She raised her head.
Her gaze pierced the gray-white mist filling the sky and locked onto the short figure disintegrating deep within it.
"Spear Dao Law: Calamity Annihilation."
As she spoke those words, the sky above the entire Arena suddenly darkened.
Clouds had not blotted out the sun. Something had absorbed the sunlight itself.
A thread-thin beam of golden-red light shot from the tip of Zhao Zhaoxue's red-tasseled spear. It was almost too fine to see and almost too bright to look at.
It pierced the gray-white mist, the power of decay, and the layered shields of Chaos essence surrounding Walker's body. Finally, it pierced the center of his brow.
The golden-red beam entered Walker's brow and emerged from the back of his head, trailing a hair-fine crimson flame before striking the Coiling Dragon Pillar at the edge of the Arena.
The laws of the Heavenly Dao sealed within the pillar shuddered, then suppressed and absorbed the beam's lingering force.
Walker stopped.
His half-disintegrated body froze in place, great sheets of skin hanging from him like an old garment coming loose.
His murky yellow left eye slowly turned toward Zhao Zhaoxue.
His lips moved, and the few bony spikes he had left opened and closed slightly.
The shape of his mouth was unmistakable.
"So... beautiful..."
Then his short body toppled backward. He landed faceup on the Arena's stone tiles with a dull thud.
The gray-white mist began to disperse. Dark green slime seeped from beneath his crumbling skin and pooled in a small, murky puddle on the tiles.
Walker was dead.
Zhao Zhaoxue was still standing.
But her body shook uncontrollably.
A wound deep enough to expose bone had split the web of her right hand. Blood ran down the spear shaft, only to be steamed into a bloody mist