The four Angel Alliance great leaders — Ren Tiange, the Silver-Eyed Great Sage, Blue Demon, and Hauge — along with six Dark Alliance great leaders including Ghost King Phantom, Skeleton King Golden Bones, and Flayer King Blood Shave — stumbled out of the third secret gate in a thoroughly sorry state.
At the cost of one Dark Alliance leader, they’d finally managed to escape the Heaven’s Sieve space that had closed around them like a net.
None of them wanted to leave this way.
Because nearly ten thousand companions remained trapped inside.
Those companions — ninety-nine percent of them still alive — were stranded in the Heaven’s Sieve space waiting to be rescued.
Deeply regrettable as that was, Ren Tiange and the others had tried every approach they could think of, and ultimately discovered that even with the full cooperation of both the Angel Alliance and the Dark Alliance combined, they couldn’t defeat the Golden Sword Giant, let alone probe the Heaven’s Sieve space’s secrets under its attacks. Unwilling though they were, they had no choice but to accept that fact.
“Something feels off out here.” Blue Demon was the first to notice something wrong outside.
“What’s happened?” Ren Tiange instinctively looked toward the Silver-Eyed Great Sage — he knew the Great Sage was the one person who truly understood the ancient treasury’s secrets.
“Someone nearby has been fighting a massive battle.” Ghost King Phantom glanced at the second secret gate and gave a cold snort. “Everyone be careful. Even during our confrontation with a deity-level being like the Golden Sword Giant, the third secret gate was never twisted this badly.”
“How could anyone inside Demon Valley be more powerful than us?” Skeleton King Golden Bones couldn’t bring himself to believe it.
“Could it be Ji Wuri, returned?” Flayer King Blood Shave was still uncertain.
By the time they made their way back out through the first secret gate and looked upon what had been the Dark Sky Nest underground city ruins, everyone stopped cold in shock.
Because what lay before them was not the Dark Sky Nest underground city ruins. It was an open-air crater riddled with holes from end to end, everything tottering on the verge of collapse in every direction. Everything that had existed in those ancient ruins — virtually all of it — had been annihilated. Or more precisely, the vast majority of what had been there — stone, earth, mountain bodies, everything — had been obliterated by inconceivable energy impacts, leaving behind nothing but countless honeycomb-like gaps in space. The shattered void was denser than fishnet, resembling the Heaven’s Sieve space but far more chaotic and unstable, collapsing at random intervals, pockets of space shattering in the same instant and reducing everything around them to powder.
Just how many people fighting a battle here could have produced this result?
Ren Tiange thought that if a hundred copies of himself were here,
and given three months,
they could perhaps — just barely — wreck the Dark Sky Nest ruins to this extent.
But he remembered clearly: entering the Heaven’s Sieve space to fight the Golden Sword Giant had taken only one day.
The Heaven’s Sieve space and the outside maintained the same time — no temporal distortion. Which meant the outside had been reduced to this state in a single day.
Reversing that calculation — if one day was all you had, how many copies of himself would it take to do this kind of destruction? Ren Tiange concluded that ten thousand copies of himself, spending a full day doing nothing but all-out destruction, might still not be enough to reduce this place to what lay before him.
Terrifying.
Who in the world had done this to the outside?
Was there truly something in existence comparable to ten thousand copies of himself? Just thinking it made Ren Tiange feel like he was losing his mind.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!
From somewhere in the far distance came another enormous explosive shockwave.
By the estimates of Ren Tiange and the other great leaders, the exchange was happening at least a hundred kilometers away — otherwise a shockwave this destructive would not have attenuated to this degree by the time it reached them.
Not one of them hesitated for even a second. Curiosity overwhelmed the fear beneath it. Ren Tiange and the others set off toward the direction of the battle almost simultaneously.
Before they could even arrive, the heaven-shaking force of what was happening was like countless demonic hands further shattering and widening the already collapsed mountain peaks and spiderweb-cracked terrain along their path. In the far distance, flashes of light erupted continuously, shockwave after shockwave, sound rolling like thunder in a storm, roaring without pause. Countless forests had caught fire and were burning and spreading across the land in a frenzy, boulder-sized rocks and snapped mountain peaks were being flung into the air without touching the ground.
At fifty kilometers out, Ren Tiange and the others were forced to slow their approach considerably.
At the edge of their vision, they could make out two terrifying points of light, moving through the sky like deities chasing each other in combat — one moment the left-side point, blazing like a sun, was driving the right-side point with its faint purple-gold glow into a corner; the next, the purple-gold point on the right had turned the chase around and was pressing the sunlike point of light into a difficult spot.
Whoever was chasing whom, whoever was hitting whom.
The moment either of them struck, the world would crack, mountain peaks collapse, rivers vaporize, the earth fracture, and forests combust.
At thirty kilometers out, the Supreme tier eight powerhouses like Ren Tiange and Ghost King Phantom were still breathing freely enough, but the weakest of the group — Hauge — along with several of the Dark Alliance leaders, were already finding their breathing significantly suppressed.
Under the pressure of the power the two combatants were radiating without even trying, their own internal energy was struggling to circulate properly.
This was thirty kilometers away.
Getting to ten kilometers through sheer determination, Hauge felt impossibly small, as though at any moment he might be blown away by the shockwaves from the two fighters’ exchanges.
The more powerful figures — Ren Tiange among them — fixed their eyes on the two combatants and were instantly struck speechless, unable to believe what they were seeing. Even someone as bold as Ren Tiange, as deep and inscrutable as Ghost King Phantom, as cold as Skeleton King Golden Bones, as arrogant as Flayer King Blood Shave — all of them couldn’t help crying out involuntarily. The ever-guarded Blue Demon shook his head in flat disbelief, refusing to trust his own eyes.
“By the heavens — one of them fighting is that pretty boy Qian Chong?” Hauge felt like he was on the edge of losing his mind.
“The more terrifying part isn’t him — it’s that newcomer with only Sky-rank strength…” Ren Tiange swallowed with considerable difficulty. A newcomer who’d only shown Sky-rank strength — how deep had he concealed himself? And even at Perfect Innate Sovereign tier five, how could anyone possibly hold their own against someone like Qian Chong, who had to be at least Perfect Innate Sovereign tier nine or above? That handsome swordsman who’d maintained a perfectly middle-of-the-road unremarkable presence throughout — how could he possibly be Perfect Innate Sovereign tier nine or higher? Just what was going on here?
“If this isn’t a dream, I think the time has come for me to leave Demon Valley.” Ghost King Phantom felt that his ambition to dominate Demon Valley was considerably more dangerous than he’d realized — between Ji Wuri from before and the two people fighting now, killing him probably wouldn’t have been particularly difficult for any of them.
“Not a bad idea.” Ren Tiange agreed.
He’d always seen it as his personal mission to rescue the Angel Alliance, and had believed he could lead it back to its ancient glory.
But now, he felt his best option was to leave as quickly as possible — because if he stayed, he was going to end up either finished by that pretty-faced Qian Chong or utterly overwhelmed by that newcomer.
“We can leave — but I want to watch until there’s a winner first.” Even the Silver-Eyed Great Sage’s expression was thoroughly serious.
The handsome swordsman Qian Chong had apparently reached Supreme tier nine at some point without anyone knowing.
The newcomer was at Supreme tier five.
Any fool looking at this, a hundred percent of the time, would say the Supreme tier nine combatant would win — and win crushingly.
But the most inexplicable thing of all was that what was unfolding before everyone’s eyes bore no resemblance to that expected law. The nominally weaker side — the Supreme tier five newcomer — was somehow fighting to a standstill against the Supreme tier nine-plus handsome swordsman Qian Chong.
Both sides had been locked in an unresolvable stalemate throughout. One moment the handsome swordsman “Qian Chong” would display magnificent power and drive the newcomer into a ragged, bloodied state, blood spraying across the sky; the next, that bloodied newcomer would somehow use a rudimentary form of law-force in some incomprehensible move, turn the tables, and knock down his higher-realm, stronger opponent in a thoroughly embarrassing fashion.
If you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes, you’d never believe it.
The whole situation was like a frail-seeming woman tripping a large, violent man intent on assaulting her… How was this possible?
“Who wins?” Ren Tiange turned his gaze to the Silver-Eyed Great Sage again, and not just him — every other person present also looked over. What they needed right now was the Great Sage’s accurate assessment.
“Hard to say.” The Silver-Eyed Great Sage shook his head with a wry smile. “In terms of raw strength, Qian Chong — or rather, the supremely powerful figure disguising himself as Qian Chong — holds an overwhelmingly dominant advantage. At Supreme tier nine, he could stand against all of us combined and not lose. And yet for all his depth of concealment, he has certain weaknesses compared to that newcomer. You may have already noticed — that newcomer has a Sacred Codex, and at a minimum two divine artifacts, possibly three or even four, otherwise he couldn’t sustain himself through Qian Chong’s storm-like attacks. The newcomer has both a Sacred Codex and multiple divine artifacts, while Qian Chong has only one divine artifact sword and no Grimoire — that’s the single greatest difference between them.”
“There’s one more thing.” Blue Demon added. “That newcomer also has an energy giant approaching divine-being power levels. If not for the giant’s movements being somewhat slower and unable to land clean hits on Qian Chong, the newcomer would probably have won already.”
“Hmm?” Ren Tiange and the others exchanged glances, feeling suddenly that there was something odd about Qian Chong.
Odd in exactly what way, they couldn’t immediately put their finger on.
The Silver-Eyed Great Sage smiled faintly and provided the explanation for everyone present. “In my assessment, Qian Chong is almost certainly an ancient powerhouse who was sealed within the Heaven’s Sieve space, escaped at some unknown point, and assumed the handsome swordsman Qian Chong’s identity to deceive us. But because his seal is not fully lifted, his Grimoire, his life-guardian war beast, and his divine sense are still confined within the Heaven’s Sieve space and cannot leave. That is the primary reason he hasn’t been able to overwhelm the newcomer by force alone. Our intelligence was leaked — deliberately or not — by Qian Chong, for the specific purpose of drawing in more people’s blood to fuel a blood sacrifice that would free his Grimoire and divine sense. Fortunately, that divine-being-level portion of his power — the Golden Sword Giant — cannot leave the Heaven’s Sieve space. If it could, we’d all have been destroyed.”
Everyone heard this and found it entirely plausible.
So that was how it fit together.
Which brought an immediate new problem before them.
What to do next? Turn tail and scurry back to their respective bases like retreating turtles, transfer out of Demon Valley — or go forward, assist the newcomer, and collectively take on the false “Qian Chong” who had deceived them all and cost ten thousand challengers their lives?
Killing Qian Chong might even save those ten thousand challengers.
But the false Qian Chong carried Supreme tier nine strength. Going to fight him would be walking into death.
Retreating was the safe option — get back to base, take the transfer gate out of Demon Valley. Everyone’s point totals had long since cleared the threshold. But how was that different from being the world’s most spineless turtles? Everyone present was a great leader commanding tens of thousands, a dominant power within their own faction — running away because the handsome swordsman Qian Chong had frightened them off, how would they ever show their faces again as powerhouses?
“Well?” Ghost King Phantom had no desire to be the first to run — he couldn’t afford the loss of face — and turned his eyes to Ren Tiange.
“Ah… Why don’t we wait and watch for a bit?” Ren Tiange equally had no wish to set this kind of example.
“Then we wait. The battle’s outcome isn’t clear yet anyway.” The assembled leaders nodded one after another. Can’t fight, can’t afford to run, so let’s just stay and watch — just spectating, not participating. Surely that’s acceptable?
Nobody had anticipated that “waiting and watching for a bit”
would turn into a hundred days.
(End of Chapter)