Liam stared at her. It was definitely her. The same Mia who had once stood beside him. The same Mia who had disappeared without a trace. But it was also not her. Just like before, she was someone else.

The woman descending from the heavens looked exactly like Mia, but the aura surrounding her was completely unfamiliar. Divine energy rolled off her in terrifying waves, each pulse causing the demonic energy covering the battlefield to hiss and retreat.

Even from this distance, Liam could feel it. She was strong. Far stronger than the Mia he remembered.

Beside him, Alex had stopped breathing. "Mia..."

Liam glanced at her. Alex's face had gone completely pale. Her earlier calm had disappeared, and she looked shaken. "What the hell is she doing here? Why is she here? Why didn't she come back?"

Liam silently held her hand. "Wait. We need to wait."

He turned his attention back to the sky.

The arrival of the divine forces had completely changed the battlefield.

The demons who had been pushing forward moments ago abruptly stopped. The vampires also pulled back. Even the two monstrous figures who had been trying to kill each other earlier separated without hesitation.

For the first time since Liam arrived, the demons and vampires seemed to agree on something. Neither side was happy to see the newcomers.

The five figures descended slowly. Mia stood among them, but she wasn't at the center. That position belonged to a tall man dressed in flowing golden robes. His long silver hair fell loosely behind him, and a radiant golden crown floated several inches above his head.

Two armored men stood to his right. Mia and another woman stood to his left. All five possessed overwhelming auras. But the silver-haired man was different.

Liam's mist thickened around himself and Alex. "Don't use your mana sense on them," he said quietly. "We need to stay hidden. Otherwise, we could lose Mia forever."

Alex immediately understood. She nodded and suppressed her aura.

Liam knew that this battle, this event meant something, but he still couldn't figure out what. Were they here to rescue Mia? That seemed impossible considering the players on the battlefield now. He couldn't even fathom what rank these people were currently. Dao Grandmasters? Dao Kings? Or perhaps even higher?

Above them, the silver-haired man surveyed the battlefield. His expression was one of complete indifference.

Thousands of corpses littered the ground. Rivers of blood flowed through enormous cracks. Mountains had been shattered. Millions of soldiers stood ready to tear one another apart. Yet the man looked at all of it as though he were staring at insects fighting in the dirt.

Then his gaze shifted toward the demon army. "So many years..." His voice wasn't loud. Yet somehow, every living creature on the battlefield heard him. "...and your kind still hasn't learned its place."

The gigantic demon wielding the black axe slowly turned toward him. The demon's face twisted. "Celestial bastard." Dark flames erupted from his body.

Boom!

The ground beneath him collapsed for miles. "You dare come here?"

The silver-haired man smiled. "Why wouldn't I?" His gaze moved toward the vampire army. The vampire in the crimson coat was no longer smiling.

In fact, Liam noticed something interesting. The vampire looked worried. The vampire slowly wiped blood from his cheek. "Three thousand years without showing your faces," he said. "And suddenly the Celestial Court sends five Archons."

The silver-haired man ignored him. Behind him, the divine army moved. Thousands of paladins simultaneously slammed their weapons against their shields.

Boom!

The sound shook the battlefield. The priestesses raised their staffs. Golden formations appeared across the heavens. Within seconds, half the sky was covered in enormous divine runes.

And the war began again.

Only this time, there were three sides. Divine light crashed downward. Dark flames surged upward. Blood filled the heavens. The entire world seemed to explode.

Liam's soul mist trembled. His eyes brightened. Soul energy filled the battleground as the carnage once again began. Even though he was only slowly siphoning souls, the number of new souls in his possession had already crossed a million.

He couldn't focus on other things anymore. Memories of the souls flooded his mind, and dao insights started filling him up. He already possessed a partially formed demonic dao core and a divine dao core. And now a blood dao core also appeared.

These dao cores started rapidly developing. Every bit of experience and insight gathered by the fallen souls belonged to him now.

This place was insane.

Everywhere he looked, beings who had spent centuries, some even millennia, cultivating their respective Daos were dying by the thousands. Their bodies were destroyed, but their experiences remained etched into their souls.

And Liam was taking all of it.

Boom! His power exploded exponentially. It was growing at a ridiculous pace, but the familiar problem showed up soon enough. His soul was a lot stronger now. His body was a lot stronger now. His mind was definitely a lot stronger now. Still, the problem remained. He simply couldn't handle anything beyond the transcendent rank.

Despite an abundance of souls all around him, he was forced to stop harvesting them. The last time this happened, he had found the mysterious soul thread, which helped him create a soul avatar and push past this hurdle.

And now he was once again back in the same place. He needed another soul thread. Otherwise, he simply wouldn't be able to move forward.

Liam gritted his teeth. Pain flared up. Unwillingness filled his heart. The battle around him was not a normal occurrence. This kind of opportunity would not come again. But he was once again pushed back to a useless and vulnerable state, permanently relying on soul threads.

Running into a soul thread was a fortuitous event. If he had to count on something like that to once again become stronger, then his path ended here.

Liam refused to accept that. There had to be another way.

He had already done it once. The soul thread had allowed him to create the soul avatar, but that didn't necessarily mean a soul thread was the only way to do it. Perhaps he had been looking at the problem backward all this time.

Liam closed his eyes. The battlefield disappeared. The deafening explosions faded into the background. The screams of millions became distant. Even Mia temporarily vanished from his thoughts.

His attention turned inward. His soul avatar floated silently within his soul space. Could he possibly create another soul avatar like this even without the soul thread? With all of this soul energy freely available, why shouldn't something like that be possible?

Liam gritted his teeth and acted. A massive amount of soul energy rushed toward his soul avatar. Pain exploded through his head. He nearly lost consciousness on the spot.

The soul avatar trembled violently as cracks appeared across its body, but Liam did not stop. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. The first soul thread had given him a shortcut. It had provided the foundation around which his soul avatar had formed.

But now he already possessed a soul avatar. Why couldn't he simply use that as the foundation?

Liam pushed forward.

Instead of trying to create something from nothing, he forced the enormous mass of soul energy to gather around his existing avatar. He studied every part of it as closely as he could, using the original as a mold.

The process was excruciating.

The soul avatar was not simply a miniature copy of his body. Every inch of it was impossibly complex. Soul energy flowed through countless pathways, intersecting and overlapping in patterns Liam had never consciously noticed before.

And running through all of it was the soul thread. Liam ignored it. He copied everything else. Slowly, another figure began taking shape beside the first.

A second Liam appeared. It was crude. Its features were barely defined, and its body constantly flickered between solid and translucent, but it existed.

Liam's heart jumped. It was working. He poured more soul energy into it. The second avatar became clearer. For a few seconds, everything went perfectly. But suddenly

Crack!

A fracture appeared across its chest. Liam's expression changed.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The fractures spread everywhere. "No." He desperately poured more energy into the avatar. It only made things worse.

Boom!

The second avatar exploded. The backlash struck Liam like a hammer. His real body staggered. Blood flowed from his nose and mouth.

"Liam!"

Alex grabbed his arm, but he barely noticed. He was already looking inward again. The attempt had failed, but he was not done just yet. There was abundant soul energy all around him, more than enough to try this a couple hundred times if that was what it took.

Liam gritted his teeth and went back in again. One after another, failures quickly started mounting up. Each backlash had a strong effect, so after some time, Liam was forced to take a break to heal his soul. However, once he was sufficiently patched up, he once again dove back in.

He continued doing this when suddenly something unexpected happened. The soul energy around him doubled. The next second, it tripled. A strong wave of soul energy freshly assaulted the battleground.

Liam immediately stopped what he was doing and observed the battleground. A shocking scene was unfolding in front of him. The silver-haired man was now standing right in front of the huge demon, and he clutched the massive black axe with one hand.

Liam's eyes widened. The weapon that had split mountains and torn apart the battlefield was completely motionless.

The demon general roared and pulled. Nothing happened.

Veins bulged across his enormous arms. Black flames erupted from his body, engulfing everything for miles around them. The ground collapsed beneath his feet as he poured more and more strength into the weapon.

Still, the silver-haired man did not move. His golden robes fluttered gently amid the raging demonic flames. Then he sighed. "Still so weak."

The demon's expression changed. The silver-haired man's fingers tightened. The next second, his other hand moved, and a devastating explosion erupted.

Liam immediately erected several layers of soul energy barriers. However, even that was not enough. The explosion tore through the battlefield.

Liam grabbed Alex and retreated several miles in a single breath. When the storm of energy finally subsided, he looked back.

The gigantic demon was still standing. One of his four arms was gone. Half of his chest had been blown apart, and black blood poured from the wound like a waterfall. Even one of his enormous horns had shattered.

Yet the demon was laughing. "Hahahaha!" The sound rolled across the ruined battlefield. "Is that all?"

The silver-haired man stared at him without expression. Then the demon's laughter abruptly stopped. A crimson blade had erupted from his chest. The demon slowly looked down. Blood-red energy crawled across the weapon, invading his body through the wound.

Behind him stood the vampire in the crimson coat.

"You..."

The vampire twisted the blade. The demon roared. At the same instant, the silver-haired man moved. Golden light flashed. His palm struck the demon directly between the brows.

Boom!

The enormous body stiffened. Then cracks of golden light spread across the demon's body. His eyes widened in dread before the demon exploded completely.

Flesh and black blood rained across the battlefield as his enormous body disintegrated beneath the combined attacks. An unbelievable amount of soul energy erupted from the corpse.

Liam's eyes lit up. Even without actively pulling it toward himself, his soul core trembled hungrily. What a monster. Just the remnants of that single demon contained more soul energy than countless ordinary soldiers.

Liam immediately started siphoning it away, but his attention remained fixed on the sky. The vampire in crimson pulled his blade free from what remained of the demon and looked toward the silver-haired man. A smile appeared on his face.

"Just like old times."

The Archon smiled back. "Indeed." But the next moment, the silver-haired man moved. His hand pierced straight through the vampire's chest.

The vampire froze. His eyes slowly dropped toward the golden hand protruding from his body. Then he looked back up. Pure disbelief filled his face. "You..."

The vampire coughed out blood. "What... are you doing?"

The Archon's expression hadn't changed. Golden flames erupted from his arm.

"AAAAARGH!" The vampire screamed. His body began burning from the inside. He desperately tried to transform into blood mist, but golden runes had already spread across his entire body, locking him in place.

The vampire stared at the man in horror. "You swore an oath! You said the Celestial Court would recognize—"

The vampire's expression went blank, and the next second his chest exploded. Blood sprayed across the sky. But the vampire was not dead yet. His severed body dissolved into crimson liquid and desperately surged backward.

The entire sea of blood surrounding the battlefield responded. It rushed toward him. The vampire was trying to reconstruct his body.

The silver-haired man calmly watched without doing anything. Then, just as the vampire had almost regenerated...

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Slow applause echoed across the battlefield.

The vampire froze. A man's voice followed. "Beautiful." The voice was smooth and amused. "Three thousand years, and you're still far too trusting."

The wounded vampire's expression changed. A figure had appeared behind him.

A young man stood casually in the air, dressed entirely in black and crimson. Unlike the other vampires, there was almost no aura leaking from his body. Yet the instant he appeared, every vampire on the battlefield stopped moving. "Your Highness!" The cry spread across the battlefield.

The wounded vampire stared at the newcomer. His face lost what little color remained.

The newcomer smiled.

The vampire's lips trembled. "Blood Prince."

Liam's entire body stiffened. This was the same vampire he had faced back on Earth. He had obtained the world seed by fighting him off. Back then, he had no idea who he was fighting against. But now... he could see clearly. This person in front of him was at an unfathomable level. He was simply far too weak in front of these monsters.

The Blood Prince casually walked towards the dying vampire. The vampire backed away. "You were behind this?"

The Blood Prince chuckled. "Behind what?"

"You told us the Celestial Court wouldn't interfere!"

"They didn't." The Blood Prince gestured lazily toward the battlefield. "Until now."

"You gave us their movements. Their formations. You told us when to attack the demons!"

"Yes."

The wounded vampire finally understood. His gaze moved from the Blood Prince to the silver-haired Archon. Then back again. "You two..."

The silver-haired man smiled. The Blood Prince smiled with him. The vampire's face twisted with horror. "You planned this together."

"Finally." The Blood Prince sighed. "I was beginning to worry that losing all that blood had affected your brain."

Rage replaced the vampire's shock. "You betrayed us!" The remaining sea of blood surged toward the Blood Prince.

The Blood Prince's smile disappeared. His crimson eyes became cold. The entire ocean of blood stopped. The wounded vampire's expression changed. Then the Blood Prince raised one finger.

The wounded vampire's sea of blood turned against him. "No..." His own blood wrapped around his body. "No! Your Highness! Wait!" The Blood Prince looked at him without emotion. "You seem to have misunderstood something."

The blood tightened. "I did not betray my race."

Crack!

A huge effigy appeared, and the vampire's body compressed.

"I decide what becomes of it."

Boom!

The vampire exploded. His blood, his body, even the remnants of his power were swallowed by the crimson ocean. The Blood Prince calmly absorbed everything. Then he turned toward the silver-haired man.

The Archon extended his hand. The Blood Prince looked at it and laughed. "Still pretending we're civilized?"

"Occasionally."

The two men smiled.

Liam watched them from inside the mist.

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