killed thirty million Celestial Devils.