Chapter 523: Divine Puppetry

“Sss——”
Under the sacred purifying power of the holy light, two of those Tomb Spirit Guardians were instantly purified into nothingness. Realizing that the holy light posed the greatest threat—like a natural enemy—they abandoned their target, Uther, and turned to attack the others instead.
Seeing this, Ampus revealed his massive form, dozens of feet tall. With a single grab, he seized several Tomb Spirit Guardians with mantis bodies and scorpion tails that were charging forward and swallowed them whole.
“Hahahahaha…”
Delighted by this success, the Abyssal Demon Smith burst into laughter, acting like a wolf in a chicken coop, mercilessly hunting down these defenseless prey and delicacies.
Noticing that these Tomb Spirit Guardians were beneficial to Ampus, Uther simply activated his sacred shield to protect the rest, allowing the demi-god demons to feast.
Soon, a group of fourteen Tomb Spirit Guardians at the Bronze rank were completely devoured by the Abyssal Demon Smith. This was because these guardians had largely lost their sanity; under the influence of resentment, they only knew to frantically attack the invaders, with no thought of escaping.
To Donald, these insect-like spirit beings held little value—killing them merely meant recovering their soul energy. But for Ampus, the Abyssal Demon Smith, they were an excellent supplement to enhance his own power. Since Donald didn’t lack sources of soul energy and the others had no objections, it made sense to leave these benefits to Ampus.
It took less than three breaths to deal with this group of Tomb Spirit Guardians. The group continued on their journey, but obstacles began appearing more frequently ahead.
Clearly, the closer they got to the center of the tomb, the stronger its defensive forces became.
At first, those mantis-like spirit beings were only at the strength of Bronze warriors, without any innate abilities, skilled only in close combat. But after traveling hundreds of kilometers and facing their ninth obstruction, the attackers turned into another insectoid warrior race at the Silver rank.
These new Tomb Spirit Guardians resembled the previous ones, but their carapaces were greenish-blue. In addition to fighting with physical weapons, they also possessed spell-like abilities to control plants, using thorny vines to trap and disrupt enemies in battle.
Of course, even with these new guardians’ strength, they still couldn’t hinder Donald and his group’s progress.

Even under the suppression of the space of the Divine Tomb ruins, just a casual attack from any one of their ten would be at a legendary level—far beyond the ability of those Divine Tomb guardians, whose strength had greatly declined after transforming into spiritual entities, to resist. One after another, these waves of vengeful spirit guardians were devoured by Amps like snacks. Despite the huge difference in rank, the sheer number of hundreds still brought significant benefits to him, strengthening the power of the Abyssal Demon Forging slightly. Ever since leaving the abyss and choosing to become Donald’s subordinate, Amps hadn’t had such a satisfying time in ages! Due to his demonic identity not being tolerated in the main world, although he was one of the few demi-gods among Donald’s subordinates with combat prowess, he could only stay in the semi-planar space for long periods. For a demi-god demon, this was practically the same as being in prison! Though this “prison” was far larger than ordinary cities! Now, in such a special environment as the Divine Tomb Garden, he had the chance to fully utilize his strength—how could he not take advantage of it to indulge in some fun? Seeing this, Donald understood his subordinate’s feelings and encouraged him, saying, “Go ahead and devour freely! Once you’ve accumulated enough, you might be able to break free from the shackles of the Abyssal Will, ignite divine fire, and become a true demi-god. Then I can easily help you become a true god!” Hearing this, the Abyssal Demon Forging was overjoyed and devoured those Divine Tomb vengeful spirit guardians even more eagerly. With the cooperation of the two demi-gods, Uther and Amps, Donald and his group hardly encountered any delays on their journey, which left everyone quite satisfied. It wasn’t until they reached the foot of a stone mountain and could see from afar a magnificent yet ruined complex of large temples atop it that they faced a more troublesome obstacle. “This should be the core of the Divine Tomb, formed from the remnants of the Divine Tomb’s master. The entire mountain is covered by rules—flying or climbing is impossible. There’s only one path to ascend. If lucky, there might still be some remnants of the divine body, or even complete divine artifacts and other immortal objects. If unlucky, there will only be a powerful willful deity dwelling there!” Through his divine vision, Donald could clearly see the radiant rules above the mountain. There was only one wide stone path carved by humans to ascend, clearly meant for the servants of the former master of the divine kingdom to go up and pay their respects.

Upon entering the Stone Mountain area, they encountered no sudden attacks. However, once they stepped onto the main path leading up the mountain, they faced considerable trouble. The reason was two stone statues standing at the entrance of the stone staircase, which, upon sensing the arrival of intruders, suddenly came to life from their statue state and transformed into two enormous stone giants, each thirty feet tall. Crack, crack, crack… As the stone giant statues stood up, their joints made sounds of stones colliding, followed by silent roars. “Boom…” These stone giants had no mouth or vocal organs, nor even the ability to breathe, so they could only emit muffled sounds. Yet the intensity of these sound waves was equivalent to that of a level-six sound wave spell. Aside from a few incarnations of true gods and demigods who were largely immune, the three legendary warriors present had to use shields for defense. Although they could, to some extent, match the strength of weaker demigods, they were still bound by mortal bodies and suffered damage from such attacks. These two stone giant statues were clearly divine puppets created using the power of the earth element, with strengths comparable to those of legendary warriors. However, thanks to their physical form, their resistance to attacks far exceeded that of ordinary legendary warriors, with slowness being their only major weakness. “It’s my turn now. Die!” Faced with these two divine puppets, the Warhammer God, who had yet to engage in combat, stepped forward first, wielding his pair of secondary divine warhammers to fight against the two stone giants. Beyond combat, the Warhammer God, who was also skilled in the fields of metal, smelting, and earth elements, was undoubtedly the best candidate to deal with such massive earth element puppets. This was quite similar to his old rival, the Stone Bear God. No wonder these two were irreconcilable enemies, both in terms of their factions and inherent alignments.