Yue Yang raised his hand.
Backhanded and forehanded, he awarded Big-Eared Bat several ringing slaps to the face — this divine-general, who had never in his life been humiliated like this, was so furious that smoke was coming out of his seven orifices.
Not just Snaggle-Toothed Rat, gaping dumbfounded. Even Big-Eared Bat himself felt utterly bewildered — how had he been caught in a single misstep, and how could he not break free? Big-Eared Bat’s own sensation was that his whole body had fallen into a bottomless mudpit — he couldn’t muster any strength in his limbs, and worse still felt sluggish, without even the desire to move! If not for the burning humiliation of these stinging slaps, he probably wouldn’t even have summoned the will to fight back.
“How do you feel, hm?” Yue Yang, for his part, was asking whether the pleasure had arrived yet.
“You — you are absolutely dead!” Big-Eared Bat had never hated a man this much in his life. Toward this fellow before him who had inflicted the greatest humiliation of his life, the first thought in his heart was not to kill him but to torment him back a thousandfold, ten-thousandfold — otherwise the fury inside would never be exorcised!
Slap slap slap!
Yue Yang mercilessly awarded Big-Eared Bat another set of slaps.
He did it with such practiced ease, as though it were Big-Eared Bat who had been begging bitterly for him to do it and he, unable to bear the pleas, was reluctantly indulging with a broad open hand out of sheer politeness…
Big-Eared Bat was so enraged his eyes went green.
His whole body shuddered slightly.
A stream of black qi.
Like smoke, like mist.
It rose from his body.
In a blink, this vaporous black qi shrouded him. Countless vampire bats flew out of the black mist. Yue Yang’s hand was suddenly empty — Big-Eared Bat, in an instant, had dissolved into a sky full of bats, escaping Yue Yang’s grip in a flash.
The vampire bats swarmed in a mad orbit, each one seeking the best angle for attack.
Give them a single opening to bite and Yue Yang would be drained to a dried corpse!
“Net!”
Yue Yang’s hand had come up empty, but at the corner of his lips a faint, contemptuous smile appeared. Just turning into vampire bats — was that supposed to escape my palm? Above the wheeling swarm of vampire bats, at some point unnoticed, a strange and eerie net had appeared in the sky. This net was not composed of any material substance of this world — it was formed of Yue Yang’s Sovereign Mind itself.
Strand after strand of mental threads, condensed from thought, wove themselves densely across the sky, forming a sky-net rivaling the vault of heaven itself.
The sky-net descended slowly.
The vampire bats could still fly low, but the instant they tried to fly high they collided with the mesh.
Those mental threads were condensed from Yue Yang’s Sovereign Mind and possessed an indestructible quality. Any vampire bat that struck them was instantly caught as prey — so long as Yue Yang did not lose consciousness, there was no possibility of breaking free.
Screech, screech, screech…
Huge numbers of the vampire bats hit the net and could not struggle free.
Below, though, many others saw the situation had turned bad and pressed their flight downward, hoping to find a gap and slip out from under the sky-net’s coverage.
“Foolish creatures!” Yue Yang almost laughed. If the sky-net I’d made had exploitable gaps, what would be the point of making it?
“Resume form, quickly, quickly resume your original form!” Snaggle-Toothed Rat Big Brother, unwilling to charge close but watching from afar, realized the situation was awful and hurriedly signaled Big-Eared Bat. This was actually the best, most rational choice — but Big-Eared Bat, transformed into a swarm of vampire bats, had weaker mental cohesion than in his human form. And besides, he was utterly unwilling — how could he give up the fight at such a critical moment? If even one vampire bat sub-body succeeded in breaking this brat’s skin, then the brat would be sucked dry alive, and no matter how many sub-bodies were sacrificed beforehand, all of them could be immediately restored!
Big-Eared Bat did not follow Snaggle-Toothed Rat’s advice — he felt that with so many sub-bodies he could still turn the tide.
To possess forbidden power is to possess an undying body.
He had never once believed he could lose!
Victory was guaranteed. Only the process and the timing of victory could vary!
Countless vampire bats swooped down in unison, all bared fangs and outstretched claws, attacking Yue Yang from every direction at once.
Yue Yang extended a finger and flicked.
The first vampire bat sub-body he flicked away seemed utterly unharmed.
But then something eerie happened — the moment that first bat sub-body, flung backwards, collided with the second bat sub-body, the first bat’s face contorted with unbearable agony. When the second sub-body then collided with the third and fourth, the first vampire bat’s body suddenly began to swell like a balloon, and finally, at the limit, unable to hold anymore — pop — it burst apart in front of Yue Yang.
The other flicked-away sub-bodies, colliding with each other, ricocheted around like headless flies.
At extraordinary speeds.
Directly implicating quite a few of the circling companions.
The collisions multiplied, doubling and redoubling… and with every additional collision, the vampire bats popped one after another like firecrackers.
The sky rained down a foul, reeking bat-blood shower. The last few surviving bat sub-bodies, screeching and darting in disarray, watched in terror and despair as the mental sky-net descended slowly overhead!
Snaggle-Toothed Rat’s expression changed drastically.
He was already leaping in mid-air to render aid, but his body abruptly changed direction.
His speed rocketed a hundredfold as he fled in the opposite direction — no trace of lingering. Yue Yang saw it and smiled. He didn’t give chase. He only forced the last few surviving bats to recongeal into Big-Eared Bat’s original body, then stuffed him unceremoniously into the Demon-Suppression Pagoda. On the subject of forbidden power, there were still many things worth researching and experimenting with — he wouldn’t be killing Hungry Ghost or Big-Eared Bat just yet… Besides, even though Duoduo — who had already ascended to “Flower Goddess” — no longer needed flower-material to boost her strength, that didn’t mean Yue Yang had abandoned his plan to cultivate another Golden Crown Thorn-Flower Queen.
Even if Yue Yang didn’t need a Golden Crown Thorn-Flower Queen himself, cultivating one for his little sister Yue Bing would still be a fine thing.
Consider: Yue Bing had the highest possible talent among plant-type war beasts.
With the assistance of Duoduo the Flower Goddess, a new-generation Golden Crown Thorn-Flower Queen would surely be born soon… it wasn’t impossible that Duoduo would transform every one of her subordinates into Golden Crown Thorn-Flower Queens; that would depend entirely on her, since as the Flower Goddess she was absolutely all-powerful in the domain of plant-type war beasts!
The moment the Frost Bloom Sword — the innate body-piercing formless sword-qi — appeared, the negative states on Raven, Pelican, and Mao Podi vanished completely.
As though they had never been poisoned in the first place.
“Aiya, why did we let that scoundrel Snaggle-Toothed Rat get away — chase, we chase!” Pelican was the impatient type.
“Don’t be rash!” Raven of course understood that Yue Yang had let him go on purpose.
“What do we do now?” Mao Podi was both alarmed and elated. He no longer dared even guess at Yue Yang’s identity. His attitude had shifted completely — his earlier escape plan was set aside for the moment, and he now awaited Yue Yang’s instructions entirely.
“Lord Mao, you should still take the escape shuttle and leave. At maximum speed, report back to the Southeast Divine Sovereign — you must convey the truth of the matter. This battle is only just beginning; there may be much greater battles to come. We have to steel ourselves for it,” Yue Yang said. Even without spelling it out, everyone understood — if this affair blew wide open, it would inevitably ignite a war between nations, and might even trigger a Divine War!
“Snaggle-Toothed Rat escaped — is that really all right?” Mao Podi felt his own strength was insufficient here. Reporting back was the better use of him now.
But the escape of Snaggle-Toothed Rat, Big Brother of the Five Sense Generals — was that really all right?
The moment he ran.
He would definitely bring back stronger reinforcements.
Like the Five Sense Generals’ superior — the Western Divine Nation’s Right Marshal, Wan’e. That “Wan’e” was not in the same category as the Five Sense Generals — he was a powerhouse whose strength far exceeded the divine-general tier. Whether in Earth Valley, or in Mountain Beyond the Mountain, his infamy carried far, and no one had ever been able to lay a hand on him. Earlier, the appearance of the Western Divine Nation’s Left Marshal Guhai — locked in battle with Griffin and Golden Eagle — already indicated that Right Marshal Wan’e was not far behind. Once these two juggernauts arrived, who could stand against them?
Golden Eagle General and Griffin Marshal, together, might barely hold their ground one-on-one.
But two on two.
Their defeat was certain.
At that point, who would step forward to share the pressure? Just Raven and Pelican of the Star Pirates? Don’t make jokes. Even adding in their bosses Winged Tiger, Wind Hawk, and Flamingo, it wouldn’t be enough for Guhai or Wan’e to grind through — let alone the fact that only one of the Five Great Villains and one of the Five Sense Generals had actually been eliminated!
Mao Podi was a little worried for Yue Yang. However great his potential, he was still young.
To face Guhai and Wan’e two-on-one — no matter how skilled, one hand cannot clap alone.
“It’s fine — this is just small-time skirmishing. The real great war is still yet to come!” Yue Yang personally saw Mao Podi off onto the escape shuttle, then nodded to Raven and Pelican. “The enemy is coming faster and in greater numbers than we imagined. It seems we’ll need to split up. Staying at my side any longer will put you in danger.”
“All the more reason we should stay!” Pelican was stubborn-headed. He thought that if a formidable enemy attacked, he could at least fight desperately to buy time and protect Yue Yang, the youngest of them with the greatest potential.
“Do we really need to split up?” Raven was much sharper. For Yue Yang to speak that way meant they had run into an enemy that he and Pelican could not withstand.
An enemy of that class was not one you could survive by mere desperate effort.
The enemy could probably crush them like fleas with a flick of the finger.
Even worse, staying would not only fail to help — it would become a liability, giving the enemy an opening.
Yue Yang nodded. “Splitting up is better. The strongest enemy still hasn’t shown himself, but I have the feeling this battle won’t be easy. If I’m alone, and I can’t win, I can still fall back. Bringing you two along means I can’t retreat that easily. Let’s do this — I’ll go rescue Griffin Marshal and Golden Eagle General. You two go find Winged Tiger, Wind Hawk, and the others. If nothing goes wrong, meet back here. The situation is pressing. Whatever our previous status was — soldier or thief — right now we must join forces! A vast enemy legion is slowly forming a siege ring around us, arranging itself. If we don’t stand together, all of us will die without a burial place!”
Raven listened, his heart tightening. He nodded gravely. “Understood!”
Pelican was reluctant.
But he couldn’t outargue Raven, and he grudgingly took his leave of Yue Yang and headed off in the other direction with Raven’s group, searching for traces of Winged Tiger and Wind Hawk.
Yue Yang, meanwhile, headed straight back to the wildly-raging battlefield in the meteor belt. The Western Divine Nation’s Left Marshal Guhai, all by himself, had been beating Griffin Marshal and Golden Eagle Great General into a steady retreat. They could only defend; they had no ability to strike back.
Perhaps it was an illusion, or perhaps a “god” truly was watching over all this from somewhere in the sky.
It was precisely because of this eerie premonition that Yue Yang had temporarily changed his mind — sending Old Mao off on a shuttle, sending Raven and Pelican away from himself… He could only hope that this “god” watching from above was the Southeast Divine Sovereign and not the Western Divine Nation’s own Divine Sovereign, otherwise this battle would truly be difficult to fight. Yue Yang was internally conflicted. On the one hand, he wanted to solo that god; on the other hand, he was reluctant to face a divine-realm powerhouse this early… If he could gather more intelligence, or crack the secret of the individually distinct divine powers of the eight pseudo-gods, that would be the best time to challenge.
On another battlefield.
Returning to the hovering mothership, Evil-Eye Monkey, Long-Tongue Lizard, and Slug had met a few strange opponents.
These few opponents — appearing to be delicate, weak-looking women — showed no fear at all upon spotting them. Instead they clustered together in a circle, extending small hands to play rock-paper-scissors, as though they intended to use the game to decide who won and who would fight first!
“Rock, paper, scissors… rock, paper, scissors!”
“I won, I won!”
“Weilai, you cheated — you, you’re really too sneaky…”
While Evil-Eye Monkey and the others watched, their embarrassment turning to fury, the girls finally produced a winner — a girl called Weilai had won the round and was hopping and bouncing with joy. Evil-Eye Monkey and company could only roll their eyes. Could your attitude get any more casual, any more indifferent? This — this is just brazen ignorance!
(End of Chapter 1152)