With a thunderous boom, the demon exploded — no bones remained, no blood sprayed. Instead, the entire body dissolved into a mass of pitch-black demonic qi that surged outward and engulfed Yang Kai in an instant.
Boom, boom, boom...
As the explosions rang out one after another, demon after demon detonated itself, and Yang Kai's heart sank like a stone.
Across the sky, wherever battles raged throughout Wuhua Hall, dense clouds of demonic qi — thick as something you could reach out and touch — billowed upward with each self-detonation, rising like black mushrooms in fast-forward. In the blink of eye, they had swallowed a vast expanse of sky, forming a dark shroud that blanketed an area of over ten li in every direction.
The dozen or so Emperor Realm cultivators trailing behind Yang Kai had let their guard down. Before any of them could react, every single one was swallowed by the black fog — and Yang Kai was no exception.
The group that had been chatting and laughing moments ago saw their expressions change in an instant. That thin demonic qi they had been dismissing as trivial was now a hundred times, a thousand times denser, and its destructive power had skyrocketed.
A sizzling, tearing sound filled the air as the demonic qi gnawed at each person's protective Emperor Qi. Even for beings as powerful as Emperor Realm cultivators, their defensive barriers felt as though they were on the verge of collapse, riddled with holes in a matter of seconds. Panic erupted, and more than a few began shouting in alarm.
No one needed to be told twice. Without a moment's hesitation, all dozen-plus figures flickered and bolted, scrambling to escape the black cloud.
When they finally burst free of the fog's reach and looked back, every face was pale with lingering dread. Not a single person had anticipated that the demons would self-detonate — and that the resulting force would be this terrifying.
Yang Kai's face had darkened to the point where it seemed ready to drip ink. Before the explosion, over a thousand demons had been charging toward them, and they had managed to knock out only three or four hundred. But in that single instant, at least five or six hundred had blown themselves to pieces. In other words, on this front alone, the Southern Domain had lost five or six hundred elite disciples.
The other fronts had surely suffered the same. The Southern Domain's forces had taken devastating casualties!
"Brother Chen, you—" a horrified voice suddenly cried out.
Yang Kai turned to look, and his eyes narrowed sharply. A middle-aged man stood there, flustered and helpless, his protective Emperor Qi shattered. Tendrils of pitch-black demonic qi clung to his body like living things, threading through every pore and orifice, infiltrating his system at an alarming rate. His aura was undergoing a drastic transformation, and his eyes showed signs of the black energy creeping over his pupils.
Yang Kai didn't recognize the man, but he was clearly one of the helpers recruited from the Northern Domain — some sect master, though which sect, Yang Kai couldn't say. The few people nearby scrambled away from him the moment they saw what was happening, keeping their distance and watching him with wary, tense postures, afraid he might lash out at any moment.
The man himself appeared dazed. He held his hands out in front of his face, staring at them blankly, then looked up at Yang Kai and pleaded, "Palace Master Yang, save me!"
If the demonic qi fully consumed his reason, he would become no different from the self-detonating demons — his life and death beyond his own control, liable to blow himself apart without warning.
Before his words had even finished, Yang Kai had already appeared before him. Yang Kai's aura shifted dramatically as an incantation left his lips. With a sweep of his hand, he cast a radiant light that enveloped the man.
Hssssss...
Strands of black qi recoiled as though encountering a natural predator. The moment the light enveloped the man, they shot out through his pores and dissipated into nothing. The chaos in his mind steadied, and a wave of relief — the sheer euphoria of cheating death — washed over him. He spoke with barely contained emotion, "Thank you, Palace Master Yang."
He had no idea what technique Yang Kai had employed, but he could feel it clearly: the demonic qi that had invaded his body had been expelled entirely.
"All of you, stay alert." Yang Kai swept his gaze coldly across the group. An Emperor Realm cultivator nearly corrupted by demonic qi — utterly foolish. He could see the root of the problem. It wasn't that the demonic qi was impossible to defend against. These people had simply never encountered demons before. The ease with which they had been cutting them down moments ago had bred carelessness. If they had simply maintained their protective Emperor Qi, this never would have happened.
There was also the shockwave from the demons' point-blank self-detonations to consider.
Back when he had been outside Maple Forest City, he had been only at the first layer of the Dao Source Realm, yet he had endured that torrent of demonic qi for a considerable time. The qi was corrosive, certainly, but as long as you guarded yourself properly and left it no opening, it couldn't do much damage.
"Shamanic arts!" High in the canopy of a distant tree, a dark figure watched the scene with narrowed eyes. Others didn't know what Yang Kai had used to purge the demonic qi, but he knew — it was unmistakably shamanic magic. In the ancient era, the Demon Race had suffered terribly at the hands of those great shamans. Precisely because he understood, he was all the more stunned.
In this age, someone still knew shamanic arts? And from the way he had cast it, the man appeared highly proficient — a purging ritual executed with such ease was no small feat.
But how could that be? Each era produced its own heroes, each governed by its own laws. The laws of the current world — how could anyone still cultivate shamanic techniques?
Before that thought had even finished, the dark figure's vision blurred, and a silhouette materialized before him like a ghost.