Chapter 6525 Eight Stars Merge Eight Gates
“As expected... something’s off!”
Xue Ying shot to her feet, staring in shock. The cup of wine slipped from her fingers, shattering unnoticed.
“Heavens...!”
Countless experts stared at Lu Ze and the others, horrified. Green flames flickered across their bodies, and in the span of a few breaths, their skin shriveled and sagged. Their blood qi evaporated. Just like that, these young elites turned into sickly old men.
“What is going on?!”
Lu Ze was scared out of his wits. He roared and unleashed his astral energy to extinguish this green flame.
“It’s too late. The moment my curse light touched you, your fate was sealed! Hahaha! How does it feel? Now you know Old Sixth’s might!”
The green parrot tilted its head and spoke haughtily. With its wings clasped behind it, it simply looked like an arrogant master looking down on others.
The other nine star heirs also tried to raise their astral barriers, but just as the green parrot had said—nothing could stop the aging.
This curse was absolutely terrifying. There was no stopping or removing it, causing all these nine star heirs to panic.
One after another, the weaker nine star heirs withered to husks before crumbling into dust. Curiously, while their bodies turned to dust, a speck of starlight remained, looking like a specter.
Then, their starlight slowly flowed into the barrier and toward Long Chen.
“Miss Xue Ying, how can this curse be that terrifying? How do we counter it?” asked a nine star heir behind Xue Ying.
They were all frightened by this. Thankfully, their master was smarter, or they would have shared Lu Ze’s fate.
“That curse energy affects body and soul only. It does not go through astral energy,” Xue Ying said, her voice shuddering despite her attempts at remaining calm. “If they had summoned the Eight Star Battle Armor immediately and pushed the Starry Sky Battle Robe to its absolute limit, it should have blocked the curse.”
But even she sounded uncertain.
The curse had erupted without warning. In theory, any killing technique would trigger any battle-hardened expert’s danger sense long before impact. Yet, Lu Ze’s group had sensed nothing at all.
That was why even Xue Ying could only make a vague assumption. She couldn’t guarantee whether her hypothesis would really work.
Furthermore, the Eight Star Battle Armor and Starry Sky Battle Robe were the nine star line’s trump cards. Who would activate them without even seeing a threat? Xue Ying couldn’t fault Lu Ze’s group for that; in their place, she would have done the same.
This realization shattered Xue Ying’s calm. She had expected the struggle over the Earth Cauldron to be brutal, but she had never imagined a threat so silent that even her instincts failed to catch it.
When Xue Ying said Lu Ze was courting death, she had assumed the Dragonblood Legion would cripple him. And even if Lu Ze could seize the Earth Cauldron, he would be too wounded to protect it. In the end, others would kill him to take it from his hands.
Still, she hadn’t anticipated that Lu Ze and the others would suffer such a death.
The bodies of the nine star heirs rapidly decayed, leaving behind only clumps of starlight that flowed toward Long Chen. Lu Ze unleashed technique after technique to resist the curse, but nothing worked. At best, he could slow the aging process slightly.
Bellowing, he launched his astral bone claw toward the green parrot. His only hope was to capture the creature and force it to undo the curse.
However, with every blow, his aura weakened. After seven attacks, he was panting.
His arm was dried up, and he could pull on his skin like it was a sleeve. Now, his face was covered in black spots, and his eyesight grew blurry.
The astral claw slipped from Lu Ze’s grip. But before it landed on the ground, it transformed into a streak of light and vanished. This astral claw had his spiritual seal on it. With his soul nearly depleted, his spiritual seal could no longer hold it.
“Save... me...”
Lu Ze stretched a trembling hand toward Xue Ying. But she and her subordinates only stared back expressionlessly.
Lu Ze finally turned to dust along with all his subordinates, and another clump of starlight flowed toward Long Chen. In total, more than two hundred thousand starlight clumps had flowed into the “egg” around Long Chen.
Stars flashed around Long Chen, as if the entire night sky had compressed into this domain. Astral energy surged like a cosmic tide.
Long Chen sat with a tiny astral whirlpool spinning over his Dantian, his hands in a seal. Then, starry rings shimmered behind him. When the final black divine ring appeared, Lu Ze’s clump of starlight merged into Long Chen’s nirvanic rebirth space.
“Miss Xue Ying... what kind of demonic cultivation is that? Does he devour our energy to advance?” someone whispered, horrified.
Xue Ying’s expression was grave, and she didn’t respond. This scene exceeded her understanding.
An eight-color divine ring slowly spun behind Long Chen. With billions of flashing stars behind him, Long Chen looked like a battle god born from the starry sky itself.
“What is that divine ring? Its aura is bizarre... and he hasn’t even formed an essence rune yet. What is he doing?” Xue Ying murmured, her eyes locking onto Long Chen.
BOOM!
Suddenly, an astral gate opened from the eight-color divine ring. The moment it did, a wild and powerful aura erupted, suffocating the surrounding experts.
“Damn...” Xue Ying clenched her fists. Her intuition told her that Long Chen was condensing an absolutely terrifying essence rune.
She had to stop him if she wanted to have any chance of victory. But the memory of the green parrot’s curse held her back.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
One astral gate after another opened inside the divine ring. When the eighth gate opened, the clumps of starlight from Lu Ze and the others vanished into it.
Then, a star ignited within each gate, blazing like a newborn sun, making Long Chen’s aura grow even more holy and sacred.
“Quick! We’re just missing a bit!” the Earth Cauldron shouted, sounding frantic.
The stars within the gates were Long Chen’s original eight stars. They were merging with the astral gates, but not fully yet. They lacked a final spark of energy. At this moment, Long Chen’s path was set. The condensation of the astral gates was for the eight stars, and this was the strongest Eight Star Battle Armor Long Chen had ever deduced.
As the eight stars condensed, they absorbed more and more astral energy. But they still seemed to be lacking some energy. Without that final bit, the fusion would fail. This was why the Earth Cauldron panicked.
BOOM!
At that moment, an explosion shook the world, and a bronze cauldron appeared in the sky.
“Earth... it’s time for you to return and become a part of me.”
A sacred and dignified voice filled with icy bloodthirst rang out.