Profound Black

Under the interference and guidance of the Moon Princesses, the Celestial Jutsu-shiki that the Moon Feather Princess had deployed with a massive expenditure of energy was shattered. The False Canopy collapsed with a thunderous roar, and the eternal night that had shrouded the East Siberian wilderness finally dissipated entirely. Daylight once again shone upon this freezing land, though it had already been transformed into a landscape of white crystals.

"We succeeded... they did it!" Eirin spoke with visible emotion as she watched the sunlight spill across the earth once more. Beside her, Suwako murmured in response.

"Yeah... with this, that thing's barrier is gone."

In the sky, the Moon Princesses couldn't help but smile as they saw the land return to the light. The small Princess Kaguya threw her arms around Kaguya in joy.

"Sister Kaguya, we did it! The canopy is open!"

"Yes, we did. With this..."

Kaguya was about to say more as she held the little princess, but a sudden, massive explosion thundered from the distant horizon. They turned toward the sound, seeing a vast expanse of white, crystalline mist.

"Damn it... we can't hold her down much longer!" Within the white mist, Miketsu was still desperately trying to suppress the Moon Feather Princess beneath her. The Moon Feather Princess, who had previously been severed at the waist, had already healed her two halves back together. Her immense strength was so great that even the giant Miketsu and Tamamo-no-Mae in his true form could no longer restrain her.

Boom!

With another thunderous crash, the Moon Feather Princess threw off Miketsu and Tamamo-no-Mae. She took to the air, flying straight toward Kaguya and the others. Miketsu scrambled up from the ground, preparing to give chase, but the Moon Feather Princess was moving so fast that it seemed she would be too late.

As the Moon Feather Princess charged toward them, the princesses' hearts leaped into their throats, and they nearly screamed. But at that moment, a colossal force bore down upon the Moon Feather Princess.

Beams of divine light in a multitude of colors descended from the heavens. The Moon Feather Princess, having only just taken flight, was struck by this five-colored divine radiance and frozen in place, completely unable to move. The powerful suppressive force pinned her firmly where she stood.

In the sky above the white crystalline wilderness, several enormous phantoms of different colors floated. They were generally seventy to eighty meters tall, their specific forms blurred and indistinct. Some resembled priests, others warriors, monks, or shrine maidens. The most abstract among them was a giant, ever-changing orb of white light.

These phantoms, along with the physically present White-robed Daoist, surrounded the Moon Feather Princess, exerting their divine power upon her. This immense output of divine power exceeded the erasure limit of the Moon Feather Princess's Chang'e Power, and the excess energy now held her in a death grip.

The combined divine power of several Chief Gods was not something the current Moon Feather Princess could resist.

"So these are... the Chief Gods?" Sitting on the ground, the now-shrunken Miketsu let out a long sigh of relief as she gazed at the giant phantoms in the sky.

Beside her, Tamamo-no-Mae had also returned to his human form. His eyes were fixed on the phantom that resembled a miko, radiating a glow like the sun. He couldn't help but clench his fists.

"Amaterasu..." Tamamo-no-Mae whispered. He seemed to want to do something, but after assessing the current situation, he abandoned the thought.

"So those are the Chief Gods of the Modern Gods. They look impressive enough. That thing should be out of options now," Suwako said from a distant hillside, her eyes fixed on the phantoms. Beside her, Eirin also stared into the distance.

"Modern Gods? The existence of these so-called Modern Gods... just what are they..."

Back at the site of the suppression, although the Moon Feather Princess continued to struggle, the constant pressure from the avatars of the Chief Gods kept her firmly imprisoned. Looking at her, the White-robed Daoist flicked his whisk and spoke to the surrounding phantoms.

"This is a primeval calamity from beyond the heavens. It is immortal and indestructible; it cannot be extinguished, only sealed. Everyone, please lend me your strength."

After speaking, the White-robed Daoist began to form hand seals and chant incantations. The other avatars of the Chief Gods followed suit. Countless runes began to float around the Moon Feather Princess, and layers of magical arrays appeared beneath her feet. With the Chang'e Power being suppressed, the laws of Earth were naturally reasserting themselves.

Trapped within the arrays, a powerful seal constructed by the White-robed Daoist and several Chief Gods was taking shape. The Moon Feather Princess sensed the approaching danger. In that moment, she made a decision.

The instant the False Canopy shattered, a massive amount of energy had returned to her. Now, she channeled all that energy, forcibly breaking the limits of her damaged body to draw even more power from the core of her spirit.

For a moment, the trapped Moon Feather Princess grew still. A silver-white shimmer flickered around her. Seeing this, the White-robed Daoist felt a jolt of alarm and immediately accelerated the construction of the seal.

Suddenly, the briefly calm Moon Feather Princess moved again. She snapped her eyes open and let out a piercing, brain-racking shriek. Accompanying the sound was a powerful shockwave that exploded outward, along with a high concentration of Chang'e Power.

"Oh no—"

BOOM!!

The expanding shockwave completely shattered the seal that had imprisoned her. As it reached the ground, it blasted a massive crater into the white crystalline earth. However, the shockwave was not the primary threat; the real danger was the high-concentration Chang'e Power that surged out like a maddened tide alongside the sonic shriek.

This was an act of desperation from Chang'e. Without having recovered her full form, she had forcibly used power she shouldn't have touched, sacrificing her very essence to unleash a strength that should only be available in her complete state. Even if she escaped the crisis and destroyed her enemies, the damage to her source would take an incredibly long time to repair.

Amidst her shrieking, tears of blood streamed from the Moon Feather Princess's eyes, and horrific wounds burst open all over her body. Her high-pitched scream caused cracks to ripple through the surrounding space. A boundless torrent of alien power poured out invisibly, sweeping in all directions like a flood with her at the center.

The avatars of the Chief Gods collapsed instantly under this terrifying alien power. Only the irregular white orb remained, struggling to endure as it grew smaller and smaller, on the verge of being snuffed out. The White-robed Daoist spat out a mouthful of blood.

"Pfft... No, this is bad... a great calamity..."

The torrent of alien power swept outward at high speed, sparing nothing in its path. Tamamo-no-Mae, being closer, was frozen in place, his mind wiped blank. The Moon Princesses and Eirin, further away, also became like motionless statues before they could even comprehend what was happening. Only Suwako, clutching her throbbing head, looked toward the erupting Moon Feather Princess in the distance.

"Did we... still underestimate her?"

The spread of the alien power was beyond imagination. With the center of East Siberia as the focal point, the land was rapidly turned into white crystals. The flawless white crystalline growth surged in all directions, encroaching and eroding everything. The grasslands of southern Siberia were instantly turned into a vast white expanse. The nomadic herders and their livestock were stripped of their consciousness in a heartbeat. On the Great Wall, guards watched in horror as a pure white wave roared toward them.

The entire world was on the brink of a great catastrophe.

At the heart of this disaster, Miketsu lay powerless on the white crystalline ground. Her eyes stared up at the sky in shock, toward the maddened Alien God.

Under such a close-range onslaught of high-concentration alien power, Miketsu had inevitably absorbed a massive amount of it. Her already precarious godhead shattered completely in that instant. Miketsu felt both her divine power as Inari and her divine power as Dakini-ten vanish into nothingness.

In its place, her true source of power—the one that had been suppressed beneath her godhead—was released directly for the first time without being filtered.

From Miketsu's fallen form, a new power seeped out and shot toward the sky. Unlike the golden, shimmering divine power she usually emitted, this power manifested as a profound, deepest black.