The Beast Emperor was determined to make Qin Ruqing realize how laughable it was to challenge him.

As the Moonfall technique continued, the blood moon in the sky sank even lower, like a crimson disc about to crash onto their faces, bringing with it an oppressive, chilling sense of doom.

Luwei, Qi Rong, Feng Mingyue, and the others were already twisted and deformed, their faces turning blue and purple, as though they would be crushed into meat paste at any moment.

Qin Ruqing had no choice but to split her lotus manifestation, sending petals over to shield them.

With each petal she sent away, the pressure on her own body increased.

“Even now, you’re still thinking about those ants?” The Beast Emperor spoke slowly, savoring the moment, like watching a show unfold.

He kindly reminded Qin Ruqing, “If you continue to share their burden, you’ll be crushed into meat paste by the Blood Moon yourself! And they, these worthless ants, cannot escape the fate of death either!”

“Ants have no value to be saved. You should be a smart person.”

You should fight against the Blood Moon with all your might, and offer your fear to him.

The Blood Moon was getting closer, and Qin Ruqing had no choice but to lie flat on her back to alleviate the pressure on her chest.

As a result, the impact of the falling moon was even greater.

In the midst of chaotic pain, Qin Ruqing could still clearly sense the movements of her companions not far away.

They couldn’t breathe, but their gazes were stubbornly fixed on one direction—her direction.

Their eyes were filled with pleading.

No.

They weren’t pleading for Qin Ruqing to save them.

They were pleading for Qin Ruqing to let them die.

“Don’t waste your strength trying to save us.” The despairing eyes conveyed such emotions.

“So foolish. Is this how humans are?”

“Even now, you still want to fight me?! You still dare to provoke me, the Emperor?”

The beast emperor’s harsh sigh echoed in her ears.

Like a supreme deity, under the reflection of the Blood Moon, he sighed at the insignificance and triviality of the ants.

A deity…

Qin Ruqing suddenly laughed.

Such a monster, what kind of deity is that?

She stared at the Blood Moon, slowly and laboriously standing up, summoning an ancient compass in her palm, with golden lines lighting up along the compass’s patterns.

The beast emperor sensed a power emanating from this compass that even he found startling.

This power was familiar to him; it was…

The beast emperor couldn’t help but accelerate the descent of the Blood Moon.

He thought Qin Ruqing would use the compass, this relic of the ancient human race barely surviving, to save herself.

But she enlarged the compass and covered the ants with it.

In the next moment, the Blood Moon truly descended, like the sky collapsing.

The compass’s golden light surged, fully protecting the human aura beneath it.

Meanwhile, Qin Ruqing used all her strength to sustain the Lotus Shadow Dharma Form.

When the true Blood Moon descended, Lu Wei, Feng Mingyue, and the others felt a sense of relief.

Under the compass’s coverage, their stagnant blood finally began to flow, and their cyan and purple, nearly suffocating faces, began to slowly recover.

But no one cared about this; their hearts were filled with immense shock.

They looked towards Qin Ruqing’s direction in astonishment—the enormous lotus petals, symbolizing divinity and purity, were shattering inch by inch under the pressure of the Blood Moon.

With the last bit of strength crushed, the entire Lotus Shadow shattered explosively.

Qin Ruqing’s lungs contracted, and she violently vomited a mouthful of blood.

The sky finally brightened.

The true daylight, dazzlingly bright, illuminated everyone’s faces to the point of muddy confusion, making it hard to distinguish blood from tears.

They looked at Qin Ruqing in shock, as if asking: Why?

The entire Tianxing Mountain had collapsed.

The last strength of the Dharma Form created a small space for Qin Ruqing.

She lay in the small space like a winged butterfly.

After an unknown period, she finally managed to move her finger.

She slowly stood up, her movements extremely slow but inexplicably carrying a breathtaking power.

She looked towards her companions and mouthed the answer to their question:

“The strength of our predecessors is to preserve the human race’s legacy.”

“As long as the legacy continues, the human race will not perish. I did the right thing.”

Even though there was no sound, every word Qin Ruqing spoke resonated like a drum in everyone’s hearts.

Her mouth was dry, and though she tried to speak, not a single word came out.

“Ridiculous!”

“Foolish!”

“Naive!”

The beast emperor’s mocking laughter sounded out of place.

“You did the right thing? With that compass, you might have had the qualification to face me directly, but without it, your chaotic power was exhausted resisting the Blood Moon earlier. What will you use to fight me now!”

Qin Ruqing turned her head, and red flames spread across her body.

Laughing recklessly amidst the flames, she said, “Old monster, your laughter is too piercing. If I can stab a hole in your heart, I can stab another one.”

“Just you? With your power exhausted and unable to use even the previous chaotic heavenly fire, you still attempt to kill me? Now kneel and pray that I consume your blood and flesh; that is the proper path.”

Having used a divine power against the heavens, the beast emperor seemed no weaker.

The eight beast claws behind him simultaneously stretched and grew larger, reaching towards Qin Ruqing.

Qin Ruqing moved with the speed of wind and thunder, dodging constantly between the eight arms.

She could no longer use the purple-gold heavenly fire that had merged with chaotic power.

The flames she now used were summoned from the Fire Spirit Root, based on her own understanding and insight.

True flames belonging to her.

Even the shattered Lotus Shadow Dharma Form, she faintly felt, could no longer be summoned.

“It’s normal for my strength to be exhausted. Because I don’t have a blood pool, nor endless descendants’ bloodline power, drawing on an inexhaustible supply for my use.” Qin Ruqing taunted, but her gaze subtly scanned the blood pool while constantly dodging.

The six bronze statues scattered in all directions.

Tianxing Mountain collapsed, and the blood array had stopped rotating.

Could the beast emperor still use such a powerful divine ability without any cost?

And she, with the Dharma Form shattered and chaotic power nearly depleted, what power did she have left to use?

“Only someone like you, a human, would naively and narrowly imagine the extent of my power. If it were during my peak, I would have crushed you with just a finger without needing so much effort.”

All the rubble floated up, controlled by the beast emperor.

Each piece seemed to have a will of its own, attacking actively, like an army.

Qin Ruqing darted through the meteor shower, like a flame, her voice always clear and bright.

“Those who only reminisce about the past show that they only have the past. You spent such a great cost, risking the entire beast race’s fate, just to realize your ambition of returning to the peak and the past. You are even more ridiculous than me, an ant!”

The beast emperor suddenly felt bored.

Bored of playing with this human, bored of tormenting her, bored of waiting for her fear to appear at any moment.

Such a person should die immediately, unquestionably, and then all her blood and flesh used for him.

The beast emperor’s eyes, covered with pupils, closed and opened in an instant.

At the moment they opened, one-third of the pupils burst explosively.

When Qin Ruqing saw the beast emperor’s pupils self-destruct, she had a bad premonition.

For an ancient monster with such power, using self-harm methods must be an extraordinary forbidden technique. S

he immediately tried to retreat.

But it was too late.

The space instantly froze.

An invisible pupil appeared behind Qin Ruqing.

It was colorless and transparent, larger than the moon, silently observing Qin Ruqing, with a tide-like, eerie spread.

Qin Ruqing’s body, expression, and everything else were frozen in that instant.

It was an unavoidable absolute control, filled with the significance of time and space, and everything about her was frozen at that moment.

When Qin Ruqing’s chaotic power was abundant, there was still hope to resolve it with the power of rules.

Now, she could only be captured.

Steel-like beast claws gripped Qin Ruqing. It was one of the eagle-claw-like hands among the eight of the beast emperor.

The eagle claw was like a hook, with the sharpness of divine weapons on each claw tip.

It completely held Qin Ruqing, revealing only her head and her cyan-purple face.

Qin Ruqing was inexplicably calm.

The self-burning, flowing red flames from her body stubbornly burned the eagle claw. Because of the beast emperor’s size, it was like holding a lamp in the sky.

The beast emperor panted slightly.

Given his current injured state, using the Void Eye consumed quite a bit of energy. But it was all worth it.

He looked at Qin Ruqing with a strange, greedy smile.

Turning around, he suddenly remembered something, and his remaining hand grabbed the few human ants lying nearby, who had not yet recovered their combat power.

One of them fell accidentally during the process.

The beast emperor’s eye swept over and found that the person’s breath was insignificant among the ants, and their spiritual power was weak.

Even the airwaves stirred by the battle might kill her, so he no longer paid attention.

The Beast Emperor held the humans in front of Qin Ruqing, showing them to her with malice.

He sneered, “Look, these are the ants you wasted the power of your compass to save. They are so useless, draining precious resources, yet they still cannot escape death.”

Qin Ruqing, her throat gripped by the eagle claws, had her eyes shut.

She couldn’t make a sound, not even a breath.

This was exactly what the Beast Emperor wanted.

He wanted her silenced, voiceless, struggling on the brink of death, unable to gather the will to shout or resist.

The Beast Emperor glanced at the large hole in his chest.

Even now, the human controlled the power of the rules, preventing his flesh from healing.

Scoffing, he summoned the bronze statues scattered by the collapse of Tianxing Mountain.

He activated a secret technique, and the empty eyes of the statues began to glow, restarting the blood ritual.

However, the blood collected was sparse—evidently, the great battle had reached its end.

Be it humans or beasts, all the blood had been drained.

The Beast Emperor didn’t mind; he had found a better substitute.

He threw Qin Ruqing into the blood ritual.

Countless blood threads, like bloodsucking leeches, burrowed into her body, only to emerge again.

Her body was pierced through by these threads, and in a humiliating posture with limbs splayed wide, she hung in the center of the bronze statue’s formation.

Behind her, a giant blood moon loomed, and she, suspended at its center, was like a puppet controlled by a demon coveting her flesh.

The formation activated, drawing upon her bloodline power, and began to operate.

The Beast Emperor could already imagine how sweet this power would be—enough to heal his wounds and grant him rebirth.

After some thought, he tossed the remaining humans into the blood ritual as well.

“You ants may be weak, but your bloodline strength is not. Since she saved you, you can die with her.” These humans were the chosen young talents of this generation, the cream of the crop—perfect to fuel his new body.

Tang Zifeng lay weakly in the blood formation, painfully watching as Qin Ruqing’s breath gradually faded in the center.

Her vitality was gone, the power that once adorned her was being stolen.

Her brilliance was vanishing.

Tang Zifeng crawled toward Qin Ruqing.

He couldn’t bear to see her suffering such humiliation in front of him.

But something always stopped him from advancing.

In that moment, Tang Zifeng hated his own weakness.

He hated himself for choosing the path of weapon refinement, hated that he had always thought only of supporting her, yet now, at this moment, he was powerless.

Weapons…

A glimmer of light flashed in Tang Zifeng’s eyes.

Without hesitation, he severed his connection to his life-bound weapon.

Blood spurted from his mouth, but he didn’t care.

He directed a strange beam of light into Qin Ruqing’s body.

“Strength. Qingqing, you still have strength. You will not fall. You still have it, I…”

He looked up at her, gazing at Qin Ruqing, who hung like a puppet in the blood formation.

Qirong watched Tang Zifeng in shock. “Brother Tang, what are you doing?!”

Destroying one’s life-bound weapon, especially for someone like Brother Tang who walked the path of unity between man and weapon, was essentially suicide.

“He’s doing the right thing. Chaos can merge with all things, and it can blend with any Dao tradition. Perhaps this can truly save her.”

Fifth Lingyu looked at Qin Ruqing with a complex expression.

In his mind, her cheerful voice echoed countless times, “You’re just a pervert.” “Light and darkness, both are part of oneself.”

Fifth Lingyu smiled, shaking his head inexplicably, with a hint of self-mockery on his lips.

He pressed a finger to his heart, his face contorting in pain for a moment before relaxing.

A power similar to Qin Ruqing’s began to slowly leave his body, flowing toward her.