Re: Evolution Online

Chapter 1470: The true might of a soulweaver

The Blood Prince's gaze swept across the hundreds of Liams surrounding the battlefield, yet unlike everyone else, there was no fear in his eyes. The initial shock had disappeared. In its place was cold arrogance.

"So this is your great trump card?"

The remaining cultivators turned toward him.

The Blood Prince looked at the shattered Blood Court warships, the mountains of corpses, and the hundreds of Dao King soul avatars steadily closing around him. His expression grew colder with every passing second, but there was still no desperation.

Instead, he seemed offended. "Do you truly believe this is enough to destroy me?"

The Blood Prince raised his head. "What exactly do you think I am?"

Crimson energy began leaking from his body. At first, it seemed no different from the Blood Dao aura he had already displayed. Then the surrounding Dao Kings began noticing something wrong.

Their Daos were reacting. The lightning surrounding one of Liam's avatars suddenly became unstable. Several sword avatars felt their blades tremble. The divine laws surrounding Xerathuna bent away from the Blood Prince, while the enormous sea of blood covering the battlefield abruptly became perfectly still.

The Blood Prince took one step forward.

DONG!

The entire world sank. Mountains collapsed beneath an invisible weight. Spatial fractures that had covered the heavens were forcibly compressed, while cultivators below Dao Master dropped from the sky by the thousands.

Even Dao Grand Masters staggered. The Dao Kings barely remained standing.

The Blood Prince's crimson eyes glowed. "I am the Blood Prince."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

His aura erupted. The heavens turned crimson.

An enormous pillar of blood-red light tore through the sky and continued upward until it disappeared beyond the world itself. The laws surrounding Green Mountain screamed beneath the pressure, and the ancient formations buried throughout the sect activated simultaneously as they struggled to prevent the whole world from exploding.

The hundreds of Dao King avatars surrounding the Blood Prince were forced backward. For the first time since Liam had revealed his army, the encirclement was pushed outward.

Across the battlefield, every surviving Dao King froze. They knew this pressure. Or, at the very least, they knew what it represented.

The difference between Dao Grand Master and Dao King was already a chasm that buried countless geniuses.

But above the King stood another throne.

An existence whose Dao no longer merely established authority within the laws surrounding it, but could suppress the authority of other Dao Kings through sheer superiority.

A realm that countless Dao Kings pursued for hundreds of thousands of years without ever touching.

Someone whispered the words. "Dao... Emperor."

Then the entire battlefield erupted.

"DAO EMPEROR?!"

"Impossible!"

"The Blood Prince broke through?!"

"When?!"

Ancient monsters who had remained relatively composed even after seeing hundreds of Dao Kings finally lost that composure.

A Dao Emperor had appeared. That changed everything. Hundreds of Dao Kings were an army capable of terrifying supreme factions.

A Dao Emperor was a calamity.

Several of the oldest cultivators present looked genuinely frightened. They understood better than anyone that cultivation at this level could no longer be measured through simple numbers.

A hundred ants couldn't necessarily kill a dragon simply because there were a hundred of them. And Dao Kings were certainly no ants. But neither was a Dao Emperor merely a stronger Dao King.

The Blood Prince slowly floated upward.

His crimson robes fluttered around him as an enormous blood-red crown materialized above his head. Behind him, the blood filling the battlefield rose from the shattered mountains and ruined warships, forming a crimson ocean that stretched beyond the horizon.

His five blood effigies changed as well. The Sword Dao avatar that had been fighting one of them tightened its grip upon its blade. The effigy moved.

BOOM!

The Sword avatar disappeared. A moment later, it smashed through seven distant mountains. The watching cultivators sucked in cold breaths.

The Blood Prince didn't even look toward it. His eyes scanned the battleground for the real Liam. "Do you understand now? I admit you surprised me. Hundreds of Dao King incarnations. Even I have never encountered such an absurd technique. But surprise is all you've accomplished."

Crimson pressure descended.

BOOOOOOM!

Dozens of Liam's avatars immediately released their Daos to resist, but it was simply impossible.

The Blood Prince smiled coldly. "You gathered an army of Kings, but I am an Emperor. Learn to bow in front of me." With each of his words, more and more soul avatars started to explode.

Far away, Xerathuna stared at the blood prince.

Her silver-white robes were torn. Golden blood stained her face, her carefully maintained hair had fallen into disorder, and the divine radiance that normally made her appear untouchable had weakened considerably.

She looked like she had already died once. She had watched her Court slaughtered. She had watched hundreds of Dao Kings appear from nowhere. She had experienced something she hadn't truly experienced in longer than she could remember, true desperation.

For those few terrible minutes, Xerathuna had genuinely believed she was going to die. She was fucking going to die at the hands of a transcendent rat.

She was the High Priestess of the Celestial Court, a woman worshiped as a goddess across countless worlds. Yet she had watched her forces collapse while Liam's identical faces multiplied across the heavens until there seemed to be no end to them.

Every new Dao King had driven her a little deeper into despair, until even the possibility of escape had begun to feel distant. Then the Blood Prince revealed his true cultivation.

Dao Emperor.

Color slowly returned to Xerathuna's face as she stared at the crimson figure floating above the battlefield. The suffocating pressure that had been crushing her chest finally loosened. Relief washed through her so powerfully that her legs almost weakened beneath her.

Then another Liam exploded.

BOOOOOOM!

Crimson pressure crushed the avatar from every direction, breaking apart its Dao authority before tearing through the soul body itself.

The avatar resisted, white-golden energy erupting desperately around it, but the difference in cultivation was simply too great. Cracks raced across its body before it burst into countless particles of soul energy. Another followed. Then another.

Xerathuna watched them disappear, and the terror that had dominated her expression slowly transformed into something else. The familiar arrogance she had carried for countless years began returning with every avatar that shattered.

Of course. How could she have allowed herself to become so frightened?

Hundreds of Dao Kings were terrifying, but cultivation had never been a simple game of numbers. The higher one climbed, the more meaningless such comparisons became, because every great realm represented a transformation that those beneath it could barely comprehend.

Liam had created an army of Kings. So what?

An Emperor stood before them.

Xerathuna straightened her back as golden divine energy once again gathered around her battered body. Her robes remained torn, blood still stained her face, and most of the Celestial army she had brought here was either dead or desperately trying to survive, but none of that seemed quite as important anymore.

Liam would die.

That single certainty made everything bearable. A smile slowly spread across her face.

However, all of that lasted only for a mere second. Before she could even feel the full relief of seeing Liam's impossible army collapse, something changed.

The soul energy released by the destroyed avatars did not disperse. All of it started rushing towards a single glowing avatar. Immediately, Xerathuna felt it. Everything was once again about to change, and then it happened.

The avatar began to transform.

At first, the change was almost impossible to notice because its cultivation remained firmly within the Dao King realm. The Blood Prince's pressure continued suppressing it along with every other avatar, yet the enormous amount of soul energy pouring into it showed no sign of stopping.

One destroyed avatar.

Then another.

Then ten more.

Every time the Blood Prince crushed one of Liam's soul avatars, the resulting energy crossed the battlefield and entered the same body. The glowing avatar absorbed everything without hesitation, and with each new influx, the aura surrounding it became denser.

Xerathuna's newly recovered smile slowly disappeared. "What is he doing?"

The Blood Prince heard her, but he didn't answer. His crimson eyes had already locked onto the glowing avatar, and for the first time since revealing his true cultivation, the cold arrogance was wavering.

He could feel it too. Something was accumulating. The Blood Prince raised his hand and deliberately increased the pressure upon the battlefield.

BOOOOOOM!

Another dozen avatars exploded. Their soul energy immediately rushed toward the glowing Liam. This time, everyone saw it.

Streams of brilliant energy crossed the ruined heavens from every direction, twisting around the avatar before sinking into its body. Then suddenly, a powerful aura erupted from the soul avatar.

BOOOOM!

Crimson light exploded across the heavens.

For the briefest moment, everyone assumed the Blood Prince had attacked again. The color was almost identical to his own power, and the thick scent of blood that suddenly filled the world carried the unmistakable authority of the Blood Dao.

Then the Blood Prince's expression changed. The crimson ocean behind him trembled. He hadn't commanded it.

Every vampire who remained alive on the battlefield felt their blood surge violently through their veins, while the weaker members of the Blood Court dropped to their knees before they even understood what was happening. Their bloodlines were reacting instinctively to the presence emerging before them, recognizing an authority that stood far beyond that of a Dao King.

At the center of the phenomenon stood Liam.

Or rather, one of his soul avatars.

The avatar's appearance hadn't changed much, but his pale skin now carried faint crimson patterns while his misty-white eyes had become a deep, almost black shade of red. Two elongated fangs appeared when his lips parted, and behind him the accumulated soul energy continued compressing until an enormous crimson moon slowly manifested in the heavens.

Itzel's sister stood up in shook. The Green Mountain ancestor dropped his gourd. They both could see what was happening but they simply couldn't believe it.

The last traces of his Dao King aura disappeared. What replaced them made the surviving cultivators stop breathing. A Dao Emperor! Another Dao Emperor had emerged in this world!

A Dao King had actually broken through to become a Dao Emperor right in front of their eyes!

The Blood Prince's expression darkened. "You..."

The crimson Liam looked at him. "You said I had to bow to you?"

There had been no heavenly tribulation, no desperate attempt to comprehend a higher realm, and none of the long accumulation that normally preceded such a breakthrough. Liam had simply gathered the energy of his destroyed avatars into a single body, and somehow, impossibly, that body had crossed the boundary.

The Blood Prince gritted his teeth. Before he could react, another powerful aura erupted somewhere in the distance.

This time golden inscriptions appeared behind him. Xerathuna's third eye snapped open. She felt her Divine Dao respond. Her face turned white. "Stop him!"

The Blood Prince was already moving. He crossed the battlefield instantly, crimson energy gathering around his hand as he appeared directly above the divine avatar.

There was no arrogance in his movements anymore. He brought his palm down with enough force to collapse the surrounding space. But before it could reach the soul avatar, the crimson Liam appeared. "Your opponent is me."

The Blood Prince's palm crashed into the crimson Liam's raised fist.

BOOOOM!

The collision tore the heavens apart. Crimson light swallowed everything for thousands of kilometers as two Blood Dao authorities collided head-on, forcing the enormous ocean suspended above Green Mountain to divide down the middle.

The crimson Liam was pushed backward.

His arm cracked beneath the Blood Prince's overwhelming power, crimson fractures spreading from his fist toward his shoulder, yet he never lost control of his body. He twisted in the air, stopped himself, and before the Blood Prince could continue toward the Divine Dao avatar, the crimson Liam stepped forward again.

The Blood Prince's eyes narrowed. "You think breaking through makes you my equal?"

"No." The crimson Liam glanced at his damaged arm as the fractures slowly closed.

"I'm new at this."

The Blood Prince's expression became colder. "Then know your place." His body disappeared. Another terrifying aura erupted.

The crimson Liam moved at almost the same instant. Their figures vanished from the perception of everyone below Dao King, and even the Dao Kings could barely follow the crimson flashes colliding across the heavens.

Every impact shattered another section of space, while mountains hundreds of kilometers away collapsed beneath shockwaves that hadn't even been directed toward them.

The difference between them became obvious almost immediately.

His control over the Blood Dao was vastly more refined, his movements carried the instinctive precision of someone who had fought with this power for an absurd length of time, and every exchange forced the crimson Liam backward.

Within seconds, cracks had spread across the avatar's chest and one side of his face, while the Blood Prince remained almost untouched.

Yet the crimson Liam kept coming.

Every time the Blood Prince attempted to disengage and attack the Divine Dao avatar, he appeared in front of him again. When the Blood Prince tried to move around him, dozens of Dao King avatars interfered from every direction, forcing him to destroy them before continuing.

And every avatar he destroyed became more soul energy.

Soon, a pillar of divine energy erupted and the unmistakable aura of another Dao Emperor emerged.