348 The serpent that touched the abyss.

The first thing Ba-Shei noticed when the darkness around him receded was that he had been separated from Sirius and the others. There were a few tens of other people around him, some patiently sitting on the stone floor while others were vigilantly surveying their surroundings. He swept the surroundings to look for traces of the others, but the voice of the overseer boomed throughout the sky at just that time.

"Enough participants have been gathered on this stage, you may begin the third trial now. 50 competitors have been gathered, the final five standing will get the chance to go to the sanctum, begin."

Whether it was those calmly sitting or those vigilantly examining their surroundings, all of them sprung to life the moment the voice faded away. The third trial was the one concerning strength, but they hadn't expected it to take the form of a free-for-all where only the last five standing would get the chance to earn a reward. But this wasn't a situation where they could take their time and think about things, each moment wasted was a moment they could get attacked so they had to start straight away.

There was, however, one person present among them that didn't burst into combat the moment the voice faded. Ba-Shei ignored everything else and closed his eyes, burrowing his senses deep into his body. He quickly found what he was looking for and then followed the thread it created, extending his senses outward and stretching them towards a distant island.

In fact, there was a truth that Ba-Shei and the others hadn't told Yao Jun about. He couldn't sense them after his God Gate broke, but they could still sense him, it just took a bit of effort. The reason was quite simple, if a bit heartless. The one they were connected to and tied to for all those years wasn't Yao Jun, it was the God Gate itself. Yao Jun was more akin to a go-between, the messenger who delivered the gifts and orders of the God Gate.

They had lost their connection to the God Gate itself, but the presence of the messenger was still embedded quite deeply into them so they could tap into that to locate him. Of course, none of them was so foolish that they actually thought that the God Gate was what they should be thankful for, they wouldn't still be following Yao Jun if that was the case. Whether or not he could be considered a messenger or not, he was the god that gave Ba-Shei freedom and opened the world for him, he was the man who gave the life of a single snake a smidgen of worth, that was a fact that he wouldn't allow anyone to alter.

He followed the lingering presence until he reached his target, his eyes springing open as he turned towards a lone island quite a distance to his left. Thanks to his sharp eyes he was quickly able to spot Yao Jun now that he was focusing, a soft sigh of relief escaping his lips when he saw that Yao Jun didn't seem to be standing on an arena like him. He waved his hands to draw Yao Jun's attention, his shadow constantly wriggling and rising to block the attacks that were directed at him.

He wanted to let out another relieved sigh when he saw that Yao Jun noticed him, but his expression hardened when he noticed that someone had appeared only a few steps behind Yao Jun. He ignored the fact that the person who appeared wore an extremely familiar face, because that person also radiated an immensely terrifying pressure.

If Ba-Shei had to liken it to something then he would compare it to the time he was just a normal snake and saw a Demonic beast for the first time. It was like meeting an existence from a different world, a being living on a completely different plane from you, one so much higher that it would only induce despair.

Despite the soul-seeping dread he felt from that existence, Ba-Shei's first instincts were to rush over to Yao Jun. That was an existence that Yao Jun couldn't handle on his own, especially in his currently weakened state, just surviving would probably be nigh impossible. But he quickly learned that heading over to Yao Jun wasn't an option, his dash interrupted when he reached the edge of the stage and smashed into an invisible wall of energy.

He instantly spread out his Qi to find a hole in the wall, but it formed a dome that covered the entire stage. And looking at just how dense the energy that formed it seemed to be, it clearly wasn't something created by your standard array. As a result, Ba-Shei could only stand there and watch as Yao Jun chatted with the person that had taken on that familiar appearance.

He could also only stand there when that figure morphed into a different familiar appearance, a somewhat crooked expression adorning the now female face. He didn't have to see Yao Jun's expression to understand his thoughts, he knew him well enough to guess that his eyes were narrowed sharply in subdued rage, generally not a good omen for what was to come.

And sure enough, a battle broke out between the two before long. But just the first exchange was enough to show off the difference between the two of them. Yao Jun landed two hits, but the end result was that his abdomen got a gash and that both his hands were almost broken to pieces. And then the opponent got so much faster that just reacting to his movements was nigh undoable, it really wasn't a battle of equals.

"You... How dare you..."

Those were the only words Ba-Shei could squeeze out through his grit teeth as he looked at the thrashing that Yao Jun was forced to endure. The opponent was lacerating Yao Jun with each attack, shredding him like he was trying to grate him into tiny pieces, it was to the point that Yao Jun barely had the chance to fight back. As he gazed upon the scene, Ba-Shei began to understand a bit about how Yao Jun thought and why he did so, the fear and worry he felt when he could do nothing but watch. But at the same time, he also felt that inordinate rage, that very same rage that once pushed Yao Jun to ruin an entire planet.

His veins, even his skin and flesh, bulged and writhed, his shadow extending like a vicious snake as it tossed in tune with his writhing veins. The scar that ran down his chin split while he gnashed his teeth, his human form twisting into something closer to his true form as his emotions slipped beyond his grasp.

His shadow spread out to cover the entire stage practically instantly, its sinister writhing pushing the other contestants into high alert. But it was already too late, a Divine Beast was currently in the process of raging for his god, so the only thing humans could do in the face of that was to perish.

The all-encompassing darkness twisted itself inside out, a torrent of energy rushing out as hundreds of pillars covered in finger-sized spikes rose up and started spinning. Everything caught by even a single spike was drawn in and ground to pieces between the spinning pillars, each chunk growing smaller and smaller until not even a drop of blood remained.

Yao Jun wasn't the only one who learned from his Demonic beasts, they too picked up bits and pieces from him. In the past, Yao Jun had merged his law of space and his law of darkness to give form to something quite similar to these pillars, his law of disintegration, a darkness that swallowed everything and gave nothing back.

And now, Ba-Shei was using a similar attack, one based on pure darkness, one he pushed beyond the boundaries of the darkness and out into the world. His goal was exceedingly simple, the concept behind it equally simple, to remove every obstruction that could separate him from his lord.

His emotions may be considered a bit too extreme for the situation, but they stemmed from a very simple fact, Yao Jun's place in his heart. It might not be the same for Zhuanxu and the others that Yao Jun had picked up later, but whether they knew it or not, Ba-Shei, Little Gray, even Sirius and the now-deceased Little Thunder had a rather special relationship with Yao Jun.

All of them were extremely young when Yao Jun picked them up, and other than Little Gray who had known them for a very short period of time, none of them really had much interaction with their parents. They were just young beasts doing their best to survive and fend for themselves, with the exception of Sirius who had been left in the care of someone else after the previous holder of the Demon God's Gate passed away.

And then along came Yao Jun, he subdued them one by one and took them in as his beasts. But he didn't treat them badly, he didn't use them as slaves, he treated them as friends and companions, he gave them freedom and a good life. Beyond what any of them ever expected, he was the closest they ever had to a proper father, and that faint fact only furthered their belief and nearly fanatical worship of him.

So, Ba-Shei raged when he saw Yao Jun getting beaten, and he brought out his all as a result. The slowly turning pillars rose higher and higher, a low droning sound reverberating through the area and drowning out even the last screams of those that remained on the stage. Before long, the pillars reached the invisible wall that surrounded the stage, the droning sound turning into a nearly unbearable screeching sound.

They halted for a second as they struggled, but then continued to slowly turn, Ba-Shei pouring more and more power into them. Part of the power was used to keep the pillars outside of the darkness, but most of it was used to push them harder, to make them stronger and more devastating. They had ground stone and flesh to nothing, but that wasn't enough, he had to grind up more, he had to push the pillars until not even Qi would be safe from their extended spikes.

The pillars slowly turned, a dark and subdued glow gradually starting to appear on the tips of the spikes that covered them. Slowly but surely, Ba-Shei felt like he was starting to reach something, starting to touch upon that desired concept he was looking for. But just as he was inching closer to understanding, a brilliant violet gleam caught his eye and drew all his attention.

He saw Yao Jun facing the opponent, arcs of violet lightning dancing off of his body, and it instantly swallowed up all his thoughts and dispersed the pillars. He knew exactly what that law meant to Yao Jun, how dear he held the law of lightning, yet how opposed he was to using it.

But there he was, once again clad in its violent beauty, and Ba-Shei felt like he was once again looking at the Yao Jun of the past, before he became the Nine Heavens Demon God. Back then there weren't any easy fights, it was all a struggle, every second a dance on the edge of death. But even so, he always danced on like a madman, his gaze so firmly locked forwards that he couldn't see the abyss lurking just by his side, waiting to swallow him should he make even the simplest mistake.

It didn't matter whether it was fear or ambition that drove it, all that mattered was the inexhaustible determination that it resulted in. He hadn't even used his law of lightning once since he lost Little Thunder, not even in the toughest battles where there was a real chance that he might lose, that was how opposed he was to 'betraying' his friend. But now he used it, now he had made up his mind and hardened his determination, his ambition, now he was aiming for the apex of creation. Ba-Shei was utterly spellbound as he looked on, engraving the battle in his mind. It didn't last long, ending with the two exchanging one final attack where Yao Jun pushed his laws of fire and ice to the brink.

It might be considered simply by some, attacks without much fanfare or brilliance, they were barely visible after all. But to Ba-Shei they only further served to solidify what he and the others had been thinking all along. Yao Jun might have lost his God Gate, lost nearly everything he had. But even so, he was still their god, he was still that terrifying Demon God that would make all existence quake as he walked by, it was a destiny that not even loss could take from him. And as if that solidification of his belief removed a rock from his chest, Ba-Shei felt his eyes grow moist.