The Deities were enraged. The demons had crossed all limits.

Without wasting any more time they headed with their army of 900,000 guards straight to the Demon Realm.

Whoever was this new enemy, they were really intelligent. To keep the Demons occupied until the Deities reached there, another group of assassins had attacked the demon realm.

The Deities were so enraged that they didn't give any chance to the Demons to prepare for the war and attacked their realm in the middle of the night.

Since, both the princes were in Southern Province of the Demon Realm, the Northern Province was left unprotected and faced most of the wrath of the Deities.

Because of the peace treaty, the demons had pulled their guards down. None of them were prepared for a sudden attack. Especially when there wasn't one but two completely different groups of attackers.

Ruoshan knew that they were at the point of losing. There wasn't enough time to prove that the Demons were innocent this time. So, he did the only thing that he could do to save at least half of his realm.

From the ancient scrolls of Demonic Cultivation, he and his brother had learned many dark cultivation powers. It was time to finally use them.

It took almost all of Ruoshan's power to build the protection barrier around the Southern Province. The protection barrier was actually a demonic array. The guards of this protection barrier were the spirits of the Demon guards who had died in the past while protecting their realm.

It took a lot of his power to summon an army of 400,000 dead demon guards and form a barrier.

The barrier stopped the Deities and the mysterious assassins from entering the Southern Province and those who had already entered were now trapped inside and they had no other option than to fight with Demons.

Though Ruoshan had lost too much of his powers, he still couldn't leave his province to fight for survival on their own. As their leader, he needed to protect his people.

He assured his brother who was fighting with a dilemma of whether to follow Ruoshan and help him or protect his own province.

At that time, the Southern Province needed their Master as much as the Northern Province did.

The sight that greeted his eyes after he reached the Northern Province, could make anyone's blood freeze.

The houses were either on fire or broken to crumbles. The crops were destroyed. The streets were covered with blood and the dead bodies of his people.

The people who were still alive were crying beside the bodies of their loved ones. If it was some normal day, all of them would have kneeled down to pay their respect to their Lord but that day, no one cared.

The Deities had already left. They had already taken their revenge.

But the war wasn't over. Before Ruoshan could even register the sight of disaster in front of his eyes, properly, black smoke covered him and the next second he was standing in the dark forest of Thundering Peaks, surrounded by hundreds of black-clothed assassins.

He fought for hours but the number of assassins kept increasing by every minute rather than going down.

At some distance, a silhouette in a crimson red cloak was standing on a high peak, keeping a close eye on the fight going on down below.

It (the person in the red cloak) knew that they couldn't take down the Demon Prince due to his immense powers and peak level of Cultivation, but since he was already weak, it crafted a perfect plan to tire him until Ruoshan couldn't lift his hand anymore.

Days passed but the fight continued. The silhouette in the crimson cloak was surprised beyond words. It had known that the Demon princes were powerful but for the first time saw it with their own eyes.

On the other hand, Ruoshan's brother and guards were searching for him. It had been days since he disappeared but they couldn't track him anywhere within the three realms.

Unknown to all of them Ruoshan was trapped inside a very powerful array, fighting with hundreds of assassins.

It took eleven months before Ruoshan finally lost all his energy and that too because the crimson cloaked silhouette had become desperate to eliminate him from their path. It took that person eleven months to find a way to take Ruoshan down.

But even after that, they couldn't kill him. It was like his body was immortal. Fire, water, air, thunder, sword, from elements to weapons, nothing could hurt him, not even a scratch.

In the end, the red-cloaked silhouette decided to use the Black Devil's Circle to finally get rid of Ruoshan.

The place where they had trapped Ruoshan in the Black Devil's Circle was none other than the Dongji Village.

The Black Devil's Circle was also one of the forbidden array formations of the Demonic Cultivation. The only person who could break this formation was the one who had cast it in the first place.

Since Ruoshan's body was in search of energy, it started sucking the spiritual energy out of the crops and the nearby other sources of energy which led to the downfall of the farmers of the Dongji Village.

On the other hand, the protection barrier that Ruoshan had created to protect the Southern Province of the Demon Realm to protect it, had now become a bane for the Northern Province.

**********

"How come a protection barrier became a bane?" Li Ming asked with a confused look.

She was actually more confused about the whole story. There were so many loopholes in it. Too many things that either didn't make any sense or didn't add up with the storyline.

"Just like I told you. There was someone else who was pulling the reins this entire time. The Northern Province was not only attacked by the Deities but there was also a black mist that spread through the entire province. It had entered the Demon realm along with those assassins. Because of the protection barrier, it couldn't enter into the Southern Province, so it started sucking the energy out of the Northern province. The sight that you are seeing around you is because of that black mist." Ruoshan told her as his eyes looked at the almost deserted and barren area around them.

"What are you talking about?" Li Ming's mind was buzzing with so many questions. She wanted to crack open his mind and get all the information in one go. The Demon Lord was playing with her while telling her the story in a circle.

"My brother and guards found out about me being trapped in the Black Devil's Circle only three years ago. Though there was no way to break the array they still tried their best but found nothing of help. Until you came out of nowhere and just within a few minutes, I was out of the clutches of the depth of the array. After you kick me out of your mansion..." Ruoshan stopped as he saw his Xingan glaring at him.

But then with a soft chuckle, he continued, "I went to meet my brother and finally found out about what happened after my disappearance. When my brother finally reached the Northern province it was already too late. Along with searching about my whereabouts he was also trying to get both the provinces back in shape. The state in which I found my province and people was not because of the attack of the Deities."

"It was done by that mysterious enemy, the assassins, and the mist." Li Ming said. It wasn't a question because she already had her doubts from the starting and Roushan's words only confirmed them. She had seen too many movies in her previous life to not understand such a simple point.

He nodded his head with a little sad smile on his face. "The Crown Prince of Heaven Realm noticed the dark presence when they entered the Demon realm. He was one of our close friends during our Academy years. He knew us and had visited the Demon realm many times. When he was ambushed at his way to his sister's wedding by the group of assassins he knew that they didn't belong to the demon realm. Their spiritual aura was completely different from us demons. He noticed the same difference when they reached here. He already knew that something was wrong, so he ordered his army to return back to the Heaven Realm. It took months of the investigation but he along with my brother and other friends proved that the mastermind behind the assassination of the Heaven Emperor and his family, were not the Demons."

Li Ming noticed the sadness and a hint of anger in his eyes which was gone in merely a few seconds but she already knew the reason behind his emotions - The Crown Prince of the Heaven Realm was his friend. Though he stopped his army from attacking the Demon Realm and proved them innocent but that day he still left the Demons unprotected, especially when he could have done something to help them!