You mean to say... I'd be afraid of him?!

Situ Xuan's dozen-plus afterimages came up empty, their fists and legs blasting into the spot where Vassago had just been standing and punching a huge crater into the floor. Broken stone sprayed everywhere, dust billowed, and deep-blue shards of stone flew through the air, reflecting the gemstones' light.

There was no helping it. The attacks from those dozen-plus afterimages had all been real!

Vassago looked at the wreckage strewn across the floor, and a flicker of heartache passed through his orange-red eyes. He had built this bedchamber with his own hands. Every block of stone had been carefully chosen by him from the veins of ore, every line carved by his own hands, every gemstone inlaid by him personally. It had stood here for thousands of years, witnessing the rise and fall of the Star Demon Clan, witnessing generation after generation of Star Demons live, age, sicken, and die.

And now, there was a hole in its wall.

No, not the wall. The entire wall.

Rumble!

A deafening crash.

The wall that Vassago had smashed cracks into finally could not hold under the shockwaves from Situ Xuan's attack. The center of the wall bulged first, then split open, and then the entire wall toppled outward, slamming into the ground outside the bedchamber with a thunderous roar like mountains collapsing and the earth splitting apart.

Dust surged in through the gap, spreading through the bedchamber, blocking out the gemstones' radiance and shrouding the entire chamber in a gray, murky chaos.

Within the dust, a figure walked out.

Situ Xuan.

His upper body was bare, and his bronze skin was covered in scars. Under the starlight, those scars glowed with a faint silver sheen. His muscles bulged, every one of them drawn taut with anger, their lines hard and sharp as if