Zero immediately began to counterattack.
Both its arms transformed and reassembled at the same time.
Its left arm became a slender energy cannon, while its right arm formed a saw-toothed battle blade driven by countless miniature algorithms.
Its analysis system locked onto a weak joint three inches below the beast's ribs, concealed beneath a layer of Origin Force. As its fingertip lightly pressed the trigger, it also finished adjusting the blade's attack angle.
The cannon and blade struck simultaneously.
The beast let out a pained howl as a wound deep enough to expose bone tore open along its side.
But what was most astonishing came in the next two rounds of exchanges.
Ignoring its injuries, the beast roared and counterattacked, firing three poisoned bone spikes from its claws straight at the joint in Zero's chest.
Zero's right-arm blade suddenly broke apart of its own accord, then swiftly reassembled in midair into a small round shield whose deflection angle was even stranger than its outer shell.
The shield completed three vector shifts in an instant, diverting the force of the three bone spikes in three different directions and keeping them all beyond lethal range.
Then, drawing on its deep Law Comprehension to drive its blade, Zero struck down its opponent in a single blow.
The projection continued.
In the next few battles, Zero displayed exceptionally cool judgment, deep Law Comprehension, and a powerful will.
It never clashed head-on with its opponents. Instead, it used precise predictions of the battlefield to target their weakest points with every attack.
Its energy core's output curve was clearly visible in a corner of the Sky Screen, and the energy consumed in each successive battle steadily decreased.
This showed that it was growing stronger through battle, continually absorbing combat data to optimize its offensive and defensive rhythm.
This fighting style was nearly unbeatable among World Lords of the same level.
When the battle projection ended, the entire Primal Universe fell briefly silent. All the powerful beings had been deeply shaken by the way Zero wielded the laws, as well as by its temperament and will.
The Sky Screen's judging criteria were clearly far more complex than they had imagined.
[Machine Race's Zero. World Lord, ninth rank.] [Law Comprehension: Initial King.] [Will: Advanced Military Lord Undying.] [Overall Evaluation: Talent and Comprehension A-grade, Will A-grade, Temperament C-grade.] [Its comprehension, will, and potential for growth earned it a place among the top ten geniuses below the Undying level in the Third Reincarnation Era of the Primal Universe, at number ten.] [Ranking complete.] [Reward: Divine Power Burning Secret Technique, First Stage.] [Reward: Attack Supreme Treasure — Black Flame Blade.]
The moment the rewards appeared on the Sky Screen, the entire Primal Universe fell silent.
Black Flame Blade.
Another attack Supreme Treasure!
And even the tenth-place contestant had received the Divine Power Burning Secret Technique!
The last time the Sky Screen ranked the top ten powerhouses, the tenth-place Dream Demon Ancestor had received an attack Supreme Treasure, the Gold-Shattering Spear.
Now, a World Lord-level Machine Race warrior had received a reward on par with Dream Demon Ancestor's, along with a Divine Power Burning Secret Technique!
Countless Universe Masters swallowed envious sighs at that moment.
Machine Race Divine Kingdom.
Zero reached out its mechanical arm and caught the black battle blade flying down from the Sky Screen. At the same time, a point of starlight sank into its head.
Immediately afterward,
Zero handed both the Black Flame Blade and the Divine Power Burning Secret Technique over to Machine Father God.
With its current strength, it couldn't even activate an Ordinary Supreme Treasure, let alone a Supreme Treasure.
Handing them to Machine Father God was undoubtedly the best choice.
In the Demon Ancestor Secret Realm, Tremor Demon Ancestor and Dream Demon Ancestor looked at each other.
They had no clear understanding of Machine Race Zero's combat strength, but the gleam of the Black Flame Blade left them struggling to find words.
"Black Flame Blade... Another attack Supreme Treasure."
Tremor Demon Ancestor's voice was low, with a bitterness he hadn't even noticed himself. "It's every bit as good as the Gold-Shattering Spear Meng Cha received back then."
Dream Demon Ancestor didn't respond. She simply stared fixedly at the Sky Screen.
Inside the Zerg Queen's palace, the queen gave a cold laugh. "Initial King-level Law Comprehension and the will of an Advanced Military Lord Undying. And that's enough to deserve a Supreme Treasure?"
But her slender fingers tightened around the Eternal Pearl, turning faintly white and betraying how little her composure matched her words.
Ren, standing behind her, lowered his head slightly. A hint of suppressed resentment flashed in his eyes.
At the Demon Beast Alliance Main Hall, Beast Ancestor's fingers stopped tapping the armrest for a moment. "Zero was only tenth... And tenth place already got the first stage of the Divine Power Burning Secret Technique and the Black Flame Blade. What will ninth and eighth place get?"
Blood Fang, standing behind him, said nothing. But its tail curled tighter of its own accord, pressing five shallow grooves into the F-Grade Metal floor behind it.
Chaos City.
City Lord of Chaos gave a slight nod. "That little Machine Race fellow is lacking in temperament. But its talent, comprehension, and battle instincts certainly make it worthy of this ranking."
The higher-ups of the Hong Alliance had something else on their minds. In the last Sky Screen ranking, Dream Demon Ancestor had placed tenth and received the Supreme Treasure, the Gold-Shattering Spear.
This time, a World Lord-level genius had received a treasure on the same level as Dream Demon Ancestor's reward back then.
If tenth place had received so much, how astonishing would the reward for first place be?
If a human genius could take first place, could the inheritance and Supreme Treasures they received surpass those of every other race?
At the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Yang Yu took a sip of wine as he watched the Sky Screen stretching across the starry sky. A glint of anticipation flashed in his eyes.
"The kid in tenth place got the Black Flame Blade. The nine above him will only get even more outrageous rewards."
He lowered his wine flask and looked through layer upon layer of spacetime, toward Luo Feng on the rooftop of Chaos City. "I wonder if you can take first place."
The void beneath the Sky Screen paused for a moment, then the text began to refresh again.
Everyone stared fixedly at that streak of flowing light.
"I told you, tenth place was just an appetizer.
"Even Dream Demon Ancestor of the Monster Race, beaten down until she was silent and shrunken, got a reward at the same rank. It's finally my turn."
Zero's voice cut off in the Machine Race Divine Kingdom's holographic communications.
The name of the ninth-place contestant appeared on the Sky Screen.
[TOP 9: Monster Race — Frost Parasite!]
The instant those words appeared, the entire Demon Ancestor Secret Realm fell silent for three full seconds.
Three seconds later, Dream Demon Ancestor was the first to react.
Her immense silver serpent body reared upright, and a light suppressed for a million years burst from her eyes.
It wasn't anger or hatred, but the joy of someone clawing their way up from the bottom of an abyss of despair and seeing the first ray of daylight.
"We made the list! Frost Parasite made the list!"
Dream Demon Ancestor's voice was so shrill it nearly tore through space. A tremor never heard in a million years ran through it. "Zhen Jiao, did you see? Someone from the Monster Race made the list!"
Tremor Demon Ancestor didn't answer.
Beneath his serrated shell, his eyes remained fixed on those four words on the Sky Screen, as if he wanted to carve them into the depths of his soul, stroke by stroke. His throat moved several times. In the end, he only managed to say, in a low voice, "Let's keep watching."
But the tip of his tail trembled.
His massive body, covered in Black Scale Armor, trembled too.
It wasn't nerves. It was because he had gone far, far too long without seeing any hope.
The night when Giant Axe had split half their territory with a single blow; the dawn when the Zerg Queen had forced them to cede a quarter of their territory with the Eternal Pearl; the humiliation of being chased and beaten by Beast Ancestor for countless years.
Every time, over the past million years, that he had clenched his teeth and swallowed his resolve, it had now all fermented into a torrent, scalding and bitter, surging from his chest to the tip of his tail.
He didn't howl. He simply forced the stale breath he had held for a million years out through his teeth, little by little.
In a corner of the hall, an unusual beast, its body covered in icy blue scales and measuring a hundred meters or so, lay quietly.
Its build was completely unlike that of the Monster Race's typical giant beasts. It had no flamboyant spikes or bulky shell. Faint frost patterns flowed over its icy blue scales, every bend in their lines fitting the curves of its joints with perfect precision, like a winter lake frozen against its skin.
Compared to a beast, it looked more like a work of art meticulously shaped in an icy secret realm.
It was Frost Parasite.
When it saw its name appear on the Sky Screen, a faint ripple passed through its deep blue eyes.
It didn't roar deafeningly like the other geniuses of its race behind it, nor did it tremble with excitement. It appeared quite calm.
At the same time, in the Demon Beast Alliance Main Hall, Beast Ancestor's fingers stopped tapping the armrest for a full second.
"Frost Parasite... The Monster Race actually made the list too."
His dark golden scales gleamed coldly in the dim light. His tone sounded as if he were reading a battle report, but Blood Fang could hear the displeasure in it.
Beast Ancestor had obtained both his Ice Wind Domain and Starfall Blade from the Sky Screen. He knew better than anyone the value of its rewards.
One rank below ninth place would mean a Supreme Treasure-level reward, yet the Monster Race, that down-and-out clan he had chased and beaten for a million years, had actually received a ticket to the competition.
Lie Tianzun's reaction was far more direct than his master's.
The young beast, whose outstretched body could cover half a stretch of the starry sky, let out a low, suppressed growl when he saw the name on the Sky Screen. "Frost Parasite... That block of ice I used to chase and beat?"
He had fought Frost Parasite during a trial. He had spent almost the entire battle crushing it with his physical strength, while Frost Parasite could only hide in the freezing domain it created and dodge back and forth. In the end, he had swatted off three of its scales with one claw.
Now that opponent he had once pinned down had stepped into the top ten of the Genius Ranking. Lie Tianzun felt as if his entire worldview had taken a brutal blow.
Inside the Zerg Queen's palace, the queen silently rolled the Eternal Pearl once across her palm.
Through her psychic network, Ren, Shadow, and Erosion all received the same command.
"Review every battle record involving Frost Parasite of the Monster Race. All of them."
But as far as the queen was concerned, the order was mostly just the result of her habitual approach to intelligence work.
The Monster Race wasn't the Insect Race's main rival.
Frost Parasite's appearance on the list meant nothing more to the Insect Race than another hypothetical enemy to study. Nothing else.
"Keep watching," the queen said calmly.
Among the Hong Alliance, City Lord of Chaos stood with his hands behind his back, gazing up at the Sky Screen. He gave a slight nod.
The name Frost Parasite was familiar to him.
Humanity's powerful intelligence network had long since collected information about Frost Parasite.
"At last, the Monster Race has turned the tables once."
City Lord of Chaos spoke without much emotion. "But it's only ninth place. There are plenty of higher spots left."
Above them, Frost Parasite's battle projection slowly began to unfold.
It showed a starry sky locked in ice.
The light of countless stars in the background had been suppressed by the laws of extreme cold, reduced to faint, cool-white halos. The entire battlefield resembled an amber trapped deep in liquid nitrogen.
Frost Parasite's figure flickered in and out of view. Within the area covered by its domain of extreme cold, even the flow of space itself slowed to a visibly measurable degree.
It wasn't simple spatial confinement. It was a subtler interweaving of laws, fusing the Law of Ice with the Law of Space into one flowing current of cold.
Its opponent was a Peak World Lord-level beast from the Second Reincarnation Era. It was as huge as a mountain, its body wreathed in dark purple demonic flames.
Those flames were hot enough to melt F-Grade Alloy into molten metal. But in Frost Parasite's domain of extreme cold, they withered as soon as they burst out. A layer of frost-white ice quickly formed around their edges, then shattered in midair into a shower of icy powder. Frost Parasite's mouth curled slightly.
That was its unique way of sneering.
Frost Parasite didn't meet its opponent head-on.
Relying on its domain of extreme cold, it darted back and forth, its movements tight and fluid, like a blue-and-white blur gliding over ice.
Every dodge landed just beyond the edge of its opponent's range, and every counterattack came during the gap as the opponent recovered from its strikes.
Anyone with a sharp eye could see that Frost Parasite was no match for the dark-purple demonic flames in a contest of sheer strength.
In speed, it held only a slight advantage.
But it was the grace with which it wove the laws of ice and space into every step, combined with the patience it had honed while alone in a frozen wasteland for thirty thousand years, that let it slowly draw out the countdown to its opponent's death in the long grind of attrition.
At last, when its opponent ran out of patience and exposed a recurring frost-cracked injury along its ribs in a fit of rage, Frost Parasite moved.
The spiraling ice-crystal horn on its forehead suddenly lit up. A beam of icy blue light, concentrated to the utmost, shot out without a sound and pinned the wound with unparalleled speed.
Its opponent's body froze instantly. Even the burning demonic flames turned into a solid blue ice sculpture, then burst into a sky full of shattered ice.
The whole process was clean and decisive, without the slightest hesitation.
No unnecessary roars, no showy flurry of attacks.
One fatal strike, then it turned and left.
After a moment of silence, the World Lord geniuses watching the projection all drew in a breath of cold air.
The ninth genius truly lived up to its name!
The projection continued.
In the next few battles, Frost Parasite's fighting style could be summed up in one word: cold.
Calm, ruthless, indifferent!
It never clashed head-on with any opponent. It wielded the fusion of the Law of Space and the Law of Water with consummate skill, delivering a fatal strike at the most unexpected moment.
In one segment of the projection, it even shattered half a scale of its own, using the scattering ice crystals to form an impassable shield of frigid currents in front of itself.
At that moment, its opponent had just spat out a blast of its innate demonic flames, charging up for a long time. Fire and ice collided violently against the shield, and rising white mist swallowed the entire battlefield.
When the mist cleared, Frost Parasite had vanished from where it had been. The next moment, it appeared five zhang behind its opponent, a trace of fresh blood clinging to the tip of its horn.
As the battle projection slowly faded, new text appeared on the Sky Screen.
[Monster Race's Frost Parasite. World Lord, ninth rank.] [Law Comprehension: Initial King.] [Will: Advanced Military Lord Undying.] [Overall Evaluation: Talent and Comprehension A+-grade, Will A-grade, Temperament C-grade.] [Its comprehension, will, and potential for growth earned it a place among the top ten geniuses below the Undying level in the Third Reincarnation Era of the Primal Universe, at number nine.] [Ranking complete.] [Reward: Divine Power Burning Secret Technique, First Stage.] [Reward: Supreme Armor — Mist Veil Armor.]
When the words "Supreme Armor" appeared on the Sky Screen, the entire Primal Universe shook once more.
Before you continue