Lü Heng stepped forward and took a few more looks at the Stone Ogre. He was clearly dead beyond doubt.
He stood up and looked at Yang Xiao, his expression a mixture of shock and conflicting emotions.
"You... really went in alone and killed him?"
The onlookers' feelings grew even more complicated as they watched.
To them, the Earthsplitter Stone Kui had been a menace that left them frantic and overwhelmed. To Yang Xiao, he seemed to be nothing more than a target to dispose of in passing.
Lü Heng smiled bitterly. "If I didn't know you'd only just become a Deputy General, I'd have thought you'd spent years cultivating in the Pill-Pattern Realm."
Yang Xiao offered no explanation.
With his perfected pill patterns and multiple prefixes stacked together, ordinary Core Condensation demons no longer posed a threat.
In the crowd, the faces of those who had been waiting to see him make a fool of himself slowly changed.
Some opened their mouths but failed to utter a word.
Others lowered their heads and stared at the weapons in their hands, their thoughts unreadable.
Yang Xiao walked to the clearing outside the mine, set the Stone Ogre's corpse on the ground, and sliced open his body with the Army-Breaking Spear before giving it a gentle flick.
A demon core rolled out.
It was the size of a fist, as heavy and solid as a stone, and glimmered with an extremely faint earthy-yellow light.
Dense demonic qi spread from the core, pressing down on everyone nearby until their breath caught.
Yang Xiao hefted it in his hand, then tucked it into his robes.
He stood and swept his gaze over the crowd. "I'll leave the corpse to you."
With that, he took up the Army-Breaking Spear and turned toward the camp.