Shadow Domain!

"Stop playing god!"

King roared, and the flames around him surged once more. Scorching air waves sent the rubble along the shore scattering and rolling away.

No sooner had he spoken than King raised his sword high. The flame-wreathed blade gleamed with an ominous red light beneath the moon.

"Twin Emperors Within the Blade!"

A barrage of slashes flew from King's hand. The flame-coated attacks were unleashed like machine-gun fire.

Some of the slashes struck the Shadow Hands, instantly cutting them into fragments, while the rest shot toward Jie Jian.

Jie Jian did not dodge.

He simply stood there until the slashes reached his face, then spoke softly:

"Your slashes are too slow. Compared to Sukuna's, they're nowhere close."

The next instant, Jie Jian's body seemed to be swallowed by darkness. He sank downward and vanished into the shadow beneath his feet.

King's devastatingly hot slashes howled through the spot where Jie Jian had been standing, but they only burned through an afterimage.

"Above me!"

King abruptly looked up.

Sure enough, Jie Jian had somehow appeared directly overhead. His pitch-black Shadow Wings spread across the night sky like twin curved blades.

"Shadows aren't just things on the ground."

He smiled at King, black flames burning in his eyes—flames utterly unlike King's own.

"Anywhere moonlight reaches, there are shadows. Even on your back!"

The instant he finished speaking, Jie Jian vanished from King's view.

No, he had not vanished.

King clearly felt a weight suddenly settle onto his back.

He spun around sharply, catching a glimpse from the corner of his eye of a pitch-black figure clinging to his back, like a monster growing out of his own body.

"You!"

"Got you."

Jie Jian crossed his hands and pressed them against King's back, one above and one below.

At almost the