At this moment, it was as if all the noise in the world had been silenced.
All humans and soul beasts, regardless of faction or strength, could only look up at the violently trembling golden ancient tree—like ants staring helplessly at the sky, powerless to do anything but watch as it seemed ready to shatter at any moment.
Their senses were completely consumed by the terrifying auras erupting and colliding madly from deep within the tree's heart.
One aura was familiar—sacred blue, now tottering on the brink of collapse. The other was unfamiliar—icy, deathly, and filled with purple-black evil.
Each clash and tear between these two forces caused not only spatial distortion and humming but also a quake that struck to the very core of the soul.
Their hearts were flooded with overwhelming fear, feeling their own insignificance in the face of such great power, and a deep confusion about what would come next.
The ferocious assault of the soul beast army had already come to a complete halt.
Even those as violent as Bear Lord and as cunning as Myriad Demon King were now utterly suppressed by the divine battle aura that far surpassed their comprehension. Their huge beastly eyes were filled with suspicion and instinctual fear.
As for the soul beasts below ten thousand years, acting purely on instinct, they had already lost all ferocity, sprawling densely on the ground, trembling, squeezing out desperate, suppressed whimpers from deep within their throats.
Inside the golden tree, the earth-shattering clash that would decide the fate of countless lives finally reached its conclusion.
Tang San, merging all the power and will of this divine consciousness avatar into one unstoppable strike, unleashed a brilliance that cleansed all evil, as if even true gods and devils could be slain.
However, what Lord Ravager Phantylia represented was a force that transcended the ordinary laws of this world—a power born from the end of the universe itself.
Especially in that last moment, she forcibly converted the vast life energy of the golden tree into purest destruction, even at the cost of damaging its source. This instant eruption elevated her power to a new and despairing height.
The black energy sphere, dark as the abyss and seemingly able to devour all light, did not explode upon colliding with the Sea God's golden radiance. Instead, it showed a terrifying property—devouring and annihilation.
Like an endless, bottomless black hole, it greedily tore and sucked away the divine power and life energy within the golden light, converting and absorbing it inch by inch, making it part of its own destructive force.
As one power waned and the other grew, the once dazzling and unstoppable golden stream visibly dimmed and shrank, its divinity rapidly corrupted and assimilated.
In the end, under Tang San's gaze, filled with disbelief and deep unwillingness, his all-out attack was completely swallowed and digested by the black sphere.
The now smaller, more condensed seed of destruction, radiating ominous light, continued its momentum and struck hard at his exhausted divine consciousness form.
"Pu—!"
There was no earth-shattering explosion, only a dull, chilling sound of energy corrosion.
Tang San's divine form instantly became transparent and illusory. Countless ferocious purple-black destruction patterns, like living poisonous thorns, crazily spread and rooted across his body, corroding and polluting the very core of his consciousness.
He could not even utter a final warning or last words before his form was disintegrated, inch by inch, in the absolute darkness, turning into countless dim golden-blue specks of light, and finally dissipating completely in the still-boiling sea of life.
Only the shadow of the Sea God Trident emitted a hum filled with unwillingness before fading into nothingness.
—This divine consciousness avatar of Sea God Tang San was completely erased, both form and spirit destroyed.
"Xiao San!!!"
In the distance, Ah Yin, forced back by the aftershocks of battle, let out a startled cry. The stable blue divine light around her fluctuated wildly in extreme shock, nearly collapsing.
She wanted to rush toward where her son's form had vanished, but Phantylia casually waved her hand, and a tightly condensed purple-black shackle of destruction appeared out of thin air, binding her from head to toe, rendering her immobile and unable to utter a sound.
She could only watch helplessly as her son's divine consciousness was utterly annihilated, her crystal-blue eyes filled with powerlessness.
Her own refining process was also forcibly interrupted by this emotional shock and Phantylia's interference, causing a backlash from the golden tree's instinctive will. Her consciousness became extremely dim and weak, on the verge of collapse.
"Hehehe... Hahahaha!"
Phantylia stood at the center of the sea of life, laughing wildly and unabashedly, her laughter full of conquest and satisfaction.
She spread her arms wide, as if to embrace the vast, now unprotected sea of life.
Thanks to Ah Yin's thousands of years of refining and assimilation, as well as the willingness of successive Sea God's Pavilion Masters of Shrek Academy to merge their souls and power into it, the golden tree's chance of developing its own consciousness had long since been snuffed out, leaving only the most primitive life instinct.
And a plane core acting only on instinct, no matter how high its level or how vast its energy, was even less resistant to Phantylia, who specialized in spiritual corruption and energy conversion, than Ah Yin before her.
"What vast and tempting life force... What a perfect foundation."
Phantylia's voice was filled with intoxication.
"Now, it belongs to me."
She no longer hesitated. Her huge and pure destructive intent surged forth, madly eroding, polluting, and assimilating the golden tree's core source.
The massive shadow of the tree of destruction behind her seemed to have found the perfect soil for parasitism. Countless thick black roots plunged fiercely into the sea of life, greedily absorbing the nearly limitless life energy and converting it into even more terrifying power of destruction.
Purple-black corruption spread rapidly from her position, like a deadly plague throughout the golden tree's interior. Wherever it went, the once dazzling golden-green was swiftly replaced by dead, bleak black. The holy, warm aura of life was completely overwhelmed and devoured by the cold, despairing will of destruction.
The entire interior space of the golden tree was rapidly shifting from a sanctuary of life into the abyss of destruction.
Outside, the survivors on Sea God Island watched in terror as the towering golden-blue pillar of light was completely swallowed and replaced by ominous purple-black radiance.
The golden ancient tree, bearing Shrek's ten thousand years of glory and faith, was visibly losing all its luster and vitality.
Its lush leaves withered, fell, and turned to dust in an instant. The thick trunk shriveled, darkened, and cracked, as if in these few short moments, it had been forced to live through tens of thousands of years and was now hastening toward the end of decay and death.
The suffocating, terrifying pressure of destruction continued to climb exponentially, like a tangible mountain, crushing all soul power and leaving only bone-chilling cold and endless despair.
"The Sea God... The Sea God's aura... is gone..."
Yan Shaozhe murmured, his face ashen, his lifelong faith completely shattered in this moment, his eyes hollow.
"It's over... Shrek... ten thousand years of heritage... everything is over..."
Elder Lin collapsed to the ground, tears streaming down his wrinkled face, filled only with endless sorrow and despair.
Just as the atmosphere of despair reached its peak—
The nearly pitch-black golden tree suddenly shuddered violently.
A colossal, highly condensed purple-black ring of pure destruction energy, like the sweeping hem of the goddess of death's dress, spread out from the golden tree, silent and swift.
This ring of destruction had no specific target; it represented only pure, indiscriminate annihilation.
Its first victims were Sea God Island and all remaining life upon it.
All members left in the Sea God's Pavilion, whether teachers, staff, ordinary people, or soul masters, could not even scream before their bodies, upon contact with the purple-black ring, disintegrated silently like paper in acid—becoming black dust, souls and all, completely erased.
"Rumble—!!!"
The ring of destruction expanded outward at an unstoppable, seemingly slow but irresistible pace.