Being struck again and again while its own attacks did nothing at all to touch him, the wild fury in the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s eyes finally began curdling into something closer to blind rage. It let out a low growl, blinding violet lightning gathering between its claws, and slashed out — a jagged bolt of lightning branding itself across Ye Tianxie’s body, accompanied by a crack of thunder sharp enough to split eardrums.

It had triggered its ultimate move far too early — Flash of Lightning. A devastating skill with no warning whatsoever before it activated; even with Ye Tianxie’s reaction speed, if he’d been standing too close, there would have been no guarantee he could dodge it at all… but right now, the attack landed against the Dragon Soul Wall instead, and not a single point of damage got through to him. A cold smile crossed Ye Tianxie’s face as he pressed forward step by step, the Hour of Eternal Fate slamming down on the lion’s body again and again, driving it back with each low, furious roar.

Five seconds. Six. Seven…

The little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s fury kept building, its eyes flickering with lightning like two violet bombs about to go off at any second. Driven to the very edge of rage, it finally let out a long howl, and a burst of light too fierce to look at directly flared to life with its body at the center, flashing straight into Ye Tianxie’s eyes.

“Ding… The Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion has been driven into total rage and has activated its hidden skill: True Electromagnetic Storm…”

The sheer horror of True Electromagnetic Storm was enough that even the System felt the need to sound a warning. Ye Tianxie showed no shock, no fear, didn’t so much as think about running — if anything, something like relief, even excitement, flickered through his eyes. He spun around and shouted at the top of his lungs toward Murong Qiushui: “Qiushui — interrupt it!!”

Ye Tianxie’s HP was draining at a rate of 10% per second, and the Dragon Soul Wall had already held for 7 seconds… 8 seconds… while the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s terrifying hidden skill was closing in on the end of its 3-second cast, right at the edge of detonation. A crushing sense of imminent death pressed down on Ye Tianxie, and on the other three as well. At the range True Electromagnetic Storm covered, all four of them would be caught inside it without exception.

And just as Ye Tianxie’s shout faded, an arrow came screaming in from a distance, tracing a perfectly straight line, and struck the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion square in the forehead with a sharp crack.

−1.

A single point of forced damage popped up over the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s head — and the violet lightning that had swelled around its body to the point of near-detonation vanished completely, all at once, right there.

Concussion Shot — one of the Hunter’s basic skills. Even though it only deals 80% of a normal attack on a hit, it carries a 35% chance to interrupt the target’s spellcasting.

And if it struck the target square in the head… that chance jumped to 100%!

Ye Tianxie had traded 9 seconds of invincibility specifically to bait the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion into its blind fury, forcing it to trigger this terrifying hidden skill. Because he believed — he knew — Murong Qiushui would interrupt it. He had to.

That was the trust between brothers.

The Concussion Shot struck the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion square in the head, cutting off its ultimate spell on the very last second of the cast. And if you looked closely, you’d notice something startling — the arrow hadn’t just struck the lion’s head, it had landed dead-center on its forehead, the distance to either side almost perfectly identical, as if it had been measured with impossible precision.

Murong Qiushui lowered the bow in his hands, his fingers — paler and finer than a woman’s — trailing lightly along the bowstring. Right now, the maximum effective range of his Concussion Shot was 20 meters, and the distance between him and the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion happened to be exactly twenty meters… not a hair more, not a hair less.

What had just been on display was the single most ordinary side of a terrifying ability that belonged to him and him alone.

Here was a man who wanted nothing more than to be ordinary — and was fated never to be. In the brutal battle that had once been fought without Ye Tianxie by his side, he’d stood alone atop the city wall, a captivating smile on his face, and the weapon that made every enemy’s blood run cold — the “Land of Ultimate Bliss” — sang out in his hands, every note as dazzling as the man himself, sending a shiver straight through the hearts and souls of every player on that battlefield.

Across the entire World of Fate, there was a legend — that if you were marked by Huaxia’s “Soul-Chasing Demon Emperor,” no one had ever escaped what came out of his hands, out of the “Land of Ultimate Bliss”… not once. Not ever.

Word had it that in that one brutal battle, he’d fired a total of 1,008 rounds from the “Land of Ultimate Bliss,” and every single one of those 1,008 rounds had claimed an enemy’s life. Every shot landed. Not one ever missed. And every single one struck exactly the target it was meant to — the magic-classes tucked away safely in the back lines, the greatest threats on the field… one-shot, every single time. That day, every player in the world learned that name. A demon’s name — one you did not want to provoke.

Not one of his shots had ever missed. Not a single one. And if there was one person alive who could have dodged them… it would only have been Ye Tianxie. But even if that barrel had been pointed straight at him, Murong Qiushui would never have tried to take his life.

Having its ultimate spellcast interrupted meant the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion suffered the exact same penalty as if the spell had gone off — 8 full seconds locked in place, unable to move at all. This was the greatest edge Ye Tianxie had to win this fight.

Eight seconds to strip away over a hundred thousand of its HP!

For an ordinary player, that goal would have been harder than climbing to heaven — madder than climbing to heaven.

And in that same instant, Ye Tianxie’s Dragon Soul Wall finally, completely dissolved. In that exact moment, the Blood Feather set into the tip of the Hour of Eternal Fate suddenly erupted with a burst of light the color of fresh blood.

Ye Tianxie’s HP at that moment: 5!!

As his HP fell from 90.2%… 80.2%… 70.2%… 60.2%… all the way down to 10.2%… 0.2%, the Dragon Soul Wall automatically dissolved, and the Blood Sacrifice of Fate — the ritual that fed on blood itself to unleash a storm of raw power — forcibly activated: below 1% HP, it triggered a full 400% attack bonus!! Five times his normal attack power!

The Blood Feather’s light spread out along the Hour of Eternal Fate and across Ye Tianxie’s entire body — light that truly looked like blood, the deepest, most concentrated shade of red imaginable. Wrapped in that crimson glow, Ye Tianxie looked as if he’d just stepped straight out of a pool overflowing with fresh blood… The sight of him, drenched in red, left Zuo Pojun and the other two staring wide-eyed all over again.

“Frenzied… Battle… Intent…”

Boiling energy seemed ready to tear his body apart from the inside, threatening to swallow his sanity whole — a violent, desperate need to unleash it all, stronger than he’d ever felt before. He raised the Hour of Eternal Fate, and with a furious roar, brought it down on the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion, now completely unable to move.

Ye Tianxie’s attack power at this moment — 4,413!!

【Author’s note: Come on, let’s break down exactly how that number 4,413 comes out…】

【Author’s note: {(10+15×8+5+48) (STR) ×2+150 (Hour of Eternal Fate) +15×5 (Claw of the Evil Dragon)} × {(1+(15×0.3×0.01)} (Claw of the Evil Dragon) × (1+10%) (Hour of Eternal Fate) × 500% (Blood Sacrifice of Fate) × (1+30%) (Frenzied Battle Intent) = 4,413.】

【Author’s note: What Huoxing wants to say is — those deceptively simple-looking numbers you see in the game? All worked out through exactly this kind of tangled, ！@#￥%-brained math. And this is still the fucking early game. Back when I was writing Asura, the late-game attribute formulas got so long they could scare a burnout case straight into a full breakdown. Anyone who says web-game novels are easy to write was a damn fallen angel in a past life!!】

BOOM!!

8,074!

This Dragon Rend Slash, fueled by that overwhelming surge of power, came down with a sound so much more shattering than anything before it — a blow that felt like it could split mountains and crack stone, so heavy that even the ground itself seemed to shudder on impact. A cold, faint smile crossed Ye Tianxie’s face — whether deliberate or not, even he couldn’t have said — as he brought down another identical Dragon Rend Slash on the Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s body.

−8,100, −8,091, −8,150, −8,042, −8,055, −8,101…

Seven seconds. Seven furious strikes. Seven staggering damage numbers. Nearly sixty thousand of the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion’s HP, gone.

Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui both stood frozen, jaws practically hitting the dirt… short of calling it a dream, there wasn’t a word in either of their vocabularies for how stunned, how utterly floored, they were right now.

The eighth second… just as the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion was about to regain its freedom, the overwhelming pressure radiating off Ye Tianxie surged again, several times over.

“Hero’s… Heart!!”

A metallic glow wove itself into the crimson light, and violent winds began forming with Ye Tianxie’s body as their center — and under the crimson light’s glow, even the color of that whirling tornado turned into pure, undiluted blood-red.

“Dragon Tornado Sevenfold Rend!!!”

The little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion, having only just regained its freedom, met true, absolute despair in the form of that rending strike…

−8,110, −8,041, −8,110, −8,042, −8,015, −8,101, −8,042!

The raw power unleashed by the Blood Sacrifice of Fate — a 400% attack bonus, Frenzied Battle Intent’s 30% attack bonus, Hero’s Heart’s guaranteed critical hit — Ye Tianxie’s ultimate strike carried a total of over fifty-six thousand damage!

In the span of a single second, the little Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion, only just freed from its stun, hadn’t even had the chance to unleash its own furious counterattack before that horrifying sevenfold strike dragged it down into the abyss of absolute despair… its HP bar emptied out completely, its body sent tumbling away by the surging winds, its six wings falling limp, its body collapsing flat on the ground, unmoving.

“Ding… You have successfully slain the Level 15 Immortal Spirit Beast, the Six-Winged Purple-Scaled Sky-Treading Lion (Juvenile). Renown +150.”

“Ding… Your level has risen to Level 16. HP +20, MP +20, Strength +3, Constitution +3, Agility +3, Spirit +3. You have gained 5 free attribute points.”

“Ding… Your pet ‘Yaoyao’ has leveled up to Level 10. HP +20, MP +80, Physical Attack +4, Magic Attack +8, Accuracy +1, Evasion +1.”

“Ding… Your pet ‘Yaoyao’ has leveled up to Level 11. HP +20, MP +80, Physical Attack +4, Magic Attack +8, Accuracy +1, Evasion +1.”

“Ding… Your pet ‘Yaoyao’ has leveled up to Level 12. HP +20, MP +80, Physical Attack +4, Magic Attack +8, Accuracy +1, Evasion +1.”

(End of Chapter 153)