"Li Shimin, you're insane! Die!"
Shi Feixuan's blade gleamed with righteous fury as she lunged forward, her strike sharp enough to split mountains. She had touched the threshold of sword-heart clarity—her technique carried terrifying weight.
But her sword never reached its mark.
A figure moved between them in a blur.
Li Xiuning.
"To be chosen as an offering to the Eternal God is the highest honor. Stop resisting and accept it."
"You...!"
Shi Feixuan couldn't believe it. How could Li Xiuning—someone raised in the battlefield—overpower her, the heir of Ci Hang Temple? Even worse, she could feel it: Xiuning held the advantage.
What had she missed?
Before she could gather her thoughts, the sky ruptured.
The wind fell silent.
A golden thunder dragon descended from swirling auspicious clouds. The heavens cracked open with a divine roar.
In that moment, even the sun and moon dimmed.
Above them all, a colossal figure emerged—wreathed in radiant halos and surrounded by deific illusions. The Eternal God.
Shi Feixuan finally understood the question Li Shimin had posed the day before.
Do gods truly exist in this world?
She now had her answer.
There was no need for faith. The proof stood before her eyes.
A voice thundered across the battlefield, deep and resonant.
"Believers, I have heard your call. This offering pleases me... And because of your devotion—I shall grant your wish."
A single divine gesture.
A palm, vast enough to eclipse the sky, began to descend.
The earth shook violently. Mountains cracked. The heavens wailed.
The hand of the god fell upon the barbarian army like judgment from above.
Darkness swallowed the light.
A moment of utter stillness.
Then—screams. Crushed earth. Oblivion.
When sight returned, a bottomless abyss remained where tens of thousands had once stood.
One palm.
Everything—gone.
Even distant peaks had been reduced to dust.
"Tch... Overdid it again," Lucian muttered, a bit embarrassed. He had wanted to display divine power, not rip open the world.
With a sigh, he adjusted his divine energy.
Reality began to rewind itself.
The abyss filled in. Cracked mountains reformed. Trees and greenery didn't return, but the landscape was whole again—as if a god had pressed rewind on creation itself.
Li Shimin dropped to his knees, forehead pressed against the dirt, knocking repeatedly.
The same with the Flying Bear Army.
And Li Xiuning.
They had witnessed true power. The overwhelming might of a living god.
As the world stilled and the restored land glimmered with traces of divine presence, a majestic voice echoed once more from the heavens.
"You did well, Li Shimin."
Lucian's voice rolled like thunder, divine and absolute.
"For offering a Daughter of Destiny, I shall grant you the gift of longevity and a thousand years of cultivation. Continue to spread my faith as my chosen do. The Son of Destiny and the Daughter of Destiny are not the same—remember that. Now rise, and bathe in my grace."
Golden light poured from the sky.
Li Shimin, trembling and choked with emotion, rose from his knees.
Tears streamed down his face.
He had chosen right.
He had followed the true path.
The path of the Eternal God.
The light wrapped around him, seeping into his very bones.
His muscles, tendons, and spirit surged with power.
Ten thousand years of life.
A thousand years of divine cultivation.
In a single breath, Li Shimin ascended from a second-rate martial artist to the golden core realm—a level far beyond earthly limits, beyond even the fabled land immortals.
He could feel it—if he unsheathed his sword now, he could cleave a mountain in half.
And that was merely the beginning.
Then, the voice returned.
"Goddess, I will accept it, I hope you will work hard..."
Li Xiuning's voice trembled, but her eyes burned with courage.
She stepped forward and bowed low, hands clasped in reverence.
"I—I am Li Xiuning, a devout believer. If it pleases the Eternal God… I offer myself. Not as a sacrifice, but to serve in your divine palace—even if only as a maid."
She raised her eyes, her breath caught in awe at the sheer grandeur of the palace floating above them in the clouds.
To be in that place, even as a servant, would be a greater honor than a thousand lifetimes in the mortal world.
There was a pause.
Then—one word echoed across the heavens:
"Accepted."
A second divine hand descended, enveloping her in a radiant beam of light. She floated upward, toward the gates of the immortal palace, vanishing into the clouds.
Shi Feixuan had already been taken.
Now, Li Xiuning too was gone.
Only the stunned mortals remained.
Back on the city wall, one of the scribes, still pale from what he had just witnessed, clutched the half-written report in his shaking hands.
"D-do we still… send this to the capital?" he asked, voice dry with fear.
His commander, eyes wide and face pale, smacked the letter from his hand.
"Send what? Didn't you see? The second son of the Li family—no, the Divine Envoy—was chosen by the Eternal God himself! Unless Emperor Li Yuan wants divine punishment raining on his palace, he'd better kneel too!"
They weren't wrong.
At this moment, Li Shimin stood tall—cloaked in divine light, radiant with newfound strength, and backed by the will of a god.
The soldiers below dropped to their knees once more, this time not from fear, but reverence.
The divine had touched their world.
The skies above returned to blue. The sun shone through the clouds again.
But the ground below… though healed, had changed.
What was once golden earth was now stained deep black—a divine scar left behind by the Eternal One's presence.
A reminder that even if the land healed, the gods had walked here. And the world would never be the same.