The Mariana Trench, a ten-thousand-meter abyss.
Once the Earth's quietest tomb, it had now become a seething crucible of Hell.
The seawater was no longer a gentle azure, but a turbid, churning, viscous blood-plasma, swirling with dark red and char-black.
The pungent stench, a mixture of melting metal, the ozone of overloaded energy, and a sulfurous foulness, was so intense it could suffocate steel.
Residual colossal shockwaves, like invisible giant hands, still intermittently stirred this deathly sea, churning up foul eddies laden with shattered carapaces, broken bone fragments, and visceral remnants.
The bone-chilling, high-pressure seawater now steamed with eerie, scorching bubbles, emitting a muffled “gurgle,” as if the Earth itself was groaning in agony.
Yet, at the center of this Chaos, there was an uncanny, absolute vacuum.
A spherical Domain, a hundred meters in diameter, was isolated as if by an invisible Wall of Sighs.
The raging seawater, deadly pressure, pungent odors, and even the ubiquitous destructive energy turbulence—all, upon touching this barrier, docilely circumvented and subsided, as if submitting to some supreme will.
Within the Domain, the air was as clear as a vacuum, with only a faint, static-like hum of energy whispering.
Zhou Qi floated at the core of this absolute Domain.
He wore a seemingly ordinary dark battle robe, an External Exoskeleton, its hem motionless, as if he existed in another dimension.
His profound eyes, like deep pools containing the Universe's star rivers, calmly surveyed this battlefield, which he had both created and personally destroyed.
As far as his gaze reached, it was a solidified epic, a shocking scar of the Universe left by the collision of powers.
To his left, the thousand-meter-long Chaos Thunder body of the Flying Thunder Centipede lay low on the charred seabed, like a dormant ancient mountain range.
Its body was no longer covered in a pure metallic luster, but flowed with a dark, constantly appearing and disappearing texture, as if woven from countless tiny spatial fissures.
The several pairs of Chaos Thunder giant wings on its back, each with a wingspan exceeding a thousand meters, were now slightly folded, their surfaces flickering with Broken deadly blue-white electric arcs, emitting soft “crackling” sounds, like billions of thunderbirds whispering.
An array of hundreds of compound eyes, like cold stars embedded in the abyss, gleamed with emotionless, chilling light, firmly locked onto the front—a light sphere, only the size of a human head, floating in the murky seawater, but its surface swirling with a terrifyingly pale electric plasma vortex.
That was the last remnant of the inter-world passage, a star mark beacon forcibly compressed and Sealed by the Flying Thunder Centipede with supreme power.
Like an evil heart, it still stubbornly pulsed under the weakened Seal; each faint flicker of plasma attempted to tear through the surrounding spatial membrane, emitting a silent scream.
Viscous, almost solid, streams of exotic energy, like the foul blood of a dying behemoth, occasionally seeped from the light sphere's cracks, instantly torn apart by the annihilating electric arcs surrounding the Centipede, turning into a wisp of smoke and a piercing “sizzling” wail, dissipating into the deep sea's stillness.
The scene on the right was even more tragic and heroic.
Uka, the dark golden Dragon that had once torn through the Iron-Blood World's firmament, now resembled a deity crucified, his massive body deeply embedded within a cooled, cracked lava barrier, almost becoming one with the scorched earth.
The terrifying, ten-meter-diameter Through injury on his chest had edges of dark golden scales, twisted and curled like rags torn by immense force, exposing broken alloy bone fragments below, glinting with metallic cold light.
In the depths of the hollow, charcoal-like organ fragments and dark red energy sparks, not yet completely extinguished, flickered faintly in the absolute stillness, like the embers of Hell's furnace.
The dark golden scales that once covered his entire body, reflecting the deep sea's eerie glow, had now largely peeled off, revealing large areas of charred, carbonized muscle and stark white bone, steaming with a pungent white smoke carrying the foul odor of burnt protein.
The Dragon Crystal, the core of his power, was long gone, leaving only a massive, molten golden-red pus-blood-flowing crater.
Each unconscious, faint twitch of his broken body made the viscous, hot pus-blood stream more turbulent, dripping onto the scorching gravel below, emitting “hissing” sounds of burning.
His ferocious head hung limply on the scorching gravel, the intermittent whimpers deep in his throat like the mournful wheezing of a leaking bellows; the flame of life, under absolute heavy damage, was like a candle in the wind, flickering and about to extinguish.
Zhou Qi's figure appeared without warning before Uka's massive head, which was covered in spiderweb-like cracks and oozing pus-blood.
Space beneath his feet folded like paper; one step was a thousand miles.
His dark boots stepped on the hot and viscous mixture of blood and rock, emitting a slight “sizzling” sound, yet not a trace of filth clung to them.
He gazed at this elder subordinate who had followed him since the humble beginnings of the White Snake Mountain Insect Farm, conquering countless Ironblood Bugman corpses and battling his way to the Star Sea.
Seeing his current state of near collapse, a barely perceptible ripple spread in the depths of those eyes, as profound as the Universe's abyss.
A smoldering anger, like an ice-sealed volcano, was silently brewing and accumulating—the wrath of an outsider ant severely damaging something within his Domain.
“Uka…”
Zhou Qi's voice, like lava surging beneath ice, was low and calm, yet contained an undeniable will, directly penetrating Uka's nearly shattered consciousness core, “Your loyalty deserves a… complete metamorphosis.”
With a subtle thought, in the depths of his consciousness, the azure light screen composed of pure data streams silently unfurled, cold and precise:
Current Origin Points: 9000 points
Apostle: Fifth-tier · Tai Cang Dragon · Uka (Endangered)
Life Strength: 70
Buzz!
A faint but incomparably pure warm current of life, like the first drop of sweet dew from melting spring snow, instantly infused Uka's severely damaged body core.
The flame of life, on the verge of complete extinction, suddenly flickered, like a drowning person grasping at the last straw.
Around the terrifying Through injury on his chest, the charred necrotic tissue was shaved away as if by an invisible sharp blade, revealing tender new granulation tissue below; wisps of golden-red energy, like tiny blood vessels, began to connect and wriggle with difficulty.
Beneath the charred muscles, the broken alloy bones emitted an extremely faint “crack” sound, as if countless nano-level machines were forcibly correcting and resetting within.
Uka's dying whimpers deep in his throat abruptly ceased, replaced by an extremely faint, yet clearly discernible, intake of Qi from his lungs!
【Ding! Consuming 50 billion Evolution Points, Tai Cang Dragon is strengthened to Sixth-tier Tai Cang Dragon, all attributes receive a slight increase.】
...Boom!
The warm current of life abruptly upgraded into a surging stream!
Uka's shattered body absorbed this power greedily, like parched land receiving long-awaited rain.
The Through injury on his chest visibly contracted by a circle, the new flesh around the edges rapidly growing and covering like a living thing, filling one-third of the gruesome hole.
The broken alloy bones were forcibly straightened and joined with a harsh “creaking” friction, their surfaces gleaming with a faint metallic luster.
A faint but real sense of power flowed anew through his massive body.
His dying head lifted slightly, and in his molten-gold vertical pupils, the almost extinguished light rekindled into a faint spark.