It was like snow meeting the scorching warm sun.
The terrifying charge formation, capable of trampling the Nine Realms, perished inch by inch in the strange, eerie wind.
There were no screams, no struggles, no resistance.
They simply dissipated quietly and peacefully.
Turning into brilliant specks of light filling the sky, they merged into the white banner that was snapping in the wind.
In the blink of an eye, over a thousand undead soldiers were swallowed by the Ten Thousand Soul Banner.
"No! Stop! Stop for me!!!"
Cul finally recovered from his shock.
He roared frantically and hysterically, ordering his cavalry to stop their charge.
But... it was already too late!
The battlefield, originally filled with howling eerie winds and ghostly aura, returned to complete silence in just over ten seconds.
Calling it "dead silence" wasn't actually appropriate; it should be... "peaceful" instead!
As the undead army dissipated, even the dark clouds in the sky scattered slightly. The long-lost sunlight poured down through the gaps in the broken clouds, shining on the devastated land and coating everything in a layer of warm gold.
The biting cold and the aura of decay remaining in the air vanished completely, replaced by a holy and clean atmosphere.
It was as if those tens of thousands of undead had never existed at all.
The entire scene was deathly silent.
The Avengers all had their mouths wide open.
Gwen still had the webbing she was ready to release held in her hand, her movement frozen in mid-air.
Captain America remained frozen in place, holding up his shield.
Tony's energy cannon had just finished charging, but now he couldn't even find a target to fire at.
Everyone had been prepared for a fight with slim chances of survival.
And then, there was no "then".
Let alone them, even Cul's face was now filled with a look of incredulous bewilderment.
His facial muscles were twitching violently, the dark green runes on his forehead flickering, and his entire aura had become extremely unstable.
His Undead Cavalry, the immortal legion he had spent thousands of years of heart and blood forging, the foundation he used to contend with Odin and conquer the Nine Realms...
...was gone.
Cleanly, without even a trace left behind.
And at the exact moment Cul's spirit suffered a devastating blow, the Ten Thousand Soul Banner in Peter's hand, having absorbed tens of thousands of ancient spirits from Asgard, also underwent a visible change.
The originally pure white, ghostly banner face had intricate, dense golden patterns emerge on it.
Those patterns wove and spread along the warp and weft of the silk, as if containing some kind of truth of heaven and earth, becoming denser and brighter.
In the end, the color of the entire banner turned completely from pure white to a majestic gold.
It wasn't a tacky "nouveau riche" gold, but a gentle and restrained holy luster, as if it had condensed ten thousand feet of morning light.
The original eerie and treacherous aura had disappeared, replaced by a majestic, dignified, and holy pressure that governed all spirits!
Peter subconsciously looked at the new banner in his hand and could clearly feel a vast and immense amount of information flooding into his mind.
That was the heartfelt gratitude and submission of tens of thousands of spirits after being liberated, a certification of "Kingship" supported by all spirits.
His mouth twitched involuntarily.
A rather absurd thought emerged in his mind.
So, his Ten Thousand Soul Banner had really turned into the legendary... Human Emperor Banner?
Audiences all over the World clearly saw everything that happened at the scene through the sky projection.
They were collectively stunned at first, unable to recover from the shocking scene for a long time.
Then, not knowing who started it, an irrepressible "pfft" sound came from a certain corner.
Followed by a second, then a third.
As if contagious, irrepressible laughter rang out one after another from all over the World.
Because the reversal of the situation was so clean and swift, it formed a mysterious sense of humor.
It was as if a World-destroying divine beast had just been released, and a chuunibyou youth in a hat popped out from some obscure corner, shouted "Go, Master Ball!", and then everything returned to calm.
With a scene like that, who could keep the corners of their mouth from curling up?
Yeah, it was just... you know?
...
The joys and sorrows of people are not connected.
At this moment, Cul only felt they were noisy.
He couldn't hear the specific sounds, but he could feel the emotions of seven billion people, through his not-yet-fully-closed fear perception, striking his consciousness fiercely in a distorted, twisted, and infinitely magnified way.
There was no fear.
Not even a shred.
Instead, there was contempt, absurdity, and mockery.
The ultimate weapon he had spent so much effort and consumed a massive amount of divine power to create, which he thought was enough to sweep away everything.
Was suppressed by his opponent in the blink of an eye, so fast that... it was like a complete joke!
"Pfft!"
An irrepressible sweet, metallic taste surged from Cul's chest to his throat.
He could no longer hold it back, and a mouthful of golden divine blood sprayed out, soaking his gray beard.
Looking at the glaring bloodstains before his eyes, Cul's body began to tremble involuntarily.
It wasn't fear, nor weakness, but a madness about to destroy everything!
"Hehehehe~!"
A burst of frantic laughter that didn't sound human emanated from the depths of his throat, and during this process, dark green scales began to appear on the surface of his skin!
Fine scales spread rapidly from the sides of his neck, down along his spine, and spread crazily to his limbs.
His pupils changed shape.
The round pupils gradually contracted and stretched in extreme anger, turning into cold and cruel vertical slits like a reptile.
Snake pupils!
His height was growing crazily, and the "crack" sounds of bones breaking and reforming came densely from within his body, making one's scalp tingle.
Two meters, three meters, five meters, ten meters, a hundred meters, a thousand meters...
His limbs began to merge, and his spine extended infinitely.
The black robe, symbolizing his status as the former Lord of the Nine Realms, was torn to shreds on his rapidly expanding body, revealing the skin beneath covered in dark green scales.
No, it could no longer be called skin.
Those were snake scales!
Each one was the size of an adult's palm, refracting a cold and hard metallic luster under the sunlight.
Cul's human form had completely disappeared.
In its place was a World Serpent, over a thousand meters long and ten-plus meters wide, coiling between heaven and earth, spanning the sky!
The huge snake head was raised high, almost touching the broken clouds.
That pair of golden vertical pupils, the size of trucks, looked down from above at the people on the ground who were as small as ants,
and in the depths of the pupils surged the purest rage and will of destruction, enough to incinerate the entire Planet.
Seeing this change, the expressions of everyone present changed again, and Thor and Sif, who had walked out from the destiny, were even more livid.
This was the reason why Cul was called the "Serpent".
Compared to that divine king body in human form, this indestructible, Planet-shaking giant snake body was more like his true form!