There was a loud thump as Rowan reached the bottom of the swamp. A brown force field was in his way but he blasted through it like rotten wood and his feet touched the roof of the Divine Palace.
Dao Ma all the way up above shuddered, he seemed to be a bit desperate, although he became resigned once more, he licked his patched lips and turned his decapitated head to face Eva, and as if he became aware of something, his eyes lit up, "It was you wasn't it? You were the true cause of my downfall."
Eva did not answer him but looked away, her keen eyes following Rowan's progress closely.
"Yes… it is you," Dao Ma sighed, "Your lord is powerful, so powerful it is almost impossible to believe that such powers could rest in the hand of one that is not even a god, even after I have personally witnessed it, I still find it hard to believe. Can you imagine that?... Fucking absurd!"
Maeve was still silent, but Dao Ma continued talking even without getting any response from Eva, "But there is something very important that I may have missed. You see, he's very powerful, no doubt about that, but he is still… ignorant about certain issues, most likely because of his age, I could feel from the fluctuations in his vitality that he should not be older than a century."
Eva was silent, but she was listening to him, although the thoughts that could be going on behind her black eyes were unknown.
Dao Ma smiled, "The most powerful weapons we have as a god are our souls, and even though I was spent from my attempt at Ascension to become a Major god, I would not have fallen so easily if you had not stolen my essence to deprive me of the power to drive my Immortal soul, you also stole my Intent, which I should have used as a Focus. I have lost this battle because you laid devious traps below the ground and I fell into it. You, pfftttt…."
"Silence little god," Eva discarded the bottom jaw of Dao Ma that she had just ripped off, around the gaping wound in his face were blue maggots, Eva also controlled Intent!
"You have no idea of what you speak. Even without my intervention, you will still lose. You are a frog inside a well." Eva looked away, her eyes carrying a distant look.
Far behind her, the roar from the Ouroboros Serpents who just entered the Divine Kingdom was heard. As they rushed through the gate of the Divine Kingdom it would seem their presence was a sort of aphrodisiac to the World Seed as the speed at which they devoured the Divine Kingdom increased, and as the Ouroboros Serpents moved past, the golden tendrils thickened and chased after them.
Dao Ma Divine Palace was different from Erohim, he did away with the large size that Erohim favored and built a relatively small temple a dozen stories tall. Clustered thickly around the door of the temple were twelve massive crocodiles, who were all Earth gods.
From the bloodline feedback he could detect from these creatures, they must be the children of Dao Ma, they were all lethargic as their Essence had been drained from them, and Rowan could see a Formation binding all twelve crocodiles that had been broken.
With his increasing knowledge of Formations, he was able to determine that it was these twelve Earth gods that were driving the Formation to create the Maelstrom, and when he devoured the Vorpal Essence thus breaking the Formation, the backlash nearly killed them.
The largest amongst them struggled to stand, "I plead for the dignity of our Father, Your Highness. His Divine Spark lies within, and we have deactivated all the traps around it, we only hope you would give us his body so that we may leave with it. We the children of Dao Ma would forever be grateful and worship your great name until the end of our lives."
"Change is coming, look to your survival," Rowan replied and walked past them, and he placed both hands on the great door and pushed it open.
The Earth gods roared in anger and desperation and they gathered all their strength to attack Rowan.
With a burst of Telekinesis, he threw them away for thousands of miles as he continued into the Divine Palace. Rowan had an increasing disdain for killing those who were weaker than gods using his own hands.
It was not pride speaking, as only a godly being had the strength and the Divine Essence to handle his blows. He ignored the children of Dao Ma, they had nothing of worth to offer him or to draw his attention.
For a normal god, even the destruction of their Divine Spark was not the end of their story and they would be reborn. It was normal that during the death of a god, his enemy would usually honor his last wishes and they would have most likely listened to the children of Dao Ma for in the future the tides might change and the resurrected god might return even stronger.
Rowan obviously would never fear such a thing happening. Dao Ma had called him Oblivion, and for an Immortal god, he could as well be that sort of thing.
Not all the traps had been fully deactivated but Rowan tore them apart with a single swing of his Axe. He arrived at the central location that housed the Divine Spark of the god that was protected by a huge gate.
He recognized this material, it was a fusion of Adamantite and a dozen other alloys that made an almost indestructible material called God Stone.
Rowan had only read about it and had never seen it, this knowledge came from one of his Angels deep inside the families of Trion. A God Stone could only be created by a god using his God Spark and it was a unique resource that was prized all over the universe and outside of it.
An Armor made from God Stone could allow a mortal to survive several attacks from a god without sustaining any damage, it could be easy to tell how valuable it was.
