“Bursting Head Hammer!”
In the instant Sea Fatty came charging in, the Young Lord of Dawn stepped back and drove the toe of his front foot hard into the ground.
A trap that had been buried under his feet at some point nobody had noticed went off with a roar. It worked on the principle of a mousetrap: an enormous mace studded with wolf fangs, a good five meters across, looking for all the world like a great tree felled to the ground — except that it moved the other way, springing up out of the trap in the earth and smashing down at the Sea Fatty who was charging into attack range shouting and hollering.
Boom!
The five-meter wolf-fang mace drove Sea Fatty straight into the rock.
If Ye Kong and the Liqie brothers behind him had not pulled up fast, they would probably have taken the same annihilating blow.
“Idiot. Don’t imagine I only carry treasures for attacking. Attack, defense, control — I lack nothing! In point of fact, this young lord holds treasures enough to torture the lot of you to death without breaking a sweat!” The Young Lord of Dawn gave a string of cold laughs, and the look on his face had gone back to confidence, and past it into pride.
If his father had not been there, the Young Lord of Dawn would very likely have run long ago.
But it was entirely different now.
His father was here.
Under that great wisdom that never leaves a gap in a plan, and that Game talent that holds heaven and earth in hand, nobody could turn the battle around — not even the Yue family’s third son Yue Titan, the one they call the Sky Tower’s miracle!
The will that had wavered a little a moment ago was back at a thousand percent confidence. He believed his father would not abandon him, and believed even more firmly that every bit of the enemy’s resistance would turn into a struggle that came to nothing. He had seen it far too often; whatever kind of enemy the Heavenly Realm produced, once they came up against his father there was never a second kind of ending.
Certain precious treasures he had been holding in reserve to save his own life could all be brought out and spent now.
Because with his father here, there was no need to hold a treasure back.
If he could only win this one battle.
And there would certainly be more treasures to harvest — perhaps even the ancient secret treasures inside the Ruins of the Gods… And of course the Young Lord of Dawn wanted to make a good showing in front of his father. As for that Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen who had come down out of nowhere, the Young Lord of Dawn knew his own limits and knew he was no match for her. But that hardly mattered: the Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen was the Solar Divine General’s opponent, and even if the Solar Divine General lost, there was still his father, who had calculated and arranged all of this long in advance. Once the Game talent was in motion, everything in heaven and earth was a piece, and not one of them escaped his lord father’s manipulating hand. That was the inevitable result.
“…” The Solar Divine General watched the Young Lord of Dawn use the Bursting Head Hammer to pound Sea Fatty into the ground in one blow, and his expression eased a little — but he did not let himself get careless, because there was still an infant-stage Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen over there.
“Fatty, you’re not dead yet, are you?” Ye Kong seemed to hear a sound under the ground like a gopher digging.
“You’re the one who’s dead. Your Uncle Hai has never felt better!” From under the ground, muffled and thick, came a disgusting voice. It was that creature Sea Fatty.
And then something strange began happening above ground.
The wolf-fang mace that had been driven deep into the earth — that enormous head, five meters across — suddenly began to shake slightly, and then rose off the ground fraction by fraction, inch by inch, lifting backward against its own direction. When it had come up a foot, everyone could see a Sea Fatty with a headful of dirt holding it up with both hands. Under the Young Lord of Dawn’s popping eyes, Sea Fatty came crawling out, wheezing and puffing… Even without the five-meter wolf-fang mace held over his head, it would have been astonishing enough; he had taken a heavy smash full in the face and head, and merely being alive was already the luck of a super-cockroach.
Sea Fatty forced the wolf-fang mace up on both hands by main strength, and under that unbelievable force of his, the lever that had worked the mace — a steel bar a good half meter thick — began putting out bursts of noise that set the teeth on edge.
It twisted, and it deformed.
And at last, in bursts of blue smoke and strange sounds, the thick steel bar twisted up like a fried dough twist and blew apart with a crack.
Sea Fatty tossed the five-meter wolf-fang mace onto the ground as casually as a man throwing away a toothpick, and the unspeakably heavy thing came down with a thud, smashing a great crater into the earth and sinking half its length into the dirt.
“This is simply not possible!” The Young Lord of Dawn stared like a fool. This ‘Reverse Hammer Trap’ was a Golden-tier control treasure. Never mind one damned fatty — a giant mammoth, a deep-sea rock turtle famed for the defense of its shell, even a Sky-rank Level Five power of the Heavenly Realm would take a heavy blow from the Reverse Hammer Trap.
Even if it did not kill them, they could hardly come out of it untouched.
And now look at this Sea Fatty.
Apart from a dirty face and a head full of mud and ash, not one hair on him was hurt… How was that possible?
The Solar Divine General’s expression grew somewhat grave. Brute-force attacks were beneath his notice entirely, but he had noticed one thing: this damned fatty’s defense really had leapt ten thousand times over. Could that blessing of the Ancient Forest truly be that strong?
By contrast, there was the Sky Tower traitor playing Yue Yang — the Grand Hall Master called the Central Divine Hall’s foremost wisdom, Dongfang, who showed himself to the world as a middle-aged scholar.
His face at this moment was very bad indeed.
Divine power!
If a thread of wishful hope had still been in him a moment ago, it was gone now.
This was absolutely a blessing of divine power — a might of divine power there was no arguing with, and a ‘blessing of divine power’ that only a Divine-tier power possessing a superlative divine rank could work. Whoever could do this much was no ordinary deity.
Yue Yang’s face was nothing like his. It was as good as a clear day with light pouring across ten thousand miles of blue sky.
His mood at the moment was excellent too.
His face was nothing but smiles.
“Siege Ram!” The Young Lord of Dawn waved a hand again, and a siege ram with a silver ram’s head and a solid bronze shaft came roaring up from under Sea Fatty’s feet and struck him with a thud between the chest and the belly. With the impact that siege ram carried, there was probably no city gate or city wall in the world that could stop it. Never mind a human body — a small hill, or the face of a cliff, would have a huge hole punched clean through it in an instant under a blow like that.
The Young Lord of Dawn expected Sea Fatty to shoot up into the sky like a meteor, then drift away ten thousand meters like a kite with a cut string, and come down hard on the ground.
Every bone broken, chest caved in, blood out of all seven openings, at his last gasp, and finally past saving and dead.
That was the normal result.
Unfortunately.
What he was looking at now was that mountain-splitting, rock-breaking siege ram bouncing high into the air, the solid bronze shaft a good meter across, turning over in the sky, and finally coming down silver head first to stick upside down in the ground in front of Sea Fatty with a bang.
And that damned fatty, who ought to have been ground to powder and was fated to die.
He had not moved a hair.
“Fatty, how’s it feel?” Ye Kong looked at the silent Sea Fatty and wondered whether the creature had been knocked senseless.
“Hurts a lot…” Sea Fatty rubbed his chest with one hand, and at the same time produced the standard answer. “About the same as a mosquito bite!”
This punk’s posturing was so outrageous it made your hair stand on end, and in the end even the Tianra Prince, elegant and natural in word and bearing, could not hold it in. “Big young master, may I use foul language?”
Ye Kong and the Liqie brothers heard it and roared with laughter.
The Young Lord of Dawn could not laugh.
Because Sea Fatty was now closing on him one step at a time, not fast and not slow, unhurried and unrushed, one step after another.
Whatever treasure the Young Lord of Dawn used, whatever attack or defense he made, none of it helped. This damned fatty out of hell stood as firm as a bronze statue that would not fall — no, he was a hundred times firmer than any bronze statue. Whatever blow he took, that little frame of his could stand there and not go down. However badly he was wounded, in the blink of an eye he would be as good as new.
In despair, the Young Lord of Dawn looked to his father beyond the transparent world.
And found, to a far deeper despair, that the father who never left a gap in a plan and held heaven and earth in his hand was holding a piece and thinking bitterly, paying him no attention at all… The Young Lord of Dawn began to scream. “Father, save me! Don’t make me a discarded pawn! I’m your son! Don’t — whatever you do, don’t do that. I don’t want to be a discarded pawn!”
“Don’t cry. Be a bit stronger. You’re not a child anymore!” Sea Fatty’s voice was as gentle as a spring breeze on the skin, and he consoled the Young Lord of Dawn patiently.
Of course, if he had not had one arm clamped tight around the Young Lord of Dawn’s waist, refusing to let go no matter how the Young Lord of Dawn attacked or struggled, it would have been more persuasive.
Sea Fatty had taken a beating the whole way in.
He had stepped on better than a dozen Bursting Thunder Mines.
Blown up until he looked like a beggar.
Clothes in rags.
But he did nothing, and showed not the slightest intention of paying the Young Lord of Dawn back.
He only held on tight, tight around the Young Lord of Dawn’s waist, gripping him close the way good brothers with an unlimited supply of affection hold each other.
“Let go, let me go, spare me! I’ll never come to the Sky Tower again, I swear it, I’ll never be your enemy again!” The Young Lord of Dawn begged, weeping as he spoke. Had it been anybody else in the world instead of Sea Fatty, however hard their heart, they would probably have softened at a plea that pitiful and been moved by it.
“If swearing worked, wouldn’t the old man upstairs be awfully busy?” Sea Fatty, who ate oaths like cabbage every day of his life, looked at the Young Lord of Dawn with great reason and great sincerity. “As promising young men, one in ten thousand in all the world, it is our duty to improve the moral tone of society, to raise the standard of virtue, to become the idols of a younger generation so that ten thousand young ladies scream and cheer for us and ten thousand women dream of us night after night. Under a historic duty that weighty, on a day this important, how could we possibly relax our standards and go swearing oaths any old way? And even if we did, it wouldn’t be your turn to do the swearing! You’re even fighting me for the right to swear an oath — what exactly do you mean by that? Have you forgotten the quality we set by our own example, and a friendship as hard as a gun barrel and every bit as unshakable?”
Sea Fatty sprayed a whole mouthful of talk over him and left the Young Lord of Dawn reeling.
And while that was going on.
Ye Kong and the Liqie brothers closed in around them.
They did not say a single word. They only used their hands.
The Liqie brothers pulled the golden arrows still stuck in them like hedgehog quills out one at a time, and stuck them into the Young Lord of Dawn one at a time — not one of them in the wrong place, not half a fraction deeper, not one position mistaken. In short, exactly the way the golden arrows had been nailed into them, they put them back into the Young Lord of Dawn’s body, meticulously and without the slightest deviation.
Ye Kong had no golden arrows in him, but that did not dampen his enthusiasm. He helped out by pulling the arrows the Liqie brothers could neither reach nor aim at behind their own backs, and returned them to the Young Lord of Dawn’s back to an impeccable standard.
Last of all, he pulled out the short golden spear still driven through his chest and out the middle of his back.
A fraction at a time, a hair at a time, he sent it into the Young Lord of Dawn’s chest.
He studied it for a good long while and found he had not made a mistake.
The whole process was as precise as a piece of fine craftsmanship, and only then did he let out a breath. He had been worried the entire time that he would not be able to restore it faithfully, and had not expected that with unlimited patience and superlative perseverance he would still succeed in returning the favor to this Young Lord of Dawn, who had once knocked him down three hundred and sixty-eight times until his skin barely held his bones in. Ye Kong reckoned that if he knocked the Young Lord of Dawn down three hundred and sixty-eight times and got his skin to the point of not holding his bones in, that would be about even. And just then Sea Fatty suddenly let out a shout. “Hey! Monkey, don’t you know the Young Lord of Dawn is an honored guest of our Sky Tower? And you dare drive a short spear into the man’s chest? This is simply too impolite! Shameful. You’re blackening the name of the whole Sky Tower! Are we the kind of people who pay back every little grudge?”
Ye Kong heard it and went slightly blank. “Aren’t we? If the short spear doesn’t go in his chest, where’s it supposed to go?”
Sea Fatty finally let go of the Young Lord of Dawn.
He worked his arms and legs loose.
He had the Liqie brothers turn the Young Lord of Dawn over, in a friendly sort of way, then pulled out the bloody short golden spear, took aim for a moment, and drove it hard into the Young Lord of Dawn’s chrysanthemum. Amid the Young Lord of Dawn’s agonized convulsions and screaming, Sea Fatty looked at Ye Kong with a completely serious face. “Monkey, do you see? This is how the Sky Tower treats a guest! Look how delighted the Young Lord of Dawn is. Look at that expression — pure joy. And listen to him cry out. What rapture! This is what we ought to be doing!”
The Solar Divine General saw it, and could not help a chill between his legs and a great cold in his own chrysanthemum.
(End of Chapter 1250)