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In Ye Ge's soul, there indeed remains the mark of the Spider Queen, allowing her to utilize Rose's divine power to perform divine magic. However, that mark is incomplete. Through the King of the Undead's ingenious methods, the core of Ye Ge's soul was completely distorted by illusions, and when Rose's divine power invaded, it failed to locate the correct position. As a result, several parts of the mark were flawed, ensuring that whenever the Spider Queen attempts to peer into Ye Ge's soul through this mark, she will only receive the false information prearranged by the King of the Undead. Moreover, she will be unable to control or harm Ye Ge through this mark. When Ye Ge eventually leaves the underground world, she can easily shed this mark and absorb the dark divine power within it.

In the process of confronting a dark deity like the Spider Queen, both Chen Xuanfeng and the King of the Undead bore immense risks and pressures. Even after perfectly achieving their goals, both were severely injured. If the Spider Queen had caught even the slightest hint of abnormality and retaliated, neither of them would have survived. However, their gains were equally astonishing. Beyond the benefits Ye Ge received, both men, who were near the pinnacle of mortal power, discovered to their delight that their spiritual levels had significantly improved after directly confronting and resisting the will of a deity. The King of the Undead, who had previously been able to abandon his body and transfer his soul at will, had always needed to replenish his spiritual losses by refining Zombie Powder with large amounts of human life force after each transfer. But after this ordeal, he found that he no longer suffered any loss during soul transfers. As a lich, he naturally understood the significance of this—it meant he now had the opportunity to evolve into a higher form of undead: the Eternal Specter.

Chen Xuanfeng's gains, though less obvious, were even more promising. After witnessing the operation of a deity's spiritual power, his mastery of spiritual energy seemed to unlock a new realm. Not only did the power of his Soulshifter Art and other mental techniques increase significantly, but the flexibility of his internal energy and combat energy also improved greatly. Most importantly, when employing this new spiritual mode, his divine weapon, the Sword of Divine Punishment, which had previously been too energy-intensive to use frequently, became much more manageable. With the same amount of energy input, the sword now generated platinum thunder sword energy more than twice as long as before, and its usage became more versatile. It finally became a divine weapon, perfectly complementing the Tiger Soul Blade in combat.

Without delving into how Chen Xuanfeng and his allies consolidated their gains, the situation in the underground world continued to evolve.

Although Ye Ge successfully eradicated the six largest families in Vilselan City, she did not unify the entire city. Instead, she summoned the smaller families to form a new joint ruling core. It was not that her forces couldn't eliminate all the families, but if she established a family that dominated an entire city, it would immediately alert the nine largest dark elf families. In the history of the dark elves, many families had been destroyed or dismembered for this very reason, so Chen Xuanfeng dared not let Ye Ge act recklessly.

Fortunately, according to the prearranged plan, Ye Ge's current control over her forces was sufficient.

On the third day after Ye Ge executed the six family matrons, Chen Xuanfeng's planned operation officially began. That night, four hundred dark elves traveled through the tunnels near Vilselan City to the surface and attacked a human town, capturing its nobles and some commoners while using magic to destroy the town's defensive facilities.

For the next month, several dark elf teams operated under the cover of night, repeatedly attacking humans. In a short time, nearly fifteen human towns were affected, with nearly two thousand people missing. Since the teams Ye Ge dispatched were dark elves enhanced by the essence of the Tiger Soul Blade, although their combat skills had not improved, their strength had reached the level of elite dark elves. Therefore, when human forces arrived, they naturally concluded that the attackers were members of powerful dark elf families based on the traces left behind.

Chen Xuanfeng's actions did not stop there; his targets included not only humans but also the underground world.

Just days after the surface humans were attacked by dark elves, the dark elf city-states in the underground world were also assaulted. First, the City of Anxili, ruled by the Seventh Family, was attacked by a group of human adventurers. These adventurers were not only highly skilled and well-equipped but also had an intimate knowledge of the dark elf city's layout. As a result, the Seventh Family was caught off guard and breached before they could react. In the chaos of mobilizing their forces, the humans broke through their defenses and escaped.

Equally unexpected was the fact that these human adventurers' goal was not the dark elves' treasures or magical items but their human brethren—thousands of human slaves imprisoned in the city's dungeons. However, they did not rescue them; instead, they slaughtered them. Several large-scale poison mist spells killed all the slaves in their cells, after which they massacred over a thousand half-elves before departing.

These human slaves and half-elves were vital strategic assets for the dark elf families, and the losses incurred were as severe as killing thousands of dark elves.

There is a reason for this.

In the past, among the elven races, the high elves were the most numerous, reaching nearly three million at their peak. Even when they retreated overseas, their numbers were around three to four hundred thousand. After four centuries of reproduction without any wars, their numbers barely reached eight hundred thousand. In contrast, the dark elves, who had split off from the main elven lineage, were initially scarce in number, barely ten thousand. Their mortality rate in the underground world remained high, and even four hundred years ago, their numbers had not exceeded fifty thousand. Yet, in the past four hundred years, while continuously engaging in warfare, the dark elf population steadily climbed, recently reaching five hundred thousand, second only to the high elves and becoming the second-largest branch among the elven races. The key to this lies in these humans.

Or rather, it lies in the divine curse concerning elven hybrids.

Every union between an elf and a human produces a half-elf. Half-elves mature only slightly slower than humans but can live for a thousand years. After the Twelve Sages perished by divine punishment, the gods collectively cast a curse ensuring that the offspring of half-elves could only be pure-blooded humans or elves. This was to prevent the combination of elven magical talent with human desire and creativity from producing more world-upsetting figures like the Twelve Sages.