A collective gasp of shock and astonishment followed the origin dao immortal’s observation.

Once upon a time, the Golden Lion King had suffered great injuries to attain origin dao immortality, marking his cultivation as a crippled one as well. Yet its latest appearance showed that its dao fruits had been restored. Its old wounds afflicted it no longer!

……

Qing Han turned ghastly pale. Her current replica was refined from the connate spirit root Moon Osmanthus, but that wouldn’t allow it to remain intact under the pressure of a flawless origin dao immortal.

Xing Chen whitened as well. He interposed himself between Qing Yu and the lion, taking on the burden of the pressure alongside her.

“If you’re not coming out… then die.”

Bam!

The Golden Lion King raised a foreclaw, aiming a swipe into Dusk Province. The appendage expanded to a hundred thousand times its normal size. It blotted out the sky like a mountain, threatening to crash down on Qing Yu, Xing Chen, and the Dusk capital ruins.

“No… even if a war treasure was charged to full power, it still wouldn’t hurt a flawless origin dao immortal!” Lu Yun struggled to get up. His exhaustion from calling upon the inheritance tower meant that he had nothing left to spare for the Divine Glory.

The other war treasures at his disposal could kill origin dao immortals, yes, but only injured ones. The old lion could do the same with a casual slap of its palm, so the cannons were of no threat to it.

“The corpse puppet!” Lu Yun gritted his teeth. He had no choice but to use the celestial emperor corpse puppet! Aside from this final weapon, he had nothing else with which to fend off the lion. He’d wanted to save it for Scarlet Ape in the North Sea, but what else could he do now?!

……

Suddenly, everything became very quiet. The claw reaching into Dusk Province ground to a halt, some invisible restriction binding it in place. Every mote of dust, every speck of qi, became immobile.

A light-blue figure descended from the heavens, gracefully landing upon Dusk Province’s soil. A middle-aged daoist nun, she wore the simple robes of her order and her hair was swept up into a bun. Although she seemed to be thirty-something at first, a second look revealed many girlish features about her.

Shwip!

A sword light flew forth from her hand.

The golden lion’s mountain of a palm crashed to the ground, severed and spraying an arc of golden blood high into the sky. The lion king wanted to scream, but the restriction holding it firmly in place meant that it could only tremble with silent agony.

“Keep your subordinates on a better leash, Scarlet Ape. Next time, it will lose its head, instead.” The daoist nun projected cold lethality.

Upon Levitating Island, the daydreaming ape seemed to recover itself. It inclined its head very slowly.

The nun spun around, then disappeared. As she did so, everything went back to normal.

“Aaaaaaaaieeee!” The lion’s anguished shriek came a little late. It retracted its forearm, then fled with its tail between its legs.

Lu Yun let out a breath of relief and retracted his consciousness from Violetgrave.

“Her aura was a lot like the little daoist nun’s… could she be a senior of the little girl?” Qing Han ventured, looking in the direction of their savior.

“There’s more to that little girl than meets the eye.” Lu Yun nodded. “A special power is sleeping inside her. When it awakens, she’ll become one of the top geniuses of the world for sure.”

……

The great battle ended even more suddenly than it had begun.

Dusk City was completely destroyed. Even the site of its ruins was in ruins, and the rest of the province had fared no better. When geniuses surrounded Dusk City, factions hostile to Lu Yun had taken the opportunity to raze every city in the surrounding countryside.

Although this battle had occurred on a smaller scale than the North Sea monsters’ invasion, the earth had been more fully salted this time.

Cultivators and immortals who’d come into the province upon the lifting of the blockade had done so only in order to destroy. Earth, mineral, and spirit veins that had been slowly recovering under Lu Yun’s rule had all been decimated by the saboteurs. This time, it would be absolutely impossible for them to recover.

“Dusk Province is done. Very soon, this place will become more desolate than the Endless Desert in western Nephrite. A single ancient lord’s inheritance tower won’t be enough to salvage this mess.” Some looked on at the devastation with visible pleasure.

They hadn’t obtained the inheritance tower or occupied Sword Lake, but the sudden destruction of a growing threat was still a delightful sight to savor.

“The natural energies here are dissipating. Now that its source has been uprooted, the immortal qi cannot recover. If Lu Yun wants to found a sacred land of immortal dao, he must go somewhere else… but where possibly can he go?”

Feng, Qing, Donglin, and Exalted immortals smirked knowingly at one another. Only powerful immortals of these great factions had methods available at their disposal to destroy a province’s earth veins like this.

When Dusk Province’s natural energies had dispersed, causing its poverty, there had still been a possibility for its renewal.

But now? They’d systematically demolished every single vein underground. Human intervention to heal the land was absolutely impossible. Not even the nine celestial emperors would be able to save Dusk Province now.

As for the Golden Lion King and the daoist nun in blue… well, everyone chose to selectively ignore them.

The Golden Lion King had healed from breaking through its cultivation threshold, but the only reason for its emergence had been the death of its heir. Meanwhile, the nun in blue had only interfered to repel it. Evidently, there was a sort of balance keeping each other in check here.

……

“Junior sister, will you still not return with me?” In a corner of Dusk Province, the daoist nun was speaking to Mo Yi. Her face was troubled by the pretty girl in boy’s clothing.

“I’m not going back.” Mo Yi shook her head. “The world of immortals is a rare patch of unsullied land in the multiverse. Someone needs to protect it.”

“Can any eggs remain unbroken when the nest is destroyed?” The nun furrowed her brows. “This world edges closer to ruin every day. If you stay here…”

“Senior sister, that’s enough. To each our own aspirations.” Mo Yi waved a hand. “Plus, I don’t think the world will necessarily be destroyed. There are other people protecting it.”

She looked toward the ruins of Dusk City.

“Are you talking about Lu Yun?” The woman shook her head. “He has a lot of potential, but he’s already made a deal with Violetgrave… he won’t have time to grow, anyway.” She raised her head toward the sky. “The divines protected this world eighty thousand years ago, but for what? Their own extinction? Smeared as slavers, they’ve now become an enemy of the rest of the world. Do you intend to follow in their footsteps?”