Lord of Prayer

The woman stared venomously at Li Xiye, her hatred overwhelming.

A dazzling flash of lightning vanished, and Li Xiye appeared a hundred meters away from the woman. "Who are you?" she asked, confused.

"You don’t recognize me? HAHAHAHA... This form of mine, neither human nor ghost, it’s all thanks to you! And you don’t even recognize me?" The woman shrieked with hysterical laughter. Her horrifying face twisted, her eyes held no mirth, only a bone-deep resentment.

"Why should I recognize you? Are you famous or something?" Li Xiye said with a sigh. "Hurry up and state your name. Don’t waste time; everyone’s time is precious."

The woman’s expression darkened, her eyes filled with venom. "Fifty-eight years ago, in the Taklamakan Desert Restricted Area, you ruined my face and threw me into quicksand. Luckily, fate wasn’t ready for me to die. Beneath that patch of quicksand was a hollow ruin, and I managed to survive..."

Li Xiye tried hard to remember, which only enraged the woman further. The scars that had healed decades ago began to ache faintly, and the fury in her chest felt ready to explode.

"Oh, I remember now!"

At that moment, realization dawned on Li Xiye. "You’re the little bitch who sold us out!"

Back then, she had joined an exploration team to venture into the desert’s Restricted Area in search of a lost ancient city. Unbeknownst to them, a traitor had infiltrated their ranks and secretly contacted other teams. Those teams attacked them under the cover of night, stealing their supplies and clues related to the ancient city, which also led to the deaths of several team members.

The traitor was exposed during the chaotic battle. Li Xiye hunted her down, gravely wounded her, and threw her into the quicksand. She never expected the woman to survive something like that.

And not only had the woman survived, she had also become Tier Four. But her aura was incredibly bizarre, a mix of who knows what. She was neither human nor ghost; it was impossible to tell if she was human or a Corrupter.

And then there were those crystalline eyeballs...

Seeing Li Xiye recognize her, the woman’s expression turned hideous. "After I escaped death, I swore to train as hard as I could. I swore that sooner or later, I would find you and pay you back double for what you did to me! Who knew that you would suddenly vanish from the Mortal World a few years later? Do you know how desperate I was then? Unable to take revenge with my own hands, I lost my only reason to live..."

"Then why are you still alive? You should have just died already."

Ignoring Li Xiye’s taunt, the woman continued as if talking to herself. "For decades, I thought of you day and night. Not a single day went by that I didn’t dream of killing you with my own hands. I thought my obsession was hopeless, but who would have thought... you’re still alive..."

Her voice began to tremble with irrepressible excitement. A crazed smile spread across her ugly face. "I’m going to rip that pretty face of yours apart! I’ll turn you into my slave, and you’ll obey me like a dead dog!

I don’t know what you were doing during the decades you were gone, but I reached Tier Four seven years before you did. You’re no match for me!"

"Oh, really...?"

Li Xiye looked bewildered. "Is reaching Tier Four seven years before me something to brag about? It hasn’t even been four months, tops, since I was fully unfrozen.

Old lady, you can stop with the tough talk. A loser is always a loser. Even if you had attacked me just now before my Advancement, you would have just ended up as a stepping stone for my ritual."

"Hmph hmph hmph... It seems you still don’t understand the situation..." The demon-armed woman laughed coldly. The crystalline eyeballs in her sockets lit up as her aura skyrocketed. She drew upon Abyssal Power, and crimson crystals rapidly appeared on the surrounding, yet-untainted ground.

At that moment, the ground began to shake violently. The corruption from the Crystal Abyss completely shattered the Light-Burning Barrier, rapidly assimilating the area and covering it in a layer of hard, sinister crystals.

Li Xiye threw a punch through the air. The resulting BOOM was like a landslide, kicking up a mighty hurricane. With a loud BANG, flesh and blood flew everywhere as the woman exploded into a cloud of fine dust.

But immediately after, countless tiny threads extended from the fine fragments, linking together and reassembling the woman’s body in an instant.

’She didn’t die?’ Li Xiye narrowed her eyes slightly. ’That punch should have destroyed both her body and her Soul!’

"You still don’t get it! The me of today is nothing like before! I have become an ’Apostle’ who does not fear death! You can’t kill me even with a Rule Ability!" the woman cackled hoarsely.

"Apostle?" Li Xiye had naturally heard the name before. "You joined Fallen Paradise?"

"Of course!"

"Fallen Paradise actually recruits trash like you? Their hiring standards are a bit low."

"You’re asking to die!" The woman flew into a rage. She aimed her demonic black hand at Li Xiye, and a ferocious torrent of Darkness, composed of various Curses and potent venoms, erupted forth.

Li Xiye slammed her hands together. A magnificent clap of thunder echoed as a layer of azure electrical arcs burst out with a shockwave. The torrent of Curses shattered with ease. Waves of arcing electricity spread out in all directions, and the moment they swept over the woman’s body, they blasted her to pieces.

But her shattered body immediately began to repair itself again.

RUMBLE...

Just then, the earth began to tremble violently. A colossal crystalline tree, both crimson and jet-black, erupted from the ground. It shot up hundreds of meters in an instant, its crystalline branches spreading out to blot out the sky. At the same time, countless thorns and poisonous flowers burst from the soil, growing and spreading at an incredible rate. It was a vibrant scene, yet bizarrely, all the plants were crystallized.

A massive amount of corruption spread out. The Low-Tier Corrupters who were being bombarded by artillery fire began a new round of evolution, gradually transforming into Crystal Demons.