Black Flame, Burning Everything

He even tilted his head slightly, as though he had spotted some novel toy.

"Interesting."

He said softly, the corner of his lips lifting for the first time into an expression that could be called "interest."

"Then, in return..."

Yu Chen slowly raised his right hand, which had remained tucked in his pocket.

There was no earth-shaking surge of soul power, nor was there any radiant martial soul possession.

His movement was unhurried, as if he were merely brushing dust from his shoulder.

Yet at the instant his right hand rose—

A wisp... of barely perceptible black vapor silently seeped from his palm like a venomous snake with a life of its own, coiling around his fingertips.

The black vapor was faint, so faint it was nearly invisible.

But the moment it appeared, it was as if the entire world had been muted.

"Hm?"

In the front row of the stands, a Titled Douluo who had been observing through a soul-tool telescope suddenly frowned.

He felt... as though the light had dimmed?

It was not an illusion!

The expensive moonlight stones illuminating the Great Soul Arena's dome were visibly weakening. It was as if an invisible hand were turning down the brightness of the world.

Then, an indescribable smell began to spread through the air.

It was a bizarre stench mixed with sulfur, coke, and rusted metal, as though the gates of hell's abyss had been pried open by a crack.

"What's going on? It feels so oppressive..."

"My martial soul... it's trembling!"

"What is this? An evil soul master? No! It's more terrifying than any evil soul master I've ever seen!"

Panic spread through the audience like a plague.

Everyone felt a chill and tremor rising from the depths of their souls. It was the instinctive fear buried in the deepest recesses of one's bloodline when a lesser life-form faced an absolute superior!

On the arena stage.

Bei Bei and Huo Yuhao felt it most directly.

At the moment Yu Chen raised his hand, they seemed to see an ancient evil dragon slumbering in eternal night slowly open eyes darker than the abyss itself.

Destruction, tyranny, extinction...

Countless negative concepts stabbed into their minds like steel needles.

The Golden Road they had been so proud of, carrying all their hope and glory, had, upon touching that wisp of black vapor...

Crack...

An exceedingly faint yet incomparably clear shattering sound rang out.

At the very front of the Golden Road, that brilliant golden radiance seemed like a painting splashed with concentrated sulfuric acid, beginning to twist and ripple violently.

The blue-violet arcs of lightning racing across it scattered frantically like startled rabbits before going out, inch by inch...

That wisp of black vapor clung to the Golden Road like a parasite on bone, spreading upward at a pace that seemed slow but was in fact unstoppable.

Wherever it passed, the golden light dimmed and the lightning vanished.

Two streaks of blood burst from the corners of Bei Bei's eyes. The dragon scales from his fingertips to his elbows exploded outward one after another, blood mingling with sweat as it ran down his arms. He clenched his back teeth so hard that his gums bled, ruthlessly pouring the last trace of soul power from his sea of qi into the Golden Road.

Huo Yuhao beside him was in even worse condition.

The flesh around his Eye of Destiny twitched violently, and the golden glow in both his eyes had turned an eerie dark red.

"Arghhhhh!"

Huo Yuhao screamed madly in his mind. His head buzzed as though hundreds of red-hot steel needles were stirring his brain. The backlash from forcibly overdrawing his spiritual power made him feel as if his soul were about to be torn apart.

It was useless.

No matter how desperately they fought, that Golden Road symbolizing Shrek's glory was like a lump of butter dropped into a pot of boiling water.

The wisp of black vapor spilling from Yu Chen's fingertips crawled upward along the light bit by bit. Wherever it crawled, the golden radiance instantly blackened and rotted away, while the blue-violet lightning died completely without even producing a spark.

Yu Chen parted his thin lips. His voice was quiet and utterly without inflection.

"Black Flame Bullet."

The three words landed upon the stage like a heavy hammer smashing into everyone's hearts.

His raised right hand curled slightly.

The wisp of black vapor wrapped around his fingertips abruptly contracted. Then, before his palm, it condensed into a sphere the size of a human head.

It was the kind of blackness that made one's scalp tingle after only a glance.

There was no heat, no firelight, and even its soul power fluctuations had vanished strangely. It was like a mass of thick asphalt suspended in midair. Even the light shining down from the Great Soul Arena's dome was forcibly dragged into it the instant it drew near, leaving not even a trace behind. The surrounding air twisted violently, emitting harsh tearing sounds.

Yu Chen bent a finger, as if flicking away a fly that had landed on his cuff, and lightly flicked the black sphere.

The Black Flame Bullet moved.

It drifted slowly forward, so slowly that even a child who had just awakened their martial soul could clearly see its trajectory.

There was no earth-shattering whistle through the air, nor any violent gust.

The entire world was terrifyingly quiet, filled only with a dead silence that seemed capable of stopping one's heart.

Bei Bei let out a dying beast's howl, veins throbbing wildly across his forehead.

"Block it! Block it for me!"

The Black Flame Bullet struck the collapsing Golden Road.

There was no explosion.

No flames soaring into the sky.

There was no sound at all.

The spectators in the stands covered their mouths tightly, their eyes nearly popping out. They witnessed a scene they would never be able to comprehend for the rest of their lives, feeling as though their common sense had been ground into the dirt.

The black fireball was like a bottomless pit that could never be filled. The instant it touched the Golden Road, that blinding band of light did not even last a second before being swallowed whole.

Dissolution.

A silent dissolution.

The Black Flame Bullet rolled onward, and the Golden Road was like a sand model struck by a tsunami, vanishing into nothingness inch by inch. The strange stench of sulfur and coke in the air grew ever stronger, choking people until even breathing made their lungs cramp.

Pfft.

The backlash from their forcibly severed martial soul fusion skill finally erupted.

Huo Yuhao and Bei Bei were like men struck head-on by a charging armored rhinoceros. Crisp cracks of breaking bones came from their chests. Both spewed a mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, their bodies flying backward like broken sacks and smashing heavily into the protective barrier at the edge of the stage. As they slid down, they left two horrifying streaks of blood across the transparent light screen.

But it was not over yet.

After swallowing the entire Golden Road, the Black Flame Bullet finally drifted into the air where the Shrek group had originally been standing.

Yu Chen snapped his fingers.

Snap.

The black sphere suddenly swelled, then burst open in midair.

There was still no sound.

Only black rain of fire filled the sky, like a vast black net falling over the Shrek Preparatory Team on the arena stage.