The snow had long since melted from the surrounding area.

The mountains had been flattened to ground level, and the ground had sunk more than 200 meters over a long stretch of about 20 kilometers around the battlefield. Of course, most of this damage was caused by the extremely terrifying footsteps of the giant Mana Eater Tree.action

Rumble...!!!

While the surroundings were still rumbling after the activation of the strongest destructive skill in Shangguan Xinyue's set, the roar of pain from the previously furious Mana Eater Tree shook the entire sky.

As the blinding red light began to lose power until it vanished, the figure of the Mana Eater Tree was revealed before the eyes of the Saint of the Absolute.

Felix's pupils contracted and at full speed he retreated, flapping his wings in haste.

Only an instant after he retreated, a huge chunk of ice fell from the sky followed by another and then another. Ice shard after giant ice shard rained down from the sky one after another.

The Mana Eater Tree staggered to the point where it almost fell to the ground from the pain. Its two arms previously frozen by Shangguan Bing Xue had broken into dozens of large ice shards, completely shattered after being struck by Shangguan Xinyue's lightning skill.

In addition to its two destroyed arms, the Mana Eater Tree's body suffered terribly to the point where only its legs and feet were not scorched black after being struck by the lightning!

Just like her daughter, Shangguan Xinyue almost lost consciousness and began to fall faster and faster from the sky. She had already gone through an extremely hard battle when she faced the Lich King and the bone dragon, two creatures of the Fourth Order far above her level... The current Shangguan Xinyue was no different from a completely empty oil lamp, she had no Mana but her Stamina had also hit a new low point.

Her mount, the Silver Flood Dragon, soared into the sky and caught her body using its front claw, "Girl, are you alright?"

"... Good catch, Grandpa Jiao." Shangguan Xinyue whispered dead tired and barely able to open her eyes.

The flood dragon laughed even though the wind blades left long lacerations all along its body. Even its tough scales were unable to withstand the power of nature at such heights.

Riding on Little Snow's back, Xia Ya bit her lips tightly. She hesitated only for an instant before a flash of resolve shone in her black eyes, "Agh, damn it! Either I die or you die!"

She raised her wand high and was getting ready to cast her strongest curse when Bai Zemin's voice reached her from the deep hole, "Xia Ya, hold it back now!"

Xia Ya's eyes flashed as she waved her black-white wand downward so excitedly that she stammered, "K-Kneel down!"

An explosion of black light, as black as the starless sky, shot out from the tip of the wand and in an instant, it pierced into the head of the pain-stunned Mana Eater Tree.

Under the shocked eyes of the Saint of the Absolute, the Mana Eater Tree roared again as its giant legs lost strength.

The fifty-thousand-meter-high beast wanted nothing more than to wave its hands in an attempt to avoid its fall, but with both arms shattered, it could only watch and ready itself for impact.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!....

Even 50 kilometers away, Khristina could still feel the ground beneath her feet trembling slightly as the knees of the giant Mana Eater Tree hit the ground ferociously. She could only imagine in her heart how fiercely the earth trembled closer to the center of impact.

Saint of the Absolute Felix looked at the three mounts and turned his attention to the humans on their backs.When Felix arrived here after finding out that the Mana Eater Tree had lost its ability to steal and devour mana, his attention had been mainly on his lifelong enemy; even Bai Zemin, the young man who had accomplished what neither he nor any other living being in history had been able to, barely came into his eyes.

As for the other four humans who were then in the flaming head of the Mana Eater Tree... Saint of the Absolute did not disdain them but felt no need to pay any attention to them. After all, if he had to pay attention to all the soul evolvers that crossed his path he would have no life to live.

It was not until now that Saint of the Absolute realized how terrifying those human females were... Even if the most terrifying Bai Zemin did not step forward, those four women were not normal Third Order soul evolvers at all!

Staring at the Mana Eater Tree surrounded by countless black chains with white skulls on the borders, feeling the creature getting weaker and weaker, Felix muttered with his eyes wide open, "What the hell.... This generation is really weird..."

After having been sleeping for countless years and finally waking up, Saint of the Absolute had been silently observing the creatures of the current Earth for a while. Although they were no threat to him at the moment, Felix was amazed and startled when he caught a glimpse of how quickly they were evolving.

In the past, a soul evolver above level 100 could take up to 1 year to level up... but on today's Earth, level 100 soul evolvers could level up at a speed that made no sense at all! While this meant that more and more lives were lost to fuel the Soul Power of a single life, those that survived were all extremely strong powerhouses!

However, compared to the humans before him, none of the life forms he had seen before were worth mentioning as far as the Saint of the Absolute was concerned.

Approximately ten minutes later, the giant body of the Mana Eater Tree collapsed to the ground with a powerful rumble. Although its overall size had been reduced by more than half, its length was still over fifteen thousand meters so the word small certainly had no place here.

A minute later, Bai Zemin slowly walked out of the fallen monster's head.

Saint of the Absolute waited for Bai Zemin to confirm the safety of his team first before he started to slowly descend from the sky.

Shangguan Bing Xue, Shangguan Xinyue, Feng Tian Wu, and Xia Ya; the four women were so tired that they could barely stand. This had been by far the most exhausting battle any of them had experienced since the time they began to evolve. Even if they had not suffered any serious wounds, the difficulty of killing the Mana Eater Tree was so high that on their own none of them was confident of victory in any way.

However, the four of them forced themselves to stand up. Looking at the back of Bai Zemin who was walking step by step towards the Saint of the Absolute with his spear firmly gripped in his right hand, they all knew that this was no time to rest.

Who knows... The battle against the Mana Eater Tree might have been no more than the opening of the real battle to the death after all.

Bai Zemin stopped 100 meters away from Saint of the Absolute and watched him silently.

After about a minute, Felix looked at the small emerald green colored pearl in Bai Zemin's left hand for a moment before looking him in the eyes, "Looks like you didn't lie... you really have quite an interesting skill."

It was not challenging for him to feel the large amount of pristine records inside that pearl, waiting to be released and absorbed.

"It's done." Bai Zemin nodded calmly but the grip on the pearl with the Mana Eater Tree records tightened whether it was a conscious act or not.

This gesture naturally did not escape the eyes of Saint of the Absolute Felix. He immediately understood that now both he and Bai Zemin had fallen into a great dilemma.

"So..." Felix smiled bitterly and said with some helplessness in his voice, "What do we do now?"

Saint of the Absolute was a considerably kind and gentle person, but he still needed records from other lives to evolve and grow more powerful. How could he not want the records of one of the most mysterious and probably most terrifying beings that ever existed?

Unfortunately, there was no way Bai Zemin would give the Mana Eater Tree records to anyone. This concerned his future evolution after all... if he didn't have these records he would never be able to level up even 1 level again in his entire life and would be doomed to stay at level 100 of the Second Order until his bones turned to ashes.

A glint of hesitation shone in his eyes as he looked at his evolution requirements.

_______Complete the following requirements to advance to the next Order - [Complete the following requirements to advance to the next Order -

[Evolve your Void Fist skill to Fourth Order: Incomplete].

[Evolve your Shadow Blink skill to Third Order: Incomplete].

[Take control over 5 of the 6 fragments of the Key of Destiny: 3/5].

[Absorb the fragments of the Key of Destiny: Incomplete.]

[Use the first activation of your Record Devastation skill, Record Degradation, and take over the deepest records of the following ancient existences:

-Headed Immortal Dragon: Complete.

Saint of the Absolute: Incomplete.

Demon of the Corruption: Incomplete.

Mana Eater Tree: Complete].

[Get control over the Earth and make the other factions no choice but to retreat: Ongoing].

[If you join a faction or submit to any other Leader you will fail the trial and will not be able to advance to the Third Order].

_______

Bai Zemin could evolve Shadow Blink and Void Fist in a short time so, in theory, he had already completed approximately 50% of his requirements to evolve to the Third Order. This speed was already very good considering that it had barely been about 3 months in the outside world since he reached the peak of the Second Order.

Although Bai Zemin didn't know where the fragments of the Key of Destiny were, since the Soul Record marked it as if he had achieved another 2 then all was well. Bai Zemin guessed that those fragments were put somewhere by the Soul Record after he killed each enemy recently released from their sleep.

At this rate, Bai Zemin estimated that it wouldn't take much longer to achieve his goal and evolve again. Therefore, he could not lose the Mana Eater Tree records... But the problem was that his current self did not have the strength to fight against the Saint of the Absolute.

Bai Zemin needed at least a week to fully recover from the spiritual and mental exhaustion, not to mention that he needed Soul Manipulation to boost the right skills in order to fight such a powerful and fast enemy.

The truth was that in addition to the World Tree Heart fragment and the Mana Eater Tree records, Bai Zemin had also stolen a Legend-grade treasure that was inside the jade tree.

Although he knew that greed was not good as it could lead to ruin, Bai Zemin still felt that it was a pity to hand over the Legend Grade treasure to the Saint of the Absolute and felt extremely reluctant... At the end of the day, the Saint of the Absolute was destined to be his enemy so giving him such a high-level treasure was no different from giving wings to the tiger.

Just when Bai Zemin and the Saint of the Absolute were in a giant dilemma as to what to do about the situation they were in, a spear of light pierced down from the clouds with such a high speed that neither of them could dodge.

The two saw the shock in each other's eyes, but just when they thought they were done for, the spear broke into countless particles of light that quickly entered their bodies without causing any damage at all.

Bai Zemin and Felix heard the soft voice of a female neither of them knew, but from the voice alone, it was easy to conclude a thing or two. In fact, the voice was so, so beautiful, that were it not for the fact that Bai Zemin and Felix were extremely powerful soul evolvers they could easily have fallen under spell on the spot without even seeing the person.

"Saint of the Absolute Felix, Transcendent King Bai Zemin, it is my pleasure to speak to you... My name is Uriel, one of the Archangels of the Army of Heaven. Now that the present battle is over, I would like to invite you to visit the Vatican in 5 days to discuss the future course of Earth and its inhabitants... I wholeheartedly look forward to your presence."

The message seemed to be recorded since as soon as the last word was delivered everything went back to normal, with no change at all.

Bai Zemin and Felix stood silently trying to take in what had just happened. However, they both knew one thing.

Earth was definitely in the process of changing; big changes.

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Really thank you very much to all those who send gifts to the novel and support with valuable Golden Tickets. I hope we can all keep it up <3