Lin Xiaohe realized it in an instant—this bastard was trying to possess her!
Little Black fused with her immediately, and a suit of fiery red battle armor enveloped her entire body.
“Heh heh. No wonder you’re the Chosen One—you’ve actually managed to reincarnate all the way to this point!” The Divine Lord’s features twisted, his eyes burning with resentment.
“What do you mean? You old geezer, do I even know you?”
The Divine Lord’s robes fluttered wildly, and behind him, tens of thousands of swords materialized out of thin air.
The blades grew sharper and more distinct by the second, radiating a chilling killing intent.
“Swords, come forth!”
Tens of thousands of swords descended upon Lin Xiaohe with the force of a thunderbolt!
They were so dense, there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Lin Xiaohe dropped to one knee, her entire body now clad in the crimson insectoid armor. Lava-like patterns flowed across its carapace.
But at this moment, several gashes—deep enough to reveal bone—were eating away at the armor’s vitality, emitting faint sizzling sounds.
She heaved ragged breaths, each one sending sharp pains through her internal organs.
The Divine Lord hovered before her, his gaze pitying, but deep within his eyes lurked a hint of madness. “So what if you have Heaven’s favor? How could a mere mortal rival my millennia of bitter cultivation?”
Because of this place’s peculiar nature, Lin Xiaohe couldn’t bring out even one ten-thousandth of her full strength. She could only rely on her body to endure.
The System, the stardust mutant plants, the sanctuary—all of them were completely unreachable.
It had been a long time since she’d felt this constrained!
She wondered bitterly—why was her enemy unaffected? He must have mastered some power she didn’t yet understand. A power entirely different from mental energy and the sanctuary!
“Such a perfect vessel… teeming with such immense life force and evolutionary potential!” The Divine Lord’s voice was hoarse, dripping with a chilling, almost greedy desire. “I’ve endured for ten thousand years, waiting for this moment—for your body, the Insect Emperor from beyond the stars! Why resist? Merge with me, and you shall find eternity!”
Lin Xiaohe gritted her teeth against the pain. “The Insect Emperor from beyond the stars? What the hell are you talking about?”
The Divine Lord had been repressed for too long. Now that his goal was finally within reach, his pent-up urge to speak burst forth in a torrent.
“Ha ha ha! You outer-domain demons all rush into this world, yet you have no idea that this place is the greatest prison in existence!”
“Why are we doomed to perish? Why is it that only the Chosen One has a chance to survive? What makes you—a soulless wretch—better than me?”
“I knew full well you were the Chosen One, yet I deliberately took your sister as my disciple. Only after her endless pleas did I deign to bestow a sliver of Dao rhythm upon you. All of this—because I saw the future!”
He had seen it—the cultivation civilization was doomed to fall!
From the very moment he witnessed that ending, he resolved to seize the Chosen One’s body, replace him, and live on!
From his rambling, frantic outbursts, Lin Xiaohe pieced together that he was a powerful cultivator from a cultivation civilization.
Because she had performed a ritual in the Shaman world, the version of her in the second world had ended up soulless.
What exactly was a soul? How was it different from mental energy? Was the life force the same as the soul?
Pushing aside her confusion, Lin Xiaohe put on a show of reluctant defiance. “There were so many candidates—why did you have to pick me?”
The Divine Lord’s laughter was shrill and piercing. “There were only two among the five candidates who could successfully reincarnate—you and Chu Huaizhi.”
In the future he had foreseen, Lin Xiaohe became Number 741 and collaborated with the outer-domain demons…
“You’re wrong!” Lin Xiaohe shot back without thinking. “Number 741 isn’t me. I’ve seen her with my own eyes.”
If she were Number 741, there’s no way she could have witnessed that nearly mummified version of Number 741 with her own eyes!
Either the Divine Lord was lying, or the future he saw wasn’t the real future.
Someone had interfered with his divination.
The Divine Lord didn’t believe her for a second. He curled his five fingers into a claw and lunged forward.
The black energy swirling around him instantly morphed into a massive ghostly claw, tearing through space and heading straight for Lin Xiaohe’s skull!
This was no longer a simple physical attack—it was a direct grab at her very soul origin.
Lin Xiaohe’s pupils shrank. Gritting through the agony, her insect wings gave a violent flap—not to retreat, but to charge forward at an impossibly sharp angle!
Her fiery red armor flared with blinding light, and the carapace on her forearms instantly transformed, extending two bone blades wreathed in eerie green flames.
“So this is the soul origin you’re after!”
She’d finally pinpointed where that mysterious power resided!
The green flames and black energy collided, exploding wildly. The shockwave rattled the crystal skulls nearby, sending them clinking and clattering against the altar.
“Stubborn fool!” The Divine Lord snorted coldly. His form flickered, splitting into three indistinct afterimages that attacked simultaneously from different directions. Each finger strike came razor-sharp, aimed directly at the damaged gaps in her armor, trying to break through her defenses.
Lin Xiaohe pushed the insect armor’s perception and speed to their absolute limits. Her figure turned into a darting crimson blur in the confined space, her bone blades spinning in an impenetrable dance—parrying, dodging, counterattacking!
Blade met finger-strike in a cascade of ear-splitting sonic booms and explosive sparks of energy.
Her fighting style was ruthless and precise, completely unlike any cultivator’s—it carried the signature efficiency and lethality of an insectoid warrior.
But the gap in their cultivation levels was ultimately too vast. One of the Divine Lord’s afterimages suddenly solidified and struck a single finger squarely into the crack on her chest plate!
“Ugh!”
Lin Xiaohe felt as if she’d been hit by lightning. She spat out a mouthful of blood, her entire body hurled backward, crashing heavily against the edge of the altar. The glow of her armor dimmed sharply.
The Divine Lord stepped forward in one stride, his eyes blazing with black light. “It’s over! Your body is mine!”
He raised his hand, and a rotating black vortex appeared in his palm, radiating a terrifying suction force aimed directly at Lin Xiaohe’s crown.
Once he drained her life force completely, her body would belong to him.
Lin Xiaohe was dazed and disoriented, fighting for her life with everything she had.
The Divine Lord grew impatient with the slow draining and instead forced his way directly into Lin Xiaohe’s body, intending to crush her will with sheer power.
The moment he fully merged into her body, Lin Xiaohe’s previously vacant eyes snapped into sharp focus. She sprang up like a fish leaping from the water, a smug smile curling at the corners of her mouth.
“Got you, you old fool! You really thought some nobody like you could just waltz in and take over my body? In your dreams!”
To his horror, the Divine Lord realized he was trapped!
Lin Xiaohe’s body had become a prison woven of green and black, sealing him in from the outside in, leaving him no escape!
Those green halos looked gentle and harmless, but even the slightest contact would gnaw at his divine soul—injuring him in a way that could never be healed.
“What is this?!”
The Divine Lord had never seen such bizarre green light! He dared not go near it.
Lin Xiaohe gave it a thought. What did her stardust plants have the most of?
Stardust, of course! And this so-called Divine Lord’s soul was actually afraid of stardust?
Oh, snap.
No wonder he never dared to go to the Federation. He could only drag her to this godforsaken place and scheme in the shadows.
Lin Xiaohe demanded, “Where is this? How do we get out? And don’t think you can kill me and take my body—because I swear, before I die, I’ll take you down with me!”
The Divine Lord was furious. “How dare you! I am a Divine Lord!”
“A prisoner.”
Seething with humiliation, he spat, “If I weren’t wounded and reduced to this mere wisp of residual consciousness, I would never—”
The Divine Lord regretted it bitterly. If only he had split off a few more fragments of his consciousness back then, he wouldn’t be in this sorry state—a fallen tiger being bullied by a dog.
Who would have thought that Lin Xiaohe, the softest-looking target, was actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Lin Xiaohe wasn’t one for idle chatter. She preferred action.
The green halos pressed closer and closer to the Divine Lord.
“Fine! Stay back!” This was his only remaining wisp of consciousness. Lose it, and he was truly dead.
“This is the place where the Supreme God fell.”
