Pan Long's fighting in the Abyss had gone smoothly.
None of the Abyssal territories he had chosen held any particularly high-ranking Demons. The strongest was merely a Balor that was not even a Tanar'ri Demon noble.
By ordinary standards, a Balor, as a legendary monster, could hardly be called "weak." But strength was relative. Legendary monster or not, it was still an ordinary Demon.
In the Abyss, differences in rank mattered as much as differences in species.
Above ordinary Demons stood Demon nobles, and above them stood Demon Lords.
Within the same species, even a single rank's difference meant a near-absolute advantage in battle. A gap of two ranks meant certain, crushing defeat, without exception.
The Balor he had killed in the Hall of Bones at High Gate DiColia, for instance, had been an ordinary Demon.
When Pan Long got serious, killing him had taken only one slash.
The Marilith that had forced him to use the Life-Protection Art, on the other hand, had been Demon nobility. She had been far stronger not only than others of her kind, but also than an ordinary Balor.
As for Cang Ye and her peers, they were the highest-ranking Demon Lords.
No one in the world could be confident of defeating one of them alone.
Pan Long would have liked to go alone and test himself against those top Demon Lords, to see just how powerful this world's greatest fighters were. But who had ever seen a Demon Lord obediently fight someone one-on-one?
More likely, one wave of a hand would send a black tide of tens of thousands of Demons surging at him. They could wear him to death...
The Balor Pan Long encountered this time was also of ordinary rank.
He was already the overlord of that region, ruling over a