Shafeng was struck dumb.

He could not accept the uncanny thing in front of him. That divine power was his own, governed by his own divine sense — how could it possibly gather itself in an enemy’s hand? And compressing divine power into a sphere: neither Hei Zhou nor God-Slayer could do that. Was this human male standing before him, whose strength read at the divine envoy level, actually stronger than Hei Zhou and God-Slayer?

If that were really so, what was the point of fighting at all?

Better to just concede.

Shafeng was arrogant.

But not arrogant enough to claim he was stronger than Hei Zhou and God-Slayer.

“You— there’s a trick to this!” In the end Shafeng chose disbelief and refused to admit what was in front of him.

His reasoning: this brat could not possibly be stronger than Hei Zhou and God-Slayer. If he were, he wouldn’t have skulked here watching the battle — he’d have leapt out and ambushed them during the encirclement of Chiqiu. Even if he couldn’t have finished off Tianchou and Zhaoxi, he would surely have had no trouble crippling Shafeng himself and Shuanghan… The brat hadn’t done it. Why not? Because he didn’t have the strength.

Everything about this brat had to be a manufactured illusion.

He wanted to deceive Shafeng with it.

Frighten him off!

Yes. That had to be it.

If the brat truly had strength beyond God-Slayer’s, why waste so much breath? Cut him down and be done with it. Why put on all these displays of intimidation?

The louder the display, the more it proved the brat’s guilty conscience… Some talent, or the ability of some war beast or treasure, had fooled his eyes. Otherwise, why had he himself not taken a single injury by now?

With God-Slayer’s kind of strength, a few exchanges would have left him crippled. Who would bother with these little parlour tricks?

Shafeng reasoned his way steadily toward the impossible, and the more he thought about it, the more suspicious it all looked.

In the end he settled on his verdict: Yue Yang, for his part, was a small-time con artist.

“I see it now.” A flash of insight seemed to go off in Shafeng’s mind — he had seized the crux of it. Beneath his delight came a wave of relief, and on the surface he broke into a smug, cold laugh. “So that’s how it is… Your talent, or your war beast’s ability, works the same way Chiqiu’s does. Borrowed force. This divine domain, the one the ancient relic’s main body generates — that’s what you’ve been leaning on. Maybe Taiyan, maybe Bingli. Let me guess: you got some secret art from one of those two great gods, something that lets you manipulate divine power to conjure illusions before you’ve grown into any strength of your own. This domain is a prison for Chiqiu and me. But you’re so weak that being cut down a hundredfold costs you nothing. Quite the opposite — you’re using it to pull your talent off!”

“Really? Aren’t you clever.” Yue Yang’s tone was pure sarcasm. He neither confirmed nor denied it.

Shafeng stared at him.

Watched him slowly devour that highly compressed mass of divine power.

And immediately snorted hard through his nose. “Hmph. I’ve found your weakness. It was Bingli’s secret art you got — only her Black-Ice divine power could dissolve my Burst-Flame divine power that easily. But if you’re Bingli’s inheritor, this gets much simpler. If you were Taiyan’s, I might have worried about you devouring and assimilating my Burst-Flame divine power. Unfortunately, you’re Bingli’s. Ice and fire run counter to each other. You are never going to assimilate my divine power. Now I can attack without a care.”

Chiqiu lunged at Shafeng, a full-speed surprise strike.

Tunlong carried Taiyan Divine Power inside it.

One clean hit and Shafeng would have more than he could swallow… Unfortunately, Shafeng was no fool. Even while talking to Yue Yang he had kept his attention split, tracking Chiqiu the whole time with his divine sense, his guard never dropping.

Had Chiqiu still been at his peak, rather than the bare thirty percent left to him after that beating, Shafeng might have had a headache on his hands.

But Chiqiu was badly diminished, attacking on nothing but the Taiyan Divine Power inside Tunlong.

He was no longer the one threat Shafeng could not remove.

A single flicker of thought.

Shafeng’s afterimage vanished from where he had stood. By the time Chiqiu’s strike hit empty air and he could mount another, Shafeng had already slipped ten kilometres away — clear of the divine domain the ancient relic’s main body generated.

He pointed back at Yue Yang inside it. “Brat! Come out, if you’ve got the nerve. Let’s see whether those borrowed-power illusions still work out here — whether they can still frighten anyone. This Divine Sovereign is standing right where he is, waiting for you. Weren’t you going to kill me? I’ll stand still. I’ll even stretch my neck out for you. Let’s see how you manage it. Thought a great deal of yourself, didn’t you? Little bug — do you know what happens to a thing that throws a punch at a god?”

Yue Yang started forward.

Chiqiu moved quickly to stop him. Shafeng’s words had planted a doubt in him too: was this young man’s real strength enough to duel a Divine Sovereign one-on-one?

He knew the young man had strength, and enormous strength at that, together with Sovereign Intent — and a life-guardian war beast in the legendary divine-beast form besides. But this young friend was, in the end, far too young. Even if he had begun cultivating in the womb, how could he match a Divine Sovereign with ten thousand years of fame behind him?

And Southwest Divine Sovereign Shafeng still held a quasi-divine artifact, Xuanya, with the domain’s crippling penalty no longer dragging on him.

A one-move kill was entirely possible…

So Chiqiu wanted him to be careful. Better not to go out at all.

Shafeng had fled the domain for one reason: to shed the penalty, draw his enemy outside, and kill him with everything he had. To walk into a head-on fight while the enemy had his heart set on murder was less than wise.

“Putting a Divine Sovereign under my heel is the first step of my own ascent to godhood. So if you want a fight, you’ll have your fight. What is there to fear?” Yue Yang laughed aloud and strode out past the edge of the domain, straight at Shafeng.

Chiqiu stared after him, stunned, as though he had to learn this young man all over again. His tier, his strength, everything — all of it far short — and still his ambition ran straight up into the sky. What a young hero.

Was it so, then, that every strong one in this world who possessed Sovereign Intent — whoever he was, whatever realm he stood in, whatever the situation — feared no enemy at all?

Sovereign Intent. What kind of realm was it, truly?

Chiqiu suddenly felt very small.

And Yue Yang’s figure ahead of him grew, inexplicably, tall — tall enough that Chiqiu had to look up at him… Shafeng, standing opposite, felt none of this. His own realm was far too distant from Sovereign Intent, and ignorance made him fearless. He could not possibly feel the dread that came to Chiqiu, whose understanding stood higher and who had at least heard Sovereign Intent spoken of.

“Idiocy!”

Shafeng could not help sneering, again and again.

Chasing after glory and casting yourself as a hero was, as he saw it, simply courting death. And this — knowing full well it was a ploy, knowing full well the trap had been laid, and putting your foot in it anyway — that wasn’t bravery. That was incurable stupidity.

Of course, in a fight, the stupider the enemy the happier Shafeng was.

Ideally the whole world would be fools.

As for clever men, one was quite enough. Himself.

Watching Yue Yang walk slowly out of the domain, murder erupted in Shafeng’s heart, a thousand times faster than lightning. Before Yue Yang could open his mouth to call the challenge, Shafeng — that lofty Divine Sovereign — launched a sneak attack. A heavy fist drove into Yue Yang’s chest, straight over the heart. And that was only the opening. A thousandth of a second later, the same fist angled upward off the chest and rode its own momentum into Yue Yang’s jaw.

In the instant Yue Yang went flying like a meteor, Shafeng — free of the domain’s penalty and restored to his normal strength — was fast enough to catch him from behind and kick him square in the back, right behind the heart.

Yue Yang shot backward into the sky.

Nearly turning into a star.

High in the vault of heaven Shafeng flickered into place higher still, an evil smile on his face, shaped like a demon god descending, blotting out the sky and swallowing the sun.

He brought both fists together and smashed them down on Yue Yang’s skull.

Force like thunder, splitting mountains, shaking the earth…

BOOM!

The meteor-shadow slammed into the ground, and the earth caved into a crater at least a thousand metres across.

The dust that went up would not settle. It was Chiqiu, too impatient to wait, who swept his divine power through it and scattered the cloud, revealing the gash torn in the ground — as hideous as the mouth of some primordial monster out of the old chaos.

Shafeng drifted down out of the sky at his leisure, looking at the black figure stubbornly clawing its way up from the depths, and a mocking cold smile came to the corner of his mouth. Still not dead? Bingli’s inheritor indeed. Well then — what if he added another thirty percent of divine power? Would the brat burst on the spot? If so, this fight was going to be dull. Without the domain to disguise him, with no illusions to make, the brat couldn’t take a single move.

An opponent from an entirely different tier. Killing him was about like pinching an ant.

A pity that Chiqiu had Tunlong in hand and Taiyan Divine Power guarding his body. That one couldn’t be killed.

Otherwise the satisfaction would have been greater.

When the agonized figure below finally dragged itself to the surface, one hand reaching up to grip the rock and haul itself out, Shafeng came down and set his foot on that hand, laughing contemptuously. “Little bug. Go on, be arrogant for me now. Do you understand yet what a god is, and what a man is? However outstanding you may be, you are still a man. In front of a god like me, you’re not worth a fart.”

“Bastard — what did you say?” the black figure below roared in fury.

“I wanted to say — it’s time to send you on your way…” It did not surprise Shafeng that the voice had changed. With injuries that severe, plus humiliation and rage on top of them, it would have been impossible for the voice not to change. What did puzzle him slightly was why the arrogant brat’s voice had warped into something that sounded a little like his own. Never mind. Finish him quickly. Young humans with that much potential were the most detestable thing there was — better to kill them early, before complications sprouted.

And as Shafeng raised Xuanya, ready to cut down the black figure beneath his foot on the spot —

he made a horrifying discovery.

The one he was standing on was not the arrogant young man. It was… himself.

How was that possible? How could he be standing on himself? He had clearly been beating the brat. Why was it himself? And yet that face contorted with rage, those eyes full of hatred — that was unmistakably him…

“You— you dared to hit me?” The “Shafeng” who had crawled up out of the ground ground his teeth in hatred.

“Impossible. You’re a fake, you’re that brat’s illusion. I’m the real one. I am the real Southwest Divine Sovereign Shafeng!” Seeing “himself” in that bloodied, wretched state, Shafeng backed away several steps in fright. As he retreated, a hand came down on his shoulder — and when he spun to cut the enemy down with Xuanya, he made another appalling discovery. There was yet another of himself behind him, and that one already had a vicious fist coming around.

The heavy fist landed square on the stunned Shafeng’s face.

(End of Chapter 1171)