Outside the city walls, roars thundered through the darkness, growing louder and louder as enormous monsters emerged from the shadows.
Inside the city, everyone tensed. These monsters looked as if they’d crawled straight out of a nightmare—grotesque, vicious, the ugliest things imagination could conjure. Some resembled humans covered in writhing tentacles, some had bodies crawling with eyes, some were fleshy flowers, others hybrids of plant and man—each more bizarre than the last.
But behind them came ancient gods with bird heads, ox heads, beast heads atop human bodies, along with gigantic evil dragons, multi-headed serpents, and bloated giants.
There were also strange, modified creatures—a giant with drill-bit arms, others whose bodies bristled with blades, living siege engines stalking forward.
Doo doo—
A gigantic ship of flesh belched thick smoke as it lumbered forward, its deck sprouting countless long arms, its hull supported by a writhing mass of legs. On the ship, half-bodied figures pounded drums and cymbals, playing a twisted carnival tune.
The flesh ship danced and cavorted to the music, its bow opening into a gaping, blood-red maw lined with steel-knife teeth, snapping open and shut in excitement as it approached the Creator city.
The moon rose overhead, bathing the city in its silver light.
A strange laughter drifted down from above. Quinn Shepherd looked up—only to see that the moon now had a human face, grinning eerily as it laughed.
And not just that—the moon had grown arms. From somewhere it produced a flute, carved from a Creator’s leg bone, and brought it to its lips, playing a jaunty, cheerful tune!
Quinn Shepherd lowered his gaze. The night here in the Grand Void Land felt like a bizarre dream, steeped in absurdity and strangeness.
Whoosh—
A massive creature plummeted from the sky, landing atop the city wall—a giant bird covered in human faces, its wings made of hollow bones that crushed half the wall beneath its weight.
The faces on the bird’s head stared excitedly at the handful of survivors in the city, each one letting out a strange, unsettling laugh.
The bones forming its wings were hollow. Suddenly, every bone blasted jets of air and fire, shrieking with a piercing, metallic howl as the monster bird rocketed back into the sky!
Amid the howling, the nightmare fiends outside the city began to move, thundering toward the Creator city!
"Heavens..."
A female True God trembled, staring blankly at the scene. "What kind of world is this?"
This is the world created by the Creators of the Grand Void.
This world is made of divine sense—the Creators visualized the entire realm, forging all things and civilization. But when an outside enemy invaded and shattered one of their worlds, Grand Void heart demons began to multiply.
Though the Grand Void Land remains intact, it lacks a Netherworld—there is no place for the dead to go. This leads to another consequence.
With nowhere to rest, the dead can only wander the Grand Void, fusing with the Creators’ divine sense and spawning lifeforms unlike anything in the known worlds.
These Grand Void fiends aren’t just made from dead Creators—they also include gods and demons of the Heavenly Court who perished in the Void.
Boom!
A violent tremor shook the ground—the Grand Void fiends outside slammed into the city walls. The seemingly indestructible walls of the Creator city shuddered, splitting with jagged, terrifying cracks.
But the city was forged from the Creators’ divine sense, and the cracks quickly mended themselves, letting the survivors breathe a sigh of relief.
Boom! The pounding resumed—deep, thunderous blows, one after another. The mirror-smooth walls couldn’t keep up with repairs. Suddenly, the south gate collapsed, and the Grand Void fiends surged into the city like a tidal wave!
"Prepare to fight!" someone shouted.
At that moment, the north gate crashed down, followed by the east and west gates—all flattened by the Grand Void fiends. The monstrous horde rampaged through the city, toppling buildings in their wake!
Thousands of Grand Void fiends poured in like a flood. The survivors stood atop the ruins, hearts chilled to the bone.
On the arrow tower, a woman screamed and shot into the air, trying to escape this nightmare city.
But as she soared into the sky, the human-faced moon shrieked, and a bone-faced monster bird swept toward her.
Countless monster birds poured out from the human-faced moon, darkening the sky. The moon itself turned blood-red, like a bleeding human face.
The tune played by the human-faced moon grew even more cheerful, almost playful.
The melody drifted down from the sky, sending the Grand Void fiends below into a frenzy.
The woman was quickly torn to shreds by the flock, her blood raining down—first as a light drizzle, then as a torrential downpour.
Blood rained down from the sky—the moon itself was bleeding. The heavens looked like a canvas splashed with blood, crimson flooding everything.
Monster birds swooped down from the sky as the horde of fiends surged toward Quinn and the others, engulfing them.
In that moment, no one cared about old grudges or orders to kill Quinn Shepherd. All that mattered was survival.
Quinn Shepherd acted without hesitation, trying to activate the Gate of Heaven—but his heart sank. The gate refused to open.
Since these fiends are vengeful souls from the Void, soul-targeting spells should be effective. But the Grand Void and Netherworld exist in separate dimensions—so the gate can't open.
If only the Gate of Heaven would open, escaping would be easy. But no such luck.
He summoned Netherworld powers, fusing vitality and divine sense to conjure a white banner, then swung it fiercely at a fiend shaped like an ancient god.
I'm not my brother, but when it comes to Netherworld magic, fewer than five in this world can best me!
The fiend’s soul was instantly drawn into the banner. Where it had been blank before, a man’s figure now appeared.
The man inside was dazed, his face twisted, struggling to break free. The banner, though made of mere divine sense, seemed to contain a hidden space.
The man’s twisted face stretched out from the banner, distorting the space inside it.
Quinn Shepherd planted the banner firmly in the ground, growling, "Where I stand is the Netherworld!"
Boom—
His vital energy exploded, transforming into rolling Netherworld miasma that swept over a hundred mu, turning the land into a world of darkness.
Inside his Spirit Embryo Treasury, his Primordial Spirit stomped, flipping the taiji diagram and turning earth into the Netherworld.
Quinn Shepherd fused with his Primordial Spirit, transforming into Tu Bo's three-eyed form, growing to a hundred zhang tall, towering like a mountain, nearly as large as the fiends.
He wielded a flaming whip, lashing it around a charging fiend's neck, shaking out its soul.
He pulled the whip back, striking the banner, which now held another twisted soul.
Quinn's brow eye opened, firing a pillar of Nether-flame that burned another fiend's soul to oblivion.
A fiend charged from behind; Quinn kicked it with his hoof, burning its soul to ashes with Nether-fire.
Another fiend attacked from behind; Quinn's tail snared its throat, lifted it into the air, and smashed it upside-down to the ground.
The fiend, dazed, tried to get up, but Quinn stomped on its head with his hoof.
The fiend's head exploded with a loud pop.
Monster birds swooped down; Quinn's twin horns blazed, turning a bird into a screaming firephoenix.
Suddenly, a fiend rammed into Quinn, shattering his ribs and sending him crashing through palace walls and giant pillars before stopping.
His Tu Bo form was shattered; he instantly reverted to human form and rapidly healed his injuries with the Seamless Creation Mystic Canon.
The fiend chased after him, but Quinn melted into the ground as a black shadow and sped away.
The fiend hesitated, then frantically chased after Quinn's shadow.
Logan Cross fought with vital energy as saber blades, struggling as he saw the city in chaos, people dying and wounded everywhere.
Even True God disciples who had mastered Small Heaven Court arts could barely resist the onslaught.
Suddenly, a True God screamed as they were torn to pieces.
After death, the True God's soul sprouted flesh, quickly transforming into a fiend that attacked others mercilessly.
Logan noticed that even when the fiends were smashed to pieces or burned to ashes, they quickly regenerated and kept fighting.
Only by utterly destroying their souls could the fiends be killed for good.
But with so many fiends and attacks, there was hardly any chance to destroy their souls.
Logan gritted his teeth, ready to pull out the Origin-Root Heartwood from his brow, even at the risk of destroying his Heaven Palace and soul, for a final desperate fight.
Logan was about to pull out the heartwood when Quinn's shadow streaked to his feet.
The shadow straightened into Quinn's form, who snatched the heartwood from Logan's brow and made it grow.
A staff appeared in Quinn's hand; he blew on it and shouted, "Grow!"
The staff hit the ground and instantly expanded.
Thunder boomed as the staff expanded.
Logan heard the thunderous boom as Quinn pulled him up, and saw the devastation below.
The Origin-Root Heartwood transformed into a colossal pillar, stretching across the Creator city for eight hundred li.
The pillar lay across the city center, over a thousand zhang thick, crushing countless fiends and buildings.
Palaces and halls along the pillar's path were flattened.
Logan and Quinn descended as flocks of bone birds attacked from above, spewing fire.
Quinn shrank the heartwood into a small wooden needle in his hand.
He flicked the needle into Logan's brow, channeling medicinal power to heal his Heaven Palace.
Logan groaned, realizing the needle's terrifying power and feeling a chill.
They sprinted along the flattened path, but the crushed fiends and buildings quickly regenerated, blocking their way.
Not only the fiends, but the crushed palaces also rapidly regenerated, blocking their escape.
Quinn frowned and pulled the heartwood from Logan's brow again.
Logan numbly followed Quinn, leaping up together.
Thunder boomed again.
The heartwood once again crushed the regenerated fiends.
Quinn collected the heartwood and reinserted it into Logan's brow.