The Heavenly Martial Empress Returns: An OP Xianxia Returnee LitRPG

Chapter 34: Stand Proud! Fight and Die Like a God!

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Fear.

Utter horror!

The God of Deep Darkness was completely awestruck after seeing Bing Xue transform.

It was just like him in shape and form, yet she was much more powerful, much more potent, much more... deep?

Her very new appearance, her form, and her shape made him start to doubt his own strength and even his own title.

Against complete and utter dominance in every aspect, how could a God who has always thought of himself as supreme feel?

Like a child who had never experienced the world outside or all the hardships that life gives, he felt completely afraid of it all.

He didn’t even know what to say or what to do.

Bing Xue kept approaching him, becoming shadows and disappearing, only to reappear above him. A dozen enormous palms of shadows descended slowly; his eyes opened wide.

“Ahhh!”

He screamed as he stepped back, using his powers to quickly evade a barrage of powerful strikes that made the Underworld tremble constantly.

BAAM! BAAM! BAAM!

Bing Xue followed him with sharp, crimson eyes spreading through her entire formless and shapeless body. Not only palms, but countless beasts of the darkness appeared.

Snakes, spiders, dragons, sharks, crows, and all matters of horror! Tentacles spread, blocking the way for the God to escape. The monstrous beast approached him as he barely fended them off with Void Waves he unleashed from his hands.

However, he was constantly wasting his energies, growing more tired than ever before. For the first time in his entire life, the God of Deep Darkness was gasping for air.

“Hahh… Hahhh… HAAHHH…!”

He was having a panic attack as the darkness lurked around him. He couldn’t see anything but obscurity.

And those crimson eyes.

Thousands—no, millions of them!

Glaring at him, judging him with their endless indifference!

Was he a challenge to Bing Xue?

No!

Was he entertaining to Bing Xue?

No!

Was he… What was he before her?

Why was she not killing him yet?

What was she seeking out of his reactions, out of his suffering?!

Bing Xue, through all her life, had struggled and fought to reach where she was. Even this form she showcased was nothing but the prize of all her efforts.

Yet these gods were so different from her that it made her experience an emotion she had almost forgotten.

“You were given everything from the beginning, weren’t you? Your power, your abilities, your divinity.” Bing Xue finally spoke, her countless dark tentacles wrapping around his body.

The God of Deep Darkness kept fighting back, beams of void and explosions of shadows covering Bing Xue’s body, yet she was completely unscathed. The Horrors of the Dark kept surging from her body, being birthed endlessly to devour him.

“So what?! What are you trying to say?!” He screamed.

“I had to work very hard for what I earned... So, even though you are so weak compared to me, I can’t help but hold a certain emotion I haven’t experienced in a long while.” Laughed Bing Xue.

“E-Emotion?” The god asked.

“I envy you.” She said.

“W-What…?” He muttered.

“You were born with strength; you were gifted a world. But what did I ever have? Just blood, just battles, fear, desperation, tears…” She muttered to herself without even looking at the God. “Hahaha… HAHAHAHA!”

And then she laughed. Her entire body appeared in front of the god, her fists reaching his body. A dozen palm attacks reached him. Each hit sent a wave of pure agony through his entire body. Large cracks started appearing across his divine form.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

“UGH?!”

His body was launched away, falling over the ground and bouncing several times. The surroundings were a mess, constantly shaking and being destroyed. At any moment, the ceiling would collapse over their heads.

“Stand up…” Bing Xue walked slowly towards the God; her eyes full of rage. “For being gifted talent and power, are you going to moan in agony as I kill you?! STAND PROUD! GET UP AND FIGHT! SHOW ME THAT THE STRENGTH YOU WERE GIVEN IS NOT WASTED!”

“Y-You…!” The God of Deep Darkness was, for the first time, experiencing yet another new sensation.

The endless desire to fight for his life! Something he never, ever felt before. He had a feeling of wanting to survive, a feeling of wanting to do anything to keep on living, even as he gritted his teeth, even as he bled, even as he cried.

“I don’t want to die…! So I’ll fight… I’LL FIGHT!!!”

He rushed towards Bing Xue, their fists clashing against one another, explosions of darkness and void erupting everywhere. The entire Underworld was collapsing. Enormous cracks leading to the center of the planet opened wide, magma drowning most of the Underworld as the two gods fought.

“If you don’t want to die, then show it to me, God of Deep Darkness! You have to fight, fight until the very last moment!”

BAAM!

“I have never experienced anything like this!”

CLAASH!

“This is life; this is LIVING!”

BOOM!

“Living…? Even… as I die?!”

The God of Deep Darkness kept gaining countless cracks. He knew it. His life was coming soon to an end; his entire existence was going to finally end.

His entire life, he lived without a larger purpose other than to please his followers, to be the god they wanted him to be, to embody darkness, and to create and raise cults.

There was a feeling, a desire to grow, which he did passively, over eons after eons of simply sitting over his throne and ordering others what to do.

Yet…

YET!

It was only now that he was finally experiencing what it felt like to live and to truly desire to survive. This was the first time he was ever experiencing the desire to live for another day—to win a fight!

This exhilarating feeling of being in a battle of life and death made him so euphoric and shocked!

His hands trembled, and his body fell apart.

Yet he couldn’t help but smile.

“I am… smiling?”

His eyes opened wide as he looked at his own fists, falling apart into tiny pieces. The almighty being in front of him continued attacking him. Bing Xue had no mercy, crushing him with each fist. Each one of her attacks broke him like glass.

“Hahah… I’ve finally… I am finally living…” He laughed, his divine body fell over the floor, and an explosion of black flames spread as the last sparks of life left gathered into a single attack, a pure-black spear. “I won’t die… Not… yet…”

The spear made of black flames flew towards Bing Xue, and she didn’t evade or defend against it, taking it. The spear managed to pierce her clothes and even her shoulder, making her bleed. She could have easily destroyed the attack or blocked it with her defensive abilities.

Yet she decided to take the hit and bleed.

“This is the damage you’ve caused to me.” She explained to him, tearing apart the spear from her wound, as the God of Deep Darkness glanced in awe at a hole where the blood of someone as strong as her was coming out. This was the wound he left on her.

“I-I managed to damage you…” He smiled. “Haha… Hahaha… I-I…”

“You fought well.” Bing Xue smiled. “You’ve learned my respect, God of Deep Darkness. It is a pity that we had to cross paths in such a way, but I bid you a good rest. In the afterlife, or perhaps, the eternal void where all things come from."

“Death… So this is... death…” The God of Deep Darkness muttered.

An even darker darkness than anything else he had ever created engulfed his consciousness; like a careful mother, it embraced him in an eternal slumber.

One he would never, ever wake up from.

“I… lost…”

His existence faded away as Bing Xue absorbed his entire being into her own. Her wound quickly healed but left behind a slightly ugly scar. This was the mark he left on her, as a warrior and as someone who battled for his life.

“So much power…” Bing Xue looked at her own hands, analyzing her body. Her dark form became even darker as she felt the entire Divinity of the God of Deep Darkness become one with her.

She saw visions—some sort of enlightenment. The birth of the God, the darkness and miasma that gathered within the depths of the Underworld, the fear, the anguish, the horror, the anger, the insanity—all of these emotions that were born from the mortals of this world.

All of them gathered within him for over a million years. Slowly yet steadily forming him, his pulsating miasmic body continued growing larger and larger, and his roots spread, forming a Divine Domain.

The Underworld was slowly born, as his existence and birth altered the very Laws of Reality in the World of Eclipse. The God of Deep Darkness, the embodiment of all that is dark, all that is evil, and all that is death, was born in that moment.

As he sat down over his throne, he watched in silence, being what the mortals wanted him to be. Yet throughout all his years, he always felt lonely, despite surrounding himself with loyal subjects.

He often wondered if his life had any meaning.

Until he met her, Bing Xue.

“You were nothing but a child at the end, weren’t you?” Bing Xue felt a slight sense of guilt for what she had done, gritting her teeth and shedding a tear. “But it had to be done. Your monsters killed my people. And I had to do this. Your existence could no longer be tolerated.”

And just as she suspected, even when the God of Deep Darkness died, the world of Eclipse remained untouched. Because these Gods were not truly the pillars of the world of Eclipse, they were simply that: Gods.

“A world without Gods, I will give you this privilege, people of Eclipse.”

She pierced through the bedrock and reached the surface in a split second. With a wave of her hands, she closed the holes leading to the Underworld and then set her gaze into the skies.

Heaven.

“I am not done yet.” She thought. “There is another one that must go.”

By kicking the air, Bing Xue appeared within a split second within the highest of heavens, the highest of clouds, all above it all. Piercing through an invisible Dimensional Membrane and reaching yet another Divine Realm.

Unlike the Underworld, this was a beautiful world of radiance and light, of clouds and floating islands. The sun shone brightly above the blue skies as a sea of clouds waved gently below her. There were a dozen floating islands with their own golden temples.

Each temple opened its gates, greeting Bing Xue with millions of Angelic Spirits between Level 500 and Level 1000. Certainly, the Goddess of Light was much stronger than the God of Deep Darkness.

“S-She’s here…!”

“She just killed the God of Deep Darkness and is already coming here?!”

“Stop her! At all costs!”

“Our mother has said we cannot let her take another step!”

Bing Xue saw millions of angelic spirits attack her at once, yet with a mere thought and by combining her Black Heaven Physique with the Divinity of the God of Deep Darkness, she engulfed them all into endless shadows.

“{Umbral Sea}”

SPLASH!

Her shadows and her darkness changed their form; much like how she was able to manipulate Photon Essence, she now was able to create its dark equivalent, Umbral Essence!

Her sea of umbral shadows consumed all of her foes, making them disappear in an instant. Nothing was left behind; the shadows consumed it all.

While Photon Energy could be used for a variety of helpful purposes, Umbral Essence was different; it was a greedy energy, a power that desired to devour everything and leave nothing behind.

It didn’t take long for Bing Xue to reach her destination. After slaying over two million Angelic Spirits, what greeted her were the golden gates of the Palace of the Brilliant Mother of Light.

“I am here, Goddess. Knock, knock.”

The golden doors burst open and exploded into pieces before her two gentle knocks revealed the temple’s interior. There was a single woman of indescribable beauty waiting for her inside.

“Y-You… So you’ve come to kill me…”

Despite how she had acted before, she seemed oddly serious, with a slight sense of despair in her eyes.

“You killed my brother…” She started sobbing.

“It had to be done.” Bing Xue said. “You will now join him.”

“Why? Please, let’s try to solve this without fighting…” She started asking her. “Please…! We can do this in another way; do you need to kill me?!”

“I do.” Bing Xue continued walking towards her. "Maybe I could have done it differently, if you didn't kill millions of people when I wasn't there."

“B-But there’s so much I want to do left. My world… We have to continue climbing the Tower…!” The Goddess cried, her radiant body shining brightly.

“Whatever you want to do is not my problem.” Bing Xue said sternly. “I’ve come to kill you, and that is what I’m going to do. You will die now, and nothing is changing that outcome.”

“N-No…! NOOO!”

The goddess grew desperate and despaired, her light shining brightly as millions of beams of light flashed, piercing Bing Xue’s entire body.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

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