pjbooks Chapter 109 The Fall of the Demon God
Chapter 109 The Fall of the Demon God
At the same time, the live stream chat exploded with comments, and the frenzied cheers of billions of viewers around the world almost crashed the server.
"Barsalon is dead!!! Brother Chen's two sword strikes!! The first strike killed the Demon King, the second struck the Demon God! Even a thug in a suit isn't this cool!"
"He's not dead, Brother Chen said he's not completely dead! But his Abyss True Body is shattered, and the Abyss Rift is sealed by sword intent. What's the difference between that and being dead? He won't be able to climb out for at least a hundred years, right?"
"Who took a screenshot? I'm going to use the way Chen Ge patted the dust off his school uniform as his profile picture! He was so damn calm. The first thing he did after killing the Demon God was to brush off the dust! That was fragments of the Seventh Pillar Demon God's Abyss True Form! In his eyes, it was just a lump of dust!"
"Here's the profile picture; you're welcome. I suggest you change your signature too: 'Abyssal debris? No, just dust.'"
"Those six surviving demon kings all ran away! These mighty S-class peak abyss demon kings squeezed into the rift like they were on a bus, and those who couldn't squeeze through had their wings clipped. In my thirty years of life, this is the first time I've felt ashamed for a demon king."
"Liangzhou has been defended! All 120,000 civilians have been safely evacuated. I just saw a little girl in the live broadcast crying when she came out of the subway station and saw the sun. Her mother, who was holding her, was also crying."
Among all these comments, one with only six characters was repeatedly copied and spammed until it became the most frequently seen sentence on the live stream's public chat screen—
"As long as Brother Chen is here, Liangzhou is here. The Dragon Kingdom is here."
When Jiang Chen entered Liangzhou Fortress, the entire inner city was deserted, but the streets, though evacuated of civilians, were not empty. The wounded soldiers who should have been at the rear, the rotating guards who should have been resting in their shelters, were all crowded on both sides of the street. Some had bandages on their arms, some had scorch marks from the previous night's corrosive liquid on their faces, and some used broken spears as crutches. Their armor was torn, their uniforms filthy, but not a single person was sitting. Wherever Jiang Chen walked, the soldiers standing in rows straightened their backs perfectly. No one shouted slogans, no one applauded, but everyone was looking at him with the same expression.
Zhao Tiecheng descended from the watchtower. The deep, bone-revealing wound on his left arm had been treated urgently; the bandage was extremely thick, but blood was still seeping out. He used the scabbard of his sword as a crutch, and as he approached, he said in a hoarse, almost inaudible voice, "Jiang Chen, two thousand garrison troops at Liangzhou Fortress are reporting for duty."
Jiang Chen stopped. He looked at Zhao Tiecheng, at the blood-stained and wrinkled face of this veteran who had guarded the western border for twenty years, paused for a moment, then reached out and patted Zhao Tiecheng's shoulder. "The wounds were treated well. Take good care of yourself."
Zhao Tiecheng opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end he simply straightened his body and gave a standard military salute. Behind him, the two thousand equally wounded soldiers stood at attention and saluted at the same instant. There were no commands, no orders, only the crisp sound of boots striking the ground and the soft rustling of Jiang Chen's clothes as he walked by in the morning breeze.
At this moment, in the command center of the Dragon Kingdom's Awakened Affairs Management Bureau, the tension that had been building up all night was finally released. The holographic projection screen repeatedly played the scene of Balthalon's true form being shattered by the golden sword light; each replay revealed new details that the technicians discovered, annotated, and recorded. Chu Tianxiong sat in a chair, his tie somehow loosened. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and his fingers trembled. Zhou Tianze retrieved his military water bottle from the control panel, unscrewed the cap, gulped down several mouthfuls, and then laughed loudly. "Liangzhou is saved! Two thousand brothers are alive, and one hundred and twenty thousand people are safe! Old Ye, the Dragon Kingdom has weathered this calamity—no, it should be said that Jiang Chen weathered this calamity for us in the Demon God Realm."
Luo Qinghe leaned against the side, his long, silvery-white hair falling below his eyes. His expression remained aloof, but his tone was soft. "The way he brushed off the dust just now was more reassuring than any great victory."
Chu Tianxiong sensed something and opened social media. Jiang Chen had already dominated Weibo's trending topics, with his name appearing in the top ten. The number one trending topic, marked with a glittering gold "Explosive," was a post by an anonymous user, containing only one sentence: "Liangzhou never lays down its armor, the Dragon Kingdom has immortals."
...
At the moment Balthazaron's abyssal true form was shattered, a temple built from solidified lava and the bones of ancient behemoths was trembling violently deep within the Demon Realm, thousands of miles away.
At the very center of the temple, seven thrones, formed from pure abyssal power, are arranged in a ring. The base of each throne is deeply embedded in the void, connecting to the endless chaotic origin at the bottom of the abyss. On the seven thrones, six figures of different forms are simultaneously sensing the same signal—on the seventh throne, the dark green soul fire that has been suspended for tens of thousands of years is dimming, shattering, and extinguishing at a visible speed.
"The true form of Balthalon in the abyss has been slain." The first to speak was a being seated on the fourth throne. He appeared as a gaunt, middle-aged scholar, dressed in a tattered scholar's robe from an unknown era. His face was withered, his eyes sunken, but two eerie blue flames burned within them. His hands rested clasped on his knees, his long fingers adorned with countless intricate runes—each rune a compressed abyssal law. The fourth pillar of the demons, "The Eye of All Laws," Mephistopheles.
"He wasn't slain," the person seated on the second throne corrected him. It was a girl who appeared to be under twenty, her skin almost translucent with pale whiteness, her black hair cascading down to the base of the throne, the ends fluttering silently in the air, each movement leaving a fleeting spatial rift. Her eyes were closed, but a vertical crack ran between her brows, within which sat a constantly rotating dark purple eyeball. The Second Pillar Demon, "Daughter of the Void," Lilith. "His true form was severed, and even the abyssal rift was sealed by his sword intent. Balthazaron cannot return now. His soul core was shattered into millions of eyes, scattered throughout the depths of the abyss. It will take at least a hundred years to reassemble."
A moment of silence fell over the temple.
Then, a low, muffled laugh, like magma churning deep within the earth's crust, came from the third throne.
The laughter emanated from a body composed entirely of dark red lava. This body had no fixed form—sometimes human, sometimes beast, sometimes a constantly churning ball of lava. The only constant was the enormous, ever-beating dark red heart at its center. Each beat sent a visible wave of heat emanating from the surrounding air. His head was bald, adorned only with seven curved horns, each tipped with a flame of a different color. The Third Pillar Demon, "Heart of the Burning Heaven," Azmod.
"A hundred years?" Azmod's laughter grew louder, his lava body expanding and contracting with each laugh. "That fool Balsalon. Three thousand years ago, when he tried to seize the position of the Seventh Pillar Demon, he was beaten down to only one eye by the previous Seventh Pillar. Back then, he climbed back in less than two hundred years. And this time? His Abyssal body was shattered by a single sword strike from a seventeen-year-old human! Not shattered, not defeated—it was shattered in one strike! Even the Abyssal Rift was sealed!"
His laughter echoed beneath the towering dome of the temple. "Seventy-two Demon Kings! He drew seventy-two Demon Kings from each of our legions! And what was the result? Over forty died! Six escaped! The rest became fertilizer in the Gobi Desert! Is this what he meant by 'testing the limits with the lives of Demon Kings'? Did he find the limit? The limit he found was that his own Abyss True Form couldn't even withstand a single breath under someone else's sword!"
"Enough." The voice from the first throne was not loud, but it silenced the entire temple.
An old man sat on the first throne. He looked no different from a human—over seventy years old, his white hair tied back with a black bone hairpin, his face thin, with high cheekbones. He wore a long, coarse gray robe and straw sandals, his hands folded on his knees, his posture serene, as if he were sunbathing in his own yard. The only thing that seemed unusual was his shadow. The shadow cast on the throne was not the outline of an old man, but a crouching, nine-horned ancient black dragon. The dragon's eyes were open, its two burning dark golden pupils slowly rotating, sweeping over every demon present—including Azmod, whose laughter had just echoed throughout the temple, now fell silent. For the one on the first throne was Neltharion, the leader of the Seven Pillars of the Abyss, the "Darkness of Eternity."
"Balsalon is a fool," he said, his voice calm and aged. "But have you ever considered this: if Jiang Chen's sword can shatter his Abyss True Form, it can shatter yours as well."
The temple was deathly silent.
"Azmod, your Burning Heaven Heart was formed from the core fire of the seventh layer of the Abyss. The core fire is one of the oldest laws of the Abyss's origin—as long as the core of the seventh layer of the Abyss remains burning, your Burning Heaven Heart will not perish. But as you have seen, Jiang Chen's sword intent is imbued with true essence, a power from another universe's cultivation civilization. His sword intent that sealed the Abyss's rift has not yet dissipated—the golden patterns at the edge of the rift are still slowly flowing, preventing both the outflow of corrupting power and the approach of the Abyss's origin. This power has already exceeded our comprehension."
As Nesario spoke, he slowly opened his half-closed eyes, revealing pupils that were pure black and devoid of any luster.
"There's an even more terrifying detail—Barthalon used the ultimate form of the Law of Corruption before his death. Do you know what that means? It means that Jiang Chen, under the full force of the Law of Corruption's erosion, used the Myriad Manifestations of Sword Dao to deny the power of corruption from its very existence. Corruption is transformation, severing is negation. Transformation requires a process, negation does not. His power level is at least one rank higher than the Law of Corruption."
Mephistopheles's withered face flickered with intense blue flames at the same instant. "The Immortal Emperor. The highest rank in the cultivation civilization. What path does he cultivate? The Path of the Sword? The Path of Slaughter? Or the Path of Ruthlessness?"
"Neither." Lilith closed her eyes, the dark purple eyeball between her brows slowly turning towards the First Throne. For the first time, her ethereal voice carried a hint of uncertainty. "Judging from the way he used sword intent to seal the rift, he should be practicing the Way of the Sword. But not the pure Way of the Sword—because the pure Way of the Sword wouldn't use sword intent to seal rifts, it would only use sword intent to sever them. He's sealing, not severing."
"That means he doesn't want to destroy the Abyss." A subtle interest crept into Nesario's aged voice.
"He held back?" Azmod's horns flickered violently.
"It's not that he's holding back—it's that he disdains it." Neltharion leaned back on his throne, his fingers tapping lightly on the armrest. "In his eyes, the Abyss and the Demon God are things he can cut down at any time. So he doesn't need to rush to destroy us. Unlike us, Jiang Chen's strength isn't the kind that needs to be proven through destruction."
These words struck the demons like a ton of bricks, even more chilling than the news of Balthalon's slaying with a single sword strike.
"The seventy-two demon kings are crippled, and Balthalon is also useless." The eerie blue flames in Mephisto's eyes stabilized. "The throne's face has been slapped—but we have to do something."
"You already know the answer." Neltharion closed his eyes again, and the black dragon shadow that lay prostrate on the throne lowered its body. "On this matter, the Apostles' stance is the same as ours."