Sunlight, dazzling sunlight, suddenly pierced through the lingering gloom once more, spilling down upon the land!
The murky air quickly became clear, carrying the suffocating earthy smell unique to the aftermath of a great disaster.
Their field of vision suddenly widened.
Silence.
Absolute silence enveloped the entire fourth examination ground of Shrek Academy, even spreading to the distant spectators who had collapsed helplessly onto the ground and had narrowly escaped being swallowed by the sandstorm.
Everyone, whether the terrified farmers and stall owners or the teachers and students of Shrek Academy, had their eyes firmly fixed on the center of the examination ground.
The once-flat open space surrounded by farmhouses had long since ceased to exist.
In its place was a terrifying crater more than a hundred meters in diameter and nearly ten meters deep!
Its edges looked as though they had been gnawed apart by the most savage of giant beasts, forming an irregular, jagged, and torn shape!
The soil and rocks along the crater walls gleamed with an eerie glass-like luster. These were the traces left behind after being instantly melted and then solidified by unimaginable heat and tremendous force!
Thin wisps of blue-gray smoke, carrying the smell of burning, rose continuously from the cracks that covered the vitrified crater walls.
And at the very bottom, in the exact center of the enormous crater, a battered human figure was deeply embedded in the vitrified earth.
It was none other than Zhao Wuji!
The clothes on his body had long since been reduced to ashes by the sandstorm and the intense heat, revealing his bronze-colored, muscular body covered in countless fine lacerations and blackened scorch marks.
His originally iron-like, bulging muscles were covered in horrifying wounds, some of which were so deep that faint traces of white bone could be seen beneath the dark-red flesh!
His face was swollen like fermented dough, a mixture of purple and blue covering his features. There was no trace of his former ferocity left. Clotted blood stained the corners of his mouth, while dark-red fluid slowly trickled from his nostrils.
His eyes were tightly shut. His breathing was weak and erratic, and every difficult breath caused his shattered chest to rise and fall violently, producing a hoarse, bellows-like "huff, huff" sound.
Only his upper body was barely exposed. Everything below his waist was deeply buried in the hardened, vitrified layer of earth, making him look like a dead tree that had been brutally snapped in half and casually discarded upon scorched earth.
The Immovable King?
At this moment, he looked more like a lump of charred mud baked into a stone.
Amid this deathly silence, the hundred-meter-tall Sandstorm Sovereign, Tyranitar, moved.
Its enormous, mountain-like body leaned forward slightly. Its massive limbs, covered in heavy alloy-steel armor, began to move.
Every step landed like the striking of a deep war drum, causing the entire glass-like crater to tremble faintly as cracks spread across it!
It slowly lowered its head.
That head was like a gigantic battering ram, while the thick, tower-like horn atop its forehead gleamed with a cold radiance. Its enormous dark-golden, lava-like eyes carried nothing but indifferent scrutiny, as though it were looking down upon an insignificant insect.
Its gaze descended upon the golden figure lying on the verge of death at the bottom of the crater.
"Ugh…"
Under the enormous shadow and the cold gaze of death, Zhao Wuji seemed to regain a trace of consciousness.
His swollen eyelids trembled with great difficulty several times as he struggled to open them.
When his blurred vision finally touched those two enormous dark-golden pupils above him, pupils that resembled the entrances to the furnaces of hell, his battered body suddenly convulsed!
"Huff…"
A short, terrified gasp, like the strangled cry of a chicken, was forced from deep within his throat.
Immediately afterward, Zhao Wuji's eyes, swollen until they were barely more than slits, suddenly widened to their limit. His eyeballs almost seemed ready to burst from their sockets!
It was a fear that had penetrated deep into his bones and been engraved into the deepest part of his soul!
It was as though he had seen an existence even more despair-inducing than death itself.
His body trembled violently like a sieve, while meaningless "g-g-g" sounds escaped his throat. He desperately tried to curl himself deeper into the scorching vitrified earth, futilely attempting to escape that gaze of absolute suppression originating from an overwhelming difference in the level of life itself.
Lin Xia calmly watched Zhao Wuji's deathly fear at the bottom of the enormous crater, his expression completely unchanged.
He merely raised his right hand casually.
"That's enough. Come back."
There was no earth-shattering explosion, nor was there any dazzling radiance.
The hundred-meter-tall beast that towered like a mountain and radiated an aura of primordial destruction began silently collapsing inward and dissipating, like a dream or illusion.
Its heavy armor became translucent, while its enormous body transformed into a stream of pure and condensed earth-yellow energy.
Like countless rivers returning to the sea, it instantly flowed into Lin Xia's palm and disappeared without a trace.
One moment, it had been a world-destroying beast capable of devastating everything beneath the heavens.
The next, all that remained was the palm-sized little beast perched upon Lin Xia's shoulder, covered in dark-gray steel armor and affectionately rubbing its tiny head against his neck.
Tyranitar let out a satisfied "Tyran~" from its throat. Its small dark-golden eyes swept over the "little bug" at the bottom of the crater, carrying a hint of lingering reluctance to leave.
Lin Xia's gaze once again turned toward the devastated, scorched-glass crater and the surrounding ground, which was covered in deep cracks and molten scars as though it had been repeatedly raked by a gigantic plow.
He let out a faint sigh. His voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached everyone's ears.
"The commotion was indeed a little bigger than expected."
Under the countless still-dazed, awestruck, and terrified gazes focused upon him, Lin Xia casually took a step forward.
The tip of his foot lightly touched the charred ground, which was covered in spiderweb-like cracks.
Buzz!
A gentle, earthy-yellow halo, soft as rippling water yet as profound as the origin of the earth itself, silently spread outward from the tip of his foot!
Like a warm spring, the radiance instantly flowed across the entire examination ground, covering every damaged area.
A miracle unfolded before everyone's eyes.
The terrifying crater, which had been nearly ten meters deep, seemed to be gently smoothed over by an invisible hand!
The shattered glass-like earth seemed to come alive, producing faint rustling sounds as it rapidly flowed, fused together, and settled!
The cracked crater walls automatically closed, while the raised edges silently collapsed inward to fill the crater.
Within just a few breaths, the enormous crater that had symbolized destruction disappeared without a trace!
In its place was nothing more than a slightly raised patch of level ground, its color a little darker than the surrounding earth and carrying the fresh, moist scent of soil.
Immediately afterward, the halo flowed across the surrounding ground that had been melted and vitrified by the intense heat.
The dazzling glass-like sheen receded like a tide, transforming back into the simplest dark-brown soil.
The enormous cracks that had seemed bottomless were rapidly stitched shut as though by invisible needles and thread, while the earth rolled and surged, filling every ditch and crevice!
The halo then flowed toward several farmhouses on the outskirts that had been caught in the edge of the sandstorm. They had been on the verge of collapse, their thatched roofs completely torn away and their walls covered in terrifying cracks.
Those shocking cracks rapidly closed and disappeared!
The peeling walls seemed to grow back, while even the thatch scattered across the ground floated upward as though time were flowing backward, returning piece by piece to cover the crude rooftops once more!
When the final trace of the earthy-yellow halo receded like a retreating tide and disappeared beneath Lin Xia's feet, the entire fourth examination ground of Shrek Academy had been completely restored!
The ground was level, the farmhouses were intact, and even the few wild grasses in the distant fields that had been blown askew had straightened themselves once again!
Apart from the lingering scent of dust in the air and the dampness of the newly turned dark-brown soil, it was almost as though the world-destroying sandstorm, the suffocating pressure, and the Soul Saint lying on the verge of death at the bottom of the crater had all been nothing more than a horrifying nightmare!
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