Stone world.

The moment Ming Rihao set foot back in the stone world, the place felt as though it had already lived through three days and three nights of war.

The environment itself was unchanged; the space and everything in it, restored by the reversal of time, was as pristine as before, without a trace of combat visible. But the two who had been standing face to face — Yue Yang and the Solar King — had undergone very different changes. Yue Yang had collapsed to the ground. He held himself up on one arm, and blood was dripping steadily from the corner of his mouth. There had to be over a hundred separate wounds across his body, of varying shape and depth — as though he had been cut by dozens of different bladed weapons.

That Yue Yang had been knocked down by the Solar King was not what surprised Ming Rihao the most.

What was surprising —

Was that the Solar King’s right hand was bleeding too.

Drop by drop, drop by drop, blood was creeping down out of his sleeve, sliding along the vertical line of his fingers like a red worm, and finally dripping from his fingertip.

This little brat Yue Yang had actually made the Solar King bleed? Ming Rihao’s shock had reached its ceiling… When I went at the Solar King, I couldn’t survive a single exchange before being knocked flat. However strong Yue Yang is, he shouldn’t be stronger than me. How did he manage that?

Could there really be a chance of beating the Solar King?

“What did you come back for?” Yue Yang, seeing Ming Rihao, immediately snapped irritably: “Are you an idiot? You know coming back is suicide and you still came back!”

“Showoff!” Ming Rihao shot back, then broke into a big laugh: “I came back to see if you’d died yet!”

“Ming Rihao. With your talent and your ability, you’ve got more than just those first three cheap tricks you showed me. Bring out your real skills. I would very much like to see what the legendary ‘bravest of the Ming clan’ Ming Rihao actually has, and whether it justifies the way later generations still talk about him.” The Solar King slowly lifted his bleeding right hand, as though he’d only just now noticed that he had, in fact, been wounded. His expression didn’t change. His gaze, still perfectly level, lifted from Yue Yang and shifted to Ming Rihao — who had gone and returned. That was the first time he had taken his eyes off Yue Yang and turned them onto anyone else.

“Kid — you think I can’t stand next to you? Well, I’ll show you.” Ming Rihao, ignoring the Solar King entirely, answered Yue Yang instead.

His summoning grimoire flared into brilliant life.

Suspending itself in midair.

A pillar of light punched straight up into the sky.

Countless golden radiances erupted around Ming Rihao’s body. Fully restored to peak state, he looked, at that moment, as majestic as a god.

At the top of the pillar of light, a sun was born in the sky — and immediately shattered. A rapidly expanding silhouette burst out of the shattered sun and dropped downward, growing and growing as it fell. When its two feet touched the ground, it already stood taller than Ming Rihao’s own ten-meter body. Ming Rihao stretched out a hand and pressed it against the golden silhouette. Under Yue Yang’s and the Solar King’s watching eyes, the silhouette’s body swelled madly — in a few seconds, it had ballooned to a colossal thirty meters.

The golden silhouette continued expanding.

Its outline sharpening as it grew.

Slowly, its features became identical to Ming Rihao’s own.

Only ten times the size.

Ming Rihao thought the giant was growing too slowly. His other hand shot up to hold up the sky itself. The life-guardian war beast — his mirror — copied his gesture, as though the two of them together were about to raise the heavens on one arm.

An energy field that had never appeared before rolled out across the several hundred meters of space around Ming Rihao.

Colorless. Formless.

Even the Solar King quietly frowned.

Because this colorless, formless domain force actually blocked the Solar Bell’s projected light and time-domain — like a barrier — creating a self-contained energy space around Ming Rihao’s body. Ming Rihao roared like thunder; his upraised hand clenched into a fist; the small law-force he had drained his last reserves to draw out crackled around the perimeter of the energy space, and the field became an independent volume of space fully controlled by Ming Rihao’s will. Inside this independent volume Ming Rihao commanded, the golden silhouette grew to a hundred meters, body like a mountain — standing before Yue Yang and the Solar King.

Yue Yang stood at the giant’s foot and looked up for a long moment before asking, a little oddly: “This life-guardian war beast — it’s rather strange.”

“You don’t know what you’re looking at. This is my humanoid life-guardian war beast with beginner-tier intelligence — ‘Kuafu.’ With my Giant talent and my Sky Domain buffing it twice over, it’s practically unbeatable. It’s more than a match for that snake-demon loli of yours, which just happens to be cute-looking.” Ming Rihao boasted smugly to Yue Yang.

“Che.” Yue Yang’s response was pure contempt at a bitter old man’s sour-grapes.

“Hmph, hmph!” Xiao Wenli was not pleased with Ming Rihao’s boasting either. She raised her tender-pink little fist and shook it once, huffily, to register her objection.

“You don’t need to lift a finger. Little brother, you just stand back and watch. Even if that were the actual sun, I could shatter it — Kuafu chases the sun!“

That was what Ming Rihao’s mouth was saying.

But in truth, he was absolutely going to team up with Yue Yang on the actual attack. Alone, even with hidden-Kuafu factored in, against the Solar King — his odds weren’t good.

Kuafu raised its massive fist, and with sky-shattering, all-conquering divine force —

Swung down toward the Solar King below.

Faster than Kuafu, Ming Rihao’s own golden fist was already coming in a fraction ahead, aimed straight at the Solar King’s face.

The Solar King glanced sideways at Yue Yang. He did not react to Ming Rihao and Kuafu’s pincer at all. He merely closed his eyes slowly.

Two fists that could utterly annihilate heaven and earth landed on the Solar King’s body at essentially the same instant. One coming down from above; one rocketing up from below. Facing this Solar King who neither defended nor counter-attacked, Ming Rihao used not only every ounce of his own strength but drew on ultimate power beyond his own peak. The Solar King’s cheek was punched inward by Ming Rihao’s fist; the hair on top of his head was violently disarrayed… His body was driven, like a nail struck by a heavy hammer, upright, straight down into the stone world’s floor, up to the knee.

An impact that violent.

Had done absolutely nothing?

Ming Rihao was, at that point, genuinely shaken. He’d assumed that with all his hidden power and Kuafu added in, he could at least stagger the Solar King’s body. He had not remotely expected — no effect at all.

When his fist pulled back from the Solar King’s face, he saw the Solar King was completely unharmed.

Complexion the same as before.

Even his hair still tidy.

This… a strike of that magnitude, aimed at the Rage Domain Emperor or Radiance Domain Emperor, would have dropped them to their knees vomiting blood on the spot. Even accepting that the Solar King was multiple tiers above a domain emperor, there was no way he should have taken a hit like that without so much as a scratch!

Ming Rihao staggered back a few steps and shouted in genuine disbelief: “How is that possible?”

Yue Yang was now, from somewhere, right behind him.

He caught Ming Rihao by the shoulder: “You can’t take the Solar King down with brute force. He’s got the Solar Bell and the Time Domain. Neither can affect our bodies — but they benefit his body and his own time-field. To actually hit the Solar King, to actually wound him, you have to use a kind of force that the Solar Bell and Time Domain cannot cancel out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Ming Rihao almost fainted. You knew brute force wouldn’t work on the Solar King and you didn’t say a word? Wasn’t that wasting his effort?

“I told you from the start. You just didn’t listen.” Yue Yang snorted, annoyed.

“That’s correct. From the very first moment, the young lord Titan has been openly listing the weaknesses of my ability. Unfortunately, none of you are yet at a realm where you can grasp what he was really saying.” The Solar King’s lips lifted in the smile of a winner.

“So what do we do now?” Ming Rihao felt they were done for. Once the Solar King made a real move, both of them were going to be tortured to death alive.

“I haven’t thought of a good idea yet…” Yue Yang indicated he needed a little time.

“Heaven help us!” Ming Rihao felt like weeping.

“Hold him off for an hour. I should have something by then.” Yue Yang thought a moment, then set a deadline.

“Not an hour — even ten minutes seems iffy to me.” Ming Rihao’s scalp went numb at hearing the target.

“Ah, allow me to correct. Titan Young Lord — I’m not certain about him. There’s some final hidden power of his I’m still wary of. But you, Ming Rihao — however strong you are relative to other people, unfortunately, you are massively overestimating yourself when the person you are being measured against holds the Solar Bell, the Restoration talent, the Time Domain and the Time Law. Never mind ten minutes. Even one minute — you cannot last. In one minute I can accelerate the flow of time — or reverse it — by a hundred years, a thousand years. And even if I do not use that ability, on raw strength alone, I can put you completely on the floor within one minute.” The Solar King contradicted them very earnestly.

“Damn you!” Ming Rihao stomped his foot in a rage, but he knew what the Solar King was saying was true. Being angry would not help.

“You’re still not going to bring out your last hidden power?” The Solar King asked Yue Yang.

“Not yet.” Yue Yang smiled.

“I keep having the feeling that unless I force you to unleash your final capability, unless I destroy your last hidden ability, I cannot really kill you.” The Solar King paused, looking at Yue Yang. Slowly he raised his right hand and pointed at Ming Rihao. “How about this: I twist off Ming Rihao’s four limbs, as a little reminder to you — don’t try to provoke an opponent who can absolutely kill you.”

“So what do you want me to do? Bare my neck for the executioner, the way you’ve imagined?” Yue Yang shot back sarcastically. He was not the type who could be made to yield by threats.

“If you refuse to bring out your last power, then I will actually get to work. Yue Titan, no matter how clever you are, you cannot escape being killed by me. The gap between you and me is too large. My tens of thousands of years of effort cannot be closed by your few years of practice — not unless there is someone to help you…”

As the Solar King said this, he glanced at the Freedom Queen.

The Freedom Queen shook her head: “Don’t worry. I will not interfere in the fight between you two. However — Solar King, holder of the quasi-divine body, powerful as you are — you are not an undying, unkillable being. Titan Young Lord possesses something that can kill you. I offer that as a small personal warning.”

The Solar King’s face darkened at once: “What thing?”

The Freedom Queen shook her head again: “I will not say. And in any case, I did not see it very clearly…”

The Solar King’s gaze slid back to Yue Yang. Suddenly, again, that flicker of a smile: “Titan Young Lord carries a god-slaying artifact? I had already suspected as much — that is precisely the reason I have been so careful of him. If he had another century to grow — say, another hundred years — then a young lord Titan holding a god-slaying artifact would very likely be able to fell even the Divine Hall Supreme. But now, that chance no longer exists! To bury the Sky Tower’s newest generation of Prison Emperor, to bury the direct disciple of the Conquest Queen — even if I, Lie Changkong, am killed by his god-slaying artifact, I die with no regrets! The final testing has ended. Ming Rihao, Yue Yang Yue Titan, and Freedom Queen Yingluo — all of you — vanish for me!”

Light hotter than the sun by an order of ten thousand exploded outward from the Solar King’s body.

The whole stone world felt as though a sun were pressed to it, searing it.

Every thing in it — burned in the sun.

Nothing spared!

(End of Chapter 972)