"Ah!"
"Damn it! Damn it!"
The Shadow Demon Daoist Heir roared again and again. Most of his remaining soul fused with the Shadow-Killing Ten-Thousand-Poison Blade and raced through space.
He used the Myriad Shadows Void-Splitting Escape, a technique unmatched across the realms by the Shadow Demon Abyss. He moved so fast that he could vanish from a Nascent Soul True Lord's spiritual-sense range almost in the blink of an eye.
His speed had reached the limit of a Golden Core cultivator.
At least, that was true in this realm. He was even faster than the Great Sun Sword Heir. There was no doubt about it.
Yet the Shadow Demon Daoist Heir did not dare flee.
The terrifying, icy sword intent that surrounded him at every moment and locked onto him was one reason. However fast he moved, he could not outrun the Super-Sun's naval guns. Leaving the other Daoist Heirs would only get him killed faster.
There was another important reason.
The Shadow Demon Abyss would not allow him to flee!
The war for the realm had to be won. Its Daoist Heir had to fight to the death!
If he fled and caused the landing campaign within the realm to fail, the first to execute him would be a mighty cultivator of the Shadow Demon Abyss!
The Shadow Demon Abyss had no need for a cowardly Daoist Heir!
It would make the other sects look down on them.
It would make outsiders think the Shadow Demon Abyss had lost its ruthless, ghostlike assassination methods—that its blade had gone soft, both at home and abroad.
If that happened, old grudges might well rise to the surface, hastening the formation of allied armies from the many sects and spelling the sect's doom.
As long as he still lived, he had to