Victory!

From a desperate situation where he’d been forced to fight one against ten thousand, to an utter reversal of fortune in the space of a heartbeat — every onlooker felt as though they’d tumbled into a dream, too incredible to be real.

Before this, who could have imagined that, surrounded by sixty thousand Skeleton warriors, Little Titan could still defy the heavens and seize victory? Who could have imagined that a torrent of steel bones sixty thousand strong would wind up wailing in agony beneath Little Titan’s feet, unable to withstand a single blow?

Some of the students backing Yue Yang were so worked up they wept for sheer joy. Chimu, tears streaming down his face, threw his arms around Hauge and smeared tears and snot all over him with abandon, while Hauge wore the resigned look of a man who’d rather just be allowed to die. Even the steady, seasoned Principal felt the corners of his eyes go a little damp, and turned away quickly to wipe them while no one was watching. The instructors who’d helped develop the flying construct laughed and cried at once. And the Oumon brothers — who’d cast aside fame and fortune to come and join the work — were moved beyond containing themselves by the sight. Several brothers embraced tightly; iron men shed tears, then knelt together as one, silently reporting to their father in heaven: The flying battle construct is finished at last. Your spirit above, we believe, has surely seen this peerless battle. Your sons were slow and dull, but today, at long last, we have fulfilled your dearest wish!

Out on the field, Wanmo’s face was the color of dead ash.

He knew he’d lost.

Lost with nothing left to say. Lost with no face to show. Lost in utter, crushing defeat.

Even with the divine power he’d traded for from that god, no number of Skeleton warriors could avail him now — because this Little Titan before him, monstrous enough to chill the blood, demonic enough to sink one into despair, was simply not a being he could stand against.

This fellow was more terrifying, more hopeless to face, than even Ji Wuri, the one hailed as nearest to the divine. If Ji Wuri was at least someone you could barely chase and keep pace with, then this Little Titan could only be gazed up at from far below, humbly. This unfathomable man could not be beaten by strength, or even by imagination — he was simply a being beyond imagining, a genius so monstrously gifted it defied belief. Every time a challenger thought total victory was in his grasp, there Little Titan would be, standing high in the clouds, looking down on his opponent the way a god looks down on ants.

Wanmo was in agony. He felt he’d been nailed to a pillar of shame.

If only he weren’t Wanmo, Master of the Hall of Darkness — if only he were Ranfeng, the Hall of Fire Master watching from the sidelines, how much better that would be! Sadly, he had chosen his opponent wrong. Even laying bare the power he’d traded from the god would only leave him more disgraced, only heap more glory onto Little Titan’s victory.

Who, before this, could have known Little Titan’s strength would be this frighteningly great? It wasn’t just him. Everyone had underestimated this young man — and badly underestimated him at that.

The price of taking his opponent lightly was one Wanmo now drank to the dregs. Once the bow is drawn, there is no calling back the arrow; it was far too late for Wanmo to regret this duel now. If only he hadn’t used divine power to temporarily break the Law’s restrictions, hadn’t loosed sixty thousand Skeleton warriors, he wouldn’t have ended up this wretched! Now, no matter what, he was fated to be nailed to history’s pillar of shame: Little Titan against ten thousand, and Wanmo with his sixty thousand Skeleton warriors the greatest loser in all of Human Valley’s history — a record with no precedent, and, one believes, an ultimate record no one after him will ever break.

Wanmo shut his eyes in anguish. He knew the best thing he could do was concede as fast as possible. Because with every passing second, the shame grew by one more measure. The Skeleton warriors were utterly beyond saving. Rather than watch them writhe in torment as the life-energy seeped through and scoured them, better to concede early and buy them a swift release.

“I…” Several times Wanmo made to speak, to admit his defeat, but the bitter words reached his lips and were swallowed back down. That single concession was simply too bitter, too galling to force out. As the Hall of Darkness Master of the Central Divine Hall, when had he ever tasted a defeat like today’s? Under the gaze of all these watching eyes, how could he possibly get the words I concede out of his mouth?

Wanmo looked once more at Yue Yang, soaring free through the sky astride his war-hawk. Helplessly, he made the decision his heart least wanted to make.

He waved a hand — ordering the badly mauled but barely surviving White-Bone Generals to hurry back, meaning to pack them into a storage ring and try to salvage these last seeds of the Skeleton Race. After all, each one of them was worth as much as a platinum-grade construct.

Boom, boom, ba-boom, boom-boom-boom-boom—

Before Wanmo could react, a string of dense, terrifying explosions erupted all around him. Blasts violent enough to annihilate everything swept the White-Bone Generals converging on Wanmo away like rotted husks, blowing them to smithereens!

Head singed and scorched, Wanmo looked up — and only now discovered that at some point the sky had filled with a “black rain”: black spherical metal bodies falling like raindrops, each with the explosive force to level a small hill. More terrifying still, these black metal bodies were themselves puppet-beasts. If a White-Bone General tried to fend them off or dodge, they would instantly transform into ferocious, snarling war-spiders, clamp onto their target like maggots grafted to the bone, and then self-destruct. No one could escape a death like that, latched right onto the body!

“Spider bombs — ahahaha, this treasure’s finally seeing the light of day! Good — blow them to bits, blow them to bits!” Chimu went as manic as a loser laying eyes on his goddess.

“Th-these are spider bombs?” Not just the Tall Tower War Wolf and Young Lord Yangquan — even Hauge and the others were in the dark.

“Tell us about them!” The students crowded in, buzzing with excitement.

“The Dusk Young Lord is the Dusk Young Lord after all — to actually know Little Titan had this kind of secret weapon too, incredible!” someone laid on the flattery thick.

“You think a matter like my having had a hand in developing these spider bombs is something I’d go blabbing to just anyone? A secret weapon, naturally, is to be used in secret! Let me tell you jealous, spiteful lot: I was the number-one assistant who personally set the example and gave it my all to help Little Titan finish his research. And I don’t mind saying — without me, there might well be no spider bombs for Little Titan today. You think it was really so simple? I’ve always kept a low profile, my talents deeply hidden. You think the paltry fame and fortune of this world could ever move my heart? What a joke — to me, fame and fortune are nothing but drifting clouds!” Chimu threw back his head and puffed out his chest, and under the worshipful gazes of countless onlookers, he felt a tingle of pleasure run through every inch of him, right down to his toes.

“…” Young Lord Mingzhu held his tongue and didn’t expose the lie — call it letting Chimu off the hook. Otherwise Chimu’s towering image would have collapsed on the spot.

By this point in the battle there was no suspense left. Even Jinji, fused as one with his demon construct, gave up the fight in dejection and bowed his head in surrender. Never mind that the lethal blows of the flying construct and the spider bombs could have battered him into scattered petals and flogged him raw from head to foot — even if Yue Yang never lifted a finger, the tireless crystal giant alone would have been more than enough to leave Jinji with a mouthful he couldn’t chew or swallow.

The evil god’s power was no cure-all. Once overdrawn, its aftereffects were dreadful too. Fighting this long, Jinji already felt the divine power he was maintaining starting to give out — and if he kept stubbornly resisting, forcing himself to hold on, the consequences would be severe. The tireless crystal giant would surely be the one laughing last: the moment Jinji ran dry and his body reverted to its natural state, it would blow him clean open and stage a grand tragedy of shattered chrysanthemum. Better to bow his head and take the loss before that happened.

Anyway, Wanmo with his sixty thousand Skeleton warriors had lost, so what the hell was Jinji still holding out for?

Wanmo took one last look at the bones littering the ground and couldn’t help shaking his head with a sigh. As the last White-Bone General fell, he finally lowered his noble, arrogant head and conceded to Yue Yang, acknowledging his shameful defeat.

“I lost. I lost…” Wanmo, deflated, conceded the fight to Yue Yang and to the arbiter.

“You’re certain?” The black-clad arbiter’s voice was charged with emotion — for he knew the battle he was officiating would go down in history for certain, an honor to bless his descendants for a thousand generations! However Human Valley’s history rolled on, however many classic battles it saw, however you ranked and ordered them, this one was certain to make the top ten — the top three, even!

“I’m certain.” Compared to the arbiter, Wanmo knew too that he’d be recorded in history — but that was the most painful, most galling part of it, because what would be recorded was his shame, the tragic figure who’d handed someone else his glory.

Wanmo was, in the end, a man of ambition and mettle; however crushing the defeat, he had the courage to own it. Since he’d already lost in the most abject way, he might as well accept it wholesale — because surely, even in all the years to come, nothing worse than today’s battle would ever befall him again!

Ranfeng, watching from beyond the field, broke into a cold sweat. Thank the heavens it wasn’t him squaring off against Little Titan — otherwise the one nailed to the pillar of shame wouldn’t be Wanmo, but himself!

Zhonghua, on the other hand, couldn’t stop grinning, delighted beyond measure. His overtures, his investment — they hadn’t been wrong after all. Little Titan truly was a genius of the Eastern Clan; obscure before, perhaps, but he was of the Eastern Clan nonetheless — the sort who does nothing until, in one stroke, he astounds the world. Come to think of it, given Little Titan’s status and strength, how could he ever lose to the likes of Jinji and Wanmo? So what if they joined forces? So what if it was one against ten thousand? Little Titan was a scion of the Eastern Clan, a divine roc born to soar ten thousand miles the moment he came into the world. How could a little bug like Jinji and a mangy old rooster like Wanmo ever threaten a being like him? To be permitted to look up at him should count as a blessing — and they still had the gall to dream of victory! What a joke!

Now, this was perfect. It only remained to see what sort of tragedy would unfold when that so-called nearest-to-the-divine genius Ji Wuri squared off against Little Titan!

Seeing Yue Yang turn the tide, incredibly forcing two opponents to bow their heads in submission one against ten thousand and take the final victory, the three white-clad maidens exchanged a smile and departed. Their expressions were mild, but you could tell they were quite satisfied with this outcome — indeed, a result like Yue Yang’s had far exceeded their expectations, and left them thoroughly and pleasantly surprised.

“I’m tired — I want to rest a while first!” Yue Yang said, returning to the midst of the group. Just as the students were about to hoist him up for a grand victory parade, he hastily feigned the weariness of a man spent from battle, signaling that he was grateful for their goodwill but they should head off first, and he’d celebrate once he’d had his rest.

That said, and terrified they’d refuse, he quickly grabbed Young Lord Mingzhu’s small hand and dashed off at a run.

Mingzhu was quite annoyed at this thief-in-the-night behavior. How could a man who’d won look as harried as a man who’d lost? What kind of person was this… And yet, with his hand caught fast in Yue Yang’s grip, Mingzhu was dragged along and couldn’t stop his own feet, so he could only, for the moment, let it happen.

The man had won — you couldn’t very well bring a great golden hammer down on the back of his skull, could you?

There’d be plenty of chances to sort him out later, anyway!

Mingzhu raised a fist and gave an inward hmph: You got lucky, kid — I’m in a very good mood today. Otherwise… hmph, hmph!

(End of Chapter)