Skull Hammer!

"I'm going to die!"

Tang Fei thought to himself.

His body had been locked down, leaving him completely unable to move.

Let alone take that hammer blow head-on.

This Fiend God was utterly unreasonable. He had clearly said that if petty rats like them retreated, he would spare their lives. How could he go back on his word?

What a waste. He had not even fired the Pulse Rifle once.

"Big Brother," Little Fatty called out.

He sensed the danger too, but there was nothing he could do.

Boom.

The hammer passed straight between their bodies.

Bang!

Tang Fei was sent flying, smashed all the way to the entrance by that single hammer blow.

Little Fatty was flung away as well, only stopping after crashing heavily into a stone wall.

"Pfft!"

Tang Fei coughed up another mouthful of blood.

He knew his internal organs had been injured.

The Yin Yang Qi within him surged rapidly, helping him regulate his internal breath and repair his organs.

"Huh? I'm still alive?"

Tang Fei was delighted again.

That hammer strike powerful enough to destroy heaven and earth had actually been neutralized by his body? What was going on?

Thinking of his body, then of Little Fatty, he hurriedly shouted, "Little Fatty! Little Fatty!"

"Brother!"

Little Fatty had been blasted away by the hammer, slammed into the stone wall, then slid down from it.

He climbed to his feet, ran to Tang Fei's side, and asked anxiously, "Brother, are you all right? You threw up blood again."

"..."

Tang Fei was deeply indignant.

He was clearly stronger. He was a Cultivator in the Qi Control Realm—so why had one hammer blow left him unable to get up, while Little Fatty seemed perfectly fine?

"Brother, you're not going to die, are you? Don't scare me."

"I'm fine," Tang Fei said. After sensing the state of the qi inside him, he added, "Help me up."

Little Fatty helped Tang Fei to his feet and said, "Big Brother, we didn't die."

"Yes, we didn't die," Tang Fei said.

He looked up and saw that the enormous head had vanished, as though what they had just witnessed had only been an illusion.

Even stranger, red light now flickered throughout the cave dwelling. It was as if the head had disappeared but left behind those two blood-red eyes.

"Brother, what's going on? What was that monster just now?"

"He said he was the Fiend God. I've never heard of anyone like him before."

"Yeah. I only know about the Flame God," Little Fatty said. The Flame Shrine operated right under their noses every day, so even a stone man like Little Fatty was quite familiar with it.

Tang Fei shook his head. "The Flame God is a false god. This Fiend God may be a true god."

"A true god?" Little Fatty's eyes widened. "Brother, do gods really exist in this world?"

"I used to doubt it too," Tang Fei said. "But now, I'm beginning to believe they do. Even if the one we saw just now was not a true god, he was still an unimaginably terrifying Cultivator. Perhaps he had already come infinitely close to becoming a true god."

"But Big Brother, he clearly swung that hammer at us. Why didn't he kill us?" Little Fatty asked.

Tang Fei had already figured out the key. "Didn't you notice? When we spoke with him, we were talking past each other. Everyone was just talking to themselves."

"Yeah." Little Fatty nodded.

He had thought the same thing as Tang Fei. The Fiend God had clearly said that if they quickly retreated, he would spare them, yet before he had even finished speaking, he smashed down with his hammer.

Shameless!

"That was only a lingering fragment of his consciousness," Tang Fei said. "Before the Fiend God died—or perhaps before he left—he may have released a fragment of his consciousness to guard his cave dwelling. After we entered, that fragment came out to stop us."

"Otherwise, there was no way we could have blocked that hammer blow. We would have been hammered to death long ago. That strike only had force, but no qi. After so many years, the force remained, but the qi had already dissipated."

Just thinking about it made his heart tremble.

A mere aura had beaten the two of them so badly. If the Fiend God's true body were still here, how could they possibly still be alive?

This tomb raiding expedition felt more like they were searching for their next home, one where a hideous ghost awaited them.

"Oh." Little Fatty nodded, then said with complete honesty, "I still don't understand."

"It means the person is dead, but the soul remains," Tang Fei said.

Little Fatty finally understood, only to become even more nervous. "If the soul remains, doesn't that make him a ghost?"

"You could call him a ghost," Tang Fei said. "But not an ordinary ghost. Forget it, forget it. Let's stop talking about this. Come on, let's go inside and take a look. Since he dared call himself the Fiend God, he must have a few divine artifacts, right? Otherwise, he would be too embarrassed to greet other gods when he went out."

Having entered a god's cave, how could they leave empty-handed?

Tang Fei picked up the Pulse Rifle from the ground and held it against his chest again. He had not fired a single shot before the Fiend God sent him flying with one blow.

That was a little embarrassing.

Little Fatty also retrieved his Pulse Rifle. His experience had been the same as Tang Fei's. He inspected it beneath the dim red light and relaxed only after confirming that it had not been damaged.

The cave was enormous, but heads were displayed everywhere.

Some were human, though even more belonged to animals.

It seemed this Fiend God had been a collector of heads.

Who knew how they had been preserved? After countless centuries, none of those heads had decayed.

Tang Fei and Little Fatty were horrified. The Fiend God's nickname truly had not been given in vain. He really lived up to his name.

"Fiend God!" Little Fatty suddenly shouted toward the center of the great hall.

Tang Fei raised his Pulse Rifle and was about to pull the trigger.

Whether it worked or not, he would fire first and ask questions later.

Just now, without any warning, the Fiend God had pinned them in place, rendering their bodies immobile and leaving them at his mercy. That feeling had been unbearable.

But he still stopped.

Because he could not sense any life from that person's body. It was a corpse.

Leopard-like head, ringed eyes, iron face, and thick curling whiskers.

His face was ferocious, bearing seven or eight parts resemblance to the enormous head formed by that lingering fragment of consciousness.

The difference lay in the eyes. His sockets were deeply sunken and completely empty. Those blood-red eyes were nowhere to be seen.

This truly was the Fiend God.

Tang Fei and Little Fatty walked toward him. Before they even drew close, they felt their blood and qi roil, while the violence in their hearts rose. It was as though a monster lurked within them, trying to break free from its cage and rush out to slaughter everyone in sight.

Tang Fei knew that was the desire buried deep in their hearts, the darkness within their emotions.

The Fiend God could infinitely magnify the malice in one's heart, turning a person into a bloodthirsty monster who killed without restraint.

But what astonished Tang Fei was that this was only a corpse.

The fiendish intent contained within a corpse could affect living people, even a strong-willed Cultivator like himself. How terrifyingly powerful had the living Fiend God been?

Then a new question arose.

Could someone as powerful as the Fiend God still die?

Was it only his physical body that had died, or had both body and soul perished?

If he had not died, where had he gone?

Beyond this world, were there other worlds? Or another spatial dimension?

For a moment, his thoughts became hopelessly tangled.

"Big Brother," Little Fatty called.

Tang Fei snapped out of it and looked at Little Fatty. "What is it?"

"Big Brother, you've been spacing out for ages. I kept talking to you, but you didn't answer," Little Fatty said.

Then he added, "Big Brother, don't be like this. You're scaring me."

"..."

A place so thick with Yin Qi, like a ghostly realm, truly did make people feel a chill in their hearts.

Besides, Little Fatty had never been particularly brave.

"I was just thinking about some things," Tang Fei said.

He carefully examined the Fiend God's appearance and said, "Who knows how long the Fiend God has been dead? Yet his body is still lifelike, as though he is merely asleep. I wonder how it was preserved."

Little Fatty had no interest in the Fiend God's preservation methods or the condition of his body. Instead, he pointed at the Skull Hammer in his hand. "Brother, that hammer. That's the Skull Hammer he used to smash us just now."

Tang Fei had seen the Skull Hammer too, because it was simply too distinctive.

It was said to have been forged from Kunlun Cold Iron. The hammer's body was shaped like a skull, with cracks running through it. When swung, it emitted a savage sound like ghosts wailing and wolves howling, unsettling the mind.

At the same time, the skull's huge mouth could lock onto an opponent's weapon. It was the king of all hammers, the most evil hammer in the world.

Tang Fei had read about the Skull Hammer in a miscellaneous book called the Compendium of a Hundred Artifacts, but even its compiler believed that such a hammer existed only in myths and legends. It did not exist in reality, and no great expert or famous general had ever been known to wield it.

People of later generations had continued searching for it, including some immensely renowned figures, but they had found nothing.

So it had already been buried here with the Fiend God hundreds or thousands of years ago—or perhaps even earlier.

This was a legendary divine artifact. Obtaining such a treasure meant this journey had not been in vain.

Tang Fei reached out and lifted the Skull Hammer. The instant it touched his hand, his blood and qi churned, and killing intent surged through him.

His entire body burned unbearably, as though on fire. His face twisted into a savage grimace, veins bulging on his face and forehead.

At the same time, his eyes turned blood-red, as if two pools of blood were rippling within them.

He looked exactly as though the Fiend God had possessed him.

Bang!

Tang Fei hurriedly threw the Skull Hammer to the ground, then sat down and gasped for breath.

The injuries to his internal organs were aggravated again. A bloody taste welled up in his throat, and he spat out another mouthful of blood.

This was the third time they had vomited blood since finding the great tomb.

Tang Fei, a true master of vomiting blood.

It was like his mouth had gotten its period...