Ripples spread through the space around the tip of the Rising Sun Spear.
Clearly, if Locke's divine power were a hundred times stronger—strong enough to fully unleash the spear's might—then the Rising Sun Spear would be capable of cleaving even Hell's space itself.
With the five senses of their souls completely sealed by Locke, the two bandit leaders were, in effect, utterly defenseless before him.
"Die!"
Locke let out a sharp shout as the spear shot straight toward the bandit leaders' heads.
A blaze of crimson light erupted. A suit of fire-red armor materialized over one of the bandit leaders, enveloping him completely.
This was his defensive divine artifact!
Boom!
The Rising Sun Spear thrust forward. Its golden tip scraped against the fiery armor, sparks flying in all directions.
"A mid-level defensive divine artifact?"
Feeling the resistance transmitted through the spear, Locke's heart skipped slightly.
With his current level of divine power, he couldn't fully bring out the might of a high-level offensive artifact—but piercing a low-level defensive artifact would have been effortless.
If his attack was being blocked, then it could only be a mid-level defensive divine artifact.
However—
"Haaah!"
His divine power erupted as Locke pushed himself to the limit, forcing the Rising Sun Spear's power to burst forth as far as he possibly could.
Crack. Crack…
The spearhead tore a thin black line through Hell's very space.
A spatial rift!
In Hell, only Highgods were capable of ripping space apart.
In other words, under the amplification of the Rising Sun Spear, this strike had already brushed against the threshold of a high-level god.
Beneath that spatial rift, the bandit leader's mid-level defensive artifact fractured, cracks spreading rapidly—until it was finally pierced clean through by the Rising Sun Spear.
Pshhk!
With the protection of the artifact gone, the bandit leader's head stood no chance against the spear's might. It was skewered straight through.
With a flick of his wrist, the spear tip trembled, reducing the head to a mist of blood. Locke then swept his left hand, collecting the exposed fire-aspect mid-level godhead into his spatial ring.
Without pausing, Locke moved with the spear, turning in one smooth motion as he thrust the Rising Sun Spear toward the second god among the bandits.
There was no suspense. Under the Rising Sun Spear's assault, the second god didn't last even two breaths before his head was pierced as well. He was annihilated on the spot, leaving Locke with another prize—a wind-aspect mid-level godhead.
"This is bad! The boss and the second boss are dead—run!"
From Locke's sudden eruption to the deaths of both bandit leaders, no more than four or five breaths had passed.
That brief span was already enough for the bandits attacking the ground below to notice what had happened.
What they never could have imagined was that the man their leaders had labeled a "fat lamb" was actually a ferocious dragon crossing the river.
Their two god -level leaders had been slain almost instantly.
Could this so-called fat lamb be a Highgod?
The thought alone sent terror through them. None of them dared to stay behind. They scattered, each fleeing in a different direction.
Watching their retreating figures, Locke let out a soft sigh.
"What a pity. If I really were a highgod, none of you would have escaped."
It wasn't that Locke was someone who insisted on slaughtering everyone—he simply regretted it. As members of a bandit group, those fleeing low-level demigods undoubtedly carried quite a few resources.
If they had charged him together, Locke was confident he could have killed them all.
But once they scattered, his weakness was laid bare.
As a demigod, Locke hadn't yet created any techniques to enhance his speed. Even though the density of his divine power made him faster than ordinary low-level gods, the difference wasn't qualitative.
If those demigods were determined to flee, there was no way he could catch them.
Descending slowly, Locke arrived at the spot where the two bandit leaders' bodies had fallen. A sweep of his divine sense, a flick of his spear—
Two spatial rings rose into the air, and Locke caught them in his hand.
With a stroke of his thumb, two drops of blood welled up and fell.
One sank into a spatial ring. The other slid uselessly off the surface of the second.
Clearly, of the two rings, Locke could only use one.
The owner of the other ring still had another divine clone—or their true body—alive, preventing Locke from claiming it.
Tucking away the ring he couldn't open, Locke sent his spiritual sense into the newly claimed one.
To his delight, aside from miscellaneous items, the ring contained more than seventeen hundred inkstones.
In Hell, inkstones were the universal currency.
A newly arrived demigod would receive a single inkstone from the Sovereign's legions.
Even serving as a guardian deity for a tribe only earned about fifty inkstones per ten thousand years.
With a hundred inkstones, one could buy a demigod godhead.
A god-level godhead cost roughly a hundred times more—around ten thousand inkstones.
As for a high-level godhead, the price was even more terrifying. In present-day Hell, at least fifty million inkstones were required to purchase one.
And even then, supply often fell far short of demand.
After all, in this era, highgods were symbols of true power.
Even those who became highgods by refining godheads were still ten times stronger than ordinary gods.
Add in the amplification from high-level divine artifacts, and a single highgod could easily slaughter a hundred ordinary gods.
In Hell, only highgods formed the true foundation of a faction.
Any force without a highgod risked annihilation at any moment. Only factions protected by such a powerhouse could endure for millions of years.
Seventeen hundred inkstones wasn't a vast sum, but it was enough to ease Locke's immediate troubles.
After all, whether it was Captain Nien or the squad leader escorting the mortals, both believed Locke had a highgod backing him—and thus lacked resources.
As a result, neither of them had given him even the single inkstone that divine beings were entitled to receive.
Without these bandits, Locke didn't even know if he could have entered Yilan City at all.
After confirming his direction, Locke headed toward Yilan City.
Having learned his lesson from the bandits, he concealed his soul aura as he traveled, using Phantom Drift to hide his true body while sending a projection ahead to scout the way.
Even so, he didn't encounter a second group of bandits along the road.
(End of Chapter)
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