National Guardian's Gone and We're Done

The inky-black night sky was like an immensely heavy lead plate,

pressing down heavily upon the earth, smothering the construction site until it was airtight and strangling all life and light within.

In the center of the construction site, a huge and deep pit opened its hideous maw,

like the entrance to a Demon’s lair reaching out from the Nine Netherworld Hell,

continuously emitting an incomparably sinister aura.

Inside the pit, the blood-red mud had been possessed by Evil Spirits,

transforming into madly twisting, struggling crimson pythons.

They writhed and tumbled over one another, emitting waves of grotesque, skin-crawling gurgles,

each squirm a declaration of their malice to the world.

Amidst the eerie churning of the mud, monstrous humanoid figures sculpted from clay gradually took shape,

slowly coalescing into their final forms.

These monsters were tall and hulking, standing around the pit like small mountains.

The nauseatingly pungent stench of blood hung about them,

as if they had just crawled out of the Blood Pool of Hell.

Where their facial features should have been, there were now only deep, sunken pits,

as if their eyes had been brutally gouged out by a pair of massive, merciless hands.

From within those pits, blood seeped out unceasingly, like a bursting flood,

winding down their twisted, fire-scorched cheeks

and collecting on the ground in foul-smelling puddles that were terrifying to behold.

After these humanoid monsters filed out of the pit,

they did not scatter and flee like frightened beasts. Instead, they stood silently near the pit like a troop of loyal guards.

Blood still trickled slowly from their empty eye sockets, but they stared with a strange fixation into the pit,

as if some far more terrible existence, one capable of upending the world, lay hidden in its depths,

ready to burst from the earth at any moment

and drag this world, already fallen into darkness, into an even deeper abyss of eternal damnation.

High above, Amaterasu hung proudly in the sky, like a golden sun—dazzlingly brilliant, yet bone-chillingly cold.

She was dressed in a golden robe so magnificent it was blinding,

its golden threads appearing to come alive, dancing and flowing within the light.

The golden radiance surrounding her was like a tangible, raging flame, burning furiously

and setting her off as a deity descended from the heavens to rule over all mortals.

Her expression was severe, her gaze a tangible blade of frost stabbing straight toward the pit. She spoke, her voice cold. "So many years have passed, and you’re still alive, just as I thought. However, the Emperor’s Qi you once wielded must be nearly depleted. Hmph. Do you really think you can still be my opponent this time?"

Her voice was laced with the icy chill of the Nine Netherworld Hell, thick with disdain and contempt,

as it thundered through the silent night sky, causing the very air to instantly freeze and fall as rustling ice shards.

Amaterasu was as familiar with the aura hidden in the pit as she was with every line on her own palm.

The memory of their soul-stirring clash all those years ago was still a persistent nightmare, resurfacing in her mind from time to time.

At the time, her opponent’s personal strength had clearly been inferior to her own,

yet the Emperor’s Qi that wreathed his body, seemingly suffused with endless majesty,

had formed an indestructible shield that even Deities struggled to break.

It had thrown the very energies of the White-Red Empire into utter chaos, completely upending the natural order.

This land was clearly her home ground, a domain she, Amaterasu, had protected for generations.

Yet under the shroud of that Emperor’s Qi, it was as if she had trespassed into another’s territory. She was constrained at every turn, each step like sinking into a mire, leaving her so stifled she was nearly driven mad.

In the end, with no other choice, she was forced to summon the Divine Artifact, the Eight-footed Jade Hook, and pour all her Divine Power into it,

unleashing it with all her might. Only by relying on the Divine Artifact’s power

was she barely able to suppress that tenacious force beneath this very pit.

"So many years have passed, and you’re still alive. How could I possibly depart before you?"

A voice drifted leisurely from the depths of the pit.

It was a voice that had traversed a thousand years, carrying the weight of ages and the echoes of history as it slowly rang out in the dead-silent night.

As the voice echoed,

the soil within the pit began to churn, stirred by an invisible hand that possessed the power to move heaven and earth.

The earth separated and swelled, and something was clearly about to break through.

Then, a figure slowly emerged, as if stepping out from the canvas of an ancient scroll.

It was an old man in an ancient robe. His posture was as straight as a pine, and he possessed an air of scholarly and transcendent grace.

His silver hair was neatly tied back, though a few playful strands had escaped to frame his fair-skinned face,

adding to his otherworldly, sage-like aura.

His eyes were as bright as the most brilliant, dazzling stars in the night sky,

yet they held the depth and wisdom of one who had weathered countless ages.

At this moment, they were fixed upon the figure in the sky, one so dazzling it was impossible to look at directly.

The old man took a step. It seemed slow and leisurely, but he was in fact using the great teleportation art of Shrinking Inches,

and in an instant, he appeared on the ground outside the pit.

An incredible scene unfolded. The surrounding humanoid monsters, formed from the blood-red mud,

received some form of silent command from the depths of their souls

and dropped to one knee in unison, facing the old man.

Their bodies were stiff, yet their movements were perfectly synchronized, like a well-trained army.

Though their faces were twisted like fiends, terrifyingly hideous and utterly expressionless,

from the aura they emanated,

one could clearly feel a sense of submission to the old man that came from the very depths of their souls.