Neither Ghost King Phantom, Skeleton King Golden Bones, nor Flayer King Blood Shave spared the Angel Alliance’s holdout personnel so much as a second glance.
And truly, apart from Yue Yang lurking concealed among them, every other challenger there was ant-level in comparison.
One side’s highest: Perfect Innate Sovereign tier eight. The other side’s highest: Sky-rank tier five. Setting aside even the fact that a Sky-rank tier six fighter could barely compare to a Perfect Innate Sovereign tier one warrior possessing the Undying Will — just looking at the bare numbers on both sides told you everything you needed to know about who stood where. It was rare in the Heavenly Realm to find a cultivator who’d reached Sky-rank tier six, because without comprehending the Undying Will of the Sovereign Realm, practitioners would typically hit a wall and stall there forever, spending their entire lives stuck at the awkward threshold of Sky-rank tier five. No matter how high a Heavenly Realm warrior’s raw combat ability, without comprehending the Sovereign Realm, they were nothing but ants in the eyes of anyone truly strong.
A cultivator who had comprehended the Undying Will of the Sovereign Realm was called a Perfect Innate Sovereign on the Sky Tower — a recognized warrior and the true beginning of genuine cultivation.
In the Heavenly Realm, the same level was called a Half-Divine.
And the Undying Will of the Sovereign Realm itself was referred to there as “Divine Sense.”
In the Lower Heavenly Realm, cultivators of Sky-rank tier five and below were considered ordinary. The moment someone manifested Divine Sense, their status changed entirely — the Upper Heavenly Realm would extend an invitation, and that fortunate individual would step into a whole new world that everyone in the Heavenly Realm knew existed, but that very few had the qualification to enter.
Cultivators who reached Sky-rank tier six without comprehending Divine Sense also existed, but they were extraordinarily rare. Generally speaking, the ones who reached Sky-rank tier six and beyond were war beasts. Warriors reaching Sky-rank tier six owed it primarily to certain special physical constitutions or rare talents, or to the support of an unusual war beast.
But regardless of whether it was Sky-rank tier six or tier seven — against a Half-Divine warrior who possessed Divine Sense, there was simply no common ground. A Sky-rank tier six fighter in a one-on-one against a Heavenly Realm Half-Divine tier one might look like a close matchup on paper, but in reality they would lose badly. Against a Perfect Innate Sovereign tier one who had comprehended their state within the Sky Tower’s Gate of Life and Death, a Sky-rank tier six would simply be overwhelmed.
A Heavenly Realm Half-Divine tier one and a Sky Tower Perfect Innate Sovereign tier one stood on the same level — but because the paths of comprehension differed, the latter was generally the stronger.
In the ancient era, the tier rankings of Perfect Innate Sovereign warriors had used the Sky Tower’s system as the standard.
Only over the past ten thousand years or so, as the Heavenly Realm and Sky Tower had fought countless bitter battles, had the Central Divine Hall — in order to erase the Sky Tower’s influence in the Heavenly Realm — renamed the Perfect Innate Sovereign tier system to “Half-Divine.” That change, after ten thousand years of embedding itself everywhere, had spread to every corner of the Lower Heavenly Realm. But in the Upper Heavenly Realm, many old families and reclusive figures of renown still used “Perfect Innate Sovereign” as the standard tier designation and measured progress by that system…
“Kill.” Ghost King Phantom — someone who’d spent at minimum ten thousand years in the Trial Grounds, completely indifferent to the outside world, single-mindedly focused on unifying Demon Valley — raised one hand in a casual, lazy gesture.
Behind him, countless elite Dark Alliance knights mounted on Bone Dragons swept down toward the Angel Alliance’s holdout personnel.
A vast shadow of death closed in.
Any challenger below Sky-rank tier five meeting these enemies would be one-shotted without exception.
Ben the one-eyed powerhouse let out a roar toward the sky and charged out alongside dozens of camp captains of comparable strength, meeting the enemy head-on with the resolve of people who’d already made peace with dying. But the cunning Dark Alliance knights refused to lock into close combat with Ben and his people — breaking up rapidly from altitude, more than five hundred Bone Dragons split into nearly a hundred smaller squads, five riders to a group, and dove from above. Ben and his fighters trying to intercept from the ground was simply hopeless.
“Go, go, go!”
Ben suddenly turned and shot back into the formation, grabbing Yue Yang by the collar, his voice a thundering shout. “You may be directionally hopeless, but your potential is real. It’s not just me — plenty of people have noticed it, and most importantly, the Silver-Eyed Great Sage has taken note of you specifically. You can’t die here. I know you’ve seen it too — we’ve walked straight into the enemy’s trap, and getting everyone out is a fantasy, but you have to get out. You have potential, you’re not like us old-timers who’ve already hit our ceilings. Listen to me — you have to get out of this alive, out of this Dark Sky Nest alive, back to camp alive. Grow strong enough, and then avenge us. We can’t do much, but what we can do is buy you a chance to leave. You do your part — be strong, keep living, live well enough for our share too!”
Without giving Yue Yang any say in the matter, he shoved him straight into the ancient transfer gate.
He knew full well that pursuit would come inside as well.
But anything was better than standing here and being slaughtered by the enemy for nothing.
“Four-Limbs, North, and Fortune — escort that kid out of here. Get him to the Silver-Eyed Great Sage if you can. He’s the newcomer the Great Sage has his eye on, and even the great leader asked his name — absolutely do not let anything happen to him! Go, go, go — anyone who delays gets to stop calling me their captain!” Ben shoved the unwilling North and Four-Limbs through the transfer gate one after another, while around him, a dozen subordinates formed a wall of flesh and blood to hold back the enemy’s diving attacks.
“Seems like a small fish has gotten away?” Flayer King Blood Shave let out a yawn, tone utterly unhurried.
“Doesn’t matter. Even if they run to the ends of the earth, there’s nobody who can keep them safe. Never mind one small fish — Ren Tiange himself is going to die here today.” Skeleton King Golden Bones paid Yue Yang no particular attention either. Potential was all well and good, but what were the odds of surviving long enough to actually realize it? What use was potential if you never lived to see it grow?
“Don’t get too careless. Ren Tiange won’t go down easily, and that kid just now — he gave me a sense of something dangerous. If he’s allowed to grow, he might become a second Ren Tiange. I hope that’s just me being overcautious.” Ghost King Phantom’s eyes flickered with an unusual light, as though he’d caught something different about Yue Yang.
“If that’s the case, I’m honestly a bit excited — days without a worthy opponent are so boring. Look how idle I was when Ji Wuri was here — nearly died of boredom before that one finally left.” Flayer King Blood Shave roared with laughter.
“We’ll see. Toying with newcomers a little isn’t a bad way to pass the time.” Skeleton King Golden Bones voiced his agreement.
“……” Ghost King Phantom shook his head slowly. His own instincts leaned toward eliminating threats at the root. But asking a Supreme tier eight Ghost King to personally give chase to a newcomer who hadn’t even reached Sky-rank would be far beneath his dignity.
If an opportunity came along later, a casual one-shot and it would be done.
The newcomer wasn’t grown yet.
Sending any random subordinate could handle the task easily enough. Personally moving to eliminate someone like that was genuinely beneath him.
On the other side.
The main Angel Alliance force that had entered through the ancient transfer gate had already navigated the maze and arrived before the second secret transfer gate. The five leaders had pushed even further — through the third secret gate, emerging into a bizarre world that bore no resemblance to the Demon Valley they’d left behind.
In this strange world, everything was inverted.
The sky lay underfoot. The ground hung overhead.
Massive boulders were lighter than clouds; loose sand was denser than steel.
Plants here crawled and crept in every direction, each opening gaping maws that seemed to want to swallow everything in reach — while the animals stood perfectly motionless where they stood, more still than any statue. If you hadn’t been watching them for signs of life, the rise and fall of their breathing, you’d have taken them for impossibly lifelike sculptures. The air here pressed in like a wall, drifting slowly through heaven and earth, through all things — and yet anyone it touched felt as though they’d walked into wall after wall with no end in sight. The flowing water, because of the inverted heaven and earth, ran eerily upward from below; even rain fell upward the same way.
Taking a single breath here felt like breathing in a lungful of fine, choking sand.
Even the five leaders, formidable as they were, arrived here and found themselves frowning.
Despite possessing the Undying Will and domain power elevated by the Sovereign Realm, all five leaders felt it clearly: within this bizarre world, their strength had been diminished to a meaningful degree. Ren Tiange and the Silver-Eyed Great Sage fared somewhat better — their raw strength was greatest — but the demon-haired Hauge suffered the worst of it, his power cut by at least half in this environment.
“Are the ancient treasures really here?” Ren Tiange never doubted the Silver-Eyed Great Sage’s word, but standing here, he couldn’t help a flicker of uncertainty.
“A world this impossibly strange — if it wasn’t created by an ancient deity, no one could have made it. There are definitely treasures here. The question is only how to find them.” The infuriatingly handsome swordsman wore an expression of faint excitement, his confidence in the existence of treasure apparently unshaken.
“Hmph, I’m starting to regret this.” The masked Blue Demon gave a cold laugh, indicating he had no fondness for this place.
“I’m not retreating.” Hauge, the weakest of the five and the most affected by the environment, looked around at the possibility of treasure right in front of him and made his decision — he was going for it, full force.
“There may be a guardian of the—” The Silver-Eyed Great Sage didn’t finish his sentence.
An alien energy erupted from the very fabric of heaven and earth, like the sky cracking open and the ground being torn apart — the entire world shook. Before the eyes of the five leaders, a Golden Sword Giant a full hundred meters tall stepped forward from seemingly nowhere, striding between heaven and earth as though the inverted-world law simply didn’t apply to it.
At the sight of this Golden Sword Giant, every one of the five leaders’ faces changed.
Something that could ignore the inverted-world law entirely and walk normally between heaven and earth — what kind of being was this, and what tier of existence did it occupy?
A hundred meters tall, yet clearly not a Titan, and not a war beast either — what manner of life was this Golden Sword Giant? A human body couldn’t possibly grow to this form, and yet the Giant’s appearance was unmistakably human, and the light of intelligence shining in its eyes was nothing like anything non-human.
“Watch out.” The demon-haired Hauge called out an urgent warning — he’d noticed the Golden Sword Giant seemed to have locked onto the handsome swordsman Qian Chong.
“I’ve been targeted — I can’t draw my sword!” The spectacular-looking Qian Chong was now drenched in cold sweat. He was also a sword user, with more than enough confidence in his blade — but in the presence of this Golden Sword Giant, he couldn’t even draw his weapon. This alone spoke volumes about just what tier of power the Golden Sword Giant operated at. Ren Tiange launched a kick, sending the immobilized Qian Chong flying a hundred meters clear in time to save his life.
“A god… This must be what the legends call a god.” The Silver-Eyed Great Sage let out a quiet sigh. “Though most of his power has been sealed away, what remains is still beyond anything we can match by force. I knew ancient treasures existed here — but I never anticipated that an actual deity would be standing guard over this place.”
“Do we fight or retreat?” Ren Tiange looked to the Silver-Eyed Great Sage, hoping for guidance toward the correct decision in this crisis.
“Temporary retreat—” Before the Silver-Eyed Great Sage even finished the sentence, all five leaders had transferred out simultaneously.
The lips of the being identified as a deity, the Golden Sword Giant, curved into a faint smile.
As though everything were proceeding exactly as he expected.
Whatever anyone chose to do, none of it fell outside his control.
When the Golden Sword Giant vanished from the inverted world, Yue Yang suddenly emerged from a pocket of empty space nearby, wearing an expression of deep, puzzled thought. As for the “Yue Yang” that North the bull-headed man, Four-Limbs, and the others had bundled away in their desperate flight — that had been nothing but a shadow clone. From the moment the real Yue Yang entered the first secret transfer gate, his true body had already transferred and been quietly trailing the five leaders.
The inverted heaven and earth was strange but hardly remarkable. What genuinely left Yue Yang unable to make sense of it was the appearance of the Golden Sword Giant.
This Golden Sword Giant was definitely not the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord.
Of that, Yue Yang was completely certain.
But if the Golden Sword Giant wasn’t the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord — then who was it? And why had it appeared here, in this inverted-world space within the Demon God Hall?
(End of Chapter)