Kill

"A super powerhouse who cultivates the Laws of Wind. His attack power is decent, but he has fused the profound mysteries of sound waves and musical arts, making his soul attacks extremely bizarre." Hodan kept half of his focus on guarding against Taier.

The Laws of Wind have always been renowned for their speed, and both the sound wave and musical art profound mysteries are soul-based attacks that are impossible to guard against, making them incredibly troublesome.

The soul-defense divine artifact gifted by Huoxie allows Hodan to ignore soul attacks below the level of a Six-Star Fiend, but it cannot withstand the attacks of a Seven-Star Fiend, even though this soul-defense divine artifact can block three soul attacks at the Asura level.

However, Hodan would certainly not use it that way, because the soul-defense divine artifact would shatter afterward. Right now, Hodan is only using the soul-defense divine artifact to weaken Taier's soul attacks, which is the most practical approach in this battle; after all, Taier's soul attacks are relentless.

Furthermore, there is an advantage to doing this: he can repair it after the battle. After all, crafting a soul-defense divine artifact is extremely difficult; not only does it require profound soul cultivation, but it also requires corresponding materials.

"I wonder how this Clisi found such a Seven-Star Fiend. The gap between an ordinary High-God and a Seven-Star Fiend is just too vast." Hodan felt a faint headache.

His own attack power has reached the level of a Six-Star Fiend, but his speed is definitely a notch weaker; it would be difficult to escape even if he wanted to. Especially when facing a wind-element Seven-Star Fiend who excels in speed, the probability of Hodan escaping is even smaller.

"Kill!" Hodan gripped his blade and charged toward Taier.

Since he cannot escape, he will fight to the death! Sitting and waiting for death has never been Hodan's style.

At this moment, Hodan did not even think about revealing Huoxie's name. This is his tribulation, but it is also an opportunity for him. As long as he can safely survive this ordeal, Hodan believes his strength will surely improve significantly.

If you are not obsessed, you cannot succeed. If you want to rapidly improve your strength, you must be willing to take extraordinary risks. Risks and rewards are directly proportional; where in this world is there a safe path to the Dao?

Taier waved his long spear repeatedly, and suddenly, shadows of the spear filled the sky. Although Hodan defended with all his might, wind-element attacks are famously fast, and many attacks bypassed Hodan's defense, striking his body repeatedly.

Although these attacks were blocked by his leather armor, Hodan was still shaken and injured by Taier's relentless attacks through the armor. At the same time, this torrential rain-like assault caused Hodan's speed to falter, shattering his plan to engage Taier in close-quarters combat.

Just then, the others charged at Hodan. Several streams of energy were unleashed, and a hidden arrow wove through the energy attacks, catching Hodan off guard. Although that arrow could not break through the defense of the leather armor gifted by Huoxie, that was not the point.

The point was the soul attack attached to the hidden arrow. The cold light flickering on the arrowhead was clearly coated with soul poison researched by High-God masters who cultivate the Death Rule. The hidden arrow turned into a stream of gray energy and darted into Hodan's mind, attacking his soul.

Suddenly, the necklace around Hodan's neck flashed with an obscure light. A circular barrier appeared around Hodan's soul, completely enveloping it.

The arrow, transformed from gray energy, shot against the barrier and shattered completely, like an egg hitting a stone. It was the soul-defense divine artifact gifted to Hodan by Huoxie that had defended against this soul attack.

Hodan couldn't help but feel a lingering fear. If not for the soul-defense divine artifact gifted by Huoxie, this soul attack alone would have been dangerous.

An arrow tainted with soul poison, especially one reinforced with the soul attack of a Five-Star Fiend—if Hodan had been unprepared and influenced by the soul attack for even a split second in this encirclement, he likely would have had his soul scattered!

In the moment Hodan was distracted, a bald, burly man raised a large hammer and brought it down, thinking that Hodan had been hit by the soul attack and was the perfect target to kill.

Losing focus in battle is never a good thing. Fortunately, Hodan recovered in less than ten-thousandths of a second. Fortunately, he could still calmly face the attack of a Five-Star Fiend.

First, he tilted his body slightly to dodge the bald man's attack, then thrust his blade out. The edge of Zhengdu, which cut through space, made the man smell the scent of death, but he could no longer dodge.

The bald man's head exploded directly, and a Godhead drifted down.

A Five-Star Fiend, dead!

"Jabar!" Taier cried out in pain. These subordinates were all people he had painstakingly recruited and trained; they were the foundation for the faction he planned to establish in the future. Moreover, because of their oaths, they were fiercely loyal to him.

In particular, they were all Five-Star Fiends; losing even one was a weakening of his strength. He hadn't expected that a single moment of negligence would leave him unable to rescue Jabar, leading to his demise.

"Die!" The spear in Taier's hand danced repeatedly, actually surrounding Hodan. The long spear seemed to transform into countless bolts of lightning, covering Hodan.

Seeing that Hodan hadn't suffered much damage under his attacks, Taier knew that Hodan possessed a material-defense divine artifact. However, material-defense divine artifacts also have their limits; they are not like Sovereign artifacts that can protect the entire body while being indestructible. But even with a Sovereign artifact, if the gap in power is too great, one can still be killed through the artifact.

It is like a child holding a steel shield, and an adult holding an iron rod, smashing it hard against the shield. Even if the shield suffers no damage and absorbs most of the force, the remaining power will still injure the child.

Taier's goal now was to break through this material-defense divine artifact, or even if he couldn't break it, to shake Hodan to death through it.

The spear was like thunder, transforming into thousands of swimming dragons!

However, Hodan discovered that although Taier's attacks were dense, their power was not as great as before, and the threat to him was greatly reduced.

The thousands of spear shadows looked intimidating, but that was only against the weak. For the weak, these thousands of spear shadows could indeed serve to slaughter, but for the strong, dispersed attacks are far less threatening than a single, powerful strike.

The leather armor on his body, combined with his High-God-level divine body, reduced this attack by a full fifty percent. The threat of this attack to Hodan was only enough to shake his blood and energy, not enough to injure his foundation.

"Six or seven types of wind-element profound mysteries, all leaning toward speed and soul attacks. His material attacks are only a notch stronger than mine." Although they had only exchanged a few blows, Hodan already had a bottom line in his heart!

In terms of material attacks, this Taier is stronger than him, but he is definitely at the bottom of the barrel among Seven-Star Fiends!

Relying on his material and soul-defense divine artifacts, along with the coordination of Zhengdu and his own ultimate techniques, it is possible for Hodan to kill Taier.

However, killing Taier is not easy. Wind-element powerhouses excel in speed, especially when the opponent has fourteen Five-Star Fiend helpers!

He is still at a disadvantage!

One careless move, and perhaps his strongest Fate God Clone will be lost here. Therefore, Hodan was exceptionally cautious, never giving the opponent any opportunity to exploit.

At the same time, he had to create an opportunity to ensure a one-hit kill; otherwise, once they reacted, Hodan would have no chance at all.

Even at this moment, Hodan did not think about using the token gifted by Huoxie. Although, relying on his relationship with Huoxie, Hodan could definitely survive this crisis safely.

No God can ignore a Paragon, even if they are a fellow Paragon. As long as they are not mortal enemies, even a Paragon wouldn't mind giving another Paragon face to avoid finding trouble for themselves.

But this would be absolutely detrimental to Hodan's growth. If there is a first time, there will be a second. This would make Hodan develop a dependency, and once Hodan develops a dependency, his progress might slow down or even stop altogether, becoming like the natives of the Yulan Continent, craving to refine Godheads to become Gods.

This is something Hodan cannot tolerate. The experience of countless predecessors on Earth told Hodan that if you rely on mountains, they will collapse; if you rely on people, they will run away. Only the power that belongs to oneself is the most reassuring.

The two sides fought fiercely like this. Although Taier's side held the advantage in numbers, it was not easy to kill Hodan, and it was not easy for Hodan to kill the other side.

The intense battle naturally caused quite a commotion. The bandits of the Black Mountain Range were naturally alarmed, and at this moment, those bandits and robbers stared at this scene, dumbfounded.

"That's a spatial rift, a spatial rift!" a bandit Mid-God exclaimed foolishly. Being able to tear the space of Hell meant that the people fighting had at least the strength of a Six-Star Fiend. How could these low-level bandits have ever seen a battle between such powerhouses?

Tearing a spatial rift in Hell was something these low-level bandits had only heard of in legends.

"A group of Five-Star Fiends besieging one Fiend! That Fiend is so powerful; he hasn't even suffered much damage!" The bandit Mid-Gods were all stunned.

"And there's even a Seven-Star Fiend among them; even with all these people combined, they still can't take that man down!"

These bandits did not know that Hodan was relying on a defensive artifact to endure the onslaught; they simply assumed Hodan was powerful.

Five-Star Fiend! Seven-Star Fiend!

Normally, it was not easy for them to even see a High-God, and most bandits would never encounter a Five-Star Fiend in their entire lives!

Yet now, there were over a dozen Five-Star Fiends, and even a powerful Seven-Star Fiend.

"Quick, quickly use the Floating Shadow Technique to record this." The bandits who had reacted were already beginning to use the Floating Shadow Technique to record the scene.

Those bandits who cultivated the Water Laws also had their eyes light up, and they hurriedly used the Floating Shadow Technique to record as well.

A Seven-Star Fiend expert was already a pinnacle existence in Hell. Do not be fooled by the fact that the Eight Great Clans and the Four Divine Beasts Clan had seen hundreds of Seven-Star Fiends die in their nearly ten thousand years of conflict; those were the foundations accumulated over countless years by the pinnacle clans of the Higher Planes.

In the 108 Prefectures of Hell, with thousands of cities, each city only had one Seven-Star Fiend presiding over it. That meant there were only a little over a thousand Seven-Star Fiends in total. Even counting those who lived in anonymity or possessed the strength of a Seven-Star Fiend, the total number of Seven-Star Fiends in all of Hell was definitely less than ten thousand.

One must know that the time Hell had existed was immeasurable, and it had gathered god-level experts from countless material planes to produce even that many Seven-Star Fiends; one could imagine just how rare Seven-Star Fiends were.

This also meant that battles at the Seven-Star Fiend level appearing in the sight of others were extremely rare. Furthermore, aside from the challenges for Prefecture Lord, which took place in the public eye, most other battles between these Seven-Star Fiends occurred in desolate places. However, a challenge for Prefecture Lord might not happen even once in countless years.

This resulted in the combat projections of every Seven-Star Fiend being able to sell for a sky-high price. Hostile Seven-Star Fiends, in particular, hoped to glimpse their opponent's flaws from these recordings to defeat or even kill them.

As long as these bandits could record this battle and sell the projection to those major powers or official institutions like the Chief Sovereign Castle, they could easily obtain what was, to them, a massive amount of wealth, allowing them to easily escape the very bottom of Hell.

Moreover, many people could observe and learn quite a bit from the combat projections of Seven-Star Fiend level battles. Even if they didn't sell them, keeping them as heirlooms was a great tool for increasing a clan's foundation and cultivating experts.

Therefore, those Water-element bandits were recording with great focus. Those who did not have a Water-element clone looked at their former companions with envious eyes, while simultaneously asking them not to forget their friends once they became rich. As for those who had good relationships but lacked a Water-element clone, they helped choose better angles so their friends could record the battle process more clearly.

The two sides engaged in battle paid no heed to the behavior of these spectating bandits. They were currently locked in a life-and-death struggle and had absolutely no time to concern themselves with these trivialities. Concentrating their energy to deal with the formidable enemy in front of them was the only thing that mattered; only by surviving did one have the qualification to speak of anything else.

I cannot go on like this. If I don't deal with Taier, I have almost no chance of winning. The longer this drags on, the more disadvantageous it is for me. Every time Hodan was about to kill one of the others, Taier would interfere. Hodan realized that his idea of picking them off one by one was simply unrealistic; if he didn't kill Taier, it would be extremely difficult to kill the others.

Hodan was currently like a snapping turtle—he had sufficient defensive power and not-so-weak offensive power, but he just couldn't bite anyone.

If this continued, the one who would die was definitely him! Because Hodan had become a god not long ago, his divine power was still limited and could not withstand a long, high-intensity battle. Furthermore, it was impossible for Hodan to be distracted enough to draw divine power from his divine power ocean during the fight.

Even if he could draw divine power, it would be a drop in the bucket for a battle this intense, and Hodan did not have a trump card like Sovereign's Might that could change the course of the battle.

Moreover, although Taier's scattered attacks were not strong—each one only causing his blood and qi to churn—the accumulation of many small injuries meant he had already been severely wounded by Taier's vibrations.

I cannot continue to be entangled like this! A thought stirred in Hodan's mind, and he immediately had a plan.

As time passed, the situation became increasingly precarious for Hodan. At this moment, Hodan was like a small boat in the midst of a violent storm, with the possibility of capsizing at any moment.

As the situation became increasingly favorable for Taier and his group, a smile appeared on Taier's face. In his view, Hodan was surely going to die!

At this moment, his tense mind had a slight relaxation. Both the frequency and the force of his attacks dipped for a split second, although Taier immediately covered it up by pulling his focus back together.

It's now! Hodan's eyes lit up. Opportunities were fleeting, but Hodan still seized this momentary opening. Ignoring the incoming attacks, he pushed his speed to the absolute limit and charged toward Taier, blade in hand.

Suddenly, Hodan's back suffered dozens of strikes, and he was shaken by these attacks to the point of vomiting large mouthfuls of blood. Hodan had suffered the most severe injury of his life. Yet, the look in Hodan's eyes was incredibly firm; he was seeking life within death, finding survival through the jaws of demise.

At this life-and-death juncture, Hodan had a new epiphany. At the same time, propelled by these dozens of attacks, he felt as if he and his blade had become one, transforming into a massive war blade. The edge of the blade tore a space rift several meters long through Hell.

"Oh no!" Taier's expression changed drastically. He had not expected Hodan to take these dozens of attacks head-on. He wanted to swing his long spear to block Hodan and slow his speed to buy more time to react!

But Hodan's speed, pushed by those dozens of attacks, was simply too fast! It was so fast that Taier could not react in time. Hodan's blade pierced his head, his head instantly exploded, and a Godhead radiating a cyan light drifted down.