It Is the Guardian God

At one end of the ruins, Councillor Zhu Meng stared at the Totem Xuan Serpent in disbelief. For years he had exhausted every means at his disposal to permanently eliminate what he considered Hangzhou's greatest threat — yet here, at the most desperate moment imaginable, it was the Totem Xuan Serpent that had stepped forward.

Now he finally understood why the Guardian Clan revered it as a divine being. The awe-inspiring power it was displaying at this very moment truly made it seem like the guardian god of an entire city — something beyond all comprehension.

The vast White Demon Eagle Legion could not breach the venom Barrier it had laid, and the Silver Dome Lord had been driven beyond the city's boundaries, not daring to advance a single step. Though both were Sovereign-class creatures, the Totem Xuan Serpent's dominion was clearly a full tier above the Silver Dome Lord's.

Beyond the western edge of the city stretched a web of highways cutting across the flatlands, reaching inland toward distant cities. The Silver Dome Lord beat its wings furiously and finally hauled itself up to several hundred meters — but even at that altitude, all the Totem Xuan Serpent needed to do was rear up and it could close its jaws around it.

The Totem Xuan Serpent stood several kilometers distant. This time it allowed the Silver Dome Lord to fly, those cold eyes tracking it without blinking.

The Silver Dome Lord had already reached a thousand meters, spiraling skyward on fast-rising currents. It would not be long before it returned to the high altitude where it could unleash its full power.

The Totem Xuan Serpent was still on the ground — and then, without warning, its outline began to blur, like a reflection in water dissolving into ripples, fading away until there was nothing left.

It vanished.

That colossal body, as immense as ever, had left not a single trace.

Throughout its ascent, the Silver Dome Lord had kept constant watch on the Totem Xuan Serpent. It feared the great serpent deeply — but its disappearance brought no comfort whatsoever.

Sure enough, directly above it, a churning mass of dark blue-black mist had materialized at some unknown moment — and within that mist, somehow, impossibly, the Totem Xuan Serpent was already there.

Like a creature of the deep sea, wherever the mist existed, it could move freely, without limit.

It traced a vast circle around a central point, its passage leaving behind a continuous ring of dark blue-black outline, head meeting tail to complete the loop.

The ring encompassed an area easily covering a full kilometer around the Silver Dome Lord. Across the entire inner surface of that circular outline, the markings from the Totem Xuan Serpent's scales spread in dense profusion — the imprints, the traceries, the ancient symbols — until from a distance it resembled a colossal Eight Trigrams diagram filled with innumerable inscribed steles, arching over the Silver Dome Lord's head like a celestial canopy.

That ephemeral force slowly solidified, condensing into massive ancient stone steles, one after another.

Each stele stood over ten meters tall, forged from those same imprints, traceries, and symbols. In an instant, what had been nothing more than a Totem pattern glowing with dark blue-black radiance transformed into the Celestial Stele Seal — an overwhelming formation of countless ancient stone monoliths crashing down from the sky above.

The Celestial Stele Seal plummeted from the high clouds into the vast space between heaven and earth, unmistakable even from the farthest reaches of the city.

The Seal struck the Silver Dome Lord's back with perfect precision — like a flat, circular meteor sliding carelessly out of the heavens — carrying the power to shatter the earth and rend the sky.

The Silver Dome Lord was slammed into the ground. The Stele Seal had been infused with powerful Earth Element magic — already staggering in size, with the Earth Element's gravitational field piled on top, each stele carried weight equivalent to several mountain ranges stacked upon each other.

**Boom — boom — boom—**

The earth itself could not bear the load and caved inward, opening a vast circular chasm.

The chasm yawned open between two parallel highways, both of them now splashed with the Silver Dome Lord's blood.

Driven underground.

The Totem Xuan Serpent had not merely allowed the Silver Dome Lord to take flight — it had stripped it of even the right to stand on solid ground, driving it beneath the earth's surface in one crushing blow. Domineering beyond measure.

"What an outrageous ability — is this something only Totems can do?" Mo Fan peered down from atop the Totem Xuan Serpent's head at the seemingly bottomless pit below, his face written with shock.

*No wonder Tang Yue had said that once the Totem Xuan Serpent survived the Molting Season, there would be nothing any Councillor could do about it.*

Power like this had to place it at the very apex of the world's living hierarchy. With a guardian like this watching over Hangzhou, what threat could there possibly be?

The Stele Seal shattered inside the chasm, splintering into countless fragments of rubble. The Silver Dome Lord crawled out in wretched condition — blood soaked its head, its back, its wings. Its once-impenetrable plumage had shed in untold quantities. Even before the battle had begun, Councillor Zhu Meng had fought desperately to destroy most of its Domain; now it had clashed head-on with a Totem Xuan Serpent that outclassed it in every way. It had been absolutely demolished.

The Silver Dome Lord's blood-soaked state was visible to countless people far across the city.

For so long, people had been stunned. For so long, they had lived beneath the crushing weight of the white demon legion's terror. But when they saw the Silver Dome Lord — their tormentor, their oppressor — sustain such devastating wounds from the Totem Xuan Serpent, they could not hold back. A wave of cheers erupted.

"It really is protecting us — this Sky-Scraping Serpent is actually protecting us!" someone in the city cried out.

"We were wrong about it all along," said an elderly man who had once witnessed the siege on the Totem Xuan Serpent at West Lake.

Back then, he and the people gathered around West Lake had all heeded Councillor Zhu Meng's call, hoping to see the Totem Xuan Serpent — that so-called threat — eliminated once and for all. How foolish that had been. If it truly had been executed at Zhu Meng's order, they would almost certainly have already perished at the talons of these white demons.

Among the crowd, Tang Yue — tasked with protecting the civilians — watched the distant Totem Xuan Serpent, emotion rising inside her, tears glimmering at the corners of her eyes.

The plague had not been its doing. It had never taken a single human life. Its immense size and overwhelming aura might have made people fear it — but it had always hidden beneath the waters of West Lake, silently guarding the city.

Now the Totem Xuan Serpent had proven itself, and the people had completely changed how they saw it. This was the best possible outcome.

Above the city, the White Demon Eagle Legion's assault had visibly weakened. Knowing they could not break through the venom Barrier, they had stopped throwing themselves away in pointless slaughter. Along the city's edges, White Demon Eagle corpses lay piled in layer upon layer across the streets — a grim and staggering spectacle.

Even with fury burning inside it, the Silver Dome Lord dared not renew its assault on the city after the grievous wounds the Totem Xuan Serpent had dealt it. It cried out, commanding the White Demon Eagle Legion to cover its retreat.

It spread its wings and soared, heading west...

"Is it trying to flee?" Lingling asked.

"Obviously. It summoned a million underlings and still couldn't get near the Totem Xuan Serpent. Then it tried going one-on-one and got demolished. What else is it supposed to do but run?" Mo Fan said.