Golden Light of Merit

"Splash—!"

Black pool water shot into the sky. A dark figure, wrapped in dense death qi, was dragged forcibly out of the pool by him.

What was that thing?

Chen Zhou didn't even have time to see it clearly.

The moment that object was pulled from the water, the scene before his eyes spun.

A battlefield vision descended once again.

The eerie entity hooked by Chen Zhou instantly revealed its true form after breaking free from the shackles of the Abyssal Underworld Pool.

His opponent this time was a twisted monster aggregated from countless resentful souls.

Upon its appearance, the terrifying pressure of the seventh-stage swept over like a tsunami.

Chen Zhou felt his death qi becoming blocked, and it was difficult to even deploy his ghost domain.

The opponent was more than a hundred times stronger than him!

The monster shrieked as countless resentful souls detached from its body, transforming into sharp claws that blotted out the sun and snatched at Chen Zhou.

However, Chen Zhou remained calm in the face of danger. He had been waiting for this moment for too long.

"Divine Path Authority—Faith Conferment!"

He activated the legacy he had just obtained from the sixth-stage Pure Soul Pond, Divine Grace for Self-Use.

Upon the Bone Altar, the hundreds of thousands of Evil God Points he had accumulated burned frantically at this moment.

Chen Zhou's aura surged instantly.

At the same time, a beam of golden light quietly fell from the sky.

The golden light was like a scorching sun, instantly causing the sky-filling claws of the resentful souls to sizzle. The souls screamed and retreated one after another. The monster's death qi was naturally countered by this force of auspiciousness, and its imposing manner was greatly diminished.

...

"What?"

Before the blood pond, the woman in palace dress, who had been looking bored, suddenly stood up, her face filled with disbelief.

"He... he reeled it in?" The middle-aged man was also clicking his tongue in wonder.

"How is this possible?" The young man opened his eyes and looked over. "It's been less than a hundred years, and he..."

The three of them watched as Chen Zhou's figure appeared so small before the violent black water, yet the fishing rod in his hand was as steady as Mount Tai.

As he stepped back one pace at a time, an eerie mass was being slowly dragged out of the Abyssal Underworld Pool by him.

That thing had no physical form; it was more like a monster composed of countless twisted shadows.

Its entire body was wrapped in pitch-black death qi. As soon as it emerged from the water, a terrifying pressure descended.

"First symbiosis contract," the middle-aged man confirmed after just one glance.

"Even though it's only the lowest-tier first symbiosis contract, this death qi and this pressure are definitely not something those in the eerification stage can contend with."

The woman lost some of her composure, her eyes fixed on the twisted shadow.

"This aura feels so familiar. Why..."

She suddenly couldn't remember, but her heart was pounding.

What shocked her more was Chen Zhou.

"I'm jealous, I'm truly jealous!"

"Even with a Guardian Auspicious God Destiny, this kid shouldn't be this absurd, right?"

"Leaving everything else aside, it's only been less than a hundred years, right?"

"This kid can actually land a big fish from the seventh-stage Wanchuan pond. I wonder which auspicious god destiny is so heaven-defying?

"Heavenly Noble? Three Wonders? Or perhaps Lucky Star?"

In her previous life, she hadn't even heard of such an absurd auspicious god, let alone seen one.

She suddenly turned her head and said to the middle-aged man, "Old Mo, back when you were alive, how many years did it take you to land a fish in the seventh-stage Abyssal Sludge Pond?"

Old Mo's face twitched as he recalled, "When I... when I had achieved the four symbiosis contracts, my lord brought me here. It took five hundred years..."

The woman then looked at the young man. "What about you?"

The young man gave a bitter smile. "Back then, I had reached the perfection of the Five Symbiosis Contracts. It took me four hundred and eighty years, and I still ended up with an empty hook."

All three of them fell silent.

They looked toward Chen Zhou's side. In the void, the auspicious cloud representing the Guardian Auspicious God Destiny was currently swirling above Chen Zhou's head.

The three of them felt envious.

Comparing people leads to anger; comparing gods is the same.

After a moment, a brilliant golden light burst forth from that auspicious cloud, shooting straight toward Chen Zhou!

Vaguely, a high-pitched dragon roar resounded throughout the Immortal-Slaying Grounds.

"Plop!"

The young man's hand jerked, and the fishing line that had been suspended in mid-air for a hundred years suddenly fell into the blood pond.

"Golden Light of Merit?!" The middle-aged man's eyes nearly bulged out of his head.

"The Golden Light of Merit is a blessing bestowed by heaven-blessed objects upon those with great merit." The woman in palace dress had also completely lost her poise. "How can there still be heaven-blessed objects in this world?

"The divine path is gone, the way of humanity is waning, and fiends run rampant. Only demons and evil spirits should be favored by heaven and earth.

"This... this golden light, such pure heaven-blessed auspiciousness... it's impossible!"

They saw that under the empowerment of that golden light, Chen Zhou's aura did not recede but instead surged!

Under the illumination of the golden light, the seventh-stage eerie entity he had hooked instantly saw its aura weaken by half, as if it had met its natural enemy!

"He... is he going to succeed?" the young man muttered.

They watched the golden light grow brighter and brighter, reflecting the dead pool water into a sea of gold.

They could feel that within that independent battlefield,

Chen Zhou's aura was not crushed; instead, with the empowerment of the Golden Light of Merit and the aura of auspiciousness, it began to climb step by step.

The three watched Chen Zhou shrouded in auspicious clouds and golden light as he forcibly struck that seventh-stage evil entity.

In their hearts, besides shock, there was both astonishment and envy—a mixture of complex emotions that could no longer be described with words.

Bearing merit, favored by heaven, and using an eerification body to strike a symbiosis form!

They asked themselves: in their past lives, they absolutely could not have done it!

The woman muttered to herself, and though she didn't finish her sentence, her meaning was clear.

Let alone achieving it, they probably wouldn't even have the qualification to land the fish.

"No, even if it were our lord..." the woman whispered, a rebellious thought flashing through her mind.

"Even our lord, at the same cultivation realm, probably... couldn't achieve such an inconceivable feat!"

Was this the terror of an auspicious god destiny combined with the favor of heavenly merit?

This junior, who was less than a hundred years old, had achieved a feat that even their former master might not have been able to accomplish!

In the battlefield, Chen Zhou had already exchanged hundreds of rounds with the monster.

Having burned a massive amount of Evil God Points and receiving the double empowerment of the Dragon Carp's golden light suppression, Chen Zhou's authority was pushed to its limit.

As the last wisp of Hatred Fire was extinguished, all the resentful souls and death qi were burned to nothing.

'This ability to ignore defense is truly useful.'

Chen Zhou's heart was calm. If not for the defense-ignoring Hatred Fire, he wouldn't have been able to even break the opponent's defense when facing a seventh-stage existence, even with the empowerment of his divine path authority, let alone grind it to death.

This seemingly perilous battle had been fought without any true mishaps, thanks to the boost from Jiu'er's top-tier fortune, the legacy empowerment from the previous round, and the suppression from the Dragon Carp's golden light.

The battlefield shattered.

Clarity returned to Chen Zhou's vision; he was still standing by the edge of the Abyssal Underworld Pool.

That terrifying seventh-stage evil entity had now lost all of its ferocity, transforming into a palm-wide silk ribbon that silently drifted into his hand.

The ribbon was made of unknown material, resembling cloud or mist, and felt ice-cold to the touch.

The moment he grasped the silk ribbon—

Boom!

A legacy even more vast than Faith Conferment surged violently into his mind.