A black altar seemed to have grown in the middle of the massive platform made out of the four airships. It integrated with the pitch-black platform, appearing out of place.
Ten naked young men and women sat in a circle surrounding the altar with space between each other.
Lu Dong and the other 12 demigods and two demigod-level summoning beasts hovered above the altar. They surrounded the ten Crow Spirit candidates and the altar in order to protect them.
Clearly, they had rehearsed the formation many times. They were in position without even speaking to each other. The entire process took less than a minute.
The Crow Leader hovered into the air above the altar and looked at the time on his Emperor's Heart Ring.
Lin Huang, who was watching in the alternate dimension far away, could not help but glance at the time too.
"11.58 p.m…."
The Crow Leader crossed his arms in front of his chest and shut his eyes. He waited for the time to pass patiently.
A moment later, it was 12 a.m. sharp.
He opened both of his eyes as a gigantic Imperial Palace solidified rapidly above his head.
It was a massive black city. The city walls alone were 100 meters tall and spread tens of kilometers. It was a few folds bigger than the platform made of the four airships.
Two majestic city gates that soared 200 meters high were in the middle of the city wall. They stood even taller than the city walls.
There was a purple crow with its wings spread wide open carved in the middle of the two massive gates. The crow's eyes seemed to have two huge red rubies mounted on them, sitting on each gate.
It was the Purple Crow headquarters, the Crow Leader Yan Ping's Imperial Palace — the Crow City!
As soon as the Imperial Palace appeared, Yan Ping's aura was completely released without him hiding it. He was clearly on perfect-stage demigod-level and was a terrifying existence comparable to a Virtual God.
The air around seemed to have frozen as the massive black city hovered in the sky.
Even Lin Huang could not help but exclaim out loud, "What a gigantic Imperial Palace!" This was the biggest Imperial Palace he had ever witnessed in his life.
"Although a demigod can't form a God Territory, an Imperial Palace possesses a certain God Territory characteristic. It's usually much bigger than an ordinary Imperial Palace," the stone tablet explained.
Just when Lin Huang was musing about the reason Yan Ping summoned the Imperial Palace, Yan Ping began controlling the Crow City.
The eyes of the purple crow on the massive black city gates seemed to light up with a red glow. Two glaring sparks burned all of a sudden.
A rumble broke the sky a moment later.
The two massive gates of the Crow City seemed to be pushed open by a pair of invisible hands.
As soon as the gates were opened, black silhouettes poured towards the altar in a frenzy. They were like a black waterfall drowning the inside of the altar. The black silhouettes in the altar became rowdy, seeming to seek escape. However, they appeared to be shackled by an invisible force.
"That soul power wave…" Lin Huang frowned as he watched. He sensed what the black silhouettes were faintly, but he could not be sure.
"It's his soul. Due to the Imperial Palace, it became visible to the naked eye," the stone tablet explained, "Seems like he's using soul sacrifice to summon the Crow God."
"What a Crow God!" Lin Huang's expression became serious as he watched countless souls being poured into the altar and gradually turning into a black liquid.
The pouring lasted for over ten minutes. Yan Ping only recalled his Imperial Palace when the black liquid in the altar turned into a whirlpool. He took a box from his storage space out.
The box was only the size of a fist. It was the color of blood with black sigils covering it.
Yan Ping performed a complicated hand seal quickly and the black sigils on the box soon began to flow rapidly. Later on, the sigils on the box cover faded and it opened automatically.
There was a crimson eyeball in the box.
Yan Ping seemed not to dare to touch it. When he flicked it through the air, the crimson eyeball flew out of the box and dropped into the whirlpool within the altar below.
A while later, the crimson eyeball began expanding at a high speed.
It grew from normal human-size to a giant sphere of approximately three meters in diameter half a minute later. It hovered from the altar slowly and hung in the air about ten meters from the altar.
The eyeball had completely transformed by now. There were red and purple blood vessels all over it and many blood vessels dangled like vines from it. They connected to the whirlpool in the altar below.
The eye now had a red iris and a pitch-black pupil.
An ominous aura spread across the space, lingering in this broken mini world.
Even Lin Huang felt a slight suppression as he watched everything far away in the alternate dimension. He had goosebumps all over and his scalp tingled numbly.
He did not find the eye scary, but rather it was the Crow God's aura that spread out which gave him a physiological reaction.
The people who had the same reaction at the same time were the God Bless members and Hong Zhuang who were hiding in the dark.
"This is scary. The aura alone gives someone a sense of despair. It can almost make someone lose their will to fight," Lin Huang could not help but exclaim.
"Apart from a True God's Holy Power, this Crow God should have some other suppressing power that exudes such spiritual oppression that's so much higher than others who are on the same level as he is!" explained the stone tablet.
On the deck of the airships, everyone including the Crow Leader Yan Ping, the other 13 demigods and the two demigod-level imperial monsters fell from the air onto the deck due to the Crow God's Holy Power.
The ten naked men and women at the border of the altar were quivering. They were not afraid, but it was a physiological terror that made them lose control of their bodies.
All demigods had Divine Power in their bodies, so they had a certain resistance to such Holy Power. However, people below demigod-level who had zero Divine Power in their bodies were like naked humans in the snow whereby they could not resist the Holy Power's suppression at all.
Yan Ping, who hovered above the air, spoke as soon as the eyeball had completed its transformation.
"Master God, we've picked ten Crow Spirit candidates. You may select the Crow Spirit."
The eyeball peeped at Yan Ping and subsequently glanced through the ten naked men and women below one after another.
Less than ten seconds later, the eyeball stared at the fifth person all of a sudden after it had just glanced through five of them.
Yan Ping and the rest held their breaths. 'He's done picking so soon?'
The eyeball was staring at the young man who had the lowest combat strength among the ten candidates.
The young man looked only 17 or 18 years old. He was skinny and stood less than 1.7 meters tall. Despite his tanned skin, he was not considered good-looking. There was a circle of black, complicated sigils on the left side of his chest which looked like a black tattoo.
There was a massive amount of black fog billowing out of the eye, forming a massive black silhouette before the young man. The black shadow looked like a crow spreading its wings, and there were 108 red pupils on the black silhouette's head like a sky full of stars.
"Young man, tell me your name." The black silhouette's head came less than a meter before the young man and asked for the young man's name. Its voice was overlapping; it sounded like more than 100 men and women talking at the same time.
The young man's shivering body surprisingly calmed down as he looked at the black silhouette's 108 pupils that looked like stars. He told his name without hesitation, "My… My name is Xiao Mo…"