Shentu and his group had arrived with fierce momentum, expecting Yang Kai to be completely helpless at the critical juncture of his advancement. Never did they imagine that a single exchange would claim the lives of more than half their Void King Realm cultivators. Such a shocking turn of events naturally left the remaining ones terrified out of their wits.
And it wasn't over yet. Hot on the heels of the Moon Blades, a cascade of five-colored radiance shot through the air with sharp hissing sounds. Before the attack even arrived, the piercing aura alone made the remaining cultivators' skin crawl and cold sweat bead on their foreheads.
"Sword Qi!" Shentu's expression shifted. At a single glance, he recognized that the five-colored radiance contained sword qi of extreme sharpness — and what was more, it encompassed all five elements without exception. Metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, each one present, generating and restraining one another in perfect cycle, resonating across the distance as if amplifying each other's power.
His face turned grave in an instant. With a thunderous roar, his short, stout body suddenly swelled to a size nearly twice its original bulk. From within that massive torso, pitch-black aura began to seep outward, enveloping him completely.
Immediately after, countless black tentacles sprouted from his body, writhing in every direction and sweeping the incoming sword qi into the embrace of his own attacks.
A barrage of explosive impacts rang out as the tentacles extending from Shentu's body were shredded apart by the relentless sword qi. But at the same time, the fearsome sword qi was also halted, unable to achieve its lethal purpose.
The Void King Realm cultivators he had just saved all turned to him with expressions of gratitude. One of them, still shaking from the close call, flattered him without restraint.
"You brat — you're at the threshold of an advancement and you still dare to fight me? You must be tired of living. In that case, hand over your life!" Shentu bellowed. A small shield suddenly appeared in his hand — a shield shaped like a ghost's head, small in size but rendered with startling realism. Its face was blue-green with bared fangs, twisted and terrifying.
He channeled his Source Power into the ghost-head shield, and the artifact transformed into a genuine ghostly head that expanded in the wind, swelling to the size of a house in an instant. It charged straight toward Yang Kai.
As it hurtled forward, the ghost head opened and closed its jaws, spewing out globules of silver ghost fire that shot forth like a volley of arrows. The display was formidable in appearance.
Yang Kai watched this with narrowed eyes, yet he remained seated in place without moving an inch.
The silver ghost fire reached him in the blink of an eye, slamming directly into his body and blasting the area around him into utter chaos.
"Huh?" Shentu froze, his eyes filled with disbelief. He hadn't expected Yang Kai to be eliminated so easily. He knew full well how powerful this Artifact was — its attacks were devastating and arcane, and combined with his own secret techniques, even a fellow Dao Source Realm first-stage cultivator who was grazed by the ghost fire would suffer severe damage, if not death.
Yang Kai was merely a Void King Realm third-stage cultivator, and he was in the middle of an advancement at that. Having taken so many direct hits from the ghost fire, how could he possibly survive?
At this thought, Shentu gave a slight nod, convinced that he had indeed succeeded.
And when the others saw Yang Kai engulfed by the ghost fire, the remaining Void King cultivators let out a string of dark laughter, mocking Yang Kai's overconfidence.
But their laughter had barely begun when a figure flickered into existence at the spot where Yang Kai had been moments ago, appearing as if by phantasm.
Who else could it be but Yang Kai himself?
Judging by his expression and condition, he hadn't been harmed by the ghost fire in the slightest — he hadn't even moved.
No one could figure out how he had avoided those attacks.
The laughter died abruptly in their throats.
Shentu's eyes went wide, his face a mask of disbelief.
Just then, a point of golden light suddenly flickered to life at Yang Kai's left eye. The World Destruction Demon Eye emerged in quiet splendor, its golden glow solid as substance, rapidly condensing around Yang Kai's left eye into the shape of a lotus.
The moment Shentu saw that lotus, a chill surged up from the deepest recesses of his heart. Instinct screamed that something was wrong, yet inexplicably, he couldn't look away. The lotus seemed to possess a hypnotic pull, seizing his attention and locking it in place.
The lotus trembled once, then vanished from Yang Kai's left eye. In its place, within the sea of Shentu's consciousness, a budding lotus was slowly blooming — and the wellspring of its blossoming was his own spiritual power.
Shentu let out a horrific scream. A pain like ten thousand needles piercing his mind erupted within his skull, a torment that reached into the very depths of his soul, nearly beyond endurance.
The scream startled the remaining Void King cultivators. They all turned toward Shentu, alarmed, trying to see what had happened to him.
And at that precise moment, the sharp hiss of tearing air rang out once more. Wave after wave of Moon Blades — each one thicker and more fearsome than before — shot toward them head-on, dense and innumerable!
Having witnessed what happened to the others before them, these cultivators knew all too well the devastating power of the Moon Blades. They immediately cried out and scrambled to scatter.
"Condense!" Yang Kai roared. The power of Law surged outward, and the space within a hundred-zhang radius of him seemed to obey some silent command, instantly submitting and growing impossibly heavy.
The movements of those remaining Void King cultivators slowed to a crawl.
Pfft pfft pfft...
The Moon Blades sliced effortlessly through their bodies, bisecting them all in a single sweep. Every corpse bore a crescent-shaped void where the blade had passed, and the flesh and blood at the wound's edge had been cast into the boundless void between dimensions.
The severed remains tumbled downward, each one with eyes wide open — dying without ever understanding what had hit them.