604 The War Resumes

While many within the Immortal Armada felt some modicum of relief following the successful sealing of the universe, almost no one looked back at the day with fondness.

The death toll had been immeasurable.. And it mostly consisted of either harmless mortals who had never set foot into the world of cultivation, and whose only desires were to live a healthy life with their friends and family, or of some of the most competent and valiant members of the Armada’s military, who were first to give their lives to defend their people from the invasion of Horror’s domain.

The losses were so vast, that at the end of the day, almost everyone within the Armada had lost someone they had known.. Someone they had laughed with, someone they had loved, or competed with. For that reason, the day was remembered as a day of tragedy, instead of one worthy of celebration.

In mortal’s fashion, however, this grief sought purpose.. A relief valve. An outlet that the members of the research team were not alive to provide. Eventually, as people started talking, this grief was directed at the cause of the intervention that had caused the death of so many people, and which more people than Admiral Okka alone had noticed.

After discovering that the problems during the installation of the formation had been caused by the intervention of the elementals, the cultivators were quick to realize that their trust had been betrayed, and the truce had been broken. As creatures capable of understanding deceitfulness, finding a likely motive for their enemy’s actions had come natural, regardless of how uncharacteristic it may have been of them.

In their eyes, the Elementals had purposely delayed the sealing of their universe, causing the horde’s invasion to start. Their goal, they had guessed, was to let the Armada and Horror’s horde fight each other, and almost destroy one another before sealing the universe themselves, and finishing off any surviving cultivator or champion of Horror.

What the cultivators believed the elementals to not have expected, however, was the fact that the horde had not waited to be in full force before attacking, allowing the cultivators to somehow manage to resist the preemptive strike. This was the reason why, they believed, the elemental army had not attacked yet. Because the cultivators had managed to save more strength than they had thought possible.

While many members of the Immortal Armada did not believe the elementals to be so machinous and deceitful, however, grief had blinded the remaining majority, who had now long forgotten about any thought of peaceful cohabitation, and demanded vengeance against the elemental army.

This mentality stoked the fires of war once more, and this time, there was no common ground to reach. In the eyes of billions, it became them or their enemies.

With renewed hatred, the Immortal Armada began the invasion of the blue galaxy, burning every newly established elemental outpost to nothing more than a smoldering rock, and killing thousands.

—–

On the other side, unaware of what had caused this hatred from the cultivators, the elementals had believed to have suffered a betrayal of their own. In fact, many of them had believed that only at this moment were the cultivators showing their true colors, while any talk of peaceful coexistence between the two species had been sweet words of nothing.

With their survival on their minds, the elementals tried to fight back, but, alas, they soon realized that the stalemate the two groups had reached during their previous war was not caused by an equal amount of strength, but by the cultivators’ decision to save strength for what at the time they considered to be the true enemy, Horror’s horde.

Now that the universe had been sealed, isolating the two civilizations within the same cage, the cultivators army had gone all out.

Waves of furious cultivators advanced through the elemental territory, scorching any garden planet in sight, and blasting the rest apart. They pushed, and pushed, like a nail into a wooden plank.. Uncaring for any strategy the ancient members of the elemental army could think of.

Many attempts at parlay had been made from both sides, as both possessed individuals that still wished to see this war end, yet the cultivator’s army continued their invasion, unbothered by the words of their peace seeking companions, for they wanted vengeance more than they wanted peace, and the only being that could have put a stop to this war was unavailable.

Forced to interrupt his cultivation to intervene during the conflict between the Armada and Horror’s horde, the Warlord had suffered an injury. One that did not put him at a risk of death, but that had forced him to remain on closed-door cultivation for the past several days. Of his opinion regarding the war, nobody had a clear idea.. yet, many had believed that even if he had been in good health, he wouldn’t have fought against the will of his people, for he was not a tyrant, but a protector.

The true leaders of the Armada was its government, entrusted by the Warlord and its people to do what they believed to be right, as long as their ultimate goal aligned with their own. The survival of the Immortal Armada and all its members. Under this creed, those who sought peace struggled to make the claim that, had the Warlord been there, he would have forgiven the elemental’s betrayal, as well as forgotten the deaths of millions of the people he had sworn to protect.

A week after the resumption of the war, the warships of the Immortal Armada had already reached the edges of the core system of the elemental’s domain. The garden planet they had never been allowed to visit, and that had always appeared as little more than a light in the distance not unlike any other, was now brighter than ever..

Seeing their arrival, the elementals were almost forced to give up in their peaceful nature to fight back tooth and nail, for losing To’han would not have been a disaster, but the end.

Yet, while they spared no effort in preparing for the arrival of their enemies, their hopes were not high. Their Lord had been missing, and many of their forces had been lost in previous encounters. What was left was led by the most ancient members of their civilization, who seemed to have made the hall of the Lord’s Palace their temporary home.

With all their might they tried to repel this invasion, but as the Armada managed to keep pushing through their defenses, the elementals realized what true might of their enemy. A power that went beyond that of simple cultivation, and that in itself, seemed capable of doubling their enemy’s prowess.. And that was their technological advancement.

Many of their most recent encounters, they elementals discovered, had ended in similar fashion. Their army would organize a plan of defense they believed would ensure victory, only to fall apart under the horrifying powers of their enemy’s weapons of mass destruction. What was left of the disorganized elementals, was then taken apart by the bloodthirsty cultivators, who did not seem keen in either accepting surrender or taking prisoners.

Now that the Armada was at their doorstep, they believed they had lost.

Even if by some miracle their remaining forces could fight off the army of cultivators, they had no doubt that their ships’ weapons would be able to blast their planet into smithereens. So as the Immortal Armada approached, a feeling of doom akin to the one the cultivators had felt during Horror’s invasion had started to take over the elemental civilization.

Yet, as everything seemed lost, a miracle did happen.

During what they had believed to be their last meeting before total annihilation, the Lord of the elementals had appeared.. Walking into the main hall of the Lord’s palace as if he had never gone missing, as if this was a meeting like any other.

“The enemy is here!”

“My Lord, were you to give us the order, my kin will throw their lives with joy..”

“We have lost so many..”

“The universe is lost, we have to retreat!”

“I can open a portal to a shattered universe..”

Different proposals made their way to the lord ear one after the other, each coming from a different black robed individual, yet he sat on his throne, almost as if unbothered by the recent events. His eyes remained close, but from the thin lines in between his lashes, an oppressive light and frightening darkness were constantly emanated.

It was only when one of hooded figures in particular, a female spatial elemental, offered a way of retreat for the elemental army, that he stood up, and walked out of the dark hall. Once in the open, he raised his hands towards the sky and slowly opened his eyes, revealing two orbs that emanated a mixture of boundless power.. One formed by a sklera of absolute darkness that encompassed an iris of pure light, while the other, was formed by an impossibly dark pit strangled by a sea of holiness.

As his hands reached the sky, the surrounding essences, almost as if heeding to their God’s will, gathered in between his palms, forming a fist-sized sphere of pure energy. Then, as quickly as it appeared, this sphere shot forward with unbelievable momentum.

Quiet as wind, yet faster than lightning, this sphere crossed the sky and pierced the atmosphere.. Only stopping once it approached the fleet of ships.

Thousands of cultivators approached the sphere. In its uniqueness, they could feel the peculiar essence of most elements. All merged into a perfect and stable bead of power. “Is this a gift?” some of them wondered while still maintaining a certain distance. Many thought that the object might have been an offer for their surrender, yet no one dared to grab it.

This possibility, however, did not change anything.. For the cultivators wanted vengeance, and the tally of their deaths far outweighed that of their enemies. A peace offering did nothing but fill them with contempt, as a few of them shouted in rejection, “Burn that planet to the ground!”

Before the cultivator could act on these orders, however, the sphere’s surface suddenly cracked.

“TAKE COVER!!” One of them screamed, aware that something was wrong.. But it was too late. Not even the time to regret did they have before the small orb of energy exploded, erasing their existence in a fraction of a moment.. And that was not the end.

The blast was unstoppable. Cultivators, ships, celestial bodies, and vast artifacts made of the strongest materials known to men. Everything within hundreds of millions of miles was instantly vaporized. Not even the star around which To’han orbited could survive the blast, and fell apart under the sphere’s immense energy.

In a moment, the threat was no more.

The larger part of the cultivators army, which had yet to arrive, suddenly lost contact with their advance fleet. Their senses, capable of reaching far beyond the furthest edges of the system, could only witness the impossibly powerful blast before tens of thousands of their people had just disappeared.

Back on To’han, the lord observed the blast of energy wash past the planet, leaving it completely untouched. And as the light produced by the explosion began to dim, as he stood there, with his robe at his feet, he slowly lowered his arms while muttering, “Perhaps I was wrong.. Sometimes nature just takes.”

These words were spoken softly, and yet, they seemed to be powerful enough to reach the very edges of the universe. Every cultivator, elemental, or even native civilizations that had yet to become aware of the risk that had fallen upon their universe, had heard them play out, almost as if they were spoken to them directly, and seeping into their bones.

As most of the cultivators felt shivers run down their spine, and began to realize that the bear they had locked out might not have been much worse than the tiger they were stuck with, one individual in particular remained calm. He sat quietly in a dark room, waiting for the last bit of his injury to finally heal up.

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