Over eighty million. What a terrible figure — and what enormous attack power it takes to do damage that staggers the world like that.

The fight between Ye Tianxie and the Dark Nether Ghost King was now entirely one-sided abuse. In front of the holy sword the powerful demon had lost every scrap of ability to parry or hit back. Watching his own single-target high-grade forbidden spell scattered outright by that sword had already broken his nerve completely.

Red Lotus God-Breaking Kill can be used three times a day, and each use burns for thirty seconds. Ye Tianxie put all three onto the Dark Nether Ghost King one after another, so that the crimson fire of heaven ran on him for a minute and a half without a break.

Cleave, slash, hook, thrust… the Dark Nether Ghost King was like a target struggling bitterly and unable to get away, taking every attack from that enormous holy sword at full price. It was not that he did not want to run. It was that the holy sword’s power had him completely pinned down, and every time he had just gathered enough strength to flee, the next heavy blow would scatter it again.

The quiet Blue Soul watched with wolf eyes fixed, its pupils narrowing steadily. As a Fate Core, it knew exactly how strong the Dark Nether Ghost King was. Gather the seven Fate Cores together on the Hour of Fate and the power they make is beyond matching. But scattered… of the seven, the only one that can beat a Demon King on its own is the purple Heaven’s Heart, and the Blue Soul, second only to it in ability, cannot.

If it had not been watching with its own eyes, it would never have believed that a day would come when the Dark Nether Ghost King could be trampled and worked over like this. Not that he was weak; on the contrary, no one would dare deny how strong he was… it was that the other side was simply too strong, and held a power that countered him completely.

Two-odd minutes went by, and the unbroken attacks had destroyed over two hundred million of the Dark Nether Ghost King’s health. In that time the Phantom Beast Ruins had lost every trace of what they had been, leveled flat. Inside the barrier, flying sand and stone and the glare of energy filled the place so completely that it was almost impossible to make out what was happening in there.

Under attacks at that level of energy the Phantom Beast race’s barrier still had not been broken, and it had shut the overflow in, sparing the northern part of the City of Heaven’s Sun an enormous disaster.

“Demon-Severing Kill Barrier!”

BOOM!

-2600000!

Lockdown, then the strike, and the Dark Nether Ghost King was slammed up against the barrier once more. Ye Tianxie gripped the holy sword in both hands and raised it above his head, and in that instant all the drifting sand and dust vanished, pressed flat to the ground by a force too strong to describe, without one more grain lifting.

In that moment the world lost its sound, and every stir of wind with it, as if time and space had both been sealed by some enormous power out of nowhere. And at last, on the holy sword pointing straight at the sky, sacred light began to flicker up… the glow thickened slowly and grew fierce, then in one instant filled the whole space inside the barrier…

“Holy… Forbidden… Skill — Heaven’s Judgment!!”

The Holy Forbidden Skill: a banned technique of the Holy Annihilation tier, a terrible attack with the power to destroy heaven and earth! As it began to gather, Ye Tianxie’s blood boiled along with it… because this enormous power, this enormous skill, was coming out of his own hand…

But the next second his body shuddered hard, and in an instant his face changed.

The shadow of despair and the feeling of death coming on were beating at the Dark Nether Ghost King’s nerves. Locked down by Heaven’s Judgment, he could feel with perfect clarity how terrible a power it was… Fear of death and that brief taste of freedom finally made him throw out every scrap of strength he could gather, and he actually tore himself clear of that pressure by force and scrambled to the edge of the barrier.

The Phantom Beast race’s barrier had not been destroyed even by the Holy Sword War God’s power, so what hope did the Dark Nether Ghost King have of breaking it? But yellow light flashed in his hand — Orange Fang, out and gripped tight — and then he drove it hard into the barrier in front of him.

No sound of impact. No sound of grinding. No sound of splitting. In the instant Orange Fang touched the barrier, a hole better than two meters across suddenly opened in what nothing could break. The Dark Nether Ghost King let out a strange howl, shot through the hole, and threw himself into the air and away without a thought for anything else.

And in the instant he came free of the barrier, every trace of the energy the holy sword was putting out vanished. Ye Tianxie’s expression froze. The next second the holy sword in his hand turned into a mass of empty energy and disappeared. His body shrank inside a drifting, dimming glow, and shrank again… all the way back to the way he had been, while the equipment he had been wearing came back onto him of its own accord.

“Ding… The ability from the Holy Mark Beast is entirely spent. Phantom God Transformation is automatically cancelled.”

Ye Tianxie: “……”

“Yee-yaa! Master, you finally changed back… wuu wuu wuu wuu, Guoguo thought Master was going to be that tall, huge, scary thing from now on… wuu wuu wuu wuu, it’s so good.” Guoguo flew in from somewhere and threw her arms around Ye Tianxie’s neck, getting it all out between sobs.

“…Good, my foot!” Looking at himself back in his normal shape, with the last few minutes going through his mind like something out of a dream, he whipped his head around and looked at the Dark Nether Ghost King, already outside the barrier.

The Holy Sword War God’s power really was too strong — strong enough to leave one of the Eight Demon Kings without a single blow to hit back with. But… he had just worked this Ghost King over like that, and now he had carelessly changed back…

The Dark Nether Ghost King was the Dark Nether Ghost King after all. However extreme the Holy Sword War God’s strength was, there was no possibility of finishing him in three short minutes. Otherwise he would not deserve to be one of the Eight Demon Kings who had the whole Lost Continent trembling a hundred years ago.

And in that one look Ye Tianxie gave him — perhaps because the Dark Nether Ghost King’s collapse had left his mental defense too fragile to hold — his Eye of the Evil Dragon actually got a part of the demon’s information.

Dark Nether Ghost King: Level 80 high-grade Divine Mystery BOSS. Health 1,772,350,000/2,000,000,000. One of the Eight Demon Kings, who command the power of evil darkness. Sealed on the Tower of Fate by the Hour of Fate a hundred years ago and escaped three years ago, but the greater part of his own power was wiped out under the Hour of Fate’s devouring, and is currently recovering fast.

Looking at that string of zeroes behind the Dark Nether Ghost King’s health, Ye Tianxie’s face went blank for a good while, and then he slowly got out two words. “Holy shit!”

A Dark Nether Ghost King at under half his peak had two billion health — nearly twice what the Holy Sword War God had, and that was a god of Holy Annihilation grade!

Demons, in the end, are not the same as people. A demon’s body is tougher than an ordinary human’s by an enormous margin, and that is one of the Demon race’s very highest gifts, and part of why they are so hard to destroy. The Holy Sword War God’s overall strength could beat the Dark Nether Ghost King into the ground, but he had a human body after all, and ability gained after birth still does not match the sheer toughness a demon at his peak is born with.

…And that figure was telling Ye Tianxie that those three minutes of attacks had destroyed barely a tenth of the Dark Nether Ghost King’s health.

True enough. If one of the Eight Demon Kings could be wiped out that easily inside three minutes, he would hardly deserve the name.

In the instant the Dark Nether Ghost King came free of the barrier, the terrible pressure off the holy sword vanished without a trace. He assumed by instinct that the Phantom Beast race’s barrier was blocking it. Under those attacks from the holy sword he had long since been frightened out of his wits, and now that he was completely free again he fled into the distance like a madman, without daring so much as one look back.

ROOOAR!!!!

Just then an enormous wolf howl came at his ear, and he shook hard. The next instant a deep-blue wolf shape shot up into the sky like lightning and drove at the Dark Nether Ghost King. Strung tight as he was, the demon was caught with no guard up at all and struck hard by that blue shape — and whether by design or not, the part of him it hit was exactly the left hand holding Orange Fang.

BANG!!

The Dark Nether Ghost King’s body was knocked violently away, that one hit carrying him better than three hundred meters, and Orange Fang flew out of his grip, traced a rough arc, and fell to the ground.

Off in the distance, the Dark Nether Ghost King’s body had already turned into a black dot getting smaller and smaller. His strength now did not reach half of what it was at his height, but even so he could have beaten the Blue Soul easily. The trouble was that the Holy Sword War God had scared the courage out of him, and he would not dare stop and tangle with it now — he did not even have the nerve to go back for the Orange Fang that had been knocked out of his hand. He rode the momentum the Blue Soul had given him and fled far away… never noticing at all that the Holy Sword War God had stopped existing some time ago.

One backward glance anywhere in that stretch and the whole situation would have turned completely around.

Orange Fang, lying on the ground, was picked up by a hand and gripped in the palm.

Orange Fang’s power had been held down, forcing it back into its original form. And that made things entirely convenient for the man who had picked it up.

The blue-haired man had watched Ye Tianxie’s body change all the way back from the Holy Sword War God to his original shape. He looked at Ye Tianxie in silence for a long time, then walked over to the barrier and gave it a casual stab with the Orange Fang in his hand.

The barrier opened without a sound, and the blue-haired man and the Blue Soul walked in through it and up to Ye Tianxie.

“It’s you!” At the sudden sight of the blue-haired man, violent feeling showed on Ye Tianxie’s face. A shadow printed forever on the sea of his heart rose up in him, and he forced the stirring down and told himself silently, in the bottom of his heart… it isn’t him, it can’t be him… it can’t be…

Last time, it was this man who had gotten Blood Feather for him, and led him down into the Hidden Dragon Abyss, and opened the way to the “Rebel-Boned Evil Dragon” class.

The blue-haired man nodded, put out his hand, and held Orange Fang up in front of Ye Tianxie’s eyes. “This is the second Fate Core, Orange Fang. By rights it belongs to you. Its power is in a state of self-sealing right now, and for three days it will not be able to take on a power incarnation, which also makes this the best time to set it back into the Hour of Fate. Otherwise it will reject the Hour of Fate the way Blood Feather did, and attack you.”

Ye Tianxie’s eyes shifted. He took Orange Fang out of the man’s hand and held it. He raised his head and asked calmly, “Why on earth do you want to help me!?”

“I have not helped you.” The blue-haired man shook his head, moved his gaze elsewhere, and said flatly, “Getting Orange Fang this time was entirely your own doing. Otherwise the Blue Soul and I would have had no way at all to take it back from the Dark Nether Ghost King. Before this, I had no idea at all that you were here.”

(End of Chapter 246)