As the divine seal descended, Jian Huaishuang felt a surge of immense power flow through the sword hilt into his body.
Having already been conferred through faith once before, he now felt the blessing of an even purer divine grace.
A hum resonated through the air.
The death qi surrounding Jian Huaishuang boiled instantly, surging more violently than ever before.
Under the infusion of death qi, his tattered paper armor was rapidly repaired, shimmering with a grayish-white luster.
His aura climbed steadily, easily shattering the bottleneck of the second symbiosis contract as his cultivation instantly soared to the realm of the third symbiosis contract.
The third contract represented a deeper level of fusion with death qi.
Jian Huaishuang slowly exhaled a mouthful of turbid air, a sharp glint flashing in his cold eyes.
He finally had strength to spare.
Within the paper snow, he maintained his Lie Sword Domain, the giant sword in his hand humming softly.
Jian Huaishuang stepped forward, his figure merging into the paper snow before instantly reappearing in front of the leading giant, his heavy sword raised high.
The Hidden Sword had been concealed for too long, accumulating full power until the death qi condensed into a grayish-white sword light that pierced through the sky and earth.
The sword light fell silently, but at the moment it touched the giant's neck, a terrifying cutting force erupted.
The head of the giant, formed from the fusion of countless monsters, was severed by a single strike!
With a thunderous crash, the head tumbled away and smashed into the ground, turning into a large pool of writhing black water.
The headless body of the giant swayed for a moment before collapsing, decomposing back into thousands of black-spot monsters; however, as soon as these monsters left the fused state, the paper people swarmed over them.
Without pausing, Jian Huaishuang turned and lunged toward the second giant.
With the support of his newfound strength, he could finally shift from pure defense to a counterattack.
Atop the high platform, Chen Zhou watched Jian Huaishuang gradually stabilize the situation, and his heart eased slightly.
"Ant, you dare to resist divine might?"
The massive eyeball on the Judge's neck spun frantically, blood vessels bulging as black light poured down like a waterfall, sinking into the ground.
He had originally thought those three giants would be enough to sweep away all obstacles, but he hadn't expected them to be blocked by a mere paper bug he thought he could crush at will.
"Power... I need more power."
"Dragon-Suppressing Stakes, return!"
The Judge did not want to wait any longer.
To ensure he could crush all resistance and prevent Chen Zhou from having another chance to snatch a new Dragon-Suppressing Stake, he decided to increase the pull.
Violent tremors shook the depths of the earth once more, more intense than any previous instance.
Three massive black pillars, each ten meters thick, broke through the ground simultaneously and shot into the sky.
The Judge had clearly learned his lesson; he knew Chen Zhou had the ability to intercept them, so he summoned three at once to make it impossible for Chen Zhou to cover everything.
The thick black spots covering the Judge also began to writhe and drip at the same time.
The black liquid fell onto the Star-Picking Platform, instantly corroding deep pits into the stone.
The entire land of Gloomlight Province underwent a rapid transformation.
Not only were the black spots beneath the provincial capital being frantically drained, but even the aura of the black spots that had spread to the Eastern and Western Regions began to be pulled, showing a faint trend of flowing back toward the capital.
A godhead.
It was the manifestation of divine authority, a certificate of identity recognized by the rules of heaven and earth.
Possessing a godhead meant being accepted by heaven and earth, allowing one to mobilize a portion of worldly power and exert a natural suppression of status over entities of the same source that lacked a godhead.
All black spots originated from divine remains and shared the same source as him.
At this moment, the Judge was commanding the divinity using his godhead.
A massive amount of black spots obeyed the Judge’s command, condensing into a blurry phantom silhouette.
The phantom held a Pen of Sin, also condensed from black spots, and pointed the nib at Chen Zhou.
"False god, kneel."
The Judge's voice echoed through the phantom, carrying a resonance as if the world itself were speaking.
The Judge's phantom raised the Pen of Sin and made a stroke in the air, causing the space around Chen Zhou to suddenly freeze.
An invisible pressure descended from the sky, as if the entire world were rejecting and squeezing him.
Chen Zhou could feel the circulation of divinity within his body becoming sluggish, and the brush formed by the Judgment Whisk trembled slightly; his divine path authority was being interfered with.
"Three at once... and he even made a phantom to interfere with me," Chen Zhou's gaze was cold. "Resorting to petty tricks, are we?"
He knew he could no longer play this game of tug-of-war for the stakes with the Judge.
He had already lost one when there were only two Dragon-Suppressing Stakes; now that three had emerged at once alongside the interference from the godhead phantom, it was impossible for him to stop them all.
In that case... he would change the way they played.
Chen Zhou shifted his gaze away from the three Dragon-Suppressing Stakes flying toward the Judge and looked down at the violently vibrating earth beneath his feet.
How many Dragon-Suppressing Stakes were still underground?
Of the eighteen original stakes, five had been destroyed, the Judge had absorbed one, and three were currently flying toward the surface.
That meant nine were still buried below.
Separated by thick layers of earth, Chen Zhou could not sense the exact positions of those stakes.
However, he could feel that the seal on the suppressed corpse dragon deep underground was rapidly weakening.
And within the corpse dragon's body, there happened to be the ownerless sinful karma he had previously injected through Wu Gou, which helped him pinpoint the location.
It was a bomb planted underground in advance.
A plan, bold to the extreme, took shape in his mind.
He was going to directly detonate the dragon vein.
He would let all the underground Dragon-Suppressing Stakes see the light of day at once.
Currently, the Judge was limited by his strength and conversion efficiency, only able to pull three stakes at most at a time.
But he would only get faster.
Chen Zhou intended to simply abandon those three and let the Judge absorb them.
He would use the window of time while the Judge was digesting those three stakes—before the remaining nine were pulled—to strike with all his might and perform the judgment first!
This was a massive gamble.
If he won, the Judge would only absorb three more stakes, which was much better than slowly pulling them one by one while he could only stop one out of every two.
As for how powerful the Judge would become after absorbing three stakes... Chen Zhou could no longer worry about that.
Between two evils, he had to choose the lesser one.
But the risks of this gamble were also enormous.
Detonating the dragon vein meant that the hellish malevolent ghosts accumulated beneath the provincial capital for a thousand years would fully manifest.
If the Eastern and Western Regions could not suppress the black spots, it would allow them to flow back and form more phantoms.
If the malevolent ghosts from the direction of the imperial palace and the provincial capital broke through the defense lines and swarmed over...
If the divine servants on the Star-Picking Platform broke through Jian Huaishuang's defense and interfered with his judgment...
Once delayed, he would merely be doing the hard work for the benefit of others, as the Judge could easily pull the stakes he failed to judge into his own body.
If that happened, it would be a total defeat.
Chen Zhou looked down.
Jian Huaishuang, with one man and one sword, was desperately blocking the remaining two giants and countless black-spot monsters.
The paper people surged forward one after another, using suicide-style attacks to delay the monsters' progress.
These paper people had been disciples of the Corpse Soul Sect in life and were transformed into evil spirit creations after death.
Their faith in Chen Zhou might not be as blazing as Jian Huaishuang's, but their obsession with dying for a peaceful world was equally pure.
Chen Zhou then looked toward the imperial palace, where golden light flashed and Buddhist chants echoed; that was Wu Gou risking his life to transcend the dead souls.
He looked toward the provincial capital's drill grounds, where black and white qi shot into the sky; that was Bai and Xiaoye striving to maintain order.
And in the more distant Eastern and Western Regions, though he could not see them, he knew his believers were surely fighting bloody battles for him there.
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