Chapter 296: Let’s Charge Right In!

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Space-time trembled, and the connection between the God Realm and the Douluo Continent was completely severed.

Su Yu, however, remained calm and composed.

He had already guessed the truth.

The three Divine Kings of the God Realm had likely already engaged in battle with the enemy. The intensity of the conflict had completely severed the already fragile link between the God Realm and the Douluo Continent.

At this moment, not even through divine inheritance or trials could Su Yu and Huo Yuhao contact the God of Life or the God of Emotions.

Of course, if he truly wanted to reach them, Su Yu could still manage it. He could use his spiritual rune script to contact his mental avatar on the Yangguang Continent, and from there connect with Rong Nianbing.

Three days passed in the blink of an eye.

The soul master army in the Extreme North was mobilized.

More than two years had passed since the war began, and soul masters were still steadily rising to the rank of Battle Armor Masters by accumulating military merits.

Now, the Battle Armor Corps had expanded from fewer than one hundred members to over five hundred.

In addition, half of the soul master army now possessed multiple pieces of battle armor. This allowed for basic integration and significantly boosted their combat power.

Even those who had only one or two pieces of battle armor were equipped with highly practical soul tools. While the enhancements weren't massive, they offered valuable offensive and defensive capabilities, allowing soul masters to excel in their areas of expertise. Compared to before, these soul masters could now be considered elites among their peers.

Due to repeated conscription orders from the Federation, the number of troops stationed in the Extreme North had reached five digits.

Over ten thousand soul masters were now deployed across the region—a force of grand scale.

At the very front of the army, Su Yu and the other powerhouses unleashed their auras.

At the heart of the Extreme North, in an area dyed pitch-black by abyssal energy, the remaining seven Abyssal Emperors looked grimly toward Su Yu and his companions.

"Su Yu."

They regarded him with great caution.

This was someone who could annihilate them swiftly and completely.

The Demon Emperor and the Black Emperor.

Among them, the Demon Emperor had ruled the fourth layer of the Abyss. Aside from the Abyss Lord, the Spirit Emperor—who had broken through to the Divine Soul Realm—and the Flame Emperor, who had forged divine power, the Demon Emperor had been the undisputed strongest.

Yet Su Yu had made quick work of the Demon Emperor, destroying him with ease.

Now, more than a year later, all seven remaining emperors truly felt fear in their hearts.

In the past, they would never have believed that a single year could bring such dramatic change.

Especially at their level, a year was usually far too short for any meaningful improvement in power.

But Su Yu had shattered their understanding of what was possible.

From the initial Abyssal invasion to just a few short months later, Su Yu's strength had grown increasingly unbelievable.

Even the Spirit Emperor had sensed through his divine perception at the Divine Soul Realm that Su Yu's soul power hadn't yet reached its peak.

All these signs combined had made the seven emperors extremely wary of Su Yu.

Nevertheless, given the current situation in the Extreme North, they had no choice but to confront him.

Behind them, the abyssal passage twisted violently. Its black exit surged and trembled, space distorting into vortex-like ripples.

"Su Yu, do you really think we're afraid of you?" the Flame Emperor snorted coldly. With a wave of his hand, countless abyssal creatures surged forth from the dark domain below him.

In an instant, over ten thousand abyssal beasts had emerged.

The vortex passage also began rapidly releasing massive amounts of abyssal energy into the Douluo Continent.

The impact was so intense that it caused constant tremors at the exit of the portal.

Su Yu could sense the disturbance affecting the rune formation on the other side.

"Trying to restructure the space in this entire region, stabilize the passage, and forcefully break through my formation?" Su Yu immediately saw through the Abyss's plan, but he wasn't the least bit flustered.

Even as the Abyss bombarded the formation with overwhelming energy, he didn't lift a finger in defense.

At this point, the formation had served its purpose.

In just ten seconds, it was breached.

From the ruins of the shattered formation, a rune glowing with pitch-black light emerged.

Even wrapped in dark abyssal energy, the rune seemed to possess a unique power that devoured all surrounding light. The abyssal energy nearby was entirely consumed, revealing the pure black rune within.

"He's already been fed this fat," Su Yu said with a smile, gazing at the Devouring Rune floating in the air before him.

Day after day, it had absorbed a vast amount of abyssal energy. And now, after nearly two full years of constant nourishment, it had grown tremendously.

That single Devouring Rune had essentially evolved under the Abyss's feeding—from its initial sketch to its current formidable form.

With a gesture, Su Yu summoned the rune toward himself.

Seeing this, the Flame Emperor and Spirit Emperor immediately stepped forward to intercept.

That rune clearly wasn't ordinary—they couldn't just let Su Yu reclaim it.

"You dare stand in my way?" Su Yu let out a cold snort and instantly summoned the power of life and death, forming an enormous grinding mill in front of the two emperors.

A terrifying force of devouring burst forth from the Mill of Life and Death, pulling the Flame Emperor and Spirit Emperor toward its center.

Their expressions changed drastically.

"Damn it! What a powerful pulling force!"

"No—we mustn't touch that mill!"

The aura of annihilation radiating from it was absolutely terrifying.

Before the mill, all life seemed insignificant. Vital force was crushed, reduced to pure death, and scattered across the heavens.

Su Yu didn't even glance at the Flame and Spirit Emperors. To him now, they were no more than insects.

Easily crushed.

They had yet to reach the god-level, though they possessed fragments of divine power. At most, they could burst forth with strength comparable to a lower-tier god, and even that was only by tapping into their layer of Abyssal authority.

But to Su Yu, such opponents no longer warranted any serious attention.

He could eliminate them effortlessly.

Trapping the two emperors with the Mill of Life and Death, Su Yu flashed to the Devouring Rune.

At the same time, he poured a flood of insights into it.

The Devouring Rune immediately merged with his eighth soul ring.

With his insights and the soul ring's advancement, the rune underwent rapid evolution.

Before, the Devouring Rune had grown strong solely through the accumulation of abyssal energy. It lacked Su Yu's personal comprehension—it was powerful, but only in a raw, unrefined way.

Now, fusing once again with Su Yu and enriched by the understanding embedded within his eighth soul ring, the rune's patterns quickly refined themselves.

Simultaneously, faint ripples of law began to emanate from the rune.

As Su Yu continued to merge his insights into the Devouring Rune, he looked toward the remaining five Abyssal Emperors on the battlefield.

At that moment, all five wore expressions of horror.

They stared in disbelief at the still-struggling Flame and Spirit Emperors—and the enormous, cyclical Mill of Life and Death that had entrapped them.

"This can't be real!"

How had Su Yu cultivated this power?

In under two years, how could he have improved so drastically?

If anyone was most shaken in that moment, it was without question the Flame and Spirit Emperors.

They were experiencing true despair.

Su Yu's strength had far exceeded anything they had imagined.

By now, the two armies had long since clashed in open combat, but the confrontation between the top-tier powerhouses had yet to properly begin.

No—perhaps it had, and the moment it did, silence fell across both sides.

The two Abyssal Emperors were plunged into hopelessness; the remaining five were gripped by disbelief and fear.

On the Douluo side, even the Limit Douluos wore stunned expressions. None of them could comprehend Su Yu's overwhelming power.

Even Jing Hongchen and Kong Deming, who had long been aware of Su Yu's rapid progress, hadn't imagined it could be to such an extent.

This wasn't just a difference in strength anymore.

This was domination.

"Today, Douluo will triumph!"

"Douluo will triumph!"

"The Federation will triumph!"

"The Federation will triumph!"

Below, from within the ranks of the army, voices rang out. One after another, the soul masters shouted in unison as they unleashed their full strength in battle.

With morale surging, the soul masters fought with an entirely different aura. Almost all of them brought out their true potential, executing every combat technique with full precision and power.

Though the clash involved tens of thousands, the vast terrain of the Extreme North prevented the forces from becoming overly congested. Each soul master had a space of about five to ten meters to engage the abyssal creatures in combat.

This allowed them to fight at their best.

It was also the main reason the army's size was maintained at this scale.

Boom!

The abyssal passage suddenly looked as though it was about to collapse.

Su Yu let out a cold sneer and manipulated the power of space to stabilize the crumbling spatial corridor.

"If you've chosen to invade the Douluo Continent, then be prepared to pay the price."

At this moment, the seven Abyssal Emperors had truly fallen into despair.

The changes in the passage just now had made everything abundantly clear.

The Abyssal Lord was preparing to abandon them.

These nine emperors—ranked just below the Abyssal Lord and the strongest in the second through tenth layers—would, if slain on Douluo, cause the complete collapse of those layers. This would be a catastrophic blow to the Abyss.

Yet the Abyssal Lord had still made this decision.

Clearly, continuing the invasion of Douluo was no longer worth it.

Even if the Abyssal Lord had already met the conditions for descent through another secret passage, he no longer intended to continue the offensive.

Su Yu's strength had at least reached the level of a Second-Class God—equivalent to a High God.

While that was still technically within the range of manageable threats, there was one critical factor that couldn't be ignored: Su Yu wasn't even a god yet. He had simply bypassed the level gap and wielded the power of a High God.

Anywhere in the universe, such a thing would be considered pure fantasy—completely impossible.

But Su Yu had actually done it.

And if he already possessed such power now, what would happen when he truly broke through to godhood?

Could he ascend during battle?

Had he already met all the conditions for a breakthrough?

The Abyssal Lord would rather assume that Su Yu had completed every preparation in advance.

After all, that embryonic divine position surrounding him clearly indicated a prelude to godhood.

Rumble!

The spatial corridor finally collapsed, but Su Yu forcibly reconstructed it using his mastery of spatial energy—redrawing and rebuilding the passage that had been destroyed from the other end.

"Su Yu, are you really going to go down with us?" The Abyssal Lord's voice echoed forth.

"The fish may die, but the net won't necessarily break."

In that moment, the Abyssal Lord understood completely: it was the Abyssal plane that was the fish.

And the Douluo Continent—was the net.

From beginning to end, the Douluo Continent's goal had always been to lure in and devour the Abyss.

The Abyss.

At this moment, three powerful auras stood silently beside the Abyssal Lord, making no comment on his decision.

After all, this wasn't their domain, and the Abyssal Lord's strength exceeded their own—they had no right to interfere.

Still, abandoning the invasion of the Douluo Continent would cause all their prior plans to collapse. Without this critical node, the price of continuing with their ambitions would increase drastically.

"Su Yu might try to force his way into the Abyss soon. Be prepared," the Abyssal Lord said solemnly.

He feared Su Yu's potential breakthrough, but that didn't mean he was truly afraid.

Especially if Su Yu dared step into the Abyss—into the Lord's home turf—he would ensure Su Yu understood what it meant to be a Plane Sovereign.

An endless supply of power. An existence that could not be killed.

That was merely the most basic ability of a sovereign of a plane.

Previously, the Demon Emperor and the Black Empress had been completely destroyed by Su Yu because they had been in the Douluo Continent. If they had remained in their respective levels within the Abyss, Su Yu would have needed to destroy an entire layer to have any chance of killing them.

Of course, if one possessed a particularly high-grade devouring-type divine artifact, they could easily annihilate the target's origin and finish them off.

But out of respect for strong opponents, Abyssal emperors wouldn't fully merge their essence into their physical forms while on home ground. A portion would always remain nestled within the core of the Abyss itself.

"Coming here to die?"

The three visiting powerhouses instantly summoned their strength, entering peak condition.

Su Yu's strength was by no means inferior to any of the three.

In fact, because of his mastery over a wide range of immensely powerful techniques, he might be capable of defeating any one of them individually.

But this was the Abyssal plane.

A Plane Sovereign's abilities weren't limited to their own power. They could channel the force of the entire plane into others within it.

Now that the Abyssal Lord had warned them, it was clear he intended to use the Abyss's power to bolster the three of them.

They might each be able to temporarily reach First-Class God—True God—level.

"Blazing Sovereign, Nether King, Demon Ghost King... the three of you had best not play any tricks in the battle to come. Eliminating Su Yu is the top priority," the Abyssal Lord said coldly. "If Su Yu survives, not only will our plans cost far more to execute—they may fail entirely. Worse yet, he could become an even greater threat."

The three remained silent.

They each harbored ambitions of their own—to seize control of the Abyss during the temporary empowerment granted by the Abyssal Lord.

The Abyss had a terrible reputation across the universe, but in truth, it was backed by powerful realms like the Crimson Domain and the Domain of Eternal Malice.

The Black Empress, Demon Emperor, and their kin originated from the Crimson Domain. They had been introduced to the Abyss as an imported species, their traits making them perfectly suited to the environment. Over time, they thrived, ruling over some of the upper layers.

Likewise, the Spirit Emperor and Blazing Emperor were from foreign species as well—though they were second-generation offspring born after the initial import, and had risen to power during the Abyss's expansion, claiming newly formed levels as their own.

One could say that, aside from the Abyssal Lord of the first layer, most of the powerful races within the Abyss originated from the Crimson Domain and the Domain of Eternal Malice.

After so many years of growth and adaptation, the Abyss had become highly compatible with them.

Even if the Blazing Sovereign, Nether King, and Demon Ghost King hadn't grown up in the Abyss, they still had an inherent synergy with its power.

Should the Abyssal Lord fall, the plane would suffer a dramatic collapse—shrinking significantly—until one of the three succeeded in fully taking control, at which point the breakdown would stop.

But that would be an enormous weakening of their own side.

And based on how wary the Abyssal Lord was of Su Yu, if the Lord died and they still hadn't dealt with Su Yu, then they would undoubtedly be next.

"What's so terrifying about that Su Yu anyway?" said the Blazing Sovereign in a rough, gravelly voice. "He's just a Second-Class God—equal to any of us."

Yet even as he spoke, he stared at the scene of his fellow clansman, the Blazing Emperor, being utterly ground to dust within the wheel of life and death.

His desire to fight Su Yu was already burning.

"Let's charge in and kill him!"

(End of Chapter)