Thud. Thud.

While the Inferno Sovereign and Yueyang were still sizing each other up, the Chaos Phantom had already found the face-anglerfish and started taking it apart.

By the standards of her previous form — the Celestial Fire Phantom — going toe-to-toe with a Sky-rank tier four creature should have been impossible. But that was another life. She had absorbed chaotic energy and Calamity god-force in Desire Valley and crossed a threshold she couldn’t uncross. What stood here now was a Quasi-Elemental war beast of a new class entirely: the Chaos Phantom. Beyond the eternally inextinguishable Nirvana Flames she’d always carried, she now held chaotic energy — the source of all energy — and Calamity god-force, the most destructive force in existence. All three, fused perfectly in a single body.

The face-anglerfish was having the worst day of its very long life.

Its greatest weapon, the devouring ability, was useless. Swallowing a Quasi-Elemental being accomplished nothing except giving her a warm place to continue operating while she dismantled its digestive system from the inside.

Its primary attack — fire — was actively counterproductive. Burning the Chaos Phantom was feeding her. She didn’t just resist fire; she consumed it, and the more the better.

Its third ability, the Flashbolt Lure — a devastating spiritual confusion technique that had never failed against any opponent — did absolutely nothing. The Chaos Phantom had no rich human emotional architecture to mislead and no visual processing that could be tricked by light patterns. She looked straight through the blinding display without registering it.

Meanwhile, everything the Chaos Phantom brought to bear ran cleanly counter to the anglerfish’s defenses. Her fire absorption had no ceiling — not since the chaotic energy from Yueyang had expanded her capacity to something effectively infinite. And even a trace of Calamity god-force, applied to a creature that had already used up several lifetimes’ worth of luck just by being in this situation, was more than sufficient to guarantee a deeply unpleasant outcome.

The anglerfish knew it was in trouble. It threw everything it had into an escape attempt — shock waves, desperate bursts of energy, anything to break out of the fire tornado that had wrapped around it like a cage. The Chaos Phantom held it through sheer will, the tornado functioning as her own rough approximation of a domain.

It was the Volcanic Whale that saved it — a tail strike from an impossible angle that sent the anglerfish tumbling into the air before the Chaos Phantom could finish draining it to a husk.

The Inferno Sovereign turned from Yueyang and looked at the Chaos Phantom.

Its expression changed.

Not the look of a warrior assessing a threat. The look of a pirate who has just spotted a map.

Underneath the hunger, there was something else — a deep, aching regret. If only she weren’t a life-guardian war beast. A Quasi-Elemental entity of this quality was better suited to the Sovereign than even the Doom Wolf. Calamity god-force for offense, chaotic energy for its body — and wrapped around it all, as the soul, Nirvana Flames.

Nirvana Flames.

Just a thread of it. But a thread was enough.

With that eternal inextinguishable fire inside her, she could never truly die. And this young man, this child, had somehow acquired her. The Sovereign had spent lifetimes searching, cultivating, building toward something like this, and been outrun by someone who hadn’t even been trying.

The Doom Wolf — already a Divine Beast, still not fully grown, potential still uncharted. The Chaos Phantom — chaotic energy, Calamity god-force, and Nirvana Flames, any one of which alone would be incalculable, and he had all three fused in the same vessel.

“You have to die,” the Inferno Sovereign said, and there was real hatred in it now.

“Why’s that?” Yueyang asked, with a look of genuine puzzlement.

“Because both of these war beasts are wasted on you. A creature like the Doom Wolf, used as a guard dog — kicked and insulted on a daily basis. And this phantom — a life-guardian war beast, which you make no effort to guide or develop, left to run loose and do as she pleases—” The Sovereign’s fury was that of a collector watching someone use a priceless artifact as a doorstop. It was intolerable on a cellular level.

“Touch of envy there, old timer,” Yueyang said, extending a middle finger with considerable feeling. “My war beasts are my business. Keep marinating in it.”

“Junior,” the Inferno Sovereign said, with the quiet of genuine rage settling into purpose, “die.”

“So boring,” Yueyang said, and launched himself straight up.

He cleared a thousand meters in an instant, stopping in the high air with his back to the strange dark clouds overhead. He looked down at the Inferno Sovereign and waved.

“Before I go — since I’m a polite and well-raised young person — one small piece of advice, completely free of charge: Senior, it’s time to take your medicine. Don’t overdo it though. A few tablets per dose. You really shouldn’t treat brain damage pills as a meal replacement.”

The Inferno Sovereign shook.

Both hands slammed downward.

The black cloud ceiling ignited instantly, burning and flowing like superheated liquid. Thousands of enormous meteors tore free from the cloud layer, dragging black-red trails behind them as they converged from every direction on the single point where Yueyang floated. A fire-rain of burning stone, coming from everywhere at once.

The impacts swallowed him.

The Sovereign brought both hands together. All the meteors consolidated, crushing inward, packing into a seamless sphere of fused rock. The Volcanic Whale launched itself from the fire sea below, mouth gaping, and swallowed the sphere whole — clean teamwork, the kind that only develops over a very long time.

What they swallowed was a phantom.

The real Yueyang was already at altitude, several thousand meters above the Volcanic Whale, the Taotie Blade in his hand charged to its limit.

The swing came down — First Strike: Mountains Split Asunder — a slash that blanketed the sky and covered the earth, filling every direction with blade force. But the target wasn’t the monstrous Volcanic Whale. It was the face-anglerfish, still reeling from what the Chaos Phantom had done to it.

The sword qi arrived before the blade did, splitting the fire sea open in a fissure a kilometer long. The anglerfish screamed and erupted its spherical fire-shield, simultaneously whipping the glowing lure-tendril at Yueyang in a blinding burst meant to disrupt his vision and break his concentration.

Yueyang’s strike shuddered and stopped.

That was intentional.

The actual killing blow belonged to Gray Wolf, who had spent the intervening time quietly rebuilding its strength back to its peak. It came in from the side, driving through the fire sea, and rammed the anglerfish body and fire-shield alike upward with a full-force headbutt. When Yueyang’s Taotie Blade resumed its arc and split the fire-shield open, Gray Wolf was already inverted — both forepaws driving into the anglerfish’s belly, precisely targeting the weakest point in its defenses and tearing inward with everything it had.

“Enough.“

The Inferno Sovereign brought a fist down on Gray Wolf — an overhand strike of overwhelming force that hit the Doom Wolf broadside and sent it tumbling beyond sight, spinning end over end across the sky. Then a casual flick of one finger caught Yueyang and batted him free of the anglerfish’s back.

Yueyang hit the fire sea surface and rebounded like he’d landed on a trampoline, using the Volcanic Whale’s tail strike that was meant to finish him as the springboard for his next move. He ignored the pursuit, brought the Taotie Blade around in an upward sweep — Second Strike: Heaven and Earth Collapse — and let the roiling blade force cut an angled cross directly into the wound Gray Wolf had torn open.

Blood sprayed.

It went everywhere — across the sky, across the fire sea, across everything in range.

The Inferno Sovereign laughed like something had cracked in it.

The heavily wounded anglerfish crashed into the fire sea below and thrashed in obvious agony. Then, within moments, it stopped thrashing. The hideous diagonal cross-wound on its belly — gaping, deep, surrounding flesh torn back — sealed itself. When the anglerfish surfaced again, the skin over its stomach was smooth. Unmarked. As though the attack had never happened.

Not only restored, but stronger than before. Hungrier. More dangerous.

“Ha ha ha ha ha! A child who has never left the safety of his guardian’s protection — do you think every place in the world is as soft as the nursery you grew up in? Without your great backer behind you, you are nothing. Let me explain something: in this fire sea, in my domain, every war beast I possess is undying. No wound matters. No damage is permanent. Even if they fall in battle, they come back — instantly, fully restored. Do you know why I spent thousands upon thousands of years building this fire sea?” The Sovereign’s voice was rich with complete self-satisfaction. “Because I wanted to create a flame world where nothing dies. Here, I am invincible.“

“Woof, woof,” Gray Wolf said quietly to Yueyang, pulling up alongside him. The tone conveyed everything: I did my best. The problem is this thing is insane.

Yueyang was already working through it.

“So it’s not a fire sea domain. It’s a fire-attribute Rekindling Domain. As long as a fire-attribute war beast exists inside this field, they regenerate continuously.”

“Clever,” the Sovereign said. “And what does understanding it change? This world’s energy anomaly prevents anyone who enters from leaving until the next transfer window. Which is roughly two months away. Two months, trapped in a world where everything I control is immortal, where the terrain itself is my weapon — you think you can survive that? What you’ve seen so far was a test. What comes next is the actual hell.”

Its power output climbed. Not gradually — a sudden tenfold surge, the kind of raw pressure that was felt in the bones before it was understood by the mind.

The shockwave alone sent Gray Wolf skidding back a kilometer.

Yueyang braced against the Taotie Blade and was pushed back three hundred meters before he stabilized. Only the Chaos Phantom, apparently immune to fire-attribute formations by nature, stood exactly where she had been, unmoved.

The Inferno Sovereign drew one hand across the surface of the fire sea in a sweeping arc. A fire-rune formation took shape beneath it — circular, ten thousand meters across, composed of characters Yueyang had never seen. Ancient, specific, nothing in his knowledge base matched it. As it completed, the power emanating from it went past resistance. Yueyang and Gray Wolf were driven downward simultaneously, pressed flat against the fire sea’s surface.

Every meter of altitude cost double.

The cost to rise one meter was the cost of two. The cost of two was the cost of four. The compounding pressure of the ancient fire formation effectively nailed them to the surface — and fighting at the surface level, against the Volcanic Whale and the resurrected anglerfish and the Inferno Sovereign simultaneously, in terrain that healed everything the Sovereign controlled and hamstrung everything Yueyang had—

Gray Wolf assessed the situation with the rapid tactical mind it typically concealed, and ran up to Yueyang. It wanted a kick. A good solid one, with Innate True Qi behind it. If possible, some law-force too — just enough to let it get large and deal with that grotesque anglerfish properly.

Yueyang didn’t give it a kick.

Instead, he spent a few seconds in quiet consideration. Then, with no announcement, he took something out — a specific flame, a particular kind of fire — and slipped it into Gray Wolf’s mouth.

In the roaring environment of the fire sea, the gesture was invisible. Even if the Inferno Sovereign had been watching closely, it would have looked like nothing.

It wasn’t watching closely. It had already decided it had won, and its attention was on the Chaos Phantom — still standing unaffected in the middle of a formation that had suppressed everything else. Not for the first time, the same thought surfaced and would not be silenced.

If only she weren’t a life-guardian war beast.

A war beast like that, right here in front of it. The combination it had dreamed of finding for ten thousand years. Already existing, already perfected — and permanently, irrevocably bonded to someone else, by the one bond that made acquisition by any other means completely impossible.

If there was a greater regret in life than this, the Inferno Sovereign could not imagine what it would be.