"You're fighting for the sake of being greasy, so you can grasp the ultimate sage who surpasses you, the ultimate sage who surpasses the Herrschers!"
"Now, enjoy—"
"Three hundred times gravity!"
Welt threw himself into swinging the energy surging in his hand. It no longer spread out as a field; instead, it was compressed into a sphere, pushed to its absolute limit. At the same time, the light burst forth—
Crush...
...ing?
He stared blankly at Jiang Cheng, who was steadily closing in.
The rocks on the ground had been crushed to powder, and even space had been distorted by the mere ripple of the force—yet that seemingly unstoppable radiance passed straight through his body.
—It was completely useless.
The three hundredfold gravity, pushed beyond its limits and unleashed with all his might, had no effect on him whatsoever.
He still walked as if on level ground.
"Impossible... This can't be happening!" Welt roared and attacked again.
Attack!
Attack!
Attack with everything he had!
If gravity couldn't crush him, then he would fire the energy in his hands, unleashing Honkai Energy like a barrage of laser cannons.
—It was meaningless.
Jiang Cheng couldn't even be bothered to put up the slightest defense. A casual wave of his hand, like he was swatting a mosquito, was enough to tear the radiance apart.
The terrifying gravity that could distort space couldn't even scorch his skin. It was as harmless as a child's water gun, a stream of water that did no damage at all.
Again and again, he attacked. Again and again, he struggled.
It was like a replay of the earlier scene—only now, the roles had been reversed. The man who had once beaten Raiden Mei one-sidedly had fallen into an even more miserable predicament.
Even after blood vessels all over Welt's body had burst, he still hadn't managed to leave so much as a scratch on Jiang Cheng's skin.
At last—
Jiang Cheng reached him.
He didn't bow his head or bend down. Just like Welt before him, he looked down at the battered man and raised his foot, planting it squarely on Welt's face.
"Ugh—ahhh!"
Welt's head was driven deep into the rock. His face pressed against the shattered stone. He struggled and roared, but couldn't move a muscle.
That foot bore down on his face like a mountain, and the already twisted, broken bones pierced through his skin.
Jiang Cheng looked down at him, a cold smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
In the corner of Welt's eye, straining to look up at him, Jiang Cheng bent down and grabbed his right arm.
"Y-you... What are you going to do?!"
The answer came in the sound of tearing flesh.
"Rip!"
His entire arm was torn off at the shoulder! Blood gushed out like a fountain, splattering across the shattered rocks.
"AAAHHHHHH—!!!"
Welt's scream rang through the sky. Jiang Cheng casually tossed the arm aside and grabbed his left.
"No—no—stop—!"
"Rip!"
The second arm.
Then his right leg.
"P-please... please..."
"Rip!"
His left leg.
Blood stained the earth.
Welt had literally been reduced to a torso. Like a caterpillar without even its feelers, he could only lie twitching in a pool of blood. His pupils had begun to glaze over, but the vitality he'd inherited from Welt Joyce kept him conscious—fully aware of every ounce of pain.
Jiang Cheng looked down at him, wearing the same smile that had once belonged only to Welt—a reckless smile, as if he had the whole world beneath his feet.
In just a few minutes, the tables had completely turned.
Welt now lay in a pool of blood, not even allowed to close his eyes—he had to watch that smile.
"Heh—"
"Hehehehahahahahaha—!!!"
Jiang Cheng laughed without restraint.
Then he reached out, gripped Welt's head as if it were a ball, and lifted his entire body into the air.
His torso, like a human stump, twitched and trembled in the air.
"P-please... please..." Welt's voice was slurred. Blood bubbled from his ruined mouth. "Let... me go... please... Whatever... whatever you want... I'll..."
Jiang Cheng laughed wildly as his five fingers slowly tightened.
Crack—
His scalp was crushed flat, and blood ran down his forehead.
"AAAHHHHH—!"
Crack—
The only intact bone left in Welt's body—his oval-shaped skull—began to deform. His eyes were squeezed, bulging slightly from their sockets.
"No... don't... please... please, no!"
Welt's body thrashed frantically—even though he had no limbs left, his torso still twisted in the air. A foul liquid ran down his pants, and the filth polluted the air.
Crack—
Cracks spread across his skull. His brain was squeezed out through his ears, nostrils, and eye sockets. His eyes were forced entirely from their sockets, dangling against his cheeks by bloody nerves.
"Crack—crack—crack—"
Jiang Cheng's five fingers tightened like the turns of a bolt.
He watched with delight as Welt's struggles weakened, as that once-proud body wet itself in instinctive terror, twitching and convulsing. He watched two spherical objects fall from in front of him to the ground, their wet surfaces coated in dust. He watched Welt's eardrums burst outward from either side, just like in a comic.
And as if listening to the most beautiful music in the world, he savored the garbled pleas—
"P-please..."
"I... I was wrong..."
"Let... me go..."
Jiang Cheng smiled, savoring the wonderful moment.
Then—
"Crack!"
His five fingers closed.
The deformed head exploded like a balloon.
White, yellow, red, green—countless fluids instantly blended into an indistinguishable slurry of blood and flesh, mixed with bone fragments, splattering across his headless body.
The body twitched a few times, then finally went still.
Flames sprang from nowhere and swept over Jiang Cheng, instantly burning away the filth that clung to him. All that remained was his battle-damaged robe, stained platinum by golden blood, and his muscular, well-proportioned body.
He raised his head, focused his gaze on the screen behind him once more, and looked down at the blonde woman.
"Are you ready to wish you were dead?"
Silence.
A deathly silence.
There were no more taunts, as noisy as mosquitoes.
At last, Cocolia's face lost its haughty expression for the first time. Her pupils trembled violently as she stared at Jiang Cheng through the screen in disbelief.
But—
Did she think she could survive by playing dead and keeping quiet?
"What kind of daydream are you having?"
Jiang Cheng scoffed without hesitation.
Cocolia, her face blank on the screen, snapped back to her senses. For the first time, she showed a trace of an overlord's composure—or perhaps the madness of a cornered beast on the brink of death.
She immediately waved her hand and screamed out her order:
"Titan Mech troops! Deploy them all! Kill him—!"
I will—hunt them down!
Not only the Titan Legion left over from the earlier battlefield, but also a wave of mechs that raced over at incredible speed or appeared before them through some other form of teleportation, just as they did in science-fiction blockbusters.
Countless blue lights flashed like traffic beneath a downpour. The steel tide formed orderly ranks, its overwhelming weight bearing down on them, as if anything that dared to face it would be crushed to powder.
Jiang Cheng's expression didn't change.
No.
The next moment, he scoffed.
Calm was a hunter's virtue, but it wasn't proof of a thirst for revenge.
Crushing the Welt Clone had helped him gauge his own strength. The Welt Clone could be considered a top-tier A-rank Valkyrie; at full power, he might even surpass Rita.
If Jiang Cheng could crush him like a bug, and squeeze even the hardest bone in his body—his skull—to pieces like glass, then he was at least a first-rate S-rank fighter.
Now, he had to face Titans?
Long speeches were worthless. Not everyone was worth wasting his breath on. There was only one thing to do now—
—Kill!
He burst forward like a rocket. That single first step left a crater hundreds of meters wide beneath his feet.
The hard earth and stone cracked like a spiderweb.
Through layer upon layer of smoke, the machine's scanners locked onto something blazing hot beyond belief—something that looked like a...
Fist?
"—Bang!"
A single, vicious punch crushed the entire mech at once. The force sent it flying backward like a cannonball, and the mechs behind it that couldn't dodge in time were swept along beneath it. The impenetrable steel tide was blasted open with a massive gap.
"How? How is this possible—"
Some of the human commanders were pulverized in an instant, without even getting the chance to take part in the battle.
Only those hiding inside the mechs managed to cling to life a little longer.
The violence was enough to terrify any human, and it erupted without restraint. The unmanned mechs flashed blue as they continued to encircle and attack him, following their commands.
—There was no chance to fill the gap he had torn open.
Jiang Cheng threw another punch.
He didn't need to make any other weapons or ignite the power of antimatter. Pure brute force was enough to tear everything apart.
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