Huff… huff…

Out on the meteor belt, Mao Podi, reception envoy of the Southeast Divine Nation, had gone down on one knee, gasping painfully for air.

It felt as though every breath he drew set a fire burning in his lungs — and yet, after so long a suffocation, his body’s desperate need forced him to keep breathing in a frenzy, making up the air he’d been deprived of. There was air out on the meteor belt, but it was exceedingly thin; even without a battle, merely standing in a place like this left a man weak all over and unable to remain upright for long.

And now he had not only to fight here, but to fight with everything he had.

The battle was so tense it was near suffocating; a man could not catch his breath.

Mao Podi knew, too, that even these few seconds of decent breathing were a chance his comrades had bought him at the risk of their lives… Had Marshal Griffin and General Golden Eagle not looked after him so, he’d surely have died at Gu Hai’s hands long since.

Gu Hai. Left Marshal of the Western Divine Nation, one of the eight great divine nations, possessed of super-divine-general strength. However foul and hateful the world’s impression of the man might be, none of it could erase his true power. Among the eight great divine nations — setting the eight divine lords themselves aside — if one insisted on ranking everyone below the divine lords, then Gu Hai, Left Marshal of the Western Divine Nation, was a top-five certainty, nailed down like iron. However you arranged the list, there was no keeping Gu Hai out of the top five. A few even claimed he had the strength to contend for the top three outright, and that it was only because the Western Divine Nation also possessed an equally formidable Right Marshal — “Myriad Evils” — that Gu Hai stood less prominently than the single marshals of other divine nations, which shaved a little off his evaluation.

Boom, boom, boom, boom!

Amid his frantic gasping, Mao Podi lifted his head and saw dozens of enormous meteors shatter and burst under Gu Hai’s assault.

Even men as mighty as Marshal Griffin and General Golden Eagle had no choice but to take cover from that power for the moment.

They dared not meet Gu Hai’s ultimate technique — Constellation Detonation — head-on.

“Go. Report everything to the Southeast divine lord.” Marshal Griffin was no fool. By now he’d long since grasped the truth: the man backing the Skyfall Bandits was Gu Hai of the Western Divine Nation — and behind him, perhaps, the Western divine lord himself, who meant to conquer the whole of the Heaven Beyond the Heaven. How had the Skyfall Bandits come to master the forbidden power? How had they rolled onto the Gannet so easily, knowing every route, taking a sky-hanging mothership without the slightest fluster? How had they managed all of it?

Now it was perfectly clear: because the Western Divine Nation had supplied the intelligence, and lent its assistance.

The Western Divine Nation meant to make an issue of the Gannet.

But it could not be done openly.

And so they had sought out the star bandits.

Those foolish bandits had been used as the Western Divine Nation’s gunmen for a round, and had become the wretches left holding the blame on the Western Divine Nation’s behalf.

The most terrible thing was not the hijacking of the Gannet itself. It was that the Western Divine Nation meant to frame the Eastern Divine Nation for all of it… Among the eight great divine nations, only the Eastern Divine Nation could be spoken of in the same breath as the Western; only the Eastern divine lord could fight the Western divine lord to a draw.

If the Southeast divine lord fell out with the Eastern divine lord over the Gannet‘s hijacking, and the two nations resolved on war, then the Western Divine Nation would sit back and take the fisherman’s profit.

Marshal Griffin knew, too, that the Western Divine Nation had been laying this scheme a long while. For himself and General Golden Eagle to break out and return home safely, to report everything to the Southeast divine lord, was all but impossible. Gu Hai alone was more than they could match — to say nothing of the Right Marshal “Myriad Evils,” whose strength was near Gu Hai’s own. So Marshal Griffin gave up entirely on the notion of fighting his way out, and thought only of how to get word home.

The Western Divine Nation’s hijacking plan had been executed nearly without a flaw.

The one thing they had failed to reckon on was that the reception envoy Mao Podi had ended his reception duty early and boarded the Gannet to return home with the rest.

Mao Podi’s strength might be insufficient, but he had steadiness on his side — a man who did not lose his head in a crisis. If the task were simply to flee for his life, there was hope in it.

“Gale.“

Seizing the moment while Marshal Griffin pinned down their formidable foe, General Golden Eagle grabbed hold of the wounded, wretchedly battered Mao Podi, unfurled his movement technique, and carried him a dozen kilometers out across the meteor belt.

Behind them, Gu Hai pressed his advantage without mercy, and wherever he passed, the meteors burst apart. That ultimate technique — Constellation Detonation — was irresistible.

Deprived of General Golden Eagle’s support, Marshal Griffin was hard pressed on every side and thoroughly on the losing end. If Golden Eagle did not return to assist him soon, he would likely be defeated shortly and cut down by Gu Hai on the spot… How could General Golden Eagle not know Marshal Griffin’s strength? Hearing the explosions thundering behind him, he hurriedly set down Mao Podi, whose breathing had not yet steadied.

“This is as far as I can take you. About fifty kilometers ahead, in a dark meteor zone, I’ve hidden a lifeboat. Take it and go! Remember — you must report the truth to the divine lord as fast as you can, or everything we’ve done will have been for nothing!”

“General!” Mao Podi knew this was the crucial moment and that he could not afford even half a second’s hesitation. He nodded at once and gave General Golden Eagle a military salute.

“No need for ceremony. Go, quickly!” Mao Podi was not General Golden Eagle’s subordinate — on the contrary, he was the general’s old friend. That he should render so grave and earnest a military salute now was because Mao Podi knew that once they parted on this battlefield, they would likely never meet again.

General Golden Eagle gave him a punch on the shoulder.

Then he embraced Mao Podi hard, turned, and flew back toward the battlefield where Marshal Griffin and Gu Hai were locked in furious combat — without once looking back.

Mao Podi gave the general one more solemn salute, drew a deep breath, clenched his fists, and ran forward for all he was worth. If he could only find that boat, he could escape. And if he could get away, he could break the Western Divine Nation’s scheme — and so not fail the grave trust of Marshal Griffin and General Golden Eagle.

As for anything else, Mao Podi hadn’t the time to think much about it.

Run. Run!

In Mao Podi’s mind there was only that one thought.

Fifty kilometers, for a powerhouse of his rank, was no great distance — a matter of moments.

The air on the meteor belt was thin and the gravity strange, nothing like the easy going of solid ground, but even so Mao Podi soon reached the dark meteor zone, and found the lifeboat that Marshal Griffin and General Golden Eagle had moved here the instant the trouble began.

“Marshal. General. I will not fail the trust you placed in me!” Before leaping aboard the lifeboat, Mao Podi turned to look back at the distant battlefield.

And in turning, he froze — shock and horror spreading across his face, his heart plunging as into an ice cellar.

For behind him, at some point unnoticed, five men had come to stand.

These five were bizarre in the extreme. The one in the middle was the smallest — limbs withered, features base and mean, with two enormous front teeth protruding past his lips. Standing beside this rat of a man was another who hovered in midair, a black-and-red cloak snapping about him. Silent, he was tolerable enough; but the instant he made a sound, it grated on the ear beyond endurance, a match for the ugliest noise in all the world. And what most ruined his appearance and jarred most with the rest of him: this hovering man had two enormous ears, round and vast, so comical to look upon that they cancelled out entirely the arrogant master’s-air he wore on his face.

Beside the big-eared man stood a hairy creature with enormous eyes.

Thinner than a monkey — and yet in that narrow face were set eyeballs three times larger than an ordinary man’s.

Now and then, within those vast eyes, an eerie light would flicker in and out of visibility. Seeing it, Mao Podi shuddered in spite of himself.

At the other end of the group of five stood two more monstrous opponents. One had an absurdly long tongue, his face pale as a ghost’s, green light glinting in his eyes, that blood-red tongue hanging down so far it nearly dragged along the ground… The other was not so extreme in other respects, but had a remarkably long nose — and had Yue Yang been present, he’d surely have pointed at the fellow and burst out laughing: Look at that ugly mug! This guy looks exactly like Faceless Void out of DOTA!

Seeing these five appear, Mao Podi went cold to the marrow.

Unless a man were blind from birth, he could not fail to recognize who these five were.

These five were, apart from the five great evildoers, the most detested, most revolting, and most despised group of five in all the Western Divine Nation. They were known in short as the Five Officer Generals — though some mocked them behind their backs as the “Five Great Dog-Heads.”

They differed somewhat from the five great evildoers.

The Five Officer Generals held formal rank, station, and status within the Western Divine Nation; every one of them was a general in the Western Divine Nation’s army. Unlike the five great evildoers — whom everyone knew to be Gu Hai’s running dogs, but whom the Western Divine Nation would not publicly acknowledge as official personnel, treating them merely as Gu Hai’s private subordinates — the Five Officer Generals were entirely different. They were the Western Divine Nation’s official, commissioned generals, and the boss above them was the Western Divine Nation’s most infamous man of all: the Right Marshal, Myriad Evils.

The appearance of these five meant the matter had come to an open rupture. There was no possibility, no room left, for recovery.

Because unless it were the final hour, these five would never lightly show their faces.

“You run quite fast!” the buck-toothed rat, the leader, said with a laugh. “A pity — we spotted the target before you even moved this lifeboat out. Hahaha! You still don’t know, do you? This dark meteor zone was our own planned hiding place from the start.”

“Boss, why waste words on him? Just finish him off,” the big-eared bat-creature sneered.

“This little insect is too weak. I’ve no interest.” The long-tongued fellow and the ugly-mugged one turned and walked away, evidently unimpressed by Mao Podi’s death-throes — and indeed, any one of the five could have killed him with ease; five against one was simply pointless. The big-eyed creature with the sinister glow shook his head as well: “We’re running a bit late. The five great evildoers are strutting about right now; we’d better hurry and grab some credit. Whatever else, we can’t go disgracing our marshal!”

“Fine, you lot go ahead! Big Ear, you do it — finish this fellow off quickly, and then we’ll go pull a proper job.” The buck-toothed rat boss was a cautious man. Leaving the big-eared bat-creature behind would have been more than enough to crush Mao Podi, but he didn’t do that; instead he stayed as well, watching until Mao Podi was dead and no accident of any kind could occur.

“Give me ten seconds!” The big-eared bat-creature’s expression was insufferably arrogant as he raised one pitch-black hand.

“So be it — I’ll fight!” Despair washed through Mao Podi’s heart.

And just as he prepared to fight the bat-creature to the death, a lazy, unhurried voice drifted out of the dark meteor zone: “As a reception envoy, you handle the receiving but not the sending off? That’s rather poor form, isn’t it? At a dangerous moment like this you actually plan to run away all by yourself? And here I trusted you so completely. Is this how a senior conducts himself? You’ve truly broken my heart!”

Mao Podi’s mouth fell open.

Wide enough to fit a toad in.

He stared, disbelieving, at the fact before his eyes: a young man who could not possibly have survived — who could still less possibly be here — was strolling out of the dark meteor zone, his pace perfectly leisurely, as unhurried as a man taking a turn about the back garden of his own house.

The buck-toothed rat boss changed color too. With all his strength, he had somehow failed to detect when this young man had appeared.

But his reaction was extremely fast.

He hurled himself at Mao Podi, meaning to finish him the instant before the young man could reach him.

And at the same time he gave the order, signaling his companions to strike in concert: “Kill!“

(End of Chapter 1150)