This was the tenth day. This was the day the God Realm would die.
A suffocating despair, colder and heavier than the void itself, had settled over the Northern Divine Region.
The Soul Stealing Realm, once a symbol of defiant shadow, was now the last sanctuary for the survivors of the Primal Chaos.
Gathered in the main hall of the Soul Stealing Palace, the air was funereal.
The remnants of the God Realm's power were assembled—God Emperors without empires, Realm Kings without realms, and Divine Masters without a future.
Yun Wuxin stood beside Mu Xuanyin, her hands clenched so tightly her knuckles were white.
Beside them, her family was gathered—Cang Yue, Su Ling'er, Feng Xian'er, Chu Yuechan, and her grandparents, Yun Qinghong and Mu Yurou.
They had all been moved here, to the safest place in the universe, under Chi Wuyao's personal protection.
"They are here," Mu Xuanyin's voice, as cold and sharp as primordial ice, cut through the silence.
She stood at the hall's great opening, her gaze fixed on the black void of the Northern Region's sky.
As one, every cultivator in the hall rose. Their profound energy flared, not with hope, but with the grim, desperate resolve of those with no path of retreat.
At the front, the three champions of the God Realm stood ready.
Xia Yuanba, towering over all, his body crackling with the golden light of the Tyrannical Emperor's Divine Veins.
His cultivation had soared in the new era, but his eyes were fixed on the sky with a desperate, animalistic fury.
He was here to protect the home his brother-in-law had entrusted to him.
Xiao Mo, the unassuming youth from a forgotten star realm, looked profoundly uncomfortable.
He was still wearing his strange headphones, his eyes darting nervously.
"This... is profoundly sub-optimal," he muttered, his voice lost in the tension.
And finally, Chi Wuyao. The Devil Empress.
She rose from her throne, her demonic beauty a stark contrast to the palpable despair.
Her dark eyes were narrowed, a universe of calculations swirling within them.
Even now, she was searching for an opening, a flaw, a single thread of possibility.
RUMBLE...
The God Realm itself began to wail. The newly restored Heavenly Laws, which had blessed the realm with a surge of primordial energy, now recoiled in abject terror.
High above the Soul Stealing Realm, the void tore open.
It was not a spatial rift, but a bleeding wound in reality.
From this tear, a wave of suffocating malice rolled forth, a presence so vile it made the very light of the stars dim.
A figure in a tattered, symbolic red dress descended: Jasmine.
Her eyes were black voids, her aura a storm of madness and primordial hatred.
Beside her, cloaked in an even deeper, colder darkness, floated the empty shell of the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor, Jie Yuan.
Behind them, one hundred Devil Gods fanned out, their collective power making the Northern Divine Region wail.
Jasmine's cold, dead gaze swept over the gathered survivors. Her voice, a chorus of malice and despair, echoed across the cosmos, a sound of malice and despair.
"Ten days have passed. Your pathetic struggle has reached its end."
She raised a slender hand.
"Send out your first... 'champion.' Let this farce begin."