ERA OF DESTINY-Chapter 147: DAY 3: PURGE OF WAR–A FORCED DELUSION– IV

The battlefield had reset.

Yet the pressure hanging over it had not diminished in the slightest. Spirit intent still clashed invisibly above the ground, heavy and unresolved, as though the war itself refused to acknowledge the reset.

Kiaria did not move.

Across the field, Shu Yan laughed. The sound was sharp and unrestrained, carrying clearly through the suspended droplets and stagnant air.

"Enough warm-up," Shu Yan said. "We’ve tested each other sufficiently."

Kiaria’s expression did not change. He turned slightly, his gaze passing over Diala and Princess Lainsa as if the battlefield behind him no longer required their presence.

"You’re right," Kiaria replied calmly. "I feel the same."

He paused.

"Take a rest. I’ll handle what follows."

The words were not shouted. They carried no spiritual amplification. Yet they fell with unmistakable arrogance–one born not from bravado, but from certainty.

Diala hesitated, instinctively resisting the order. Princess Lainsa’s eyes narrowed, measuring the battlefield one last time.

Fairy Fu Cai had already understood.

She lifted her hand gently.

The suspended water droplets parted as if yielding to an unseen authority, opening a clear path through the battlefield. Without obstruction, Diala and Princess were guided away from the central zone, arriving beside Fairy Fu Cai as the space behind them sealed once more.

"Leave everything to him," Fairy Fu Cai said softly.

Princess Lainsa did not release the earth-branch Shu battalians trapped beneath the battlefield.

Shu Yan’s smile sharpened.

"I acknowledge your strength," he said. "But let’s see how long you can maintain this pace against us."

Kiaria faced him fully.

"Do whatever you intend," he replied, voice steady. "Just make it fast."

The battlefield stilled.

"Hahaha..." Shu Yan’s voice rolled across the battlefield like a war drum struck too hard.

"We slay you. We feast on your flesh. And your bones–"

his lips curved,

"–we turn them into chimes."

The air shuddered.

Behind him, the Shu Fire Branch rose as one. Fires climbed their bodies, not burning, but shaping. Martial souls burst forth–rat-like, half-human shadows, crouched and feral, their eyes glowing with hunger. Thousands of them filled the sky, screeching in a pitch that scraped against the nerves.

The ground answered.

Water pooled across the land, rippling without wind. Magma beneath it bubbled and breathed. Blood from the Roga Bull kin mixed in magma. Blood did not let magma solidify. The water did not boil. Two opposites coexisted unnaturally, bound by will rather than law.

Then both tribes moved.

Ten thousand Roga.

Ten thousand Shu.

They rose into the air together.

No hesitation. No disorder.

Every movement mirrored. Every step echoed.

Arms lifted. Bodies rotated. Formation lines locked into place with mechanical precision, like a colossal living sigil forming in the sky.

Zhou Shi Lin.

Rong and Shu Yan ascended to the core.

Their fingers moved.

Fast. Sharp. Exact.

The formation sealed.

Below them, magma piles ruptured.

From the ground, fiery corpses clawed their way up.

Charred bodies. Hollow eyes. Fires burning from within ribcages and skulls. They did not cry out. They did not stumble. They simply rose–by the thousands–filling the land with the sound of cracking stone and burning marrow.

The heat pressed down.

The sky darkened.

Kiaria watched with curiosity.

"So that’s what you prepared," he said quietly.

He closed his eyes.

The obsidial-diamond cloth bound itself over his closed eyes, plunging the world into darkness.

Then–

Eyes opened inside that darkness.

The battlefield regained its nine color channeling–sharper, deeper, layered with moving lines of intent and reflection. Each color represented separate purpose.

Kiaria smiled. His focus of stare chose movement of the red channeling threads–the bloodline interlinking.

"Come." He commanded.

At Shu Yan’s signal, the fiery corpses surged.

They rose into the sky and descended in waves, smashing down like a living inferno. They did not tire. They did not slow. When shattered, they reformed and pressed on again, bodies cracking and fusing mid-charge.

Kiaria moved.

Not hurried.

Not strained.

He slipped between strikes as though walking through falling leaves. Heat brushed past him. Claws missed by inches. Flames tore the air where he had been a heartbeat earlier.

He did not draw his sword.

The nine Crescent Loop Moon Blades spun around him, humming softly. Every corpse that reached their boundary was sliced apart, reduced to fragments before impact.

Again.

And again.

Still, Kiaria’s expression didn’t change.

"These corpses are endless. But, not wise. I want something mo–" Kiaria got interrupted.

His reflection stretched across the water beneath his feet. It flickered in suspended droplets hanging in the air.

Those reflections moved.

From the water, assassins rose.

Their bodies were liquid, shifting and translucent. Blades formed from flowing arms and struck without warning. They did not advance–they appeared, shifting instantly from one reflection to another.

Steel met water.

The blades cut through them.

Water form bodies scattered–

–and reformed elsewhere.

Again.

Closer.

The nine blades reacted, slicing through wave after wave, water bursting apart only to return.

Kiaria’s eyes sharpened behind the obsidial cloth.

"This is much better." Kiaria said.

Shadow swallowed Kiaria.

His form dissolved without warning, dispersing into a formless, shifting darkness. The Shadow Ghost Body activated fully, erasing solidity and presence in the same instant.

Fiery corpses surged from the ground, claws tearing upward as they struck where he had been. Their attacks passed through nothing.

From behind, a water body dashed forward, blade forming from its arm mid-strike.

The Crescent Loop Moon Blades vanished.

The fiery corpse’s downward strike did not stop. It passed through Kiaria’s shadowed form–and smashed directly into the water body instead.

Water exploded outward.

But before the splash could scatter, the liquid twisted.

The water body reassembled instantly, shifting to the nearest suspended droplet beside Kiaria’s shadow. Reflection replaced distance. Position replaced movement.

A hand emerged from darkness.

Shadow condensed.

Kiaria’s formless grip closed around the water body’s neck.

Darkness wrapped inward, coiling tightly, suffocating–not water, but the controlling will inside it. The liquid convulsed, form destabilizing as shadow seeped into every current.

A sharp command cut through the chaos.

Shu Ming reacted instantly.

She waved her hand.

The young woman of the water branch staggered violently, regaining consciousness as the control was severed. The water body collapsed, slipping free and splashing to the ground as ordinary liquid.

Shu Ming did not pause.

She dashed forward, voice sharp and absolute.

"Gale Soul–Soul Resurge!"

The command echoed.

"Gale Soul–Soul Resurge!"

Water surged.

Currents folded into one another, accelerating, compressing, layering. The scattered water bodies fused, cycling through their first, second, and third forms in rapid succession.

The air screamed.

A singular presence formed–

Water Gale Assassin Eminence.

The assault intensified beyond restraint. Speed surpassed perception. Angles collapsed. Attacks overlapped so tightly that space itself seemed cut apart.

Even Kiaria’s Star Feather Technique lagged. Even the surrounding field of intent strained to respond.

If his body had been solid–

It would have been fatal.

But he remained shadow.

Shu Yan laughed loudly, his voice echoing through the battlefield.

"What am I seeing?" he mocked. "The mighty Gods can’t even defend against a combined strike like this?"

Rong laughed with him.

"So this is all the ancestral so-called Gods amounted to?"

From the edge of the battlefield, Princess Lainsa clenched her fists.

If we were truly Gods, she thought coldly, you wouldn’t even be allowed to speak.

Diala watched silently, jaw tight.

They outnumber him. They overpower him. He stands alone.

And yet, he is just an Immortal Infant and all of them are Beast Gods and Transformation Realm Beasts. Who’s comparing whom?

She raised her voice.

"Senior," she called out sharply. "Enough playing. Be serious."

The battlefield shifted.

Kiaria’s shadow rippled–then solidified. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

His body reformed completely, stance grounding into reality as shadow peeled away from him. The playful stillness vanished from his expression.

The real Crescent Loop Moon Blade answered.

The massive blade slid forward into his hand, its presence alone distorting the air. The nine smaller blades faded, their rotation ending as the true weapon claimed the field.

Kiaria had deliberately avoided striking on the nine color channeling all this time.

That restraint ended.

His posture changed.

Patron body fully manifested.

Fiery corpses leapt toward him in a dense wave, flames roaring as they descended.

Kiaria looked down.

Then–fist answered.

The Crescent Loop Moon Blade moved its own.

The blade traced a silent arc through the battlefield, circling the nearest zone around Kiaria. The air along its path hardened into an invisible boundary. No one crossed it.

Those who tried–

Were cut.

But not bodies.

It sliced through the red bloodline interlinking that bound water forms to their true origins. One clean severance at a time. Water Gale bodies collapsed instantly, dispersing into lifeless liquid. Far behind the frontline, water-branch members screamed once–then fell unconscious, their bloodlines extinguished.

No blood spilled.

Kiaria inhaled slowly.

The battlefield darkened as the breath relaxed.

A Blood Moon rose in the sky in response to his breath.

It was neither a domain, nor technique.

It was understanding.

Something gained from listening–truly listening–to Fu Cai’s teachings, not as lessons, but as truth.

"I let you play long enough," Kiaria said.

His face was empty of expression. Not amused. Not serious.

"Now it’s my turn."

He spread his hands.

Behind him, the colossal soul form emerged.

Not instantly.

It grew.

Layer by layer, consuming the god-blood buried beneath the land as nourishment. The colossal soul form expanded until it dwarfed mountains, until even the Blood Moon felt small by comparison.

Kiaria raised his hand.

A massive blood palm formed above the Blood Moon.

Then he pushed downward.

The land answered.

Blood surged upward from the ground–drawn from corpses, from pooled magma, from every place where death had left a trace. The Blood Moon descended unnaturally low, pulling the crimson tide into itself.

Magma lost blood contents.

Corpses dried mid-motion.

Scorching fire vanished and what remained was mere stones.

Statues of corpses.

Thousands of them.

At Kiaria’s will, the Blood Moon vanished.

The colossal Patron Body dissolved.

Silence fell.

But it was already too late.

The suspended droplets–still hanging in the air–had been tainted. Blood seeped into them during the descent. The moment the Moon vanished, those droplets collapsed inward.

Water branch members screamed.

Then fell.

Their bodies lived.

Their souls did not return.

Kiaria walked in midair, forward to them.

He looked at them one by one–faces frozen in terror, defiance, regret. He stopped before Rong and Shu Yan.

"You said something earlier," Kiaria said calmly.

"I’d like to hear it again."

Shu Yan clenched his fist.

His voice was cold.

"Indeed. I said. So what? If you enter a battlefield, returning alive is never guaranteed," he said. "I don’t care how many lives are in your hands."

He lifted his massive spear.

"Oh?" Kiaria replied.

He turned his gaze.

"Shu Ming."

She stiffened.

"I saw how desperately you tried to save a young woman from your battalion," Kiaria continued. "Do you still agree with him?"

Silence spread across the battlefield.

Shu Yan turned sharply.

"Shu Ming," he said flatly. "Whatever choice you make doesn’t matter."

Then his voice hardened.

"If you choose surrender, I’ll kill you myself–before he ever touches you."