The scar looked exposed, but the Eyes of the Universe showed power already gathered through the opposite shoulder, hip, and rear leg. The Demon God had left the old wound visible because it expected Haotian to enter deeply enough that the waiting counter could land before he escaped.
Haotian changed the strike.
His palm hit the shoulder instead of the scar.
The Demon God's prepared counter cut through empty space where Haotian's torso should have been.
Lianhua entered from the outside.
She had seen the same trap in the Demon God's posture without needing Haotian's vision of the internal circulation. Voidpierce Sword Sutra attacked the arm committed to the failed counter and forced the Demon God to withdraw it before the spatial edge could reach the joint.
Ziyue came from the other side.
The Demon God turned.
Yueru moved toward the scar.
The Demon God abandoned Ziyue before she reached it and drove after Yueru again.
Yueru reversed immediately.
The chase pulled the Demon God across a section of ground Yanfei had not yet altered. Instead of trying to prepare the route in advance, Yanfei released Frostfire behind the Demon God's first step and caught the second, contracting the stone after its weight had already begun descending.
The foot broke through the surface.
Xiangyin's spearhead arrived near the ankle.
The Demon God tore the leg free before the spear could trap it and kicked outward.
Xiangyin withdrew the weapon, but the pressure from the kick reached farther than the foot itself and struck the shaft hard enough to reopen both palms. Her grip slipped.
Ziyue entered before the Demon God could follow.
Tenfold Elements: Severing Arc narrowed around her blade once more, but she changed the elemental emphasis this time. Wind and Metal drove the cutting edge toward the arm while Lightning interfered with the Abyssal current gathering along the limb, allowing the sword to cut deeper through the outer protection before Fire and Ice widened the damage.
The Demon God seized Ziyue's sword wrist with the opposite hand.
She released the weapon before the grip could use it to control her entire arm.
The sword dropped.
Ziyue turned with the Demon God's pull, drove a kick into the knee, and used the contact to throw herself outside the reach rather than contesting the grip. Her sword had not reached the ground before Yueru kicked the hilt sideways toward her.
Ziyue caught it on the next movement.
The Demon God had already turned toward Yueru.
Haotian entered again.
One strike from the Demon God Killing Martial Arts hit the side of the torso where Ziyue's repeated Severing Arcs had weakened the defense. Haotian did not call the technique aloud or wait for the result. The strike compressed through the damaged protective layer, jolted the Demon God's body enough to interrupt the next step, and gave Haotian the fraction he needed to bring Seraph Shatter Palm toward the chest.
The Demon God reinforced the scar.
Haotian struck the guarding arm instead.
Dark blood continued running from the reopened wound anyway.
The Demon God's use of its damaged former True God pathways was worsening the injury even when no one reached it directly. Each violent acceleration sent larger currents close to the cracked structures surrounding the demon core, and Alter's residual crimson lightning reacted whenever the repaired network strained around those currents.
The Demon God knew what was happening inside its body.
It changed how it fought.
The next several attacks relied less on the deeper pathways and more on the stable Immortal Emperor circulation. Its speed decreased from the brief surges Haotian had just been struggling to follow, but it remained faster than every Lesser Immortal Lord surrounding it.
It also began using more technique instead of forcing every exchange with raw acceleration.
Abyssal power condensed around both hands during a turn away from Lianhua. The Demon God brought the palms together once, and several curved blades of dark energy erupted outward at different heights rather than traveling toward a single target.
Lianhua changed direction beneath the first.
Yinxue cut apart another with Sword Dao before it reached her.
Ziyue deflected one away from Yueru.
Xiangyin rotated the spear and changed the angle of a lower blade instead of taking the full force against the shaft.
Yanfei's Frostfire struck the last one from the side, disrupting enough of the concentrated Abyssal energy that it broke apart before reaching her.
The technique had not been intended to kill any one of them. It forced all six women to respond at the same time while the Demon God moved through the disruption, its dark movement art compressing the distance toward Haotian as everyone else dealt with the spreading blades.
Haotian saw the approach and shifted through several false continuations, but the Demon God no longer followed the first rhythm offered to it. It drove through the middle of the shifting possibilities and used its superior perception to force Haotian into choosing a real direction earlier than he wanted.
A blackened palm struck toward Haotian's chest.
He turned it aside with both hands.
The Demon God allowed the redirection and followed with its elbow from the same motion, catching Haotian across the shoulder before he could fully leave.
Haotian hit the ground and rolled.
The Demon God followed, but Lianhua cleared the last dark blade and crossed toward the pursuit with Cloud-Sundering Steps. Voidpierce Sword Sutra entered against the Demon God's side and forced it to turn away from Haotian before completing the next strike.
The Demon God accepted the cut and struck Lianhua instead.
She saw the attack and moved, but her injured ribs limited the deepest turn of her footwork. The blow caught the outer edge of her guard and threw her across the stone, worsening the same injury without breaking anything beneath it.
Yueru approached the chest.
The Demon God turned immediately.
She stopped outside its reach.
The chest protection thickened anyway.
Yinxue's Sword Dao struck the shoulder while Ziyue attacked the flank and Xiangyin's spear threatened the next step. Yanfei changed the ground beyond it, but the Demon God drove through the first two pressures, altered direction before Xiangyin could close the route, shattered the Frostfire-weakened stone beneath its foot, and reached Ziyue before Haotian could fully reenter.
Ziyue raised her sword.
The Demon God struck the blade near the guard.
Her arm folded under the force and the weapon slammed against her own shoulder before she let the motion carry outward.
Haotian reached them with Heaven-Piercer Step and drove Fist of Ruin into the Demon God's side.
The body moved only slightly.
The Demon God had already reinforced the region.
Haotian changed the follow-up into a palm against the elbow, but the Demon God's other hand reached his ribs first.
The impact threw him across the battlefield again.
His body struck the ground hard enough to bounce once before sliding. He rolled onto one knee, pressed a hand briefly against the damaged side, and felt pain sharpen beneath the ribs without the unstable movement of a fresh break.
The Demon God continued attacking while Lianhua drew it away from Ziyue with Voidpierce and Yinxue pressured the turning shoulder. Xiangyin interfered with the next step, Yanfei changed the ground, and Yueru remained outside the chest, their timing remaining sound even as the Demon God's higher cultivation kept breaking the relationships before they could fully mature.
Another exchange failed before Haotian could exploit it. Lianhua forced a shoulder turn, but the Demon God released Dao pressure and disrupted Yinxue before her support settled. Xiangyin caught the resulting step, only for the Demon God to change direction after her spear had already committed, and Yanfei's Frostfire reached the second route a fraction too late.
Ziyue saw the open flank and attacked.
The Demon God accepted the cut and went after Yueru.
Yueru gathered Lightning.
The Demon God reached her before she could approach the scar.
She redirected the blade rather than attempting the attack and escaped beneath the incoming arm, but the pressure caught her back and drove her several steps away.
Haotian used that pursuit. His rhythm split across the Demon God's perception before his movement changed again, the false continuations giving way to a sudden direct entry at the last instant. Seraph Shatter Palm struck the guarding forearm and fractured the defense before Haotian drove the other hand toward the reopened scar with a Demon God Killing strike.
The Demon God twisted.
The blow landed along the outer edge of the wound instead of its center.
Alter's crimson lightning flashed beneath the damaged tissue.
Dark blood sprayed across Haotian's hand.
The Demon God's body contracted around the internal reaction before its knee struck Haotian beneath the guard and threw him backward.
He landed heavily and lost one full breath before forcing air back into his lungs.
Yueru saw the crimson lightning still active in the scar and moved before the Demon God finished turning. Lightning gathered through her sword and entered the wound through a glancing contact rather than a committed thrust, causing the residual crimson current to answer sharply and run along the repaired pathways.
The Demon God struck outward.
Yueru withdrew before the hand reached her, but the pressure caught her Lightning arm and sent numbness from the shoulder into her fingers.
Ziyue reached her as she landed. "Can you still use it?"
Yueru flexed the fingers around the hilt twice before raising the sword again. "Yes. It's numb, not useless."
Ziyue nodded and moved away before the Demon God could use their proximity against them.
The next time Yueru shifted toward the chest, she did not gather Lightning.
The Demon God reinforced the scar anyway.
Lianhua saw the change and attacked the shoulder while Yinxue pressured the opposite side and Ziyue struck low. The Demon God refused to release the chest protection and took the attacks through stronger regions of its body instead, allowing Lianhua's blade to open another cut along the shoulder and Ziyue's sword to reach the thigh while Yinxue's Sword Dao tore part of the outer protection from the arm.
The Demon God responded by releasing another spread of curved Abyssal blades.
This time the attacks arrived at different speeds. Yinxue destroyed the first and found the second arriving behind it before her sword arm had completely recovered from the motion, forcing her to shift aside rather than drive the injured limb through another cut. Lianhua avoided two with Cloud-Sundering Steps, but the third curved after her initial movement and forced a sharper turn through the injured ribs.
Xiangyin redirected one blade with the spearhead.
Yanfei disrupted another with Frostfire.
Ziyue cut through the last with an ordinary sword strike instead of spending Severing Arc against an attack she could already handle.
The Demon God moved before the dark blades finished crossing the battlefield.
Its movement technique carried it toward Xiangyin this time.
She recognized the target change and kept the spear between them, not as a shield but as a moving line that forced the Demon God to decide where to enter.
It entered anyway.
The first hand knocked the spearhead away.
The second caught the shaft.
Xiangyin released both hands before the twist came.
The spear flew.
The Demon God struck toward her chest.
She moved inside the reach rather than backward, slipping beneath the arm and driving a palm against the ribs before turning away.
The blow did little against the Immortal Emperor body, but it placed her behind the Demon God.
Yanfei sent Frostfire across the ground between them.
Xiangyin stepped through the hardened section while the Demon God's pursuing foot landed in the region where heat had opened the cracks beneath the surface.
The Demon God crushed through it.
Haotian arrived before the next step.
Fist of Ruin struck the knee from the outside, not to break it but to change the angle as the foot came down. Xiangyin recovered her spear from where it had landed and drove the head toward the opposite side of the same leg.
The Demon God lifted the foot before either attack could trap it.
Lianhua's sword came toward the chest.
The Demon God blocked her.
Yueru moved closer.
The chest defense thickened.
Ziyue's Severing Arc struck the flank.
The Demon God accepted it again, allowing the elemental force to open the earlier wound and send another line of dark blood across the torso while its attention remained on Yueru and Haotian.
Haotian saw what that fixation was costing elsewhere, just as he saw what using the damaged deeper pathways was costing inside. The Demon God had reduced how often it called on the old channels, but each time it did, the repaired structures around the Sky Piercer wound reacted more violently than before. One pathway near the demon core widened along an existing crack after a sudden acceleration, and another failed to carry a clean return current after the Demon God reinforced an arm against Lianhua's Voidpierce.
The Demon God could continue fighting this way, probably longer than any of them could, but the wound was not stabilizing.
The next burst through a damaged leg pathway carried the Demon God across the battlefield before Xiangyin could reposition her spear. It struck Yinxue's Sword Dao aside, moved beyond Yanfei's altered ground, and reached Lianhua before Cloud-Sundering Steps completed the second transition.
Lianhua took the strike across her guard.
The force threw her farther than any previous hit.
She landed hard, rolled once, and remained down only long enough to recover her breath before pushing herself back to one knee.
Haotian reached the Demon God while it was still turning away from her.
Heaven-Piercer Step drove him directly into the opening.
Seraph Shatter Palm hit the shoulder.
Fist of Ruin followed into the side.
The Demon God blocked the third strike before Haotian could turn it toward the scar and drove its palm into his chest.
Haotian crossed both arms.
The impact broke the ground beneath his feet and sent him sliding backward, but he remained upright.
Yueru approached from the other side.
The Demon God turned toward her.
She stopped.
The chest defense thickened.
Ziyue cut the flank while Xiangyin threatened the rear step, Yanfei changed the ground, and Yinxue's Sword Dao pressed against the shoulder.
The Demon God broke through all of it with an expanding surge of Abyssal power that forced every nearby attack away at once. Lianhua had barely returned to her feet when the pressure reached her, and she used her movement to ride the outer edge instead of taking it against her injured ribs.
Haotian remained closest.
The pressure struck his guard and pushed him backward.
The Demon God did not pursue.
For the first time since the deeper pathways had begun carrying additional power, it allowed the distance between them to remain open. Abyssal current withdrew from the damaged former True God channels one pathway at a time, leaving the more stable Immortal Emperor network to maintain the body while power compressed around the reopened Sky Piercer wound and slowed the bleeding without repairing the cracks deeper inside.
Haotian straightened and watched the change rather than rushing the stillness.
The Demon God's gaze passed over him, then over Lianhua, Yinxue, Yueru, Ziyue, Xiangyin, and Yanfei before moving farther across the stronghold.
Surviving demonic presences remained scattered among damaged military districts, shattered reserve positions, defensive roads, collapsed structures, and formations the coalition had not yet completely cleared. Hundreds had survived the earlier assault, with others farther from the fighting still regrouping around whatever officers and positions remained.
The Demon God lifted one hand.
Through the Eyes of the Universe, Haotian saw thin Abyssal relationships spread from it into the stronghold. They did not resemble commands. The connections reached directly toward demonic cores.
One touched a surviving demon several districts away and closed around the core before the cultivator appeared to understand anything had happened. Another reached a group retreating through a damaged road, then divided among them.
Lianhua followed the Demon God's gaze toward the distant ruins. "What is it doing?"
Haotian watched the first core collapse inward.
The demon carrying it dropped where it stood, followed by another elsewhere and then several more as the same relationship tightened around them. Across different sections of the stronghold, demonic bodies began failing almost simultaneously, some collapsing without taking another step while others seized in the middle of retreat or turned toward the pressure inside themselves only after their cores had already begun breaking down.
Haotian followed the connections back to the Demon God.
"It's sacrificing them."
The Demon God closed its raised hand while the network spread through every surviving Abyssal presence it could reach. Across the stronghold, demonic cores began collapsing in waves, and the first streams of dark essence tore free from the dying bodies and turned toward the battlefield.
The first currents crossed the stronghold before the bodies that released them had finished falling. They moved above broken roads and collapsed military structures in long twisting streams, each one carrying the remains of a demonic core, cultivation, blood essence, and Abyssal power toward the Demon God at the center of the battlefield. More connections tightened behind them, and farther through the stronghold, other demons convulsed as their cores began collapsing under the same pull.
Haotian moved before the nearest stream reached its destination. Heaven-Piercer Step drove him across the space while the Eyes of the Universe followed the converging relationships from every direction. Fist of Ruin struck toward the arm controlling the sacrifice, not because Haotian expected breaking the gesture to sever something already spread across the stronghold, but because allowing the Demon God to receive the first wave uncontested made no sense.
The Demon God turned its forearm into the strike.
Haotian's fist compressed the Abyssal protection around the limb, and Seraph Shatter Palm followed against the shoulder before the Demon God could counter. Lianhua reached the opposite side and drove Voidpierce Sword Sutra toward the reopened scar while Yinxue's Sword Dao descended from farther away. Xiangyin's spearhead appeared near the rear leg, and Yanfei sent Frostfire through the ground beneath the same step.
The Demon God did not abandon the sacrifice.
Its Dao pressure expanded through the attacks while the first streams of essence arrived. Lianhua's spatial edge bent under the heavier Dao and slid away from the wound, Yinxue's pressure fractured before it could settle fully, and the Demon God stepped through Yanfei's altered ground with enough force to break the surface beneath Xiangyin's spear line. Haotian shifted outside the returning fist, but the attack did not pursue him farther because the first sacrificed essence had already reached the Demon God's back.
The dark current entered through the skin without impact.
Haotian saw the change immediately.
The incoming essence did not merge directly with the Demon God's cultivation as if becoming new realm progress. It spread through the body in hundreds of smaller streams, filling depleted Immortal Emperor pathways first, then moving toward cracks and damaged structures left behind by the ruined True God foundation. Abyssal power packed itself around those fractures, not rebuilding the original structures but pressing against them from every side and forcing them to hold their shape.
The reopened Sky Piercer wound reacted as soon as the first reinforcement reached it. Dark blood stopped running freely from the torn chest as Abyssal essence gathered along the split tissue and pulled the outer edges together, covering the visible wound beneath a rapidly thickening layer of condensed energy. The crimson lightning Alter had left behind did not disappear; through the Eyes of the Universe, Haotian could still see it buried beneath the new reinforcement, flickering through the same damaged route toward the structures surrounding the demon core.
Lianhua saw the wound beginning to close and attacked again. Cloud-Sundering Steps carried her beneath a sweeping arm, and Voidpierce Sword Sutra drove toward the seam where the new Abyssal layer was forming over the scar. The Demon God turned enough that her blade struck the edge instead of the center, but the spatial force still cut through part of the fresh reinforcement before a second stream of sacrificed essence poured into the same region.
The cut disappeared beneath it.
Ziyue attacked the flank instead, narrowing Severing Arc along her sword as she crossed behind the Demon God's turn. Lightning disturbed the newly arriving current first, while Metal and Wind drove the severing edge against the thinner defense and Fire and Ice widened the stress that followed. Her sword reached flesh again and opened the wound already left along the side, but another stream of essence flowed through the Demon God's body before she had completely withdrawn.
The damaged flesh tightened.
The cut did not vanish completely, yet the bleeding slowed almost at once.
Yueru saw the incoming essence collecting around the chest and moved toward it with Lightning gathering around her blade. The Demon God's attention snapped toward her before she reached striking range, and the pressure around the scar thickened under both its own cultivation and the new sacrificial power.
Yueru changed direction.
Ziyue remained close enough to cover her retreat, but the Demon God did not pursue either woman. More essence had begun arriving from the distant stronghold, hundreds of dark streams crossing above the battlefield at different heights as the sacrifice spread farther through the surviving army.
Haotian followed the network through the Eyes of the Universe. Some demons collapsed instantly as their cores were stripped apart. Others resisted for a breath or two, their cultivation flaring as they tried to hold the energy inside themselves before the connection tightened and tore the power free anyway. None of the resistance mattered for long because the relationship did not originate from outside their bodies alone; something in their Abyssal cultivation answered the Demon God's authority and turned their own cores into conduits for the sacrifice.
Xiangyin thrust toward the Demon God's abdomen while its attention remained divided between the incoming essence and Yueru. The spearhead carried the strength of her Dao Palace of the Spear into a narrow point, avoiding the broad contest her damaged hands could no longer support. The Demon God caught the shaft near the head and tried to wrench the weapon aside, but Xiangyin released one hand, allowed the spear to rotate through the other, and withdrew before the full twist reached her palms.
Yanfei attacked the moment the Demon God's foot adjusted. Frostfire spread across the leg rather than the ground, cold contracting the outer Abyssal protection before heat surged through the same layer. The opposing changes disrupted the incoming sacrificial current long enough for cracks to appear through the condensed reinforcement.
Haotian reached those cracks with Fist of Ruin.
The strike drove into the side of the thigh, collapsing the weakened defensive layer and forcing the Demon God's leg several degrees outward. It did not fall, but the change in balance gave Lianhua another angle toward the chest.
Voidpierce Sword Sutra reached the new reinforcement.
The Demon God struck her before the blade could sink deeply.
Lianhua turned with the impact, keeping the palm from landing squarely against her ribs, but the force still sent her backward across the fractured ground. She recovered before the Demon God could follow, breathing tighter than before when the movement pulled across the injured side.
The Demon God did not need to pursue.
The sacrifice was accelerating.
Dark essence now reached it from every direction in continuous streams rather than isolated currents. Some descended from above after crossing entire districts. Others moved low over the rubble, carrying the remnants of demons killed only moments earlier. The air around the Demon God darkened as those currents gathered faster than its body could immediately absorb them.
Then its frame began to change.
The first increase was small enough that Haotian noticed it through the relationships inside the body before the difference became obvious from outside. Sacrificial energy entered the bones, muscles, and deeper spiritual structures, pressing through tissues that had once supported a much greater cultivation and filling them with more power than the damaged body had carried since Marephoros.
The Demon God's shoulders widened.
Its arms thickened along the same proportions rather than distorting into uncontrolled growth, and the torso expanded around the reinforced chest as the next waves of essence entered. Clothing and Abyssal armor shifted with the body, dark energy spreading through them as if the material itself had been designed to accommodate the transformation.
Yinxue attacked during the growth. Her Sword Dao converged from multiple angles toward the enlarging torso, forcing the Demon God to answer before its changing proportions could fully settle. The Abyssal Dao that met her had already become heavier, not because the Demon God had crossed another realm, but because replenished energy flooded through the existing Immortal Emperor cultivation with less restraint than before.
Yinxue's first pressure broke.
She shifted the second away from the direct clash before the backlash reached her injured arm.
Ziyue entered beneath the same exchange and struck the expanding ribs with an ordinary sword cut rather than spending another Severing Arc. Her blade reached the defensive layer and stopped earlier than it had only moments ago.