"How is it? This is the masterpiece you and I created!"
In Leonor's former office, Xishan monitored the entire headquarters of the
"Nothing at all. All living things—from birth, to growth, to extinction—follow the laws of nature…"
Leilin replied expressionlessly, feeling that he was increasingly resembling one of those charlatan prophets.
He and Xishan had come here for one very important task—transferring the core consciousness entity of the secret realm gate!
This process was extremely troublesome. The array spirit's defensive and sealing arrays were actually minor concerns in comparison.
A consciousness entity was an exceedingly fragile thing, especially one stripped from a physical form. The slightest external attack would annihilate it entirely. Xishan had originally planned to destroy it, so he hadn't needed to worry about any of that, resorting to the most brute-force methods to break through.
But now things were different. They had to transfer the consciousness entity to the hands of the Black Wizards while guaranteeing its safety—a task requiring extraordinary precision. Moreover, the interests at stake were far too great. Whoever controlled the core consciousness entity would hold the Ganges Secret Realm gate in their hands going forward!
Such利益! Even within the White
"Who's the handover personnel? You can tell me now, can't you?"
Leilin fixed his gaze on Xishan.
The office was now packed tight with a crowd of Black Wizards.
The Four Seasons Garden's core command post within the Ganges Secret Realm had been completely seized by a group of Black Wizards! It was almost laughable.
But not a single White Wizard could laugh, because they had all become corpses in the corridor outside.
These Black Wizards carried the sharp, ruthless bearing unique to military-trained personnel. The stench of blood clinging to them was so thick it could barely dissolve.
These were the elite of the Black Wizards! Their combat power was far beyond what ordinary wizards could match—even the common wizard soldiers of the Lightning Legion were a notch below them!
Even standing still, they radiated an overwhelming sense of pressure.
In comparison, only No. 2 and No. 3 stood at Leilin's side. They looked rather outnumbered.
"The person—you're certainly familiar with them…"
Xishan chuckled coldly, a trace of schadenfreude hidden in the look he gave Leilin.
"That would be me!" A hoarse, raspy voice echoed through the room.
A mass of emerald-green flame spread through the air, eventually taking the shape of a portal.
A tall, thin wizard clad entirely in a black robe, his eyes burning with green fire, stepped through the flame portal.
Around him, a ring of materialized silver Spiritual Power particles drifted up and down. Waves of formidable spiritual power undulated outward like ocean swells.
"Lord Korben!!" The surrounding Black Wizards bowed in greeting.
This Second-rank Black Wizard was none other than the same one Leilin had met before—the mastermind behind the Thousand Leaf Hand, and Xishan's and the Giant's biological father!
"Heh heh! We meet again, boy!"
The emerald flames in Korben's eyes flared noticeably brighter as he regarded Leilin with a look brimming with malice.
"So it's Lord Korben!" Leilin's expression didn't change. He gave a slight bow, but inwardly he had already begun to grow tense, running the spiritual power compression technique he'd obtained from the old witch at full capacity.
Fortunately, this Second-rank Black Wizard was still focusing his attention on the core consciousness entity.
Korben walked to the site of the original seal. Most of the restrictions had already been dismantled by Leilin and Xishan working together; the remnants were trivial before a powerful Second-rank wizard.
Korben lightly stamped his boot on the floor, and the desks on either side cracked open, revealing the sealing array within.
At this point, the array was more than half destroyed, its wizardic runes faded and dim.
At the center of the ruptured array, a translucent recess appeared.
A pea-sized spark of white-gold flame burned缓缓ly within.
"So this is the core consciousness entity of the metal gate?" Though this white-gold flame seemed tiny— liable to gutter out at any moment—Leilin could sense through his spiritual power the vast energy and materialized spiritual power contained within.
The feeling was like unexploded magma, or the ocean in its calm state—fathomless! Boundless!
"This is it! This is it!"
Korben, this Second-rank Black Wizard, let out an intoxicated murmur.
Then he turned his gaze to the wizards present: "From now on, I will personally oversee this location! Until our people have fully secured it!"
The core consciousness entity of the secret realm gate served as something like a key to the gate—an object of immense importance. This Second-rank wizard was clearly here to guard against contingencies. Should anything unexpected arise, he would immediately flee with the consciousness entity or simply destroy it.
"Black Blood Legion! You—guard the corridor leading here. Without my express orders, no one is to be allowed in!"
Korben immediately began deploying defensive assignments.
Once every Black Wizard in the room had been given their task, this Second-rank wizard turned his attention to Leilin. In his eyes flickered an unconcealed look of amusement, as though studying a lab mouse.
"Wizard Leilin. The Black Wizard Alliance will take note of your contributions… I wonder, might I trouble you a little more at this point?"
Standing behind Korben, Xishan let out a cold, mocking laugh. In his view, Leilin had long since exhausted every shred of useful value. And the fate of such people in his father's hands was never pleasant.
"What is it?" Leilin asked, his face betraying nothing.
"Would you kindly die!!"
Korben cackled and struck in the same instant! A silver spiritual power storm swept through the office without hesitation—books and bookshelves whirled into the air, gradually disintegrating into fine powder within the silver radiance.
This Second-rank Black Wizard, Korben, feared not the contract of the Eye of Judgment at all, and had brazenly launched an attack against Leilin!
The silver spiritual power coalesced into a massive bony claw, and at the knuckles, droplets of red blood even seemed to drip down!
"You dare threaten me! A First-rank wizard dares to threaten me, Korben! And what's more—you dared treat Xishan that way! I will rip your soul out and roast it above the White Bone Cold Fire for ten thousand years…"
Korben roared.
Swish!
Facing the full-force strike of a Second-rank wizard—one who was no longer in the grievously wounded state of last time—Leilin's expression was utterly grave.
A layer of fine black scales surfaced across his body. At the same time, the defense of the Falling Star Pendant condensed around him, forming an ethereal suit of armor. In an instant, Leilin had entered his maximum defensive state.
Hummm! A yellow-brown gravity array materialized at his chest and instantly blanketed the area within a hundred meters.
Gravity forty times greater than normal suddenly descended upon the scene.
Seemingly affected by the gravitational pull, the bony claw in midair sank slightly and its speed was noticeably reduced.
"Shadow Fireball!" Leilin rapidly chanted the incantation. A massive black fireball appeared, stretching elongated in midair. Two blood-red eyes sprouted from it, and from its mouth emerged a flame-shaped flickering tongue.
The colossal black-flame serpent hissed and lunged forward, crashing savagely into the white bony claw.
Boom!!!
A tremendous explosion immediately engulfed the entire office.
"You—" Korben's face was full of shock and fury. He flicked his hand, and a black energy shield instantly cocooned the spot where the core consciousness entity had been.
Then black and silver-white energy streams ran wild, spreading outward in every direction.
First the floor, then the windowsills, the walls…
A colossal black mushroom cloud rose缓缓ly from the point of impact between the two spells, swelling ever larger until it formed a massive sphere that devoured everything around it.
The explosion was so enormous that even the nearby battlefield fell silent for a moment. The Black Wizards controlling their magical creatures and the White Wizards fighting desperately to defend both halted, staring in stunned disbelief at the colossal blast billowing up from the heart of the headquarters.
When everything finally subsided, Leonor's former office had been leveled, and the surrounding buildings had all vanished as well.
Even the ground had been scraped away by several layers.
All the Black Wizards Korben had posted on guard duty had been caught in the blast. They lay scattered across the ground in tangled heaps, blood and severed limbs strewn everywhere—had their strength not been exceptional and their innate wizardic defenses formidable, they would all have been dead instead of merely gravely wounded!
Xishan, who had been standing behind Korben, fared even worse. He had been hurled hundreds of meters away by the massive energy wave and buried deep under a pile of rubble, his condition unknown.
Leilin stumbled back several steps, his face paling.
Behind him, the robes of No. 2 and No. 3 had been completely blown away, revealing powerful muscles and wizardic runes branded into their skin.
"You—" Korben extended a single skeletal finger at Leilin, his face a mask of disbelief.
Although he had needed to split his attention to protect the core consciousness entity, he had still channeled seventy to eighty percent of his power into the bony claw. And even that level of attack had been blocked by Leilin.
Compared to just a few days ago, he had now recovered his full strength! He had held nothing back against Leilin!
Yet even this level of attack had been withstood. Could it be that Leilin had already reached the Second-rank wizard realm?
Korben found himself momentarily speechless.
"It seems my suspicions were correct! You really do have ways to circumvent the Eye of Judgment contract!"
On the other side, Leilin had retreated some distance, his eyes locked firmly on the Second-rank wizard Korben.
For him, the only person on the scene who posed a genuine threat was Korben. Everyone else could be ignored.
Although Leilin and Korben had signed an Eye of Judgment contract last time, someone who loved playing word games as much as he did could never have truly believed in it.