Qing Chen's voice drowned out the roaring formations inside and outside Yanmen Pass.
The Carefree Marquis gazed at the figure standing alone beyond the Azure-Black Heavenly Canopy, the surprise in his eyes gradually fading.
The Nine Profound Suppression of the North Formation lay just over a hundred feet behind Qing Chen.
But however close those hundred feet were, he was still outside the formation.
Under the coverage of a Spirit Transformation rule domain and powerful divine sense, that distance hardly counted as distance at all. If the Carefree Marquis truly intended to kill him, a single thought of his primordial spirit could envelop him completely.
"You have some courage, at least."
The blood moon behind the Carefree Marquis rotated slightly. "But daring to come out and being qualified to stand before me are two different things."
Qing Chen gave a cold laugh. "At this point, whether I'm qualified is no longer for you to decide."
"I, the Commander-in-Chief, entered the Heavenly Gang Ranking, slew Great Cultivators, defeated the Taiyi Daoist Heir, took command of the Northwestern Circuit's Dao Seal, and led two million Dao Soldiers to reach my position today. Who dares say I'm unqualified?"
He raised his head, his gaze crossing the thousand-mile blood marsh to meet that dark-red blood moon.
"Carefree Marquis, if you could rise from a Peerless True Lord on the Heavenly Gang Ranking to a Spirit Transformation Venerable, why can't I?!"
"I may not be a Spirit Venerable today, but does that mean I won't be one a hundred years from now, or several hundred?"
"The position of Origin-Initial Heavenly Devil in our sect isn't a birthright. If the Branch Masters of the Origin-Initial Devil Sect can contend for it, why can't I, the Deputy Branch Master of the Primordial Magnetism Branch, contend for it