Chapter Eighty-Two: The Purge Begins

“I never said that,” Sea General Sea Dragon said, gently shaking his head.

“Then what do you mean?” asked Sorrento of the South Atlantic.

Sea Dragon replied with calm confidence, “We can use the evil god of North America to weaken the Sanctuary in advance and make thorough preparations for the holy war to come.”

“No!”

Bian of the North Pacific rejected the idea at once, then added, “If you help that North American evil god, you would also be placing Lord Poseidon in an unjust position.”

Though Athena and Lord Poseidon were indeed at odds, that was, after all, an internal conflict among the gods of Olympus.

If they were to aid an alien evil deity against the Sanctuary, it would be no different from forcing Lord Poseidon to sever himself from the divine domain of Olympus.

When that time came, every Olympian god would likely become an enemy of the Sea Realm.

“Why does none of you trust me?” Sea Dragon of the North Atlantic gave a helpless smile. “How could I possibly dare do such a thing?”

“Then what exactly do you mean?” Io, Sea General of the South Pacific, was growing impatient.

“We help neither side.”

The corners of Sea Dragon’s mouth lifted as he explained slowly, “A god is still a god in the end. They are not so easy to deal with. If the Sanctuary launches a campaign against the evil god of North America, they will surely have to pay an immense price.”

“We need not help the Sanctuary, nor need we help the evil god of North America. We only need to watch the situation closely and, at the crucial moment, hinder the Sanctuary’s reinforcements ever so slightly. If that makes them suffer greater losses, it will be enough.”

“Like that?”

Io of the South Pacific considered it for a moment, then nodded. “That proposal is not bad.”

“But even so, would that not still make us seem to be helping the evil god of North America?” Bian of the North Pacific hesitated.

“Your concern is unnecessary.”

Sea Dragon immediately said, “I have already seen that some of the Underworld Specters have gone to the Sanctuary. If we add a little more trouble on top of that, it amounts to nothing at all.”

Hearing that the Underworld had already begun to act, Bian’s final misgivings vanished.

“Very well. We shall do as you say.”

With the Underworld standing in front to bear the brunt, the Sea Realm’s situation could hardly become too dire.

The other two voiced no objection.

Elsewhere, Mayura of the Peacock and Yin Seventeen landed one after the other on the northwestern coast of North America.

“Prepare for battle.”

After setting the two Bronze girls down, she called to the four of them. At once, a stream of green light rose from her neck and transformed into a green Sacred Cloth edged in red, which clothed her body.

At her words, the others also, in silent accord, ignited their Cosmos and activated their own Sacred Cloths.

Four streams of light of different colors rose and became different Sacred Cloths upon their bodies.

With the five Saints standing together, the difference in the quality of their armor was obvious at a glance.

The Cloths of the three Bronze Saints were the crudest, protecting only three main areas—the heart, the arms, and the lower legs—while most of the rest of their bodies remained exposed.

Mayura’s and Yin Seventeen’s Silver Cloths, however, clearly covered far more. Aside from the waist, the arms, the thighs, and a few small portions left bare, most of their bodies were wrapped in silver armor.

“You three stay close to me,” Mayura said, turning her head. “Especially once battle begins—do not leave my sight.”

Though they all knew her eyes could not see, they could still sense that Mayura was “looking” at them with her sixth sense.

Ruolan and the other two especially understood their own limits well enough. Those words were plainly meant for the three young Bronzes.

“Yes, Lady Mayura!” they answered in unison.

“If I am entangled by a powerful fighter of the evil god, the safety of those three will be yours to watch over,” Mayura said, turning toward Yin Seventeen.

“I understand.” Yin Seventeen nodded.

“Good. Then let us go.”

Mayura gave the word and immediately took the lead, rushing inland.

Perhaps to accommodate the three young Bronzes, and also to search for the evil god’s fighters across the land, Mayura did not move too quickly, using only about ten times the speed of sound.

Even so, ten times the speed of sound was already terrifying.

A Bronze Saint’s search radius was roughly a hundred meters. Moving at ten times the speed of sound, one could search approximately a hundred square kilometers every second.

And the entire North American continent covered only a little more than twenty-four million square kilometers.

For a single Bronze Saint to carry out a carpet search over all of North America, it would not even take a full day.

And with Silver Saints like Yin Seventeen and Mayura, whose search and perception range increased along with their strength, the area they could cover in a given time grew even greater.

For five of them to search an entire continent by human effort was no wild fantasy, but a dreadful and very real possibility.

It was only because the evil god’s forces in North America had shifted from darkness into the open and given up concealment that Yin Seventeen and the others could use such a crude method for a sweeping search.

Otherwise, if their foe had remained hidden underground like Sobek, the Crocodile God of the Nile, they would have had to spend time investigating slowly.

The five spread out in a fan formation, searching back and forth across the earth. After some unknown stretch of time, as they passed a small town, several abnormal Cosmos entered their range of perception.

These Cosmos were unlike ordinary ones. Their owners could not fully control them; they leaked energy unconsciously at every moment, like balloons forever hissing air.

Such a striking trait could only belong to evil god fighters—men forcibly awakened to Cosmos by an evil deity.

With a more careful search, they quickly pinpointed the exact location of that group.

It lay by a ten-meter-high pyramid at the northeastern corner of the town.

Without question, that pyramid was their stronghold.

“Kill without mercy.”

At Mayura’s command, she surged forward at once.

At the same time, one of the evil god fighters within the stronghold also sensed that murderous and immensely powerful Cosmos approaching.

“Enemy attack!” he shouted a warning.

But a distance of barely a hundred meters was, to a Saint, little more than the blink of an eye.

Much less for a supreme Silver warrior like Mayura.

The evil god fighter had only just cried out when Mayura had already become a green meteor, plunging down upon the pyramid.

Boom!

Mayura did not restrain her power in the slightest. Indeed, it could be said she had deliberately meant to destroy the pyramid.

Falling upon it at extreme speed, she unleashed an immense impact in that instant, and the pyramid, nearly ten meters high, collapsed at once into a heap of broken stone.

Beside it, four evil god fighters had been standing guard, but the moment Mayura struck, they were blasted away by the force of her landing.

They tumbled across the ground like spinning gourds, rolled several times, and never managed to rise again.

“It’s a Saint!”

“She destroyed Lord God of Light’s pyramid—she must be killed!”

Within the stronghold, the evil god fighters, recovering from their shock, erupted in fury.

Their duty had been to guard that pyramid.

Now that it had been destroyed, they could not even imagine how they were to answer to the God of Light.