"Shenrong Chong... couldn't have picked a worse time to show up!" Lei Zhan frowned. He had just fought a desperate battle with the great demon Black-Toothed White Elephant. Though his Qi Refining Path cultivation had improved, keeping his divine power loss to a minimum, he was still far from his peak.
He had been using Law of Heaven and Earth throughout his fight with Black-Toothed White Elephant, and had just used Star-Plucking Hand once more. Now he had only eighty percent of his divine power left.
"Danger lurks everywhere above the North Dark Sea. With only eighty percent of my divine power left, I'll have to conserve it in case something unexpected happens." Lei Zhan gazed into the distance at the towering giant who had already manifested Three Heads and Six Arms. Suddenly, a fearsome battle intent blazed in his eyes.
"Then I'll get serious and finish this quickly!"
He hadn't unleashed the full might of the Great Divine Ability, Star-Plucking Hand, which his master, Daoist Sanshou, had just taught him!
"Boy, prepare to die!" Shenrong Chong's face twisted with madness. All three of his enormous heads spoke at once, like three night owls screeching in unison.
"Prepare to die? Hmph!" Lei Zhan snorted. "Three Heads and Six Arms? Is that what you're counting on?"
Rumble!
Lei Zhan's body shuddered. Four more arms sprouted from his towering, muscular divine body, while two more heads grew from his shoulders.
"Shenrong Chong, die!" Killing intent billowed around Lei Zhan as he transformed into a streak of light and charged at Shenrong Chong.
"Hahaha! You're just struggling on the brink of death!" Shenrong Chong gripped a black staff in each of his six hands. In the next instant, he shot forward like lightning, bringing three massive black staffs crashing down.
"In terms of cultivation, I'm at the late Myriad Phenomena stage. In terms of divine abilities, my Law of Heaven and Earth is stronger than yours! And in terms of magic treasures, unless I'm mistaken, your God and Devil Blood-Refined Divine Weapon can barely match an Earth-grade treasure! What do you have to struggle with?" Amid his madness, Shenrong Chong wore a trace of pride. "Die!"
Just as the three black staffs reached Lei Zhan, he instead put away the Cold Shadow Divine Spear in his hand. Three enormous, fan-like palms seized the ends of the black staffs.
The three black staffs, each containing tremendous power, went from moving at full speed to dead still. For an instant, space itself seemed to freeze.
"What?" Shenrong Chong cried out in shock.
His magic treasures were also God and Devil Blood-Refined Divine Weapons. But after absorbing a vast amount of baleful energy, murderous aura, and malice, each one could rival a top-grade Earth-rank treasure!
And now Lei Zhan had caught them all with his bare hands?
But battles between cultivators unfolded at astonishing speed. Before Shenrong Chong could fully react, the intricate Star-Plucking Divine Patterns on Lei Zhan's three remaining empty palms suddenly lit up.
"Who did you just call a dead man struggling on the brink?" Lei Zhan's voice rumbled like thunder, the waves of sound almost tangible as they pierced Shenrong Chong's mind and left it buzzing.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
Lei Zhan clamped down on the three black staffs with the full force of Star-Plucking Hand. Before Shenrong Chong could release his weapons, Lei Zhan's remaining three fan-like palms swelled in an instant and slapped his complicated expression across the face, one after another.
"Didn't you just say my cultivation was inferior to yours?"
"Didn't you say my divine abilities were inferior to yours?"
"Didn't you say my magic treasures were inferior to yours?"
Lei Zhan's expression was icy. "You came looking for me. Were those the things you were counting on?"
"D-damn it!" Shenrong Chong's three heads realized what was about to happen. But Lei Zhan's Star-Plucking Hand ranked among the top ten Great Divine Abilities in the Three Realms!
Lei Zhan had cultivated it only to the first revolution, yet the divine ability alone made his hands comparable to Heaven-grade magic treasures. Once he used Three Heads and Six Arms, who could stand against six Heaven-grade magic treasures unleashed with the full force of Star-Plucking Hand? Certainly not the disregarded Shenrong Chong of the Shenrong Clan!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The three enormous palms came crashing down. Shenrong Chong's entire body seemed about to be sent flying, but Lei Zhan still held the black staffs tightly, so there was no way he could escape so easily.
His three pale heads burst apart like watermelons.
Shenrong Chong's God-Devil Body Refining had reached the Myriad Phenomena stage. Though his heads were vital, the destruction of all three wouldn't kill him immediately.
But inevitably, he could barely control his own divine body. All he could manage was a few simple techniques.
Shenrong Chong had all sorts of life-saving methods, but against Lei Zhan, who was unleashing his full strength, he was nothing more than a lamb led to slaughter.
Whoosh...
The headless giant with six arms trembled. Under the control of Shenrong Chong's feeble consciousness, divine power surged through him, and flesh began to grow at the necks on his shoulders.
"Die!"
Lei Zhan's gaze sharpened. Seeing that Shenrong Chong had almost completely lost the ability to fight back, he unleashed the full force of Star-Plucking Hand with Three Heads and Six Arms. His enormous palms came crashing down in a furious barrage.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The full might of Star-Plucking Hand was terrifying. Even over the vast, open North Dark Sea, the thunderous booms carried far into the distance.
It all seemed to happen slowly, but in truth, it was over in an instant.
At the same time.
"Water-Fire Grinding Disc, go!" At a thought from Lei Zhan, countless Rahula Divine Needles appeared before him.
The Rahula Divine Needles formed its bones. Endless freezing winds, boundless azure seawater, and roaring flames coiled around one another to form its flesh, together creating a colossal grinding disc of terrifying power.
The grinding disc spanned a hundred zhang. Threads of the true meaning of the Dao swirled around it, and wisps of astonishing spear light flickered within.
Crack! Crack!
The headless corpse, over three stories tall, swung its six arms instinctively. But before the hundred-zhang Water-Fire Grinding Disc, it was no more than a slightly larger stone.
"No—" Terror of death made Shenrong Chong's entire soul tremble. Despair gradually engulfed him.
But his heads hadn't fully regenerated. No matter how many methods he had, he couldn't use them quickly.
Suddenly, Shenrong Chong flipped his hand, and a Golden Dao Talisman appeared in one of them.
"Not good!" Lei Zhan's pupils contracted. The talisman was only about the size of a palm, yet the terrifying power radiating from it made even Lei Zhan's heart skip a beat.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!" Lei Zhan's eyes turned bloodshot. The Star-Plucking Divine Patterns deep within the flesh of all six arms whirled furiously, each hand brimming with overwhelming power.
At the same time, under Lei Zhan's control, the enormous Water-Fire Grinding Disc ground and crushed relentlessly. As he used it together with Star-Plucking Hand, the arm Shenrong Chong was using to clutch the Golden Dao Talisman was the first to be smashed to pieces.
At a thought, Lei Zhan snatched up the Golden Dao Talisman radiating terrifying power.
The smashing of the arm was only the beginning. The Water-Fire Grinding Disc immediately ground and crushed every last bit of flesh from Shenrong Chong's divine body.
With unstoppable force, the disc quickly ground Shenrong Chong's tough divine body into dust.
Shenrong Chong was dead!
"Phew!" Lei Zhan slowly let out a breath. He immediately withdrew Law of Heaven and Earth and Three Heads and Six Arms.
With a sweep of his sleeve, he collected the magic treasures and other valuables Shenrong Chong had left behind, along with the three God and Devil Blood-Refined Divine Weapons.
"I used Star-Plucking Hand one after another. Now I have less than thirty percent of my peak divine power left..." Lei Zhan sensed the divine power flowing through his body, his expression grave. "At thirty percent, I can use Star-Plucking Hand six or seven more times at most..."
Using Star-Plucking Hand together with Three Heads and Six Arms had been exhilarating, but it had also consumed an enormous amount of divine power. Just one breath's worth of fighting had directly burned through nearly half of it.
Of course, it had been worth it. If he hadn't unleashed his full strength, no one could say what would have happened after Shenrong Chong crushed that Golden Dao Talisman.
Lei Zhan quickly scanned the area. His gaze lingered for an instant on a distant patch of clouds and mist.
"The commotion from my fight with Shenrong Chong was too great. It must have carried a long way."
"Let's go!"
A Dragon-Head Great Ship appeared out of thin air. Lei Zhan boarded the magic treasure, and it shot away as a streak of light, disappearing from that stretch of sea.
Whoosh...
Only a moment later.
Ripples spread through the air high above.
Over the sea, which had just begun to calm, a cultivator in a purple robe suddenly appeared.
"That Lei Zhan... actually killed a disciple of the Shenrong Clan?" The purple-robed cultivator stood high in the air, golden light faintly flickering in his eyes.
He swept his gaze across the surroundings, his face touched with shock.
As an intelligence operative sent out by Tianbao Mountain to verify information, he had seen many battlefields left behind by cultivators.
The intelligence operatives of Tianbao Mountain all cultivated special ocular techniques. Though they couldn't revisit the past and fully observe a place the way a Celestial Immortal Patriarch could, their unique techniques could still gather a great deal of intelligence.
He had seen how terrifying Lei Zhan was.
"A cultivator who practices the Crimson Bright Nine Heavens Map can usually only match the early Myriad Phenomena stage of the God-Devil Body Refining Path at the ninth level. But Lei Zhan actually killed a late-Myriad Phenomena cultivator who practiced God-Devil Body Refining, all by himself—and his opponent was a disciple of a great clan."
"This Lei Zhan must undoubtedly be a disciple of Immortal Juhua!" the purple-robed cultivator murmured.
"I need to report this intelligence to Tianbao Mountain immediately!"
Street-Pavement Diary 2
Sigh... this washed-up author sighed.
My new book's doing poorly. I just found out that even getting a second-round recommendation is a struggle. If nothing changes... this is probably as far as it'll go.
Still, I'll keep writing like usual. If I can manage three chapters a day, I'll do three chapters a day! After that, I'll give up completely.
But compared with those who haven't even gotten a contract, I'm already lucky. I'm deeply grateful for everyone's support. At least you let my new book spend a few days on the fantasy new-release rankings.
For the new book... please keep reading!