"Old bastard, here I come."
Shen Que advanced step by step, his twenty-foot-tall body like a moving fortress of flesh and blood.
With every step, an exceedingly deep, heavy boom shook the Arena floor.
His blood-red eyes remained locked on Liu Madman, the two pools of bloodthirsty light deep within his pupils all but spilling out.
The fangs at the corners of his mouth ground together incessantly, producing a grating creak that set teeth on edge.
His breathing was heavy, scorching white vapor blasting from his two enormous nostrils.
Each breath was like the hot blast from a blacksmith's furnace, condensing into two billowing clouds of white mist over the cold Arena.
In his right hand, he held an enormous black blade taller than himself, its tip pointing down and its flat as broad as a door.
Its edge was covered in jagged chips, each one embedded with dark-red bone fragments and crusts of dried blood.
Dense strands of dark red wound around the blade, alternately tightening and loosening, pulsing faintly like blood vessels.
With every pulse, fresh dark-red liquid seeped from the cracks in the blade and ran down the hilt onto his iron gauntlet.
Then it was slowly absorbed by the network of cracks across his skin.
With every step he took, the massive blade's tip scored a long white mark across the Arena's stone surface, dark-red sparks spraying continuously along its edges.
"Are you... that eager to die?"
Shen Que split his mouth into a grin, his thick, purplish-red tongue curling between his teeth.
It drew out a strand of viscous saliva that dripped onto the reddish-brown fur on his chest.
"Don't be afraid. I'll grant your wish soon enough."
"Care to introduce yourself?"
Liu Madman raised his head, revealing a mouthful of large yellow teeth.
Those