The small fire serpent tumbled nimbly through the air, yet it sent shockwaves of disbelief through everyone watching.
Fu Shu had gone blank, staring dumbly at the fire serpent, completely forgetting that he was in the middle of a fight.
The goat-bearded man bellowed, "Your Highness, this is not a Sacred Art! Don't let his tricks cloud your judgment!"
"Is it really not a Sacred Art?" Fu Shu turned his head to ask.
The goat-bearded man was so furious his beard bristled upward as he reiterated, "I stake my life on it — this is absolutely not a Sacred Art! It merely resembles one… superficially! Nothing to fear!"
Hearing this, Fu Shu's spirit surged with renewed vigor. He roared, "I knew it! How could someone of your meager standing possibly wield a Sacred Art? So it was all a bluff — you're dead!"
He moved to nock another arrow, but
Fu Shu ignored it completely, paying no attention to the serpent's attack. He knew the Sacred Tree would grant him powerful protection — none of
The fire serpent didn't look particularly formidable — just an extremely ordinary Fire Serpent Spell, the kind of sorcery that even a common warlock could perform back in the ancient era.
With a thunderous boom, the fire serpent slammed into Fu Shu — and produced an utterly unexpected result. The green protective light that had materialized over Fu Shu's body was shattered by the serpent in a single blow. Though the fire serpent dissipated at the same time, scattered sparks splattered all over Fu Shu's body, screeching out of him in agony.
The goat-bearded man's eyelids contracted sharply. A growing sense of wrongness crept over him.
In theory, as the First Prince protected by the Sacred Tree within Human Emperor City, only beings of the Eight-Leaf rank or above were qualified to harm him. Yet this inexplicable outsider had actually done it — it was beyond the boundaries of his comprehension, and he simply couldn't fathom how.
And that secret art — why did it look identical to the Sacred Tree's power? Aside from lacking the Sacred Tree's own energy imbued within it, it was essentially a Sacred Art from a different template.
"The Sacred Tree's blessing protects me too, you know,"
"Nonsense!" Fu Shu extinguished the flames still licking at his body and cursed, "You think you're worthy?"
"Whether it's nonsense or not — why don't the First Prince see for yourself?" As
"You — you — you—" Fu Shu was so shocked he could barely stammer. "Why don't you need to chant incantations?!"
"Why would I need to chant?"
"Sacred Arts naturally require incantation chants!" Fu Shu felt as though every fundamental truth he'd ever known was crumbling, and he could barely accept it.
As he spoke, a dense swarm of fire serpents had already formed before him — like an entire nest of snakes uprooted. And as time passed, even these newly conjured serpents began to undergo changes.
Faint threads of green luminescence flickered across their fiery red bodies. Though subtle at first, they were unmistakably green — and the hue grew stronger with each passing moment. By the end, the last several serpents were almost entirely emerald in color.
The goat-bearded man sucked in a sharp breath, cold sweat streaming down his forehead. Events had spiraled far beyond his predictions. This outsider had genuinely obtained the Sacred Tree's blessing and was now casting Sacred Arts infused with the Sacred Tree's power. Any hope of the Third Prince winning him over was utterly extinguished — and worse, this man's arrival was enough to trigger a once-in-ten-thousand-years upheaval within Human Emperor City, potentially reshaping its entire power structure.
All thoughts of recruiting
Across the way, Fu Shu was too stunned to utter a single word. The violent emotional rollercoaster had set off a devastating chain reaction: first, his Bloodlust Art, pushed to its absolute limit, forcibly deactivated; then the backlash of his unrestrained Sacred Art usage erupted. Fu Shu screamed and collapsed to the ground, clutching his nose, but the blood gushing from it would not stop. His vitality plummeted to a critical low in an instant — he looked as though he might die at any moment. He howled, crying out for help in every direction, but who would lend a hand at a time like this?
The enemy who had been fighting him tooth and nail just moments ago was the first to fall.
He turned his head and fixed the goat-bearded man with a smiling gaze.
The latter felt cold sweat sliding down his forehead. In a hoarse voice, he ventured, "Could it be… that you are a lost member of the Imperial Bloodline?"
"Then how… can you harness the Sacred Tree's power?" The goat-bearded man simply could not wrap his mind around this point.