Calonandis… Looking at him — which was to say at his own attributes now — Ye Tianxie felt an endless unreality, as if he were inside a dream. 1.2 billion health, 8 million magic, 500,000 base attack power… numbers out of a myth, and they had turned up on him, real as anything.

And in his hand he was holding a… a Holy Annihilation sword!

Holy Annihilation. Setting aside the legendary “Forbidden,” it could fairly be called the highest tier in the world of Fate. It stood above Immortal Spirit, above Heaven-Severing, above Divine Mystery… Holding this sword, he finally understood… why people said a Holy Annihilation sword could not exist even in theory, and lived only in the old stories… and that even if one did, it could never fall into a player’s hands.

Because a Holy Annihilation item was simply too strong. Absurdly strong. Strong in a way you would not believe unless you saw it with your own eyes… no, strong in a way that even with your own eyes on it you could hardly believe any weapon so terribly powerful existed at all.

A body like this, a power like this, a weapon like this… the Holy Sword War God did not disgrace the word “God” in the least.

And the state he was in at the moment came out of a single skill… one called “Phantom God Transformation.” Did that mean… that now that he had it, he could become this whenever he wanted?

Then what a heaven-defying skill that would be, what a heaven-defying class!!

Ye Tianxie turned around, and his gaze came to rest on the Dark Nether Ghost King, who had become a small thing in front of him. He was carrying a sense of strength now — the kind that could grind every obstacle to powder, destroy every enemy, overturn heaven and earth themselves… and under a power like that, the Dark Nether Ghost King, against whom he had not had a scrap of resistance a moment ago, no longer felt like a threat at all. He could even feel that this creature’s life and death were his to decide.

What the Dark Nether Ghost King felt was, beyond any question, the exact opposite.

Ten-odd seconds ago, the presence he let out carelessly had crushed the human flat with no trouble at all, and one twitch of a finger could have settled whether the human lived or died. But now he could feel his own body and his own soul being pressed down by a power that set him trembling — and the source of that fear…

His gaze fell on the enormous sword in Ye Tianxie’s hand, and in an instant those green eyes shrank to the size of pinholes, and a voice came shaking out of him, the sound of something falling into an abyss. “The Holy… the Holy Sword!!!”

Among the Demon race there had always been a story of a terrifying holy sword — the forbidden sword their race feared, said to have come from heaven and to have been born for the single purpose of judging sin. The sacred power inside it was something even Lixiao, the strongest of the ancient Demon Gods, held in deep dread. The shape of that sword was cut into the race’s emblem, and every demon knew it by sight.

A shape could be imitated. A color could be imitated… but the sacredness that set his soul shaking could never be imitated. The Dark Nether Ghost King had never once imagined that a day would come when he would see it with his own eyes — this holy sword out of the old stories, with its extreme and terrible sacred power.

His power crushed, his soul shaking… he thought of running! From the day he came into being until now, even when the power of the Hour of Fate sealed him a hundred years ago, he had never been afraid the way he was afraid now. Because the Hour of Fate had the power to seal him forever and swallow him slowly — but the holy sword had the sacred power to judge him, and to destroy him utterly.

Everyone has the thing he fears most, the thing he will not go near. Everyone fears death, and demons are no exception. If anything, they fear death more than ordinary humans do. Because when a human dies he can enter the next of the cycles of rebirth, and when a demon dies he falls forever into an endless abyss he can never rise out of… into purgatory, even.

Shaking with the fear the holy sword brought, the Dark Nether Ghost King backed up a step. Ye Tianxie raised the sword in his hand and took his first step… and with that one step the ground shook and the mountains moved.

That one simple step came down on the Dark Nether Ghost King’s heart. As the holy sword came closer, that terrible sacred power thickened by several degrees. However hard he tried to steady himself, however hard he tried to gather his power and hold the thing off, he could not push down a fear that nothing could restrain.

“Dark Nether Ghost King… Heaven means to see you gone, and today you are fated to end. Still, dying under a holy sword, you have no cause to complain.” Ye Tianxie’s voice came slowly, and the holy sword in his hand swung out all at once. As that enormous blade came around, sacred light shot out from it in every direction and lit the body shaking under the black cloak.

BOOM!!

The Dark Nether Ghost King threw a dark Blink and slipped that vast stroke. The blade came down on the ground and brought up a huge roar, and that destroying power cut a deep trench into the floor.

Blinking thirty meters back, the Dark Nether Ghost King set his back against the wall, still unable to believe anything he was seeing, and screamed hysterically. “No!! Impossible!! This is impossible… why did you wake the power of the Holy Mark… why is there a holy sword! This has to be an illusion, none of it can be real!! It’s an illusion!!”

Ye Tianxie took two steps forward, and those two steps carried him five meters. “In this world, plenty of things do not stop existing just because you think they are impossible. Why all this is happening, even I don’t know… but what I can tell you for certain is this. Today, you die. There has never been anyone who dared to run his mouth like that in front of me!!”

The holy sword rose again and came down, and watching that enormous blade fall, the Dark Nether Ghost King did not so much as think of blocking. Had it been ordinary power of the same strength he would still have chosen to block, but against a sacred power that countered him completely, his instinct was to dodge, to get away…

At his height the Dark Nether Ghost King’s strength had been close to Holy Annihilation grade, not far off the true peak at all. But over the hundred years sealed on the Tower of Fate, his strength had been swallowed and stripped away by the Hour of Fate’s great power every moment of every day, and what was left to him now was under half of what he had started with… somewhere between Divine Mystery grade and Holy Annihilation grade.

And Calonandis, the Holy Sword War God, with the holy sword Elsidion to help him, stood deservedly at Holy Annihilation grade — the summit of strength on the Lost Continent. His overall strength was already above the Dark Nether Ghost King at his height, and on top of that, the holy sword was the natural enemy of exactly this kind of dark power.

The Dark Nether Ghost King at his height would not have been Calonandis’s match. Still less this one, holding half the power of his peak. Half a grade apart is the difference between heaven and earth. If it had not been for the pressure that came off a gap in strength that wide, and the terrible weight of the sacred power holding him down, a creature with a demon’s arrogance and a demon’s pride would never have chosen so easily to run.

BOOM!!

The holy sword’s second attack missed as well. The enormous blade came down on the pitch-black wall, and there was a roar and a spray of broken stone. Space itself shuddered hard, the walls around them caved in one after another under that vast shock, and the earth overhead came rustling down. The Dark Nether Ghost King, several tens of meters back again, did not dare hesitate any longer. He turned and ran, throwing himself backward at his best speed with no thought for where he was going.

Ye Tianxie did not chase. He watched the Dark Nether Ghost King’s retreating back and raised the holy sword slowly, and a shaft of sacred light shot out of the blade and drove straight at the fleeing demon. “Demon-Severing Kill Barrier!!”

However fast the Dark Nether Ghost King ran, he could never match the speed of light. The light out of the holy sword covered him in an instant, and the body driving forward stopped short, holding the shape of a running stride without moving, as if it had been sealed in ice.

And in the same moment that it covered the Dark Nether Ghost King, the pure light stopped spreading. This white shaft joined the demon at one end and the holy sword in Ye Tianxie’s hand at the other. Ye Tianxie’s body shot forward along the straight line the light had drawn, at a speed past believing, and arrived in front of that locked body as if he had blinked there. The holy sword, still shining, came down on the Dark Nether Ghost King with an enormous weight of impact behind it…

BOOM!!

-3,200,000!

Demon-Severing Kill Barrier, the skill belonging to the holy sword Elsidion alone, gathers a lockdown and an attack into one: it seals with sacred light, then delivers a violent blow. And against creatures of the dark element the lockdown succeeds 100% of the time, so there is no way at all for them to escape it.

Seven figures of damage — an astronomical number to stagger the world. When the Dark Nether Ghost King’s body was knocked flying like a dead leaf under that peerlessly powerful strike, Ye Tianxie could still hardly believe a damage figure like that had come off his own hand.

What he was living through was nothing less than the shock and unreality of an ant knocking over a mountain.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang…

The Dark Nether Ghost King’s body smashed through one wall after another, and when it hit the ground the enormous force behind it still had not fully spent itself, and instead drove him deep down into the earth. Ye Tianxie’s steps followed. Looking at the spot where the Dark Nether Ghost King’s body had disappeared, he raised the holy sword high and drove it viciously downward. “Rending Quake!!”

BOOM!!

The holy sword bit deep into the ground, and the earth broke apart at once. A muffled explosion came up from below, and as the floor blew open spectacularly, the Dark Nether Ghost King’s body, sunk deep underground, was flung high again in a rain of sand and stone. Ye Tianxie looked up and watched that pitch-black shape, screaming, come down slowly through the air, and just as its body was about to touch the ground the holy sword swung out once more, without mercy…

“God-Breaking Slash!”

BOOM!!!!

Calonandis was a god of battle. What he loved best was a challenge, and the only ones fit to be his opponents were those whose strength stood level with a god’s. He did not have many skills of his own, but not one of them disgraced the word “God” in the least.

A God-Breaking Slash, a stroke enough to drain the color from a true god’s face, crashed down onto the Dark Nether Ghost King and drove him hard into the ground below. As that battered floor blew apart once more, he was smashed underground again — but this time there was no telling how deep his body went. A hundred meters, maybe. A thousand…

“God-Defying Slash!!”

God-Defying Slash can be used on its own, and it can also be chained off the powerful God-Breaking Slash — and used immediately after it, its effect is extraordinary. It makes the enemy struck a moment before take another attack of exactly the same strength, but running in the exact opposite direction… whatever state the enemy is in, however far he has been knocked, wherever he has fled to, even a thousand li away in an instant, this God-Defying Slash falls as if out of the sky and lands on him without a hair’s error.

It is a control skill that sends an enemy you have knocked away straight back to your side to be worked over some more. A strange thing like this, which no ordinary reasoning can explain, is perhaps something only a true god could ever set off.

(End of Chapter 243)