“Tch…” Yuying clicked her tongue as she quickly pushed her current thoughts aside and sped through the air. While figuring out the deformed true ident.i.ty could prove to be an advantage later on in the battle, being too preoccupied with such thoughts meant leaving Zhang to fend for himself against an army of demons. 

Of course,  Zhang was more than capable of annihilating the demon army by himself, but since the deformed corpse had yet to put its true powers on display and Reverend Dark Moon had yet to reveal all of his hidden cards, allowing the battle to drag on could prove disadvantageous and lead to catastrophe.

Performing a series of hand signs and withdrawing millions of bones from her interspatial ring, Yuying tried to close on the Reaper’s Coffin.

In the meantime, after seeing Yuying joining the fray, Ling, Lingqi and Ai also sped into action, unleashing various techniques that were at their disposal. 

Without uttering a single word, Ling waved her hand, causing all of the moisture in the air to gather and condense into hundreds of crescent water blades that spun toward the ground leaving trails of destruction in their quake.

Although Ling had yet to become a half deity like Zhang, it could be said that she was but a hair"s breath away and as a result, her ability to manipulate the water had grown to a terrifying degree. If she and the other beauties had spent the entirety of their time furthering their cultivation instead of preparing ma.s.sive array that encircled the Aurora Empire then perhaps they would have been able to become half deities already. 

With deadly force, Ling’s crescent water blades had swept through the demon army where they severed limbs, decapitated heads and caused streams of blood to deep into the ground. 

Unlike Ling who excelled at manipulating the elements to attack from afar, Ai’s monstrous strength had been elevated to an otherworldly level which was put on full display as her fist smashed into the ground causing the ground to sink and split apart.

“Let me join in the fun as well.” Lingqi said as she waved her hand and four different colored vials fell toward the ground. Due to the ensuing chaos that had now taken hold of the battlefield, the sound of cracking gla.s.s could not be heard, however, the instant Lingqi’s four gla.s.s vaults broke apart four differently colored clouds of gas could be seen smothering the forest down below. 

Before long, the four differently colored clouds of gas began to mend together, rapidly changing from one color to the next in rapid succession.

“Now for the finishing touches.” Lingqi said as excitement flickered in her eyes.

Using one of her fingernails as a blade, Lingqi had cut a small line across another one of her fingers and caused a drop of blood to descend.

Unlike regular blood, Lingqi’s droplet was actually a bright shade of violet. If someone were to be given the chance to examine this drop of blood, they would discover that not only did it contain the properties of dozens of different kinds of poisons and medicines, there was also a highly concentrated amount of essence. 

Feeling that her abilities were inadequate and made it so she could not contribute to the group, Lingqi had secretly begun cultivating a very ancient technique that few know about and even fewer dare to practice.

Using her body to store medicine and poison while using her blood and the essence as a catalyst, Lingqi could amplify the effectiveness of various poisons and medicines dozens if not hundreds of times more than their usual effectiveness. Poisons that usually were useless against beings such as saints could become deadly. 

Of course, there were drawbacks to such a technique, if one was not careful and introduced a poison that was too powerful into their body, the possibility of death was very high. If one were to introduce a medicine that was too effective then there was a chance of erasing all of the poisons that one had spent countless years acc.u.mulating. 

Basically, Lingqi had to keep the medicines and poisons in her body in equilibrium or risk killing herself or rendering her efforts pointless. She was now walking on a fine line between life and death.

Slowly but surely, Lingqi’s  drop of blood fell toward the eye catching cloud of poison that was quickly spreading throughout the forest below. 

“Let’s see if all my efforts were worth it.” Lingqi muttered as the drop of blood disappeared into the cloud of poison. 

“Ha! You call this poison! Laughable!” A member of the Order of the Blue Moon laughed as he gazed up into the sky toward Lingqi with eyes filled with ridicule. 

“Junior brother, that batch of crimson viper pills you cooked up not too long ago is easily ten times more toxic than this stuff.” Another member of the Order of the Blue Moon said with a chuckle as he and his brethren ran through Lingqi’s cloud of poison as if it were not even there.

Simply said, most members of the Order of the Blue Moon were extremely well versed in the art of poison and even more knowledgeable about the human body, a result of their countless human experiments and their thirst for power.

Since the beauties were each separately attacking different parts of the demonic army, those affected by Lingqi’s poison felt they had been blessed with a phenomenal amount of luck, unlike their comrades who were being cut to pieces by blades of water or pummeled to a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp by Ai’s fists. Sadly their mocking laughter and sneering eyes were soon replaced by screams of agony and lifeless gazes.

Mere seconds after the members of the Order of the Blue Moon had spoken, Lingqi’s drop of violet blood reached the ground where half of it instantly evaporated and turned into a violet stream of smoke that quickly combined with the mixture of poison already floating around in the air, the other half of the drop of blood seeped into the ground causing the soil to turn into a sickly black color which began to creep and spread across the land. Be it the earth or the air, everything was now enveloped within a deadly poison.

Little did Lingqi’s victims know that each one of the four poisons released by her had a different use. The sole purpose of one of the poisons was to seep into the pores of all living things it came into contact with, other than this function it did not do much else. The purpose of another one of the poisons was only to quickly seep into the ground and spread while another one of the poisons was only meant to linger in the air and the last poison was a mild brew whose purpose was to plant a false sense of security within the members of the Order of the Blue Moon.

All four of the poisons contained within the four vials released by Lingqi were only meant to act as preparation for when her drop of blood was released. The poisons contained within Lingqi’s blood quickly combined with the four poisons released earlier and in a flash, everything and everyone within a five-mile radius found themselves with one foot in the grave.

“First one would find themselves overcome with a sudden sense of thirst, this sense of thirst would quickly heighten to the point where one would feel as if their throats were on fire, but of course that is only the beginning. Soon the poison that had seeped into their blood will react to my blood and moments later their entire bodies will be enveloped in a burning sensation so strong that it makes many feel as if they were lit on fire. Their eyes begin dilating, their mouths begin to foam, many will begin to writhe in pain as others will notice their blood vessel become visible underneath their skin as it turns black in color. Slowly their lives come to an end and their bodies fall onto the ground, before long only their blackened bones will remain.” Lingqi said to herself as she watched the effects of her cloud of poison take effect, causing hundreds if not thousands of bodies to fall onto the pitch black ground where their flesh melted away due to the toxic soil.

Surprisingly enough despite Ling’s blades of water, Lingqi’s deadly cloud of poison and Ai monstrous attack that split the earth, the bulk of the demonic army was untouched and had begun launching countless spells into the sky toward Zhang, ignoring the beauties entirely.

“I guess the undead wouldn’t be affected by poison considering they’re already dead, as for the evil spirits they obviously can’t be harmed through physical means…” Lingqi said she watched countless streams of light soar into the sky toward Zhang, without the ability to come to his a.s.sistance.

Zhang’s brows creased as he watched thousands of multicolored beams of light inch ever closer toward him.

“Hmph, you think attacks created through the use of essence would have any use against me?” Zhang said in a low mumble as a tiny flickering black flame danced on the tip of his finger. Pointing at the incoming onslaught of attacks, Zhang unleashed the Soul Devouring Flame. What started out as a tiny flame quickly began to grow to what resembled a miniature black sun.

“Your attacks will only serve to kindle my flame” Zhang as the flickering Soul Devouring Flames could be seen reflected in his pupils.

True to Zhang’s words, one by one the thousands of incoming beams of light were absorbed by the Soul Devouring Flames, causing the miniature black sun to double in size.

“Impossible! His attack is able to consume the essence just like the great devourer....” Reverend Dark Moon cried in an astonished tone, however despite the turn of events not even a hint of hopelessness could be seen in his eyes. Shifting his gaze from Zhang toward the deformed corpse, a gleam could be seen in Reverend Dark Moon’s eyes.

With a ghastly roar, the deformed corpse could be seen covered in an eerie looking black glow as its shadow squirmed about and grew larger and larger until a vast area on the ground was covered by a blanket of darkness. Similar to Zhang’s abyssal cape, the deformed corpse’s shadow appeared to be a gateway into the unknown, into a place where nightmares dwelled.

Seeing the deformed corpse’s ma.s.sive shadow, scattered memories started to surface within Yuying’s mind, scattered memories that soon became much greater in number as she watched countless skeletal hands rise up from the dark abyss.

“Th-that technique… It can’t be… Of all of the people to run into, how could it possibly be him…” Yuying said in a weak tone as she finally realized what she and the others were up against.

“The man who nearly rewrote the hierarchy of the Underworld. The man who started a rebellion that lasted a thousand years. The Diyu that nearly overthrew father… Diyu Ding Zhe…” Yuying muttered as she recalled the countless legends that she had read about the man that had become the deformed corpse standing before her. She remembered the accounts she had read about, of the war that had taken place countless millennia ago. A war that engulfed the entire Underworld, a rebellion that nearly succeeded and a man who had almost replaced the Yama.

“Brother, we must end things quickly or else it’ll be the end of us!” Yuying’s voice rang inside of Zhang’s mind just as countless skeletal hands shot out from Diyu Ding Zhe’s shadow. Once the skeletal hands touched the miniature black sun, the two opposing attacks began to consume each other. Although thousands of skeletal hands were turned into dust after all of the essence within them were burned away, Zhang’s miniature black sun began to dim before disappearing without a trace moments later.

“Although they appeared to cancel each other out, my flames were extinguished while the skeletal hands are still reaching upward toward me.” Zhang thought as he body flickered further up into the air, creating further distance himself from the skeletal hands before ten flickering black flames could be seen streaking across the night sky. 

Instead of aiming at the skeletal hands reaching toward him, Zhang’s ten soul devouring flames maneuvered their way to Diyu Ding Zhe and engulfed him within a fiery inferno causing a hint of worry to begin to surface on Reverend Dark Moon’s face.

While all of the events up until now had taken quite some time to describe, from the beginning till now, not too much time had pa.s.sed at all.