Chapter 5021  Invasion

Six-Headed Hydra Upper Realm.

The sky had long lost its brilliance.

It was not dim in the sense of dusk, nor was it veiled by clouds. It felt quite empty. The light from the Solar Reverence felt distant, as though the world itself had been abandoned. What once descended as rich, nourishing heaven and earth energy now came in thin, scattered strands, barely perceptible even to Sovereign Stage cultivators.

Below that hollow sky, the Six-Headed Hydra Upper Realm was slowly unraveling into one of chaotic anarchy.

Among the many cities, there was one that once stood radiant with formation lights and flowing spirit streams, now trembled behind cracked walls. The defensive arrays flickered erratically, unable to sustain themselves without sufficient energy. Their glow surged and died like a failing heartbeat.

Outside the city gates, the land had turned gray.

Fields that once grew grains with a high amount of energy now lay barren, their soil dry and lifeless. Rivers had thinned into sluggish currents, no longer infused with vitality. Even the trees seemed to sag, their leaves dulled, their wood essence slowly bleeding away into nothing.

In this kind of desolation, the people in the city had a dull demeanor.

Most of them were making it out of the city, but the city gates were closed.

They cried and hurled insults but were only met with a sharp slap to their faces from the city guards, and in worst cases, even got executed on grounds of desertion.

Suddenly, a low rumble echoed across the plains.

At first, it only felt like a distant thunder, but slowly, it grew louder before turning heavier and rhythmic like a biological drum of wards.

The ground began to shake ridiculously.

"Magical Beast Tide!"

Someone shouted, their voice hoarse and desperate.

From the horizon, a dark mass surged forward. Thousands upon thousands of magical beasts, their eyes bloodshot, their bodies gaunt yet ferocious. Hunger had stripped away their instincts, leaving behind only madness.

They didn't seem to be hunting but devouring anything in their wake.

Hundreds of beasts smashed against the walls.

The defensive formations that were activated were unable to stop these Empyrean Beasts. They collided and smashed into the walls, their towering figures looming over the city.

Massive horned beasts rammed into the gates, their skulls cracking, blood spraying, yet they did not stop. Serpentine creatures slithered up the walls, their scales scraping against stone as defenders desperately tried to cut them down.

Above, winged beasts shrieked as they descended, claws tearing through cultivators who could no longer maintain stable flight due to the lack of energy.

Explosions of martial techniques flared across the battlefield, but they were weaker, thinner. What once could shatter mountains now barely held back a tide of starving creatures.

"Hold the formation!"

"It's collapsing!"

A section of the defensive array flickered and shattered. In that instant, the beasts poured through.

Screams erupted within the city.

Streets turned into slaughter grounds. Civilians fled, only to be trampled or torn apart. Blood soaked into the already dying earth.

Yet the beasts were not the only threat.

Within the city itself, chaos had already taken root.

"Those nobles are hoarding resources!"

"The City Lord has escaped!"

"Run!"

A mob surged through the inner districts, their eyes filled with the same desperation as the beasts outside. Cultivators who once upheld their morals and lived somewhat righteously now clashed against one another.

Blades met blades.

Brothers turned on brothers. Nearly everyone turned to banditry since there weren't enough resources to go around, with the city already sealed and no supplies or reinforcements sent for them to be aided in these desolate times.

A group of rogue cultivators stormed a merchant guild warehouse, breaking through its defenses and dragging out whatever resources remained. Fights broke out even among them as greed overtook cooperation.

"Mine!"

"You think you deserve this more than me?"

A man was cut down from behind by his own ally, his corpse stripped of his spatial ring before it even hit the ground.

Elsewhere, a lone faction's stronghold burned.

Its leader had refused to share resources with the surrounding sects. Now, those same sects had united, not to defend the city, but to annihilate him and seize everything he possessed.

The flames rose high, but even fire felt weaker in this dying world.

While the magical beasts were breaking in, the storm within the city finally erupted.

Suddenly, a terrifying magical beast emerged in the skies, its figure couldn't even be fully witnessed as it was at the hundred-kilometer mark.

At that moment, everything quietened.

The cultivators and everything within the city stopped fighting, turning to look at this massive creature looking at them in the skies.

It was a dark frog.

Its body blotted out what little light remained, a vast, swollen silhouette hanging in the sky like a curse given form. Its skin was pitch-black, yet faint ripples of sickly green and violet coursed beneath it, as though something inside it was constantly rotting and regenerating at the same time.

No one could see its full form.

At a hundred kilometers away, it still felt impossibly close.

Its presence alone pressed down on the city.

Cultivators who were mid-battle froze unnaturally, and blades that were about to kill even halted inches from throats. Those who were about to get killed and even had their last-ditch effort also stopped, their techniques dissipating before they could even be released.

Even the frenzied magical beasts that had been clawing and biting moments ago now trembled instinctively as they came to a stop.

Silence spread instantly to every part of the city. It was a dreadful, suffocating silence.

As they looked at this creature, the frog's eyes slowly opened.

They were not like ordinary eyes. They were hollow pits of darkness with a purple bar-like pupil, swallowing light instead of reflecting it. Just looking at them made one feel as though their soul was being dragged out of their body.

An Autarch Stage cultivator on the city wall shuddered violently.

His knees buckled as he knelt.

"Exalt Beast…"

He could barely force the word out before blood spilled from his mouth.

His soul had already begun to collapse.

The frog did not even move much as it simply breathed.

The act alone caused the surrounding space to warp, and the minute strands of heaven and earth energy in the area twisted unnaturally, drawn toward it like starving prey being dragged into a greater predator's maw.

Then, it opened its mouth.

It was slow, perhaps even lazy.

Yet the moment its mouth parted, the sky itself seemed to tear open with it.

A vast, endless darkness revealed itself within. It was as though its mouth was a void, a devouring abyss that seemed to have no end.

For a single heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then everything did.

The air roared.

A force beyond comprehension erupted from that open mouth. It was a tremendous force of wind, yet it moved like a storm, sucking in everything with an irresistible might.

The city shook violently.

Walls cracked further, and towers collapsed. The very ground began to peel upward as if the world itself was being uprooted. Even formations flags cracked and were pulled out of their places, causing the foundation to collapse.

"Run!"

Many screams echoed, but they were pointless.

People were already being lifted off the ground.

Civilians, cultivators, corpses, rubble. Everything rose into the air, dragged screaming toward the sky.

Some tried to resist.

A group of Empyrean Stage cultivators unleashed their full power, anchoring themselves with techniques that once could split continents.

Their bodies trembled, and their meridians ruptured.

One by one, they were torn free because they were unable to resist.

"No…!"

Their screams were cut short as they were pulled into the frog's mouth, vanishing into that endless darkness without even a trace left behind.

The magical beasts fared no better.

The tide that had been crashing into the city moments ago was now being reversed. Massive horned beasts dug their limbs into the ground, tearing trenches as they tried to resist.

It meant nothing since they were dragged upward, their bodies twisting midair before being swallowed whole.

Winged beasts attempted to flee.

They were the first to disappear.

The sky itself became a funnel of death.

Within the city, chaos reached its peak.

The people at the other end of the city clawed at the ground. Some grabbed onto others, dragging them down in desperate attempts to survive. Others killed without hesitation, using bodies as anchors to use blood escape techniques, using anything to buy even a second more.

It changed nothing.

A mother clutched her child, her fingers digging into the flesh as both of them were lifted into the air.

A cultivator drove his sword into the ground, the blade bending under the force before snapping. His expression twisted into despair before he, too, vanished.

Nothing could escape or resist, the hundreds of millions of citizens all soaring into the skies before their screams disappeared.

The city itself began to rise. Chunks of earth tore free as the buildings were ripped from their foundations. Entire streets lifted into the sky, spinning as they were dragged toward that abyssal mouth.

In mere moments, the once-bustling city ceased to exist.

*BYURP~*

The dark frog closed its mouth but suddenly let out a burp; the massive fog emanating from its mouth filled with poison as it spread around the broken city.

However, it made a disappointed expression as though its stomach wasn't fulled before it hopped away, its figure instantly disappearing despite its massive size. If one could follow it with their eyes, they could see it might've almost jumped out of the realm's bounds.

Its destination seemed to be another city but whether it can devour them or not was unknown as it might finally encounter a Primarch cultivator.

After what seemed to be a long time, there appeared to be nearly no survivors.

But in this region, the space suddenly began spiraling as a giant portal opened, blowing away the poisonous atmosphere.

And then, countless beasts stepped out, their eyes filled with rabid curiosity.

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