Tu Wan sensed his targets almost at once.
There was no denying it: Grand Hall Master Dongfang’s talent and wisdom were simply astonishing. The moment Tu Wan had slipped up against Princess Qianqian’s group and gotten lost in the void, Dongfang had guided him straight across to another battlefield where he could put his strength to use. That crossing had not only spanned an immense distance — it had set him down precisely within five hundred li of his enemies’ route. The whole arrangement was frighteningly perfect.
At this range, Tu Wan could use his divine-tier senses to search out the enemy and find them.
And the enemy knew nothing about it.
In all the world, only Grand Hall Master Dongfang — with his Game talent, which made heaven and earth the board and all things the pieces — could pull off something like this.
Grand Hall Master Dongfang was moving, step by step, into the endgame, drawing in the great net he had laid across the battlefield long ago… To make that happen, even Tu Wan, a divine-tier power, could not avoid becoming a piece in his hand to move however he liked.
That was why people went pale just hearing about Dongfang’s wisdom — that, and his one-of-a-kind, all-controlling Game talent!
“Die, you pitiful little rats!”
Having found his targets, Tu Wan unleashed his terrifying divine-tier might in wild excitement. Too impatient even to fly, he slashed space open with his Bloodflow scythe-halberd and teleported straight to the side of the targets he was about to attack. As one of Grand Hall Master Dongfang’s hidden pieces, he had been waiting a long time. He had meant to make his entrance with a feast of blood — and instead his opponents had driven him into the void, where he had nearly been lost for good… Now that he finally had another chance, he could not wait a single second more.
Beheadings, severed heads, blood and despairing screams.
Those were what the hunger in him craved most.
Tu Wan burst out of the void with a roar, like a god descending from heaven, and landed in front of the handful of targets who were hurrying along their way.
The little rats in his eyes were, in fact, a few women.
In the middle was a flower fairy in a lovely flowered dress, her fragrance overwhelming, a rainbow circling her body. What annoyed Tu Wan intensely was that this flower fairy seemed to be divine tier too; the divine will and power he could glimpse in her, there one moment and gone the next, pressed on him with an invisible weight.
No wonder Grand Hall Master Dongfang had sent him to intercept — the opponent was divine tier! Still, Tu Wan did not believe a divine-tier flower fairy who was not a combat type, at most a support type, could pose any real threat to him. She might add a bit of trouble while he was cutting her down, but in the end she would never escape her doom. On second thought, Tu Wan decided an enemy like this was actually not bad at all. He could toy with her longer, he would feel more accomplished once the job was done, and most important of all, beating someone at divine tier would raise his standing in Grand Hall Master Dongfang’s eyes.
To the flower fairy’s left stood a dragon woman who also seemed to be divine tier.
And she was clearly a combat-type dragon woman, carrying a strange kind of will about her.
Tu Wan sensed that his most troublesome opponent might be her, not the flower fairy, and he could not help taking a second look.
To the flower fairy’s right was a queen of the bloody race whose strength seemed somewhere around divine envoy, or maybe divine general — not worth much attention at all. And beside that bloody-race queen stood what looked like a sheep-girl of the sheep race. Only, this sheep-girl was far too tall and far too slender. If not for the curved, jade-white horns on her head, anyone would have taken her for a human woman rather than a docile sheep-girl.
On the dragon woman’s other side was a flame phantom of the phantom race.
A mindless phantom like that was not worth wasting time on either!
With nothing more than a careless glance, Tu Wan settled the order of attack. First he would cut down the sheep-girl, who had very little fighting power. Then the bloody-race queen. After that he would wipe out the mindless phantom in passing, and somewhere along the way he would find a chance to cripple or kill the non-combat flower fairy…
Last of all, of course, would come a hard fight with the combat-type dragon woman.
He figured cleaning up the dragon woman would take a little time. The rest were nothing worth mentioning.
“All right, all right, I admit it. You’re not a few little rats I can sweep up with one hand. You’re big rats who’ve actually managed to catch this god’s interest. For the time we have left, let’s play a game together. Its theme is blood and screaming!” Tu Wan threw back his head and laughed in triumph.
“Who’s this idiot?” Duoduo, whom Tu Wan had taken for a non-combat flower fairy, wrinkled her little brows adorably.
“No idea. Who knows what back corner this moron crawled out of…” The Chi-Dragon Woman Jiangying had never heard of anyone called Tu Wan either.
“How does the Sky Realm even have someone like this? I feel like this guy could drag the whole Sky Realm’s intelligence down a full level! Next to him, I’m realizing even Sea Fatty is a smart guy!” Hong was suddenly a little worried that idiocy might be contagious. If Sea Fatty ever heard what she had said, he would either spit blood and roll on the ground in rage or cry himself half to death. The Hai family’s eldest young master was a smart guy to begin with, thank you very much! His IQ might run out on him a lot, but at least he would never mistake Duoduo for a non-combat flower fairy, or A-Man for a sheep-girl!
Only two kinds of people would mistake A-Man for a sheep-girl.
The first was the blind.
The second was someone with eyes wide open and an IQ in serious trouble.
As for mistaking Duoduo for a flower fairy, only one kind of person would do that: an idiot so dim it might be catching!
Faced with this Tu Wan, who had leapt out of the void and stood there laughing at the sky like an idiot, even A-Man was a little lost for words. Two divine-tier powers right in front of him and he couldn’t even tell — a brain like that was really… Forget it. The sooner someone like this died and got reborn, the better!
She sprang into the air, and her fist came smashing down like lightning at the golden giant Tu Wan, who was still laughing his head off.
“You’re asking to die!” Tu Wan really was divine tier; his reactions were fast. But he did not quite understand why the one attacking a divine-tier power like him was this unremarkable sheep-girl, and not the combat-type dragon woman. Who but that dragon woman could take a blow from the divine artifact Bloodflow in his hands? Never mind — he would cut off the sheep-girl’s head first, for good luck.
Bloodflow swept through the air in his hands. In an instant it tore through space and split heaven and earth.
Before A-Man’s fist could come crashing down, it had already landed a vicious, heavy slash on her shoulder.
A-Man was wearing a martial artist’s outfit. Perhaps she was still used to wearing the Black Tortoise War Armor Yue Yang had made specially for her, because she ignored the attack the way she always had, with no defense at all, and took the full, heavy slash of a divine artifact squarely on her shoulder.
Hsss…
Blood sprayed from her shoulder.
The scythe-halberd’s blade carved a long gash, half sunk into the shoulder.
Tu Wan was a little puzzled. That slash should have been able to split an entire mountain — so how had it failed to take this sheep-girl’s shoulder off? And the wound was shallow. It was nothing like the usual result, where his opponent was split in two. What strange breed of sheep-person was this sheep-girl, anyway? How could her body’s defense be so high?
Still, no matter how high her defense was, it made no difference.
Because what had wounded her was his proudest divine artifact, Bloodflow.
Every target Bloodflow wounded bled to death. Unless it was a god, even a giant dragon would collapse under its killing power and bleed out!
“Huh?” A-Man found that it was not just her shoulder — wounds were tearing open on her back, her arms and her neck too. The enemy’s weapon carried a killing will that made wounds fester far faster than they should, and blood gushed from the bursting wounds like water from a spring. In a moment A-Man was drenched in blood from head to foot. Yet she did not go down the way Tu Wan had imagined. Her wounds kept worsening and the bleeding would not stop, but she stood as steady as a mountain, without the faintest sign of collapsing or bleeding to death.
“What on earth kind of race are you?” Tu Wan was baffled. How could there be a race in the world that bled without dying? A phantom or some undead thing he could understand — they had no blood to lose. But this was clearly a sheep-girl. Wounded this badly, how could she be completely fine?
“Nice weapon. It’s mine now!” A-Man reached out a bloody hand and gripped the Bloodflow scythe-halberd tight.
“Dream on.” Tu Wan gave a cold laugh.
A divine artifact chose its own master.
And a divine artifact had its own power to reject and resist any enemy who tried to seize it. If it would not acknowledge you, how could you take it with your bare hands?
A-Man’s hands, wrapped around the Bloodflow scythe-halberd, suddenly burst open as if slashed by countless strands of sword-qi. Skin and muscle split; one bloody wound after another tore open and then worsened wildly…
The Bloodflow scythe-halberd’s instinct as a divine artifact was fighting back on its own against A-Man’s will to take it.
Tu Wan had known it would turn out this way.
He had seen attempts like this more than once in battle, but every enemy who tried to take Bloodflow had been badly wounded by the divine artifact’s will and power, and had been forced to give up such a hopeless, pointless act of greed. Seize a divine artifact with your bare hands? Hah, the person who could pull that off hadn’t been born yet!
“Hah!” A-Man ignored the torn-up wounds on her hands, let out a huge roar, and wrenched the Bloodflow scythe-halberd right out of Tu Wan’s grip by sheer force.
The Bloodflow scythe-halberd went on savaging her hands the whole time, but she held on tight and would not let go, as if she could not feel pain at all.
Hong watched and shook her head. “A-Man, this weapon probably isn’t a good fit for you. Just let it go!”
A-Man held on tight and said nothing. The Bloodflow scythe-halberd might not suit her, but she had soaked up so much of her master Yue Yang’s influence that she knew how much slaying the monster and grabbing the loot meant to him. So she was not going to give up.
Anything in the world that was useful to her master, she would see through.
Never mind seizing one divine artifact. Even destroying the entire Heavenly Realm, if it was what he wanted, she would do without a moment’s hesitation.
“Give Bloodflow back!” Tu Wan was about to lose his mind. Was something wrong with this damned sheep-girl’s head? It was a divine artifact that could not possibly be taken, and she just kept hanging on to it! What made Tu Wan want to pass out was that when he lunged at A-Man, the one standing in his way was now Hong — while A-Man, still clutching the Bloodflow scythe-halberd she could not claim, had slung the divine artifact over her shoulder and taken off running.
Tu Wan went into a frenzy of rage.
Moving far faster than lightning, he swerved around Hong’s block and hurled himself madly at A-Man, who was running off with Bloodflow on her shoulder.
A-Man suddenly looked back. A strange red light, demonic and dreamlike, flashed in her eyes… Instantly Tu Wan froze where he was. His eyes went unfocused and he hung motionless in midair, his body still in the pose of a lunging kill, but every bit of him stopped dead.
By the time he broke free of the soul world the Death Gaze had trapped him in, A-Man had long since run off with the Bloodflow scythe-halberd and vanished without a trace.
His head splitting with pain, Tu Wan clutched his forehead and groaned in agony.
He had nearly been killed outright!
If not for the strength of his divine-tier realm, his soul would probably have been annihilated by that soul-reaping stroke, which had come down like Death’s own scythe. What race was that sheep-girl, anyway? How could she have such an incredible talent?
Tu Wan could not make sense of it at all. She bled without dying, felt no pain from her wounds, and could kill with a Death Gaze. Was that still a weak woman?
“Let’s not waste too much time on this idiot. We should hurry on!” Duoduo was in no mood to fight something like Tu Wan, and she was the first after A-Man to teleport away. “Jiangying, will you stay behind? My guess is Dongfang sent this guy here as a throwaway piece to die. Maybe he’s meant to be a sacrifice, or some other kind of hidden move. Don’t kill him for now — just beat him till he can’t fight…”
“We’ll go too!” Hong signaled to the Chaos Phantom. “Our target is the Immovable Supreme. Leave this guy to Jiangying. She’s got the Dragon God Supreme’s divine-might guillotine, and she’s got the best way of dealing with brainless idiots like this!”
By the time Tu Wan’s headache had passed and he was fully himself again, only one opponent was left in front of him: the dragon woman he had originally thought was the strongest fighter of them all, Jiangying.
The Chi-Dragon Woman was not happy that her companions had dumped this “garbage disposal” chore on her. But she was the easiest of them to talk into things, and since she was always asleep advancing her cultivation, she had the fewest chances to show what she could do. She really was in no position to be picky!
With that thought, the Chi-Dragon Woman settled her mind and took her stance.
Tu Wan’s anger erupted like a volcano.
On this interception mission, not only had he failed to kill his opponents, but that sheep-girl had robbed him of his most treasured divine weapon. It was beyond outrageous! What made him angriest of all was the attitude of the dragon woman in front of him. Was that any way to face a divine-tier power? Even if she was not afraid, she could at least show a little gravity or nerves, couldn’t she? Standing there looking so relaxed — did she think this was a spring outing to catch butterflies?
His giant fist came smashing down toward the top of the Chi-Dragon Woman’s head.
Furious, Tu Wan meant to flatten this dragon woman with a single punch and then chase down the sheep-girl who had stolen his divine Bloodflow. He was going to crush every bone in that damned sheep-girl’s body one by one, take them apart, jumble them up, and then put her back together in perfect human shape!
“Too slow!” Tu Wan heard the shout right by his ear. Next, he felt something clamp down on the back of his neck — his opponent had actually hoisted him up into the air by the scruff.
The next second, Jiangying held Tu Wan — a five-meter golden giant — by the back of his neck, swung him around a few times like a bag of trash, and flung him away hard… He shot off far faster than any meteor in the sky, flew a hundred kilometers, smashed straight through a mountain peak, and slammed deep into the mountain beyond it. By the time he crawled dizzily out of the dirt, the dragon woman with the boundless strength was long gone.
On the ground, though, she had left a marker scratched in on purpose.
It pointed straight toward White River Valley.
“Damn it, I won’t let any of you get away with this!” His head boiling with rage, his eyes blood red, Tu Wan charged off like a maddened bull in the direction it showed, chasing at full speed.
(End of Chapter 1284)