Yu Rumeng was clearly furious. She had never been cursed at so viciously by anyone — and the one doing it was Yang Kai, of all people. She clenched her silver teeth and hissed through them: "I'll take you down with me!"
Yang Kai sneered without pause: "Go ahead and try if you've got the guts."
He didn't believe for a second that Yu Rumeng would actually attack him in front of everyone. If she did, her identity would be exposed immediately. As long as she still had plans in motion, there was no way she'd throw away all the groundwork she'd painstakingly laid.
That was what he'd believed, anyway...
The moment those words left his lips, he saw Yu Rumeng's beautiful eyes fixed on him with mocking amusement — and then his consciousness sea suddenly churned violently. A splitting headache crashed through him, forcing a muffled grunt from his lips as his body swayed.
He wasn't the only one affected. Yu Rumeng herself was clearly suffering the same thing. It was obvious that whatever pain Yang Kai was enduring, she was being dragged along with it — her luminous skin had gone pale, and fine beads of sweat had appeared on her forehead.
Under normal circumstances, their abnormality would not have escaped the perception of everyone around them. But right now, every last person was pouring their strength into maintaining stability within a dozen-zhang radius, preventing this small patch of ground from being hit by the aftershocks of the Great Emperors' battle. Who had the bandwidth to pay attention to anyone else?
So the two of them reacted in complete silence, unnoticed by a single soul.
"What did you do?" Yang Kai was alarmed. He hadn't sensed any move from Yu Rumeng at all, yet his head felt like it was about to explode. What kind of situation was this?
"I'll take you down with me!" Yu Rumeng shot back through gritted teeth, her voice transmitted in broken, halting intervals — clearly she was enduring tremendous pain as well.
"Have you lost your mind?" Yang Kai's expression changed drastically. What kind of timing was this? The woman was actually pulling something like this now — she really was a lunatic.
"Who told you to insult me!" Yu Rumeng stared at him stubbornly, sweat beading across her forehead.
"I only said one thing to you. If you didn't like it, you could've fired back at me," Yang Kai said, half exasperated, half amused. "Why do we have to hurt each other?"
"Apologize!"
"Apologize your mother's head!"
"You're still insulting me!" Whether from rage or pain, Yu Rumeng's whole body was trembling. Her disturbance finally drew Lan Xun's attention, and the latter asked with concern: "Senior Sister Li, are you all right?"
Yu Rumeng shook her head slowly and said nothing.
Yang Kai transmitted in a timely fashion: "Whatever this is, we can settle it later. Stop making a scene right now."
Yu Rumeng's voice came back cold: "No one has ever spoken to me like that. No one is allowed to speak to me like that. Unless you apologize, I'll die right here alongside you!"
Yang Kai was utterly speechless. His face twitched for a moment before he finally relented, offering conciliatory words: "Fine, fine. I was wrong just now. I won't insult you again." A true man knew when to bend and when to straighten — what was an apology, really?
"You're the one who said that."
"Yes, I said it. You heard correctly."
Only then did Yu Rumeng stop. She fell silent for a beat, then asked with unexpected concern: "Does it hurt?"
"What do you think?" Yang Kai seethed, feeling that this woman's mood swings were faster than flipping a page.
"I lost my temper in the moment. Don't push me like that next time." Perhaps the shift in her mood had given Yu Rumeng a twinge of guilt over what she'd just done, because her tone had gone so soft it was practically disintegrating — enough to turn iron into something you could tie into knots.
Yang Kai's eyes darted to the side. "Was that the power of the Heart Imprint Secret Art just now?"
Yu Rumeng neither confirmed nor denied, naturally recognizing that Yang Kai was trying to fish for information.
Yang Kai wanted to press further, but the chance was gone. In the brief time the two of them had been tussling, the world around them had finally begun to collapse. The earth and the void cracked apart in chunks, then, acted upon by some unknown force, drifted gradually away from one another, tumbling into the depths of the void.
It was the first time anyone present had witnessed such a bizarre sight. Every person was struck with a creeping dread, and they stared, transfixed.
"It's over!" Xue Zhengmao let out a long sigh. As the Star God Palace's Grand Elder, a Third-Order Emperor, and a man who had lived for countless years, he wasn't exactly afraid of death — but Lan Xun was still here. If he died, so be it. But what if Lan Xun died too?
And beyond Lan Xun, there were the children and disciples of four other Great Emperors present as well.
A pall of despair settled over the group.
Yang Kai, for his part, remained perfectly composed. Despite having painted the situation as dire earlier, the truth was that if things truly reached that point, all he could do was collect everyone into the Myriad Worlds Bead and figure out how to escape through the void himself. Once he was safe, everyone else would be safe too.
Under normal circumstances, he would have been fairly confident about pulling off such an escape. But right here, right now, three Great Emperors were clashing, and the entire world was collapsing. He couldn't say for certain what he'd be facing when the time came, so he didn't want to make empty promises to anyone — he would wait until things had deteriorated beyond all hope, and then he would act.
Cracks split through the world in an unending chorus. The collapse accelerated. Chunks of land broke away and vanished into the distance.
In barely the span of an hour, nothing remained but void on all sides. The only ground still intact was the patch they stood on, preserved by their collective effort — and even that was no more than a dozen zhang across. Each person felt as though they were stranded on a tiny island in the middle of an ocean, an island drifting through the cracks between dimensions, where no light could reach, no path led in or out, as though the entire world had forgotten they existed.