<h4>Chapter 982: Forced Into It</h4>


    With the shattered battlefield broken into chunks, the allied forces each chose their favorite chunk and camped there overnight.


    In the void, there were no celestial bodies to serve as markers of time, and the third realm possessed no clocks. However, there were still methods that the various forces could use to track the progress of time.


    The next day, at the appointed time, the allied forces gathered and headed toward the dimensional crack under the direction of the blood lord.


    Not all the allied forces did so. The king of evil and the decaying king''s forces continued to proceed toward the heart of death spirit territory.


    The remaining forces set off with the blood lord.


    Zhang Lie asked curiously, "Where''s this purported dimensional crack? I understand if you were unwilling to reveal its locationst night in case of an ident, but now that we''re about to set off, shouldn''t you tell us?"


    The blood lordughed. "It''s precisely because we''re just about to set off that I can''t tell you. If there were a traitor among us, wouldn''t it be problematic?"


    The captain of the sr corps smirked at Zhang Lie. "Could there be a traitor among us, I wonder?"


    Zhang Lie refused to interact with the idiotic captain of the sr corps.


    The blood lord shrugged. "I don''t know if there are any traitors, but we shouldn''t ignore that possibility. I hope you''ll understand why I need to be cautious."


    Zhang Lie didn''t push further. The forces continued onward into a dead world, one filled with familiar ck sand. The world was ratherrge, and it had likely been a peakrge world before its downfall.


    The blood lord led them toward a gigantic abyssal crack. Zhang Lie and the others could feel dense spatial energy seeping out of that crack, leading to another world beyond.


    The blood lord exined, "The other side of the dimensional crack leads to the sura realm."


    The frost spiritmander asked, "Where are the death spirits? I don''t see any of them. Are we supposed to wait here?"


    "The death spirits have already arrived," Zhang Lie shouted.


    The sand in the desert began to shake as countless battleships emerged from underground, surrounding everyone in sight. ck spirits flooded from the battleships, as numerous as raindrops in a storm. They surrounded the allied forces.


    The frost spiritmander grew rmed. "A trap!"


    "An ambush!" Zhang Lie''s face grew dark. As he expected, something would go wrong.


    The blood lord suddenly swelled to multiple times his size. He struck the captain of the sr corps, who was standing beside him, with a massive palm. No one expected the blood lord to suddenly betray them all.


    The captain of the sr corps, caught unaware, suffered the brunt of the impact. A blood-red mark was imprinted on his chest, and frothing golden blood sprayed out of his mouth.


    "Why?!" The captain of the sr corps refused to believe what the blood lord had done.


    The blood lord immediately retreated after his sneak attack, without giving the others the opportunity to retaliate.


    The blood lord''s betrayal was wholly unexpected.


    Zhang Lie thundered, "To think that someone like you would be the death spirits''ckey!"


    The frost spiritmander refused to believe his eyes. "Why would you do something like this? The death spirit king destroyed Blood Heaven—and you''re working for him?!"


    The blood lord narrowed his eyes. "This realm goes to the strong. The death spirit king was stronger than the blood king, and I naturally submitted to him. What''s wrong with that?"


    The frost spiritmander howled, "Have you forgotten that the death spirit king ruined your world? And even then, you were willing to kneel to the death spirit king and be one of hisckeys?!"


    The blood lord shook his head. "That''s a ridiculous im. I never felt the need to take revenge for the destruction of my world—or rather, I was the one who caused that destruction to begin with."


    "What?!" Everyone grew even more shocked.


    The blood lord boasted, "If I didn''t betray the blood king, Blood Heaven wouldn''t have been destroyed. It was because I provided the death spirit king with sensitive information that he managed to destroy the blood king. I instigated this whole affair!"


    The frost spiritmander shouted, "You must be crazy—why ruin your own world? You know what the death spirit king would do to it!"


    Nightdemon chuckled coldly. "We all call the death spirit king a lunatic, but we didn''t realize there was a lunatic in our midst, too."


    "A lunatic?" The blood king shook his head. "No, I''m more rational than any of you here."


    The frost spiritmander shouted, "Don''t you know what the death spirit king is intending to do?"


    Nightdemon called out, "The death spirit king''s goal is to devour all three thousand worlds, then the realm itself. If you allow him to do so, even my base form, the king of primordial chaos, won''t be able to do anything to stop it."


    The blood lord shrugged. "And so what? Isn''t that fine?"


    The frost spiritmander shook his head. "It''s useless. This fellow''s gone nuts!"


    Nightdemon was stupefied. "More than a lunatic. He''s willing to be devoured by the death spirit king, to benefit the death spirit king to the detriment of all. I simply don''t know what to say."


    Zhang Lie gave the blood lord a thumbs up. "Even for ackey, it''s hard to be such a diligent bootlicker."


    The blood lord narrowed his eyes. "You seem to be misunderstanding something. The death spirit king himself promised me that I would survive the ordeal. As long as he''s able to devour all three thousand worlds to be an existence never before seen in the realm, he''ll confer me my own world."


    The frost spiritmander snorted. "Do you really think the death spirit king will keep his promise?"


    The blood lord shrugged. "Nothing is certain in this world—you''ll have to gamble at one point or another. And what if I win?"


    Nightdemon frowned. "As far as I''m aware, you were already a great lord of Blood Heaven, and you were responsible for managing essentially all of its operations. What caused you to want to work with the death spirit king?"


    The blood lord''s face turned wretched. "If your boss were a pig who spends all day thinking about sex, who only thinks with the lower half of his body, you''d want to work with someone more ambitious, too. I don''t know how that piece of trash ever became the king of the realm. All he tells me to do is to find him more women, not to strengthen or expand his domain!"


    The blood lord''s aggrieved expression was clearly the umtion of long years of grudges and misgivings.


    He clenched his fists. "The blood king has sex with any female lifeform—two-legged, four-legged, eight-legged, even twelve-legged! And you know what he likes? To make others watch him while he has sex with those females. Do you know how many times I''ve had to resist the urge to vomit while watching him? I have nightmares about him! Who knows when he might suddenly develop an interest in men ande at me instead?"