Chapter 600: Devil God Nation
Just as he was weighing the consequences, something stirred violently within his body. His Black Dragon Chaotic Bloodline surged to life without warning. Heat coursed through his veins, concentrating around his right arm.
Max hissed through clenched teeth as a burning sensation flared beneath the skin. In moments, the green turtle-like mark began to smolderâthen charâand finally dissolve into nothingness. Max blinked in disbelief.
âItâs gone!â he muttered in awe, inspecting his now-clear arm. The Black Tortoise Bloodlineâs mark had been completely erasedâscorched away by the fierce dominance of his own chaotic bloodline.
Blob chuckled in approval, the tension in his voice loosening. âYouâre good, kid. I underestimated your bloodline. Itâs more than dominantâitâs outright sovereign. To erase a mark from the Xuan Family without external help? Thatâs something even the Four God Nation might fear one day.â
Then, his voice dipped into caution again. âBut donât get too comfortable. The mark might be gone, but that mechanism wasnât just local. Someoneâmaybe the elders already knows you killed Silus. They may not know where you are just yet, but your face⊠your presence⊠it might already be known. Be careful.â
Max nodded, a dark resolve in his eyes. If the Xuan Family was going to hunt him, then so be it. Let them come. Heâd face them all if he had to.
For now, there was still one more thing to do. He turned his gaze toward Silusâs mangled corpse, walking slowly toward it.
As he reached out his right hand, it burst into ghostly purple flames. âTime to extract your secrets, Silus,â Max muttered coldly. âLetâs see what you were hiding.â
Max lowered his right hand, letting the ghostly purple flames lick across the cold, broken corpse of Silus. There was no ceremony to itâjust purpose.
The moment the flames made contact, they spread with unnatural precision, consuming the body in seconds. Silusâs flesh, bones, bloodâall of itâcrumbled to cinders, leaving behind only a wisp of fading ash.
Then, without warning, Maxâs mind was pulled into a torrent of visions. The Ashes of Insight had activated. Scenes began to flash one after another in rapid successionâmemories not his ownârecollections from a life now ended.
It was like being thrown into a storm of thoughts, sensations, and history. He saw Silus as a child, training under the pressure of divine expectations; as a young prodigy learning the secrets of the Citadel; as a proud descendant of the Xuan Family being told what it meant to carry the Black Tortoise Bloodline.
Countless momentsâyears of ambition, fear, power, hatredârushed through Maxâs consciousness in mere minutes. And in those memories, he saw something elseâsomething ancient. Something buried.
Max slowly opened his eyes, his breathing shallow, mind trying to process the flood of information. After a moment, he steadied himself, sorting through what he had seen. âSo, the original owner of the Citadel⊠was the Divine King of the Fifth Family,â Max muttered under his breath, eyes narrowing. âWhen the Four God Nation was still the Five God Nation.â
That piece alone sent a ripple of shock through his thoughts. He had heard of Five God Nation only from the mouth of Blob who existed since ten thousand years ago. But from Silusâs memories, the truth had been preservedâat least among those high enough to know.
Once, long ago, there were five divine bloodlines in Acaris, not four. The fifth was the Devil God Nation with Devil God Bloodline.
âAccording to his memories,â Max continued slowly, thinking aloud, âin that distant past, when someone reached the absolute peak of Divine Rankâthe final limit of the Mortal Realmâthey could ascend. They could truly enter the Divine Realm.â His tone grew heavy with awe and realization. That was the path⊠the path that no one had walked for thousands of years. That was the truth buried in silence.
But what shook him most wasnât the path to divinityâit was the fate of the Fifth Nation. âDivine King Atherion,â Max whispered the name with a strange reverence, âthe ruler of the Devil God Nation⊠he was the last one to ascend.â And it was that very actâhis ascensionâthat led to the downfall of the Devil God Nation.
Max clenched his fists, eyes blazing with clarity. âSo thatâs what the Citadel is⊠itâs the last legacy of the Devil God Nation.â
According to the memories Max had absorbed from Silus, the truth behind the Devil God Nation was far darker than any legend had dared to whisper. Unlike the other four divine nationsâeach founded upon the principles of celestial harmony, order, and reverence for sacred beastsâthe Devil God Nation stood as a blight upon the world.
Its roots werenât in enlightenment or unity, but in terror, chaos, and forbidden power. The very foundations of their civilization had been carved from blood rituals and soul sacrifices. Their inheritance methods twisted the natural order, drawing from corrupted lawsâdarkness, death, decay, and the unnameable forces from beyond the veil of the living.
Where the Dragon, Phoenix, Black Tortoise, and White Tiger symbolized balance and purity, the Devil God Nation had knelt before a forgotten entity born from the void beyond death, a chaos god whose name had been erased from mortal tongues.
Their temples oozed with demonic energy, ancient and hateful. Their cities, surrounded by bone-carved walls, breathed fear into even the bravest souls. And their capital, the Crimson Abyss Citadel, was cloaked in an eternal black mist so vile it could corrode the soul of any mortal who dared breathe it in.
The people of this nation werenât merely strongâthey were abominations. The elites traded years of life for demonic strength, reshaping their own bodies into grotesque, monstrous forms that existed only to kill, destroy, and devour.
No pact could be made with them. No peace ever lasted. The Devil God Nation existed not to co-exist but to dominateâto plunge the world into a new dark era ruled by primal chaos where only raw power mattered.
It was inevitable, then, that after Divine King Atherion ascended to the Divine Realm, the balance broke. The moment their king left, the other four nationsâwho had always feared the Devil God Nationâacted as one.
For the first and only time in history, the Four God Nations united their armies and descended upon their oldest rival. Even though the Devil God Nation was the strongest, the combined might of the four divine clans was overwhelming.
War raged. The land bled. And slowly, the Devil God Nation fell. Their armies were crushed, their towers toppled, their temples shattered, and their people hunted to extinction. Entire bloodlines were erased, cities turned to ash, records purged from history.
The Fifth Nationâonce feared above allâwas removed from the world so thoroughly that only myths dared mention its name. Until now.
As Max stood there, his purple flames slowly fading after consuming the last remnants of Silusâ corpse, a heavy silence settled around him. His mind churned with the flood of memories he had just witnessedâan entire history buried beneath layers of propaganda, lies, and forgotten truths.
âDevil God NationâŠâ he whispered to himself, the name tasting both cursed and sacred on his tongue.
Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!