Demon Monarch Wujie raised his heads and gazed up at the night sky. A few stars hung overhead, their light cold and bright.
Yet those stars were drawing closer and closer, their light growing ever more intense.
"My emissaries, what are those?" One of Wujie's heads tilted high while another turned toward Yehui at his side, his tone puzzled.
"Why are those stars so bright? What exactly are—" Before he could finish, an instinctive sense of danger surged through him. The "stars" were drawing closer, giving off an aura that filled him with loathing: an aura woven from light and holiness, so pure it was suffocating.
"My lord, I don't know what they are either," Yehui replied respectfully.
"Roar! Aerial forces, engage the enemy!"
Demon Monarch Wujie didn't hesitate. In an instant, the newly formed Flying Devil formation surged into the sky, charging straight toward the rapidly approaching stars.
The starlight blazed. Only when they drew nearer did Monarch Wujie realize they weren't stars at all, but enormous shells infused with the auras of light and holiness.
They were none other than a thousand Level 8 Fixed Soul Guidance Shells: Holy Radiance.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions rang out one after another. The Flying Devils that had just taken to the sky fell like raindrops.
Their shrill screams echoed across the land. Great torrents of light and holy elements poured down from above.
In an instant, winds howled. The Demon Legion, which had been ready to deploy just moments before, was now strewn with corpses. Its ranks had been shattered, and the air reeked of charred flesh.
"Roar!"
Demon Monarch Wujie let out an enraged roar. All three heads opened their gaping jaws, firing one energy blast after another in an attempt to intercept the judgment raining down from the sky.
Unfortunately, as only a Quasi-God, he could barely wield seventy percent of his power under the Douluo Plane's laws. He simply wasn't strong enough to stop the shells.
And he could use that much only because he wasn't powerful enough for the plane's suppression to be too severe.
At last, the bombardment stopped.
Wujie panted as he surveyed the battlefield. The Flying Devils, Demon Men, and other core forces had suffered devastating losses.
But the army's structure remained intact. As long as they absorbed enough life energy, they would soon recover.
And their true top fighters were still alive: the three Three-Headed Giant Dogs he had split off, along with the two Great Devils borrowed from elsewhere. None had been seriously injured.
"Ha ha ha!" Wujie suddenly threw back his heads and laughed. "Rats will always be rats. All you can do is resort to flashy tricks like these. You can't even scratch my people."
Just then, a strange, piercing shriek rang out. It was so sharp that it sounded like a death knell, making Wujie shudder.
The ear-splitting howl arrived in an instant. The sound of a sonic boom could even be heard in the air.
The Three-Headed Giant Dogs stopped laughing. Below, there came a soft puff as drill-shaped objects emerged from the ground one by one.
They had surfaced right beneath the remaining core of the Demon Legion, along with its surviving top fighters.
Several Three-Headed Giant Dogs lowered their heads curiously to look. One even stretched out a head, wanting to see if the thing was edible.
It was cone-shaped, its entire body gleaming silver-white.
The moment the Three-Headed Giant Dog bit down—
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A continuous chain of explosions rang out again.
Silver-white light burst apart. Countless tiny metal fragments, carrying terrifying kinetic force, shot in every direction.
They were none other than Level 9 Fixed Soul Guidance Shells: Destruction Storm.
The Three-Headed Giant Dog caught in the blast was so badly hit that it didn't even have time to scream. One of its heads was blown to pieces.
The explosion raised a cloud of smoke that blotted out the sky. The entire core area was like porcelain struck by a giant hammer: the ground cracked apart inch by inch, and bottomless ravines spread in every direction.
The smoke cleared.
The Demon Legion, once densely packed, had been reduced to seven lonely figures.
Three Three-Headed Giant Dogs.
One had lost a head to the blast, so it could only be called a Two-Headed Giant Dog now.
Two Great Devils.
Yehui, specially protected by Monarch Wujie.
And Wujie himself.
A deep wound on Wujie's middle head gushed blood, narrowly missing his eye. He stared around in disbelief.
Severed limbs littered the ground. The land was charred, and the subordinates who had been alive just moments ago were now cold corpses.
"My... my legion..."
His voice trembled, and all three heads let out low, mournful whimpers. Tens of thousands of demons, countless elite troops—all had been wiped out in barely half an hour.
The three surviving Three-Headed Giant Dogs huddled together, trembling, their eyes filled with terror.
"They destroyed my legion and slaughtered my people! I'll tear them limb from limb!"
Monarch Wujie let out an enraged roar. As soon as he finished speaking, a man's soft laughter drifted over from afar.
"Well, Clan Leader Yuanen? I didn't lie to you, did I?"
Several figures appeared in the distant sky.
At their head was Xie An, with Yuanen Zhentian standing beside him.
Behind them, five War Gods from the War God Temple stood shoulder to shoulder with Yuanen Tiangang.
"How about this? I'll handle their leader. The six of you take on the other five. Any problem with that?"
"And Tian Dang, how about you go get your wife back?"
Xie An flashed in front of Wujie, gripping the World-Breaking Spear in his hand.
"People from the Demon Plane, you're guests here. Allow me to give you a proper welcome."
A vast domain enveloped Wujie. It was none other than the Spear God Domain Xie An had comprehended.
"Roar!"
Wujie's three heads roared, firing energy blasts from their mouths one after another.
The World-Breaking Spear danced up and down in Xie An's hands. Spear flowers bloomed as he deflected each attack and left hole after hole in Wujie's body.
Wujie fought back with everything he had, but the spear moved like a swimming dragon. Before long, his body was covered in wounds.
None were fatal, but if the fight continued like this, he was sure to lose.
"Is that all the Demon Monarch can do?"
Xie An stood with his spear in hand. The Spear God Domain was an invisible cage that trapped Wujie within.
His spiritual power spread out like quicksilver. It covered not only the battle in front of him, but the entire battlefield as well.
For one thing, his cultivation gave him more than enough advantage against Wujie, who was suppressed by the Douluo Plane.
For another, he wanted to see if his subordinates could break through their limits when facing a new challenge.
A hundred yards to the right, Yuanen Zhentian was locked in fierce combat with a Great Devil close to the peak level.
The Titan Giant Ape Clan Leader stood firm as a mountain, fists clenched, his gaze as calm and deep as water.
The Great Devil's wings burned with dark-red hellfire. It moved at astonishing speed, leaving trails of flame in the air.
But the moment it tried to dart past him from the side, Yuanen Zhentian moved.
He threw a punch. It was plain and simple, without a sound.
Yet space twisted wherever his fist passed.
Before the force of the punch even reached it, the suffocating pressure made the Great Devil shriek and veer sharply aside, barely dodging the direct blow.
The wind from the punch skimmed past its side and struck a hillock a hundred yards behind it.
Boom!
No rocks flew. The hillock simply vanished beneath the lingering force of the punch, crushed into powder.
The Titan God Fist broke through technique with sheer strength, imbued with a trace of the Law of Strength.
The Great Devil didn't dare take him lightly. Dark-red flames surged from its purplish-gold wings and gathered into a massive shield of fire, forming layer after layer of defensive barriers.
Yuanen Zhentian didn't even look. He threw a second punch.
Boom!
The shield of fire shuddered violently, its light dimming. The Great Devil grunted and slid back more than ten yards, leaving two deep tracks in the ground.
A third punch.
Crack!
The shield of fire exploded. The Great Devil shrieked and darted into the sky. It finally realized that standing its ground against this human had been its greatest mistake.
Yuanen Zhentian didn't pursue. He simply raised his head and slowly clenched his right fist.
His fourth punch struck toward the sky.
A pillar of force, condensed into solid form, shot upward. The air parted on either side, and a visible vacuum corridor tore open in the sky.
Pfft!
Dark-red blood burst through the air. A huge chunk of the Great Devil's left wing was torn away. It screamed and spiraled toward the ground.
But it was the strongest fighter there after Wujie. The instant it began to fall, it spat out a mouthful of essence blood that coated its right wing.
Flames instantly blazed even more fiercely across that wing. It forced the Great Devil to steady itself and flee into the distance like a streak of fire.
Yuanen Zhentian remained where he was. He slowly lowered his fist and exhaled a breath of stale air.
"Truly worthy of being the Clan Leader of the Yuanen Clan." Xie An's spiritual power covered the entire battlefield, allowing him to take in the scene.
He lightly flicked the World-Breaking Spear in his hand, knocking away an energy blast from Wujie, and silently praised him. He hasn't reached the Quasi-God level, but when it comes to sheer strength, there's probably no one in the human world who can match him today.
Xie An nodded, then turned his attention away from that fight and toward the people from the War God Temple.
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