Gurgle, gurgle.

A low growl mixed with blood, trembling faintly, poured out this Heaven Realm great demon's fury.

An Tingfeng had once stood at much the same realm as this young cultivator. Yet before the Dragon Consort of the jade mountain, a Heaven Realm being, he had been utterly helpless. She had seized him by the throat with ease, and his life or death had hung on a single thought of that woman's.

Now he had stepped into the Heaven Realm himself, and he too faced an Earth Realm cultivator.

It ought to have been a cat toying with a mouse from on high. The plan had been to watch, cold and unmoved, while this cultivator darted about beneath his claws, desperate to live. Once he tired of the game, he would cruelly reap the man's life, chew him up and swallow him along with An Yi.

Yet An Tingfeng had even used his life-bound divine ability, and still had not so much as touched the hem of the brat's robe. Instead, he had been run through the throat with a single thrust.

This was so far from what he had imagined that he could not accept it at all.

"Last time, that worthless beast protected you… This time, you want to protect that worthless beast…"

An Tingfeng clutched his throat and let out a slurred laugh. In an instant he whipped his head around, his face twisted to the point of distortion, his eyes full of crimson. "Can you protect her?!"

As he moved, his towering figure turned at once into a powerful, fur-covered demon body. The muscles of that terrifying tiger arm bulged, and its sharp claws tore through the black cloud filling the sky and smashed savagely into Shen Yi!

Of the five Dao weapons, the black armor and the phoenix core were the two weakest, held back by the gap in their Hall Masters' strength.

The black armor was a little better off, since the Myriad Demon North Hall held an Earth-Nether Dark Python to back it. But it still had not fully risen above the…