A Divine Bird blocked the sky ahead, while a pride of lions held the ground behind.
At that moment, Xiao Yan's predicament was just like that old saying from his past life: wolves ahead, tigers behind, and a complete idiot caught in the middle.
He really didn't want to admit it, but right now, that idiot was him.
The golden flood came to a halt at the edge of the forest clearing. Nearly a hundred Pyroar and over a dozen Blazing Demon Lions surrounded the colossal beast like stars clustering around the moon.
The Golden-Haired Blazing Lion King.
It merely stood there, yet its scorching aura made the air ripple, and its kingly pressure made people want to bow down in submission.
The Lion King paid Xiao Yan no mind. In fact, it barely gave the weak human a second glance.
Someone who might not even be able to defeat one of its Hundred-Year Soul Beast underlings wasn't worth its attention.
Its gaze swept past the insignificant Xiao Yan and fixed directly on the Great Sun Rainbow slowly descending from above.
The ruler of the sky and the king of the land locked eyes.
Great Sun Rainbow... It already occupied the entire airspace of Sunset Forest, and that still wasn't enough. Now it wanted to encroach on the lion pride's territory too?
Greedy, greedy, greedy!
"Roar—!"
The Lion King let out an angry roar. In an instant, all the surrounding Soul Beasts, whether they were a hundred or a thousand years old and no matter how ferocious they had been before, cowered on the ground, trembling. They didn't even dare twitch.
This was the presence of an apex predator. Any weakling caught in its pressure would be forced to submit.
The Great Sun Rainbow narrowed its eyes. It was nothing but a thousand-year Soul Beast, yet it dared to challenge it. Had being given a few territories made it think it was the boss? Die!
"Coo-coo-ga-ga!"
How could the ruler of the skies tolerate such an insult? It immediately unleashed Rainbow Feather Shot. Feather after feather, razor-sharp, streaked through the air in brilliant arcs of rainbow light, hurtling toward the pride.
Xiao Yan watched the two sides. Both were powerful beings in Sunset Forest, yet without exception, they ignored him—just as two elephants wouldn't care about an ant at their feet.
That realization loosened a knot in Xiao Yan's chest. His taut muscles relaxed all at once.
He wasn't the protagonist of the battle to come. At least, not right now.
Without the slightest hesitation, the light of the Dragon Scales covering his body quickly faded, and he suppressed his Soul Power fluctuations to the bare minimum, almost as if he were practicing tortoise-breathing.
Fight all you want. I'm going to lie low for a while.
Xiao Yan slipped silently into a shadowy crevice behind him, where massive tree roots and rocks pressed together. It was a perfect seat for a spectator: he could stay hidden while keeping the entire battlefield in view.
"Roar—!"
The Golden-Haired Lion King struck first. It suddenly opened its gaping jaws. This wasn't a mere sonic attack, but a visible golden torrent—a wave of flames that swept through the forest, surging toward the Great Sun Rainbow flying low overhead!
The trees along its path instantly turned to charcoal. The earth was plowed into a deep ravine, and the rocks melted under the heat into boiling lava.
"Caw!"
The Great Sun Rainbow let out a piercing cry that split metal and shattered stone. It neither dodged nor retreated, but abruptly beat its enormous wings!
In an instant, hundreds upon hundreds of feathers shimmering with seven-colored light broke free from its wings, raining down in a dazzling yet deadly storm.
Each feather-blade tore through the air with a shrill whistle, trailing brilliant rainbow light as it crashed head-on into the golden wave of flame.
Rumble—!!!
A deafening explosion rang out. The violent aftershock of energy formed a devastating ring of air centered on the collision, then swept madly in every direction.
The rocky crevice where Xiao Yan was hiding shook violently, and loose stones pattered down.
He peered out and felt his scalp go numb.
The battlefield from earlier—the Blazing Fire Ant nest where the ants had turned on one another because of the Purple Sun Flower Dew—had been wiped off the map.
The nest, the worker ants, the soldier ants, and even the Ant Queen he'd placed such high hopes in had all been utterly vaporized in that first clash. Nothing remained.
Xiao Yan held his breath, but couldn't bear to miss a single moment of the battle. Watching two beasts fight from such close range was even more astonishing than the movies he'd seen in his previous life.
The Lion King's attacks were sweeping and powerful, relying purely on fire and brute strength. It pursued the utmost destructive force, every move a wide-range attack capable of laying waste to heaven and earth. Its style was nothing short of overwhelming.
The Great Sun Rainbow, by contrast, was somewhat more nimble. Rainbow Feather Shot wasn't merely a physical attack; the rainbow light it unleashed could steadily erode its opponent as well.
In their clash just now, a considerable portion of the Lion King's wave of flames had been directly "dissolved" by that rainbow light. One couldn't help marveling at how bizarre its attacks were.
And that wasn't all. The Great Sun Rainbow's attacks covered an enormous area. Its feather-blades rained down not only on the Lion King itself but also on the pride behind it.
For a time, anguished cries rang out among the lions. Many hundred-year Pyroar were pierced by the rainbow light on the spot and turned to ashes.
"Roar!"
The Golden-Haired Lion King was utterly enraged as its offspring were slaughtered.
It threw back its head and roared. Golden flames erupted around it, and several golden fireballs, each as large as a house, coalesced above its head. Trailing long tails of flame, they crashed toward the Great Sun Rainbow in the sky!
A trace of disdain, almost human in its expression, flashed through the Great Sun Rainbow's eyes. It spread its wings, seven-colored radiance flowing across them, and an enormous domain instantly unfurled.
"Divine Punishment!"
Though Xiao Yan couldn't understand the beasts' language, he could feel those two words in the mental wave.
Within the domain, dense rainbow light descended like the wrath of the heavens, transforming into countless spears and swords of light.
The fireballs were shattered in midair by the dense barrage of rainbow light, turning into a rain of fire.
Even more rainbow light pierced through the flames' defenses, aiming straight for the pride and the Lion King below.
Squelch!
The Golden-Haired Lion King couldn't dodge in time. A beam of rainbow light pierced through its left eye, and golden blood sprayed out as it let out a pained grunt.
Behind it, the pride fell in swaths beneath this "Divine Punishment," like grass being cut down.
In just a few short breaths, all but a dozen or so powerful thousand-year Blazing Demon Lions, who were still struggling to hold on, were left. Nearly a hundred Pyroar had been wiped out.
However, the Great Sun Rainbow hadn't escaped unscathed either.
At the same moment the Lion King was struck in the eye, it had risked grievous injury to force out a condensed beam of flame. The beam tore through the rainbow light's blockade and left a huge, bone-deep gash in one of the Great Sun Rainbow's wings. Seven-colored feathers mixed with blood drifted down from the sky.
The battle had entered its most ferocious phase.
Both sides were fighting with everything they had, and their injuries grew more and more severe.
At last, the Great Sun Rainbow seemed to have run out of patience. It let out a resolute cry, and every feather on its body lit up. Its radiance blazed so brilliantly that it even outshone the sun.
Damn it, I'm taking you down with me!
It folded its wings inward, and its entire body became a seven-colored beam of light that pierced through heaven and earth. Like a spear hurled by a god, it plummeted toward the Golden-Haired Lion King on the ground!
The Golden-Haired Lion King sensed the deadly threat. Madness blazed in its remaining eye. It didn't retreat. Instead, it poured all its remaining Soul Power, along with the essence of its life force, into its mouth.
A golden sphere of light, compressed to the extreme, with stars seeming to blink in and out within it, slowly emerged from its mouth and met the seven-colored beam that could destroy heaven and earth.
If we're exploding, then we're exploding! Who's afraid of who, you mangy chicken!
Boom—!
A white light swallowed the entire world. Xiao Yan's vision turned completely white. He couldn't see anything or hear anything.
The terrifying shockwave ripped the enormous boulder sheltering him out of the ground and hurled it high into the air.
After an unknown amount of time, Xiao Yan regained consciousness. When he crawled out of the rubble in a sorry state, the scene before him made him suck in a sharp breath.
A gigantic crater, over a thousand meters in diameter, had appeared in the middle of the forest. Everything inside it had been reduced to dust.
At the edge of the crater, the Great Sun Rainbow lay there, covered in blood. Most of its beautiful feathers had fallen away, and its body was riddled with charred wounds. Its aura had dwindled to almost nothing.
On the other side of the crater, the Golden-Haired Blazing Lion King knelt on one knee. Its golden fur had turned dull and gray, like burnt firewood. Its once-proud head hung weakly, and its life force had likewise dwindled to the very brink.
Both sides had suffered grievous losses.
"Coo... caw..."
The Great Sun Rainbow struggled, flapping its ruined wings, and somehow managed to stagger back into the air. Its injuries were severe, but its instinct to survive remained, driving it to take flight and escape this dangerous place.
Once airborne, it gave the Lion King, who lay on the verge of death, a venomous look. Then its gaze swept toward the pile of rubble Xiao Yan had just crawled out of.
I've got my eye on you! Next time, I'll take your life!
In the end, it didn't linger. Dragging its grievously wounded body, it beat its wings with difficulty and disappeared into the horizon.
Xiao Yan's heart stirred. The greatest threat had already left.
He slowly emerged from his hiding place and looked toward the Golden-Haired Lion King, still kneeling with not enough strength to stand.
The opportunity had come.
A Soul Ring nearly ten thousand years old was within his grasp.
He walked toward the Lion King one step at a time. His Charmeleon Martial Soul was ready. All it would take was one Buddha Fury Fire Lotus to finish off this former ruler of the forest.
The Lion King seemed to sense his approach and raised its head with difficulty. Its remaining eye held none of its former pride, only self-mockery.
It had basked in glory its whole life, only to die at the hands of a human child. What a bitter irony.
When it had awakened the bloodline of its ancestor, the Golden Lion Mastiff, it had thought it could shoulder the burden of reviving its species. But...
The whole pride had been devastated in its conflict with the Great Sun Rainbow. Some were dead, others wounded; fewer than one in ten had survived.
Damn it, Golden-Haired Lion King! What had you protected?
It seemed to hear some Soul Beast cursing it, but it no longer mattered.
It had reached the end of its road. This child would kill it, then claim its Soul Ring.
Xiao Yan stopped in front of it.
The Lion King closed its eyes, waiting for death to arrive.
But the fatal blow it expected never came.
A medicinal pill rich with a potent herbal fragrance was gently brought to its mouth.
The Lion King suddenly opened its remaining eye. Its pupil filled with bewildered disbelief.
This human... hadn't killed it to take its Soul Ring. Instead, he was feeding it a healing pill?
What did this mean?
Before you continue