Fortunately, Karen was just joking with her.
Now they need one exceptionally strong player, one average player, and one exceptionally strong player—all combined—to deal with a Smoke Mirror. Hmm, the situation doesn't seem so hopeless after all?
However, none of the three of them had practiced combined attack formations, so their coordination wouldn't be as smooth as an extension of their own limbs. Therefore...
"You can decide whether to support me based on the situation."
Karen stood up, walked out of her private room, and headed towards the smoke mirror.
Hela shrugged, and Pania nodded nervously. No one said anything more.
This is a battlefield where death could strike at any moment. Rather than making do with something on the spot, it's better for Kallen to step in first, while Hela and Panya rely on their tacit understanding.
At this moment, the Smoke Mirror was tormenting the poor Corn God. He stepped on the Corn God's face and twisted his nose little by little with the heel of his shoe. However, when Kallen walked over, the Smoke Mirror immediately raised his head, raised his eyebrows and looked over: "Hmph, instead of choosing to run away, you took the initiative to come to me? You're not your father, little Nephalem (half-angel)."
“If my father’s power frightens you,” Karen retorted calmly, “then you are doomed to defeat when you face my strength.”
Now, Smoke Mirror was genuinely surprised: "Wow, the Peacock King's daughter really has some courage. Much better than my daughter. Don't you think so, my dear daughter?"
He lowered his head again and kicked Mikkelsen, who was paralyzed on the ground and unable to move.
In the blink of an eye, Karen made her move!
Five-colored divine light—yellow, white, red, black, and blue—shone brightly in her palm. Just then, a clear whistle, like a dragon's roar, boomed out! Karen took a step forward, traversing what was previously half the arena's space, and unleashed a palm strike. When she stood still, she resembled a lotus, a peony; but when she moved, her power was more intense, more domineering, more ferocious than thunder! It was unimaginably fast, filled with a fierce and overwhelming aura that cut through all obstacles!
A massive army surged forth with her palm strike, causing the wind and clouds to change color and the earth to tremble!
"Hey, that's starting to look pretty good!"
Smoke Mirror sneered, but did not dodge. He threw a punch, which collided with Karen's palm.
A deafening roar pierced the sky!
Besides the gods, there were originally hundreds of divine messengers from different companies in the ritual arena. Even without their divine power, they were still considered top-tier fighters, but they were instantly annihilated by the aftershocks of the battle. Even Pania had neither the chance nor the ability to protect them. In less than a heartbeat's time, they were all dead.
Then the circular ritual field absorbed the blood and life of these divine messengers.
At the same time, Karen felt as if her palm strike, like the blow of a thousand troops, had struck the sun.
That was a black sun that illuminated the world. The power of a thousand armies, the overwhelming divine might, and the five-colored divine light of earth, water, fire, wind, and space—none of them could destroy this sun!
"Silent winds and Styx, cease the night's winds and extinguish the sun!"
At this moment, the goddess Hela opened her arms and made a bow-drawing motion in mid-air.
Then the winds of death transformed into a longbow, unleashing chilling, wind-slaying arrows from the underworld. These were cursed arrows, capable of killing even the wind itself, blown from the River Styx. Hela now aimed them at the Mirror of Smoke, hoping to give her daughter a sliver of hope in the battle.
Why are all the peacocks so stubborn?
Smoke Mirror impatiently stretched out her other hand and deflected Hela's arrow with her index finger. Although it was done casually, it gave Pania an opportunity.
She didn't attack the Smoke Mirror because Pania was at least half a South American goddess, and would be severely countered by it. But Pania's little mind worked quickly, so she immediately did something more valuable than attacking the Smoke Mirror, and also more in line with her personality:
Pania transformed into a bolt of lightning and shot towards Micket, who was slumped at the feet of the Smoke Mirror!
Smoke Mirror blocked Kallen's palm with one fist and Hela's arrow with the other. When he noticed Pania sneaking over and tried to stop her from stealing someone, it was too late.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Karen stepped forward with her other hand, pushing her palm forward and sending a second force crashing down on the smoke mirror. This time, however, she didn't use the [Five-Colored Divine Light], nor the power to dispel evil and destroy, but rather the [Dream Flower].
It is the power of purification and transformation!
Smoke Mirror's power may be stronger than Kallen's, but that doesn't matter! She can use the power of the [Dream Flower] to reverse the disparity in strength, converting Smoke Mirror's underworld divine power into life energy, and turn the tables on Smoke Mirror!
...and then something incredible happened.
Just as Karen was forcefully channeling the true power of the Dream Flower into the Smoke Mirror, she suddenly felt as if the root of her divine artifact had collided with something—something that was particularly heavy, extremely large, and also extremely complex.
She could use the [Dream Flower] to transform it, which she could—but that was something far too heavy and far too enormous.
Like another sun hanging in the sky.
Like a strange, dark sun that has fallen below the horizon and sunk into the underworld, harboring endless darkness of death.
Why are there two suns?
The next moment, a surge of pitch-black energy, like a tsunami, suddenly erupted from the sun of the underworld, forcefully pushing Karen's left hand back, causing her to take three steps back, and interrupting the transformation of her [Dream Flower]!
In contrast to Karen, who took three steps back, Smoke Mirror stood firmly in place, without even swaying, just like the midday sun.
Although Hela often teased her daughter, she knew how powerful and skilled Kallen was. Seeing this scene, she was surprised: how could the weakest of the main gods, the floor god, be so strong that she wouldn't even flinch after being hit twice by her daughter?
No way. It shouldn't be this strong. This is beyond the power that the smoke goggles usually display!
"It seems your attack power is far inferior to your father's!"
Smoke Mirror gained the upper hand in this exchange of blows, its momentum rising, and it taunted him.
"Now that you've finished your attack, do you want me to give you three moves?"
Before she could finish speaking, Karen suddenly felt the air around her become unusually heavy. She was a god, an extremely powerful god, yet she still felt a strange chill coming from behind her, and heard an ominous sound that she couldn't tell if it was the mourning of the earth or the wailing of the dead.
"aieeeee!"
Pania, who had just flown a few hundred meters with Micket in her arms, looked up at the sky and suddenly opened her eyes wide in surprise, screaming in shock: "Karen, look!"
It turns out that, from some unknown time, the sun above everyone's heads began to distort, warping and deforming like an image through a convex lens. The sun's shape was bending in an impossible, strange direction, falling towards the infinite beyond.
At the end was a pitch-black void. Yet countless eyes peered out from that void, ignoring the vast distance, responding to Pania and the others' gazes with their own.
Moreover, Hela and Pania, one a goddess of the underworld and the other having died once, were both very familiar with death and reacted immediately. Hela immediately shouted, "Daughter, retreat first! You can't fight this kind of monster head-on!"
"It's no use, Hela! If you run away now, my [Great Magic] will be activated, and you'll never have a chance to win again!"
Smoke Mirror laughed heartily and nudged them with the flames.
"Besides, you, little Karen, you've finally been independent for a few years, are you going to go back to be protected by your parents again? Don't you believe in your own strength to defeat me? If you can't even beat an old ghost like me, what are you going to rely on to conquer the whole world?"
Given Karen's past personality, if she were mocked like this, she would at least retaliate in some way, even without fighting.
However, this time, Karen did not do so.
Taking a step back, she used her divine power to pull Pania and Hela together, beginning to create distance between herself and the Smoke Mirror.
"Looks like you're still not weaned!"
Smoke Mirror laughed, but did not give chase.
The next second, the sun directly overhead, above the ceremony grounds, suddenly turned pitch black, like an eclipsed sun obscured by the moon's shadow. The surface of the eclipsed sun rippled incessantly, as if released from a long seal, overjoyed. Its flames and light turned a deep black, a fire so terrifying it could devour light itself. Such intense, indescribable radiance, with its powerful heat and raging black flames, filled the air.
combustion
充满
power
This is the cry of thousands of soldiers on the battlefield.
This is a moment of joyful caresses.
This is the sorrow of loss, the joy of victory. A vast, surging tide, oppressing and melting everything. It contains the bitter heat of a thousand suns, and also every joyful kiss; it is the packaged, customized life of the people of this nation that defines all their feelings.
Then the black sun began to pour out a black torrent. The raw, concentrated black tide gushed out like vomit, rushing towards the entire circular ceremonial ground like a tsunami, submerging the entire island of Aztland.
The hellish scene that followed left Pania and Hela speechless.
Where the city of Aztland was swallowed by the flood, the buildings were corroded and turned into living, undead flesh. They saw the citizens fleeing in panic, only to be devoured by the monstrous flesh.
Hela was heartless and indifferent to the lives of others, but Pania was a good child. She almost immediately closed her eyes and turned away, unable to bear it, unable to describe it, and unable to understand it. In her eyes, the entire capital, Azlant, seemed to be gradually becoming undead, the magnificent city rapidly transforming into a bloody hell. It was a rotting city composed of countless twisted bodies of living people. Maggots gnawed at the very foundation of life, devouring all living things, turning everything into deformed remains in their endless thirst. Countless wails echoed in pain and despair—a dark reflection of the corrupted winds of life.
During her escape by air, Pania saw several ordinary citizens of the capital struggling against the black torrent—being entangled by the viscous black tide. Seeing one citizen about to be overwhelmed and fall into the water, Pania finally couldn't hold back any longer and fired a divine shot.
The hit Kuroshio flinched for a moment, and then... he actually turned around and pounced towards Panya!
Only then did these raw, concentrated torrents reveal their true nature in Pania for the first time.
They were all dead, shadows, and countless spirits! Each one was the size of a living person, with sharp claws on their hands and feet, emaciated bodies, and their entire bodies were pitch black.
"The artificial underworld in South America is connected to the physical world."
Hela looked at these undead and immediately recognized their origin, muttering to herself.
"But that's strange... I don't remember that Smoke Mirror Company ever created an artificial underworld. Didn't they just use immortality to replace the underworld with the human world?"
Yes. In South America, the dead are simply dead. Only the wealthy and powerful factory workers are transformed into self-aware undead beings after death, like vampires. They don't have an artificial underworld like the Mitra Corporation's "Pure Land"! What exactly is this solar eclipse connected to?!
Nobody knows, at least they can't possibly know right now.
In the heart of this city, where the ceremony once took place, something began to crawl out of the darkness, growing infinitely large like a tumor.
He is formless and shapeless, yet infinitely varied in form, sometimes fat, sometimes thin, like a wisp of smoke, like a phantom, constantly spreading upwards. That smoke has round eyes, like a dead, cold sun, and its wide smile is as broad as the horizon.
Smoke Mirror emerged from the darkness with a smile.
“Peacock’s daughter, let me teach you a lesson. When your Dream Flower transforms pollution and poison into life force, I can also use your technology to neutralize, destroy, or even change that life force.”
He grinned and said.
(Strange, why does He know my dream flower technique?)
As Karen retreated, she quickly considered the problem and then realized what was going on. On one hand, everyone had seen Hayden and Karen use it so many times that they were probably able to understand it to some extent; on the other hand, Hayden had sold some basic techniques to Micket, and now they were probably all in Smoke Mirror's hands.
She wouldn't blame Hayden, after all, it's impossible to stop technological proliferation forever. To remain at the top, one must constantly improve and become stronger... That being said, the current situation is indeed quite troublesome.
The most powerful Aztec god walked on the dark sea.
His name is Tescatlipoca, the black sun obscured by the moon.
In other words, it is life and death, night and day, light and shadow, heaven and earth, and the master of these two and everything in between.
The omnipotent God who reflects all things.
357: The Dead Sun
The black sun poured out a black torrent, like a wound that kept oozing pus.
A viscous, concentrated black tide erupted like vomit, surging towards the entire circular ritual arena like a tsunami, flowing out as if from a slowly splitting intestine, engulfing the entire island of Aztland. Where the city of Aztland was swallowed by the torrent, buildings were eroded, turning into living, undead flesh and blood. Space itself seemed to disintegrate, and the earth trembled incessantly.
Citizens scattered in panic, only to be swallowed by the monstrous flesh and blood. The capital of South America, an ancient city with thousands of years of history, the jewel of the Smoke Mirror Company—all its glory vanished, all hope was shattered, screams echoed in the air, and countless wails of despair resounded in fear and hopelessness.
Pania tried to rescue the citizens, but she only touched the tip of the iceberg of this dark power before feeling her own insignificance and powerlessness. A great god? What use is a great god? If she were swallowed by this darkness, she would vanish instantly as well.
The entire South America is now sealed off by the power of the Smoke Mirror and will soon be completely swallowed up by the black sun.
"Ugh, this is so troublesome."
Hela sighed and pulled out a USB drive from somewhere.
It was a blood-red USB drive. When Hela pressed the button on the drive, it immediately emitted a mesmerizing red light and a strange electronic sound:
[Scarlet!]
"Accept the sacrifice of my blood!"
Then Hela tossed the blood-red USB drive into the lake outside Aztland Island.
The headquarters of the Smoke Mirror Company was originally located on a large island in central South America, surrounded by lakes. These lakes were not originally able to block the torrent of the Black Sun, but when Hela threw the USB drive into them, the lake water immediately turned into blood.
The entire lake, after Hela tossed the USB drive in, instantly transformed into a boundless lake of blood. Even more incredibly, the once clear lake water, unable to withstand the black tide of the black sun, noticeably slowed the spread of the black torrent after becoming a blood lake. The pungent, black slurry immediately slowed its flow upon contact with the blood lake.
"Wow……"
Pania was utterly shocked. Not so much that Hela could instantly turn the lake water into blood—any powerful being could do that. The real shock was that Hela's seemingly simple action had actually slowed the spread of the Smoke Mirror's power. Pania herself had just tried it once, and it proved to be barely better than shooting an arrow at a tsunami. She knew how difficult that was to accomplish.
Karen sighed at this moment: "Mom, there's no need for that."
"This is my [Styx Memory], the foundation of my divine power, just like Kallen's [Dream Flower]."
Hela shrugged and explained to Pania.
“A hundred years ago, I used a self-made arcane program to seal the ten attributes of death into a memory. The attributes of death can be reproduced by using the memory. I threw the [Blood Styx Memory] into the lake to recreate the Blood River in the material world, which can at least slow down the strange mud in the Smoke Mirror.”
All large corporations study death because no one knows what the real afterlife is like, or even whether it exists at all. All gods and corporations are like blind men touching an elephant, which is why they each create their own artificial underworld.
One of the foundations of Hela's ascension to godhood is that, like the blind men and the elephant, she discovered ten "contact points" in death and sealed these ten attributes of death into her memory using arcane magic. Hela called these ten contact points the "Ten Rivers of the Styx," believing they each symbolized one of the ten ways of dying. Through the principles of sympathy and contact with death, she could draw upon a limited but sufficient amount of Styx energy.
The Blood Styx represents the death of violence and war, the most primal and pure energy of death. Hela first throws it into the lake, recreating it and turning the entire lake into a blood lake, effectively slowing down the invasion of the Smoke Mirror. Because the Blood Styx, already occupying the lake, will naturally resist the other death forces of the Smoke Mirror.
Furthermore, Hela voluntarily offered up the foundation of her divine power and sacrificed her blood, an act that perfectly aligns with the supreme principle of the South American magical system—the power of sacrifice!
With these advantages combined, Hela, though far weaker than the Smoke Mirror, could still put up some tricks against Him. This young god, only a little over a hundred years old this year, actually started out practicing witchcraft.
"However, even if I sacrifice some of my foundation and go all out, my trick can only slow it down for an hour at most. Within an hour, I can block this black tide in the lake... probably."
Hela then turned to look at her daughter: "So it's up to you guys now."
"That's more than enough."