"What a tough turtle shell."
Hong Xiao withdrew his fist, shook out his wrist, and grinned.
He glanced down at the layer of frost coating his knuckles and gave his hand a forceful shake. The frost shattered, and ice fragments fell to the ground with crisp clinks.
"Is hiding behind a bell all you can do? This is what passes for a powerhouse on the Origin Continent outside the Feather God Clan? Not much to speak of, if you ask me."
He deliberately stressed the words "not much to speak of," his scarlet eyes brimming with provocation.
Ling Juehan remained expressionless, but the index finger of his right hand, which held the bell, twitched slightly.
It was an exceedingly subtle movement, impossible to notice without watching his hand closely.
Yet Hong Xiao caught it. A trace of smug satisfaction flashed through his scarlet eyes, and his grin widened.
"Angry? Good. You should be."
Laughing loudly, Hong Xiao kicked off with both feet. His thirty-foot-tall body shot skyward like a cannonball, soaring a thousand feet into the air.
He brought his hands together, and every chain around him retracted at once, gathering into an enormous scarlet ball of chains between his hands.
The ball measured a full hundred feet across, its surface covered in dark red runes.
Those runes overlapped in layer upon layer, dense as a swarm of ants, and contained the most ferocious bloodline power within Hong Xiao.
Dark red light seeped from inside the ball of chains, like a scarlet sun on the verge of bursting.
"Tyrannical Chain Star-Shattering Hammer!"
Holding the enormous ball of chains in both hands as though bearing a falling star, he hurled it down with savage force.
The ball of chains tore through the sky, shattering space inch by inch in its wake.