Chapter 915: Huaxu (1/2)

A harrowing battle was taking place deep in space. The Yin Prince’s eight bearers and massive army of yin soldiers had all been massacred, leaving only Shentu and Yulei protecting their mistress against hordes of connate demon gods.

The Yin Prince’s face was unhealthily pale from a series of deep injuries; something had pierced her body through. If it wasn't for Shentu and Yulei desperately defending her and other parties in the fray, she would've perished a long time ago.

“Haotian!” Yulei snarled at a figure sparkling with golden radiance in a crowd of demon gods. “If you dare harm my mistress, I will rip a piece off you today even if I have to die for it!” [1]

Yulei wasn’t very strong as he was just an ordinary connate demon god. However, he showed no sign of backing down before the throngs of demon gods and celestial soldiers.

“Yulei, we can consider granting you mercy if you throw yourself under our banner. How does being the future king of the netherdark sound?” The indistinct figure throwing out aureate radiance boomed, “The Yin Prince goes against heaven’s will and is not a good mistress!”

“Your own mother would be ashamed of this bullshit!” Yulei cursed loudly. “Haotian, you’re nothing but a two-faced, shameless ferret! When the world struck back at you because you tried refining the bloodline in Pangu’s body, it was my mistress who saved you! You’d be nothing more than a lost ghost if it wasn’t for her, but you bite the hand that feeds you and ambush my mistress!”

“Harrumph!” Hidden within the blinding glow, Haotian’s expression darkened when he heard Yulei’s words.

He was a powerful connate demon god among the first batch born in the world, someone on par with Leize. In the year of Pangu’s demise, he’d tried to refine the bloodline in the great god’s body and nearly died to the backlash from the heavens. Thankfully, the Yin Prince had saved him in the nick of time.

Haotian disappeared from the world after that and joined Taiyi’s celestial court without great fanfare, working his way up the hierarchy and eventually becoming a critical member of its operations. He hailed himself as celestial emperor upon Taiyi’s death and inherited the court to become the ruler of the three realms.

Despite doing so, none of the connate demon gods in the great wilderness recognized him as the celestial emperor. After all, very few knew of his background apart from Houtu, Leize, Huaxu, and the others.

“And what’s more, I know that you’re the one who fans the flames for connate demon gods to distill Pangu’s bloodline out of the humans. You’re also the one who covertly instigated the attack on my mistress and Leize!” Yulei’s eyes shone brightly, seeming to see through all things in the world.

“Men, capture Yulei!” came Haotian’s low roar.

“Understood!” Countless celestial soldiers assembled into formation among the stars and surrounded the Yin Prince’s party of three.

Formations!

Though formations originated from Fuxi’s hand, he’d passed them onto Taiyi, who’d used them to create the Great Formation of the Nineheavens Gates to steady the celestial court’s fortunes. Upon ascending to the throne, Haotian naturally came into possession of a few fragmented manuals regarding formations and was able to create his own from them.

However, the court laid in tattered pieces after the war with realm monsters; it was a far cry from its former glory. Thus, Haotian didn’t proclaim his new rule far and wide, instead opting to conserve energy and build up strength.

Over the past hundreds of thousands of years, he’d imitated Taiyi and traveled the great wilderness, recruiting countless numbers of connate demon gods and empyrean great masters. After accumulating his strength for all this time, while he may not have restored the court to its peak under Taiyi and command so many demon gods that they were as numerous as the stars, he wasn’t far off from that heyday.

……

“You say that it was Haotian behind the mob against Leize that year?” A frosty female voice suddenly echoed through the void before a white-haired woman wearing black robes walked barefoot out of space. Her glacial features promised pain and retribution.

This patch of space instantly quieted down and the soldiers about to charge the Yin Prince froze in place. They stared dumbly at the chilly woman with a remarkable bearing, not knowing what to do.

“Huaxu!” Haotian walked out of his golden haze when he saw the newcomer, appearing in the form of a middle-aged man. He appeared stately and dignified in a long dark-gold robe and exuded a poised air from his being.

His original plot had been to take down the Yin Prince and use her as bait to lure the Flame Emperor over.