The Punishment Legion was the
And leading the Punishment Legion was the Stewart family's most respected Second Elder, so there were no issues whatsoever with command.
An army like this, if deployed properly, could indeed turn the tide of the current crisis — at the very least, it could even out the front lines.
Yet a feeling of dread had been lingering in Agnes's heart, refusing to dissipate.
"What's going on?"
Agnes climbed to the elevated platform and spotted the Punishment Legion almost instantly. Compared to the previous few times, the aura emanating from the punishment guards this time was even more formidable, which put Agnes somewhat at ease.
"Defensive wards — preparation complete!"
"Initiating ward input — preparing to activate the Holy City's protective formation!"
"Alchemical siege cannons — second-stage preparation complete! Ready to fire at any moment!"
Command after command was relayed in succession, and a layer of wards — one that would allow free passage through the Holy City's magical formation — was densely inscribed upon the Punishment Legion's armor.
"Sortie!" From the central defensive phalanx, a massive golden banner swayed, and a warm yet resolute voice rang out.
"Punishment Legion — move out!!!"
An elderly white-haired man standing at the forefront let out a fierce roar as the aura exclusive to a sixth-rank powerhouse erupted from his body!
This was the unique bloodline power of the Stewart family's bloodline sixth-rank creature — the Three-Headed Python!
The sheer force of it was enough to shake the minds and spirits of countless defenders stationed atop the walls.
"No! Something's wrong!" Agnes finally realized something was amiss. Her pupils dilated sharply, and even her voice turned shrill. "How could Second Uncle's aura have grown so much stronger? Even using forbidden techniques, this shouldn't be possible. Unless it's..."
She let out a desperate roar: "Be careful..."
But everything was already too late.
"The power of punishment — walk with me!" The soldiers of the Punishment Legion roared in unison, their bodies subtly swelling as terrifying and malevolent power erupted forth in an instant.
Boom!
A massive number of arrays erupted, weaving everyone's power into a single stream and channeling it into the Second Elder's hands.
"Thunder of Punishment!" The Second Elder bellowed, unleashing an attack brimming with devastating destructive force. It slammed directly into the city gates!
Crack! Crack! Black lightning swept across, blazing with blinding radiance.
The guards on the city walls were charred in an instant before being incinerated into ash, which then dissolved into the smallest of atoms.
Following that, the gates of the Holy City themselves began to crumble piece by piece under the Thunder of Punishment's assault, with vast numbers of protective runes collapsing!
"No! Don't!" Agnes clutched her head, tears scattering involuntarily.
The defensive arrays atop the Holy City were extraordinarily powerful — grand formations laid by Rule Exponents themselves. Even the Punishment Legion would have struggled to destroy them in a single strike, and that was precisely what the Holy City had relied on to stand against the horde of Devouring Beasts!
But now, the Punishment Legion had been granted recognition by the defensive formations. It was as if they had torn the arrays apart from within, instantly stripping the Holy City of its greatest shield.
Worse still, the core defensive formation had already been nearly annihilated in the enemy's previous attacks. Those had been the elite of the Steward family — all of them Agnes's kinsmen! And among them, her own father, the patriarch of the Steward family.
"In the name of Devouring — kill!"
The Second Elder who had turned traitor laughed maniacally. His entire body detonated, transforming into a terrifying three-headed giant serpent, its irregular scales laced with a tangled web of bulging blood vessels — a truly nightmarish sight.
Immediately, the defecting Punishment Legion opened fire on the stunned allies around them. Screams of agony erupted without pause, and blood and fire rained through the air.
"Why? Why?!"
Agnes rushed forward. She had been fortunate — the section she was responsible for was not the most critical stretch, so the losses she had suffered were relatively light.
But with the most vital defensive array destroyed, this battle had already lost any semblance of suspense.
"Why? Second Elder — why would you betray the honor of our Guardian family?"
Tears welled in Agnes's eyes, her voice still trembling with disbelief.
"Why?" The three-headed serpent's vertical pupils gleamed with mockery and madness.
"The Guardian family? Heh heh… Did you think I enjoyed being a watchdog for the Ten Thousand Serpents? Bound by the shackles of a bloodline curse, unable to break through for an entire lifetime, condemned to nothing more than guarding someone else's door — I've long since had enough of that!"
Hsss!
The three-headed serpent roared as countless serpentfolk who failed to dodge were devoured. Rings of blood-red energy surged through its blood vessels, flooding every part of its body, making it more grotesque and powerful. It even seemed to be approaching the peak of the sixth rank, with faint stirrings of a charge toward the seventh.
"Now this is power! Marvelous!" A look of intoxication gleamed in the three-headed serpent's vertical pupils.
"
"Corrupted? No! I asked for this myself! Only in this way can I obtain true power! And it's not just me! Every single guard in the Punishment Legion made the same choice!"
As the Second Elder spoke, the Punishment Legion guards wore manic grins on their faces and instantly transformed into colossal serpentine forms, their bodies bearing bizarre, deformed features — an unmistakable mark of the Glutton King's corruption.
"Agnes! Stand down! He's completely lost his mind!"
BOOM! The rubble of the city gate exploded outward, revealing a sleek, elegant three-headed serpent — though its scales had sloughed off in vast patches, leaving horrifying wounds across its body.
"Father!" Agnes cried in joy.
"Heh heh! My dear brother! You're not dead yet?" The Second Elder sneered with twisted amusement.
"An abomination who willingly surrendered to the power of Gluttony — you are no longer a member of this family. I will correct our family's mistake!"
The three-headed serpent lunged directly at the Second Elder.
At the same time, a tremendous force flung Agnes far away. "Go! Now!"
"Heh heh! Brother! Now I will prove that I have always been superior to you — far more worthy of leading this entire family!"
The Gluttony-corrupted three-headed serpent roared and clashed with the clan head without a shred of restraint.
The blood-soaked carnage of two sixth-rank behemoths instantly carved out a swath of devastation and a quarantine zone. Whether it was the guards or the Glutton-type beasts, any who drew near were simply shaken to death.
"ROAR! HOWL!" A massive horde of Glutton-type beasts surged straight through the earlier breach into the Holy City, clashing with the remaining guards in a brutal frenzy of bloodshed and slaughter.
Agnes's face was drenched in tears. In the end, all she could make out through the choking clouds of terrifying smoke was her father's body collapsing limply to the ground, and the wild, cackling laughter of the Second Elder…
…
Boom! Boom! Boom!
As the Holy City was being ravaged by Devouring Beasts, it was as though the prayers of most of its residents had been heard. At the very center, the colossal Serpent Mother statue began to radiate a blinding light.
Within that layer of radiance, the entire Holy City seemed to experience a magnitude-ten earthquake as countless deep fissures tore open across the ground.
Crash! As if the heavens were collapsing and the earth splitting apart, numerous buildings throughout the Holy City twisted and crumbled. The colossal Serpent Mother statue sank lower and lower before a terrifying abyss was revealed beneath it.
The bottomless cavern appeared to lead straight to the heart of the earth, exuding an eerie and terrifying aura of malevolence.
"The power of Devouring, masked alongside the power of Chaos! Beilusebabu! Have you allied with the Filth Bird?"
A serpentine sphere like a star rose slowly from the depths of the cavern, and a multitude of colossal serpent heads unfurled, revealing the bewitching countenance of the Mother of Ten Thousand Serpents.
The powerful fluctuation of an Eighth-rank existence instantly silenced the entire Holy City. Hordes of Devouring Beasts were directly swallowed by the shadows, reduced to ash and scattered to the winds.
At the moment of life and death for the Holy City, the Mother of Ten Thousand Serpents had finally stepped forward!
"Sovereign Mother! Great Supreme! Ancestor!" The surviving residents of the Holy City immediately dropped to their knees, tears of joy streaming down their faces.
What appeared this time was not the usual sacrificial phantom or avatar—it was the true, original body of the Mother of Ten Thousand Serpents!
Every single scale on her body carried an incomparably tangible sense of real flesh and blood, even articulating the laws of existence. The mere ambient aura she radiated brought indescribable benefit to all who bore the serpent bloodline.
"Wanshe! You were the first to break our pact and begin intervening directly!"
Accompanied by wild, cackling laughter, a monstrous serpent suddenly emerged from the ranks of the Devouring Beast army surrounding the Holy City.
No—or rather, calling it a giant serpent was no longer accurate. The creature possessed the body of a colossal serpent, yet it had grown a pair of eerie, demonic wings, purple-brown muscular arms knotted with sinew, thighs equipped with hooked claws, and a face covered in a multitude of compound eyes.
It looked as though Beilusebabu's fractured soul fragment had fused with some manner of half-serpent being, yet it radiated a power pushed to the absolute limit—even rivaling the Mother of Ten Thousand Serpents herself.
This form clearly drew a flash of astonishment in the Mother of Ten Thousand Serpents' eyes.
"Hehe! The raw material for this body happens to be one of your own descendants, combined with my Devouring power in absolute perfection! I must say, I have a certain little creature to thank for that gift!"
Beilusebabu split open its massive maw, running a barbed, purple-black tongue across its razor-sharp white teeth. "And as repayment, I intend to devour him afterward—to merge him forever with the great Beilusebabu…"
The frenzied power of Devouring and the omnipresent shadow energy began a tense standoff, using the walls of the Holy City as their boundary. In a single instant, scores of guards and Devouring Beasts alike were reduced to ashes.
The clash between two Eighth-rank existences—one that could very well determine the future trajectory of the Purgatory world—immediately drew an enormous amount of attention.
Several terrifying wills descended directly upon this location, with the faint cries of the Filth Birds and the judgment power of the Eye of Judgment continuously surging forth.
"That cunning little brat—I never thought he'd cause me such enormous trouble!"
The Mother of Ten Thousand Snakes' eyes briefly went vacant, her gaze locking onto a certain spot within the Holy City! (……