That power had already gone completely beyond anything he had understood across his two lifetimes.
In the image, although Steward Chen was pinned to the ground, his strength was considerable, and he did not immediately pass out.
He barely managed to turn his eyes toward the little girl leisurely munching on a Spiritual Fruit, and finally felt fear.
But the arrogance in his bones still kept him from admitting defeat.
With difficulty, he fished a blood-red jade token from his robes and used the last scrap of strength in his body to crush it.
"You witch, you dare dig up the ground above the god of calamity's head..."
Steward Chen grinned viciously as he coughed up blood.
"I've crushed the Hall Master's life-bound jade talisman. Lord Blood Eagle King will descend any moment..."
"You're dead! All of you will join me in the grave!"
At the name Blood Eagle King, Yue Guan's heart, which had only just settled, instantly leaped back into his throat.
Blood Eagle King!
He was one of the Great Luo Heavenly Domain's Nine Kings, a genuine Supreme Realm expert!
A figure of that level could flatten this entire back mountain with a casual breath.
Sure enough, the very next second after the jade token shattered.
The sky above the entire Outer Sect of the Great Luo Heavenly Domain suddenly changed color.
The previously clear sky was instantly covered by a thick layer of blood-colored clouds.
A savage aura thousands of times stronger than those blood eagles surged skyward from the direction of the Inner Sect like floodwaters bursting through a dam, enveloping the Spirit Medicine Garden in an instant.
"What petty vermin dares lay hands on my Blood Eagle Hall's people!"
Immediately afterward, a furious roar exploded within the blood-colored clouds.
Then space twisted.
A middle-aged man in blood-red robes, with a hooked nose and sinister eyes, slowly descended through the air with his hands clasped behind his back.
With every step he took, the surrounding air cracked explosively beneath the unbearable burden.
This man was none other than Blood Eagle King, one of the Great Luo Heavenly Domain's Nine Kings.
The people of the Douluo Continent stopped breathing at the sight of this great figure's arrival.
A Supreme Realm expert!
This was a true titan who ruled over a region of the Great Thousand World.
Blood Eagle King glanced down at his subordinates rolling all over the ground, and his face instantly darkened like stormy water.
He turned his head, his gaze locking directly onto the little girl and Yue Guan below.
Since the girl usually kept to herself, and many people did not even know she existed, someone like Blood Eagle King, whose head was filled with nothing but struggles for power and profit, naturally failed to recognize the barefoot girl before him.
"So you two ants were the ones who injured my subordinates?"
Blood Eagle King snorted coldly, without even the slightest interest in asking another question.
"Since you dared disgrace my Blood Eagle Hall, pay for it with your lives."
With that, he slowly raised his right hand.
In an instant, the blood clouds filling the sky rapidly converged, transforming directly into an enormous blood-colored eagle claw hundreds of yards across.
The eagle claw tore through the air, bearing a despair-inducing Supreme pressure as it viciously grabbed toward the Medicine Garden below.
Never mind Yue Guan-even the spirit-testing stone plaza from earlier could have been crushed into powder in an instant by this strike.
Yue Guan closed his eyes in despair.
He knew he really was going to meet his end here this time.
Yet as the little girl in the black dress, who had been quietly eating her fruit all along, watched the blood-colored eagle claw descend from the sky, her brows finally drew together slightly.
"So noisy."
She casually tossed the leftover fruit core aside.
Then she lifted her exquisite little face, her dark-gold eyes narrowing slightly.
She formed no hand seals and did not even spare Blood Eagle King another glance.
She merely raised her fair little hand lightly and delivered a slap through the air toward the enormous blood-colored eagle claw in the sky.
"Smack!"
The crisp sound of a slap rang out abruptly in midair.
The next instant, a scene unfolded that everyone on the Douluo Continent, including Blood Eagle King himself, would never forget for the rest of their lives.
The enormous blood-colored eagle claw, containing a Supreme Realm expert's full-force strike, collapsed on the spot the instant it met that slap, turning into red specks of light that filled the sky!
But that was not the end, for the lingering force of that slap crossed hundreds of yards of space and struck Blood Eagle King squarely across the face without holding anything back.
"Boom!"
The mighty Blood Eagle King, one of the Great Luo Heavenly Domain's Nine Kings.
Before he could even scream, his entire body was slapped away like a cannonball fired from its barrel.
He spewed a great mouthful of blood in midair, his body smashing through three mountain peaks in succession before finally becoming deeply embedded in a massive cliff face, his fate unknown.
The wind stopped once more.
The Medicine Garden fell eerily silent.
Yue Guan opened his eyes and stared at the spot in the sky where Blood Eagle King had vanished, his mind having completely lost the ability to think.
One slap.
She had slapped a Supreme Realm king away?
Just what sort of divine being was this little girl?
While Yue Guan and the people of Douluo were still immersed in that shock, unable to pull themselves free.
The commotion caused by that slap finally roused the beings in the deepest reaches of the Great Luo Heavenly Domain.
Deep in the space within the Inner Sect.
Three terrifying auras that had been slumbering in seclusion suddenly awakened.
Each of these three auras was countless times stronger than Blood Eagle King's, and even the laws of this world gave way before them.
Under everyone's gaze, space was torn apart.
Then three elderly men of extraordinary bearing and world-shaking pressure stepped out of a Spatial Rift, instantly appearing above the Spirit Medicine Garden.
These three.
Were precisely the three highest decision-makers who administered the Great Luo Heavenly Domain on another's behalf.
Sleeping Emperor, Spirit Sword Emperor, and Sky Vulture Emperor!
Three genuine pinnacle experts!
The hearts of the people on the Douluo Continent nearly leaped out of their chests when they saw these three legendary mighty figures descend.
It was over. Beat the juniors, and the elders came running.
Now the entire highest echelon of the Great Luo Heavenly Domain had come out. No matter how heaven-defying this little girl was, she couldn't possibly defeat three supreme experts!
In the sky, Spirit Vulture Emperor's face was ashen as he surveyed the devastated Medicine Garden below.
He was just about to fly into a rage and see who had been so audacious.
But when his gaze fell upon the little girl standing barefoot on the grass in a little black dress, his pupils abruptly contracted, and he dropped to his knees on the spot in fright.
"Your subordinates..."
"Pay our respects to the Domain Lord!"
Before everyone's eyes, three emperors at the Peak Supreme Realm knelt respectfully before the little girl who was not even wearing shoes.
"We pay our respects to the Domain Lord!"
Those words echoed through the empty Spirit Medicine Garden for a long time.
The voices were not loud, yet they were like a string of thunderclaps that blasted all three of Yue Guan's ethereal souls and seven corporeal souls clean away.
Yue Guan stood rooted to the spot.
His expression had frozen completely, and even his thick layer of powder could not conceal his paper-white complexion.
The hand he usually liked to hold in an orchid-finger gesture was now trembling violently beyond his control.
The Domain Lord?
This little girl in black who had followed him along the way, stopping and starting, sitting on a tree branch munching fruit, whom he had grandly promised to "take as his disciple" and "treat to a life of feasting and luxury."
Was actually the Great Luo Heavenly Domain's supreme ruler, who had supposedly been missing for ages, before whom even the Three Emperors had to bow and pledge allegiance?!
Yue Guan felt as though all the air around him had been sucked away.
He opened his mouth, trying to draw a breath, but only strange croaking sounds escaped his throat.
He recalled the lofty expert's demeanor he had put on when he first met this girl, and the bold promises he had made, thumping his chest and declaring that he would protect her in the sect.
He had even warned her not to speak recklessly, lest she offend the important figures above them.
After all that, he himself had been the biggest joke.
This girl had been playing the pig to devour the tiger all along, watching him leap about like a clown!
"Thud."
Yue Guan's legs could no longer support his weight, and he dropped straight to his knees in the dirt.
He lowered his head, his clothes already soaked through with cold sweat, without even the courage to raise his eyes and look at the girl in black.
Meanwhile, outside the Sky Screen, the entire Douluo Continent had also fallen into a prolonged silence.
Spirit City, Pope's Hall.
A soft clatter sounded.
The Pope's Scepter Bibi Dong had been gripping tightly, the symbol of supreme power, actually slipped from her hand in her momentary daze and fell onto the Main Hall's hard jade floor.
Yet she remained completely unaware, her beautiful eyes wide and round as she stared blankly at the scene in the Sky Screen.
Standing below, Ghost Douluo Gui Mei involuntarily swallowed several times.
The aged face beneath his mask was already filled with incredulous horror.
"Elder Ju... he actually mistook the Great Luo Heavenly Domain's Domain Lord for a lost little girl?"
A Red-Clothed Cardinal's voice trembled so much that he could barely get out a complete sentence.
"The ruler of such an enormous power is actually a little girl of ten or so?"
"Just how many things beyond our understanding does this Great Thousand World hold?!"
All the senior figures in Pope's Hall felt a chill down their backs.
They had been mocking this girl as a sheltered flower who knew neither heaven's height nor earth's depth, believing that angering Blood Eagle King would surely mean her death.
Who could have imagined that she was no flower at all, but a living ancestor who could poke a hole through the heavens!
On Shrek Academy's training field.
Tang San retreated two steps, nearly colliding with the wooden post behind him.
His face, usually so full of confidence and composure, was now covered in a sense of defeat.
He prided himself on his two lifetimes of experience and his incisive judgment.
Only moments ago, he had been inwardly scorning this little girl for being brainless.
Reality had instead delivered a vicious slap to his face, leaving him dizzy and reeling.
"She's the Domain Lord..." Tang San gritted his teeth, feeling his throat go dry.
That terrifying might that could slap a Supreme Realm expert away with a turn of the hand, that supreme authority that made three Peak Supreme Realm experts willingly kneel.
Such things were heights he, Tang San, would struggle to reach even if he fought for several lifetimes on the Douluo Continent.
Beside him, Yu Xiaogang had long since collapsed to the ground in fright, unable to utter a word, left only to gasp for breath.
Within the Sky Screen's image.
The little girl in black did not even glance at the Three Emperors kneeling on the ground.
She turned, her bare feet treading over the somewhat disordered grass as she walked step by step toward Yue Guan.
She bent down, her dark-gold eyes curving into two beautiful crescents, a slightly mischievous smile on her face.
"Mister, why are you kneeling?"
The girl's voice was still as soft and sweet as ever, but to Yue Guan, it was ten thousand times more terrifying than a death-summoning Buddhist chant.
"Didn't you say earlier that as long as I followed you, I could swagger around the Great Luo Heavenly Domain however I pleased?"
Yue Guan shuddered all over and knocked his head straight against the ground.
"D-Domain Lord, spare my life! This lowly one had eyes but failed to see! I deserve ten thousand deaths!"
At that moment, Yue Guan regretted it so bitterly that even his guts were nearly turning green.
Now he only begged this great figure to show mercy; even letting him off like a fart would do.
Seeing Yue Guan frightened out of his wits, the girl seemed to find it somewhat dull.
She straightened, the smile gradually fading from her face, restoring an indifference and majesty beyond her years.
The girl turned her head, her gaze sweeping over the Three Emperors kneeling beside her.
"I merely wanted a few days of peaceful sleep on this back mountain. Your underlings certainly do throw their weight around."
Hearing this, cold sweat instantly broke out across the Three Emperors' foreheads.
They naturally knew the Domain Lord was referring to the Blood Eagle Hall members who had just come to cause trouble.
"We failed to discipline our subordinates and disturbed you, Domain Lord. Please punish us!"
The three spoke in unison, their manner humble to the extreme.
The Sky Screen's image gradually pulled back, leaving the people of Douluo to slowly savor the disturbance on the Great Luo Heavenly Domain's back mountain.
The image rippled like water.
After a brief blur, the scene before their eyes underwent a world-overturning transformation.
This time, there were no beautiful mountains and waters, nor any enormous sect buildings.
What appeared before everyone was an ancient expanse of empty space filled with desolation and deathly stillness.
The far west of the Tianluo Continent, the Ancient Heavenly Palace Ruins.
The sky was gray and murky, as though not a single ray of sunlight could ever penetrate it.
Absurdly huge fragments of shattered continents floated silently in midair, as though gravity had lost its hold on them.
An ancient, decaying aura permeated the air, mingled with a chilling presence that felt deeply oppressive.
On a vast, fractured white jade plaza.
A figure wrapped in golden light appeared out of thin air, then slammed heavily onto the crack-riddled ground.
The light faded.
A tall monster with a pair of enormous blood-colored bat wings on his back slowly rose to his feet.
This was none other than the third Explorer chosen by the Sky Screen.
The ruler of Slaughter City, Tang Chen.
Tang Chen opened his red-glowing eyes and surveyed his surroundings in some bewilderment.
He had been resting on the Throne in Slaughter City when the Sky Screen suddenly sucked him into this godforsaken place.
A cold wind swept past, stirring up a few pieces of rubble from the ground.
Tang Chen frowned. He could sense that this place was abnormally vast.
What unsettled him even more was that, after arriving here, the savage, evil will of the blood-red Nine-Headed Bat King within him had become unusually quiet, even faintly betraying a sense of fear.
Like a mouse encountering a cat, it was so frightened that it hid in the deepest recesses of his meridians, not daring even to poke its head out.
Tang Chen gathered his thoughts and strode forward along the white jade plaza.
The sights along the way secretly alarmed him.
He saw a broken stone pillar.
The pillar was several hundred meters thick, carved with all manner of lifelike ancient Divine Beasts.
Just one small section lying broken on the ground was larger than Spirit Hall's Pope's Hall.
Farther ahead, a bottomless ravine appeared in the ground.
Tang Chen stood at its edge and looked down.
The cut surfaces of the ravine were as smooth as mirrors, with a faint trace of fluctuating Sword Qi still lingering on them.
Clearly, someone had forcibly cleaved it open with a single sword strike all those years ago.
"Just what level of battlefield is this...?"
Tang Chen drew a deep breath.
As one of the three great Peerless Douluo of the Douluo Continent, he had always been proud and haughty.
But before these abandoned ruins, he felt so insignificant for the first time.
Before you continue