The voice was icy to the bone, carrying unquestionable authority and overwhelming killing intent. Like a tangible shock wave, it made the entire Dark Corrosion Cavern hum!
Marquis Rock, who had been preparing to make a desperate last stand, froze. Even her burning divine power faltered.
Blood Fang King's descending claw abruptly stopped as well. His cruel, slit pupils contracted as he looked toward the gaping hole in the ceiling in alarm and uncertainty.
A figure wreathed in flowing black flames suddenly descended!
Space law flowed naturally around him, as though he had become one with this chaotic space. His earth-shattering entrance had barely caused any spatial ripples, revealing exquisitely precise control over space.
His face was somewhat obscured by the flowing flames, but his unconcealed, powerful aura as a King-level Immortal seemed poised to turn the situation around!
"A human King?!" Blood Fang King was startled. Judging by the strength of the newcomer's aura, he was far more than a newly advanced King. He even gave Blood Fang King a faint sense of pressure!
The environment inside the Dark Corrosion Cavern was exceptionally strange. Chaotic energy currents and unusual mineral structures severely disrupted the stability of space.
Even King-level experts who had mastered Teleportation found it difficult to align their consciousness perfectly with spatial fluctuations at a precise coordinate deep inside the cavern.
Of course, a King-level expert who knew Space Lockdown could use this to seal off a large expanse of space more quickly.
Thus, when Hu Yanbo approached the final stretch, he had charged straight through at sublight speed!
That was also why Blood Fang King had not seen him teleport at first, only witnessed his forceful entrance with an overwhelmingly oppressive presence!
Trapped in a desperate situation, Marquis Rock stared at the black figure with widened eyes, unable to believe what she saw.
Although his aura was countless times stronger than she remembered, the essence of those soul fluctuations...
"Hu Yan... bo?!" She almost cried out his name, then shook her head sharply. "No... impossible! How could he be a King?!"
As far as she knew, Hu Yanbo was a lone wanderer. When they had last parted, he had barely reached Marquis level. How could he have leaped to King level after only ten thousand years apart, becoming powerful enough to intimidate a demon King?
Could he be... reinforcements Hu Yanbo had brought?
But this aura was unmistakably his!
While their thoughts raced, Hu Yanbo had no intention of wasting words.
Rescue was like fighting a fire. Any delay could bring disaster!
"Slash!"
He gave a low shout, leaving Blood Fang King no time to react. Holding two fingers together like a sword, he pointed at Blood Fang King from afar!
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
In an instant, nine silver spatial blades, condensed to the utmost and as thin as cicada wings, appeared out of nowhere. They seemed to merge completely with space itself, following strange, elusive paths as they crossed more than ten thousand kilometers in a flash and sliced toward Blood Fang King's enormous body from impossible angles!
Nine Universes Void Blade!
It was a killing technique Hu Yanbo had created by incorporating his insights from the Nine Universes Chaos Stele!
Fast! Precise! Ruthless!
Slice! Slice! Slice!
The blades cut precisely into Blood Fang King's divine body, instantly leaving several enormous wounds deep enough to expose bone. Golden divine blood sprayed out!
"Roar! Get lost! Stay out of my way!" Blood Fang King roared furiously in pain, his charge faltering.
But the next moment, bloody light surged across his body. Those horrific wounds, along with the severed scales and muscles, began writhing and healing at a speed visible to the naked eye!
In the blink of an eye, his divine body returned to its original state, as though he had never been injured!
An immortal body!
As long as his divine power was not completely annihilated or his soul grievously injured, physical damage of this degree could be healed swiftly!
At the very least, physical attacks at the High King level could not annihilate an Initial King's physical substance.
"Hahahaha! Human!" Seeing this, Blood Fang King let out a savage, arrogant laugh. The uncertainty in his slit pupils faded, replaced by even more vicious killing intent. "Even if you're stronger than me, you can't do anything to me!"
He roared again, burning with an even fiercer bloody aura. His enormous body tore through space as he lunged forward with greater ferocity!
He was convinced that Hu Yanbo's attacks posed no substantial threat to him!
As long as he finished off Marquis Rock before him, he would still have time to seize the treasure and escape!
Yet as Hu Yanbo watched Blood Fang King recover instantly, he felt no frustration. Instead, a strange feeling rose within him.
Once, while traveling through the Vast Sea Universe, he had taken every step as though treading on thin ice, cautiously fearing that a single mistake would doom him forever.
That was the caution and helplessness of a lone wanderer struggling to survive in the boundless universe.
But now?
He felt the divine power surging within him, far surpassing what he had possessed before, and the hope of growing ever stronger in the future!
An unprecedented sense of exhilaration and boldness suddenly swept away the caution accumulated over tens of millions of years!
A thousand years!
A thousand years of transformation!
Surely he could now count himself among the universe's powerful figures!
"An immortal body? Fast recovery?" Watching Blood Fang King pounce again, Hu Yanbo's lips curved into an icy smile tinged with mockery. "Then let's see whether you can restore the very essence of your soul as well!"
At that instant, his thoughts cleared and his fighting spirit surged to its utmost!
All his past doubts about soul attacks, his insights into the mysteries of the soul within the Abyssal Seal, and even his fierce desire to utterly destroy the immortal body before him... all converged with a thunderous rush, erupting like a volcano that had reached its limit!
Inspiration struck, and everything fell into place!
The supreme soul attack secret technique he had originally intended to create during secluded cultivation in Chaos City naturally took complete form in his sea of consciousness!
Its intricacy and the destructive intent it embodied far exceeded even his original conception!
His original idea had stemmed from his Soul Defense Secret Technique, the Void Tower. He had tried to make it serve both offense and defense-using the tower to stabilize his soul and crush his enemies' souls.
But now, inspiration flashed through his mind like lightning!
What was a tower?
A tower emphasized anchoring! Defense! Suppression! Its form was square and upright, its essence stable, its might vast. It was an unparalleled instrument for securing all directions and protecting oneself!
An attack derived from this foundation would certainly be powerful, but it always seemed... to lack something.
It was like forcibly grinding an edge onto the strongest shield to hack at an enemy. It could inflict damage, but it could never realize the full potential of its material, and it lost some of the ultimate sharpness and complete destruction that an offensive technique should possess!
The core intent of offense and defense should be fundamentally different!
Defense should be like bedrock, like an abyss, like an immovable divine mountain, absorbing and neutralizing everything, enduring through eternity.
But offense!
It should be like thunder, like heavenly punishment, like flames burning the world!
It sought the ultimate eruption, complete annihilation, the resolve to tear apart every obstacle, break it down, and reduce it to nothingness!
A tower... was not suited to offense! At least, it was not my ideal form for an offensive technique! The thought resounded through Hu Yanbo's mind like a great bell.
He was not a God King like Sitting Mountain Guest, capable of creating the Star Tower through supreme power, its body suppressing and sealing while its tip shattered everything, bringing offense and defense together in perfect mastery.
Within his understanding and insights, the core essence of a tower's form ultimately lay in suppression and defense.
Even when its tip was used to attack, it mostly relied on unmatched weight and solidity to ram and crush, or on suppressive force to restrain and wear down an opponent.
Then what could bear this intent of annihilation and express offense at its utmost?
Almost simultaneously, another image naturally emerged-the method of attack he had been using all along-
A lotus!
With a single thought, everything was renewed!
Void Lotus!
A lotus, born in mud and blooming in the void, pure yet uncanny, beautiful yet deadly.
Its petals bloomed layer upon layer, both life's ultimate splendor and the devouring maw of reincarnation!
Its form could be soft or hard, its intent still or dynamic!
With void divine power as its stems and petals, and the mysteries of space traced as its veins, its bloom would both open the void and return all things to silence!
This was a form born solely for offense and annihilation!
Void Lotus!
Though countless thoughts passed through his powerful soul, they were all completed in a split second!
To the others, the instant after Hu Yanbo's physical attack, the spatial fluctuations around him suddenly became utterly ethereal. An invisible chill that made their souls tremble abruptly spread!
He brought his fingers together once more!
The nine silver spatial blades transformed into the beginnings of nine strange petals, flowing with a dark silver sheen while illusory black light flickered along their edges!
Vast torrents of void-transformed immortal divine power poured madly into the nine nascent petals like rivers flowing into the sea, instantly making them solid and full. They linked and encircled one another, forming a budding black lotus between reality and illusion in a single instant!
The lotus appeared in exactly the right place, directly between Blood Fang King's claw and Marquis Rock!
It floated quietly, its petals seemingly engraved by nature with countless intricate, delicate space secret patterns.
The patterns circulated rapidly, causing the space around the lotus to twist and collapse violently. It radiated an aura of annihilation that could freeze even an immortal's soul!
Launched later, yet arriving first!
Blood Fang King's slit pupils, filled with greed and killing intent, suddenly contracted!
His pounce was extremely fast, yet the black lotus seemed to transcend the limits of time, appearing out of nowhere to block his inevitable path!
An instinctive terror of that annihilating aura, rising from the deepest part of his soul, made him shriek!
He tried to force himself to turn or stop, but his tremendous momentum and the tiny distance left him unable to avoid it completely!
"Bloom."
Hu Yanbo's icy intent descended.
The budding black lotus suddenly unfurled its petals, blooming fully without a sound!
There was no dazzling light, no tremendous spectacle, only an ultimate silence that returned everything to nothingness.
The heart of the blooming lotus resembled a miniature black hole as it met Blood Fang King's descending claw!
Hiss...
An exceedingly faint, strange sound seemed to ring directly within the soul.
Blood Fang King's descending claw did not disappear. Its scales remained dark, and divine power still gleamed across them. On a physical level, it seemed completely unharmed.
Yet at the instant of contact, Blood Fang King's enormous body stiffened, and his forward momentum abruptly stopped!
An indescribable, unprecedented feeling of absolute emptiness and agonizing tearing swept through his entire consciousness like a cosmic cold wave. It came not from his divine body, but directly from the very core of his soul!
His vast immortal soul, tightly bound to every portion of divine power in his divine body, seemed to have had a huge piece gouged out by an invisible, supreme blade aimed specifically at the soul's essence!
"Awoooo-!!!"
Blood Fang King let out an unprecedented, distorted scream of agony! The pain within that cry exceeded the suffering of an injured divine body a thousand times over. It was the most primal terror of having his foundation of life shaken and his eternal existence threatened!
He could clearly sense that nearly 5% of the powerful soul he had cultivated for hundreds of millions of years had been forcibly and permanently erased in that single instant!
His divine body remained whole and his divine power vast, but the sudden loss of part of his soul instantly made his control over divine power sluggish. His perception of the laws seemed shrouded in thick fog, and even his thoughts scattered for a moment!
This wound to his very essence brought an indescribable sense of incompleteness and a weakness that sank into his bones!
Damn it!
This human King was a soul master!
An incredibly terrifying soul master!
The treasure? Marquis Rock? Neither meant anything to Blood Fang King now!
If one attack could destroy 5% of my soul, wouldn't twenty attacks kill me?!
And I've already burned a considerable amount of divine power. A dozen or so attacks might be enough to kill me now!
Even if my body remained, without a soul, I would still be completely dead!
Thus, the only thought left in Blood Fang King's mind was the purest instinctive terror of his soul, and the need to escape!
He did not even dare glance at Hu Yanbo again. Burning his already depleted divine power, he desperately tore through the space behind him. His enormous body shot backward madly, seeking only to get away from this terrifying being as fast as possible!
Hu Yanbo watched Blood Fang King's retreating figure as he fled in utter panic and disgrace, sensing the aura of his suddenly weakened soul and its overwhelming terror.
His exhilaration at commanding such power, and his satisfaction with the might of Void Lotus, reached their peak.
But he did not let that delight cloud his judgment. The caution he had developed over sixty million years was still at work.
Don't pursue a desperate enemy... Hu Yanbo calmly watched the direction in which Blood Fang King had vanished, his thoughts racing.
Though Blood Fang King was badly injured and frightened into fleeing, he was still a King-level Immortal with reserves of strength.
If I pushed him too hard and drove him to desperation, he might choose to self-destruct regardless of the cost... that power would be anything but ordinary.
Hu Yanbo clearly understood his own strengths and weaknesses.
On offense, the newly comprehended Void Lotus, which targeted the soul's essence, gave him strength comparable to a Peak King. Against an Initial King who possessed a soul but lacked a protective treasure, he could pose an even greater threat than a Peak King.
But in terms of defense... his strongest physical protection was merely a precious suit of grade G metal armor. It might withstand an Initial King's ordinary attacks, but it absolutely could not withstand the ultimate strike of a desperate King-level Immortal who burned everything, or even detonated his enormous divine body!
Besides, precise teleportation is impossible inside the Dark Corrosion Cavern. Unless I burn divine power, catching him will already be difficult!
Having made up his mind, Hu Yanbo paid no further attention to the fleeing Blood Fang King.
He turned toward Marquis Rock, who was still in profound shock.
"We can't stay here. Take me to Radiance at once!"
Marquis Rock snapped back to her senses. Looking at Hu Yanbo's unfathomably deep aura and astonishing abilities, she hurriedly suppressed the turmoil in her heart and nodded firmly. "All right! Follow me!"
Spatial fluctuations rippled again, and the two figures swiftly vanished from the devastated battlefield.
Before you continue