Within the Demon Realm, the Winged Demons were exceedingly rare, and those among them who could become Demon Kings were even fewer. Of course, this was intelligence Yang Kai had obtained within the Illusory Dream Realm, and he had no way of knowing whether the Demon Realm was still the same.
But the Winged Demons were most renowned for their archery. An arrow loosed by a Demon King–level Winged Demon possessed enough destructive power to annihilate entire stars.
Clearly, Yang Kai's indiscriminate slaughter had drawn the attention of the Demon Race, prompting them to deploy a Demon King–level Winged Demon to deal with him.
Their gazes met. Yang Kai flashed the Winged Demon a broad grin — one that made her heart lurch with a sudden feeling that her very life was no longer under her own control.
She was decisive enough; the moment she sensed something wrong, she immediately pulled back to retreat.
Yang Kai would never allow her that wish. The instant she began to move, he thrust his hand toward her, reaching out to seize her.
"Heh heh heh!" Just then, a chilling laugh echoed by his ear. A sliver of cold light bloomed, and a pitch-black dagger plunged toward Yang Kai's neck.
No one had noticed that a sneaking shadow had appeared behind Yang Kai at some unknowable moment.
A Shadow Demon!
This branch of the Demon Race was famous for assassination. When a Shadow Demon struck, it was with a thunderous blow — and at equal levels of cultivation, very few could evade their assassinations.
Yang Kai turned a deaf ear to it, completely ignoring the Shadow Demon's movements behind him. With the laws of space surging around him, the enormous hand reaching toward the Winged Demon clenched tight, and he bellowed, "Get over here!"
The words had barely left his lips when the retreating Winged Demon's face drained of color. In that instant, she felt the space around her entire body become locked down, as though an invisible hand had seized her, and she hurtled uncontrollably toward Yang Kai — arriving before him in the blink of an eye.
A Winged Demon's lethality lay in her archery. Even though this particular Winged Demon had reached the level of a Demon King, the combat power she could wield at close range was extremely limited. The moment Yang Kai dragged her before him, her expression fell into complete disarray. She struggled with all her might, but how could she break free from the shackles of the laws of space?
Yang Kai threw a fist straight at her.
With a sickening crunch — like a watermelon smashed open — the head of this remarkably beautiful Winged Demon Demon King burst apart in every direction. The headless corpse swayed for a moment, then toppled to the ground. Yang Kai brought his foot down upon it, crushing the body to pulp, and only then was he satisfied.
The Demon Race's vitality was extraordinarily tenacious. As long as the Demon Heart endured, a demon could not die. No one knew where a Demon King had hidden her Demon Heart, or how many Demon Hearts she had cultivated. Only by obliterating the corpse beyond recognition could one truly claim to have killed her.
At the same moment, the Shadow Demon's dagger had already reached Yang Kai's neck. The piercing edge of its killing intent sent a chill through his skin.
A slender, porcelain hand reached out and pinched the dagger's tip with effortless precision. The jade-like hand gripping the blade clearly hadn't used any real force, yet the dagger could not move a single inch.
The Shadow Demon's face changed drastically. He turned his head to look at the hand's owner.
Yu Rumeng gazed at him with an expression of cool indifference, her eyes looking down upon him the way a deity high above might observe a mortal.
Their eyes met. The Shadow Demon shuddered, and before he could even react, Yang Kai had already drawn his sword and swept it downward in a backhand strike.
Silently, the Shadow Demon was split in two.
Yang Kai's sword danced like a dragon, slicing the Shadow Demon's body into countless fragments. Only then did he turn his head and fix Yu Rumeng with a sharp, cold look while reaching up to touch his own neck.
A faint scratch lay across his skin. Even if Yu Rumeng hadn't intervened, he would have been fine — the defenses of his half-dragon body were not so easily breached. Had it been otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to disregard a Demon King–level Shadow Demon's assassination attempt so casually.
What was peculiar, though, was Yu Rumeng's attitude. Ever since Yang Kai had charged in, she had stayed by his side without so much as a step of separation — yet she never intervened in the fighting. She had only made a move just now when Yang Kai had briefly been in danger.
"Do I have flowers on my face?" Yu Rumeng seemed somewhat uncomfortable under Yang Kai's gaze and asked with a faint smile.
Yang Kai burst into hearty laughter. "You are the most beautiful flower in this world!"
He turned away, his Million Sword sweeping in wide, devastating arcs as he charged back into the Demon Race's ranks. Behind him, Yu Rumeng furrowed her brows slightly and followed after him, just as she always had.
…
At the spatial formation, a group of figures materialized as if by ghostly magic. They numbered only about a hundred, but every single one of them possessed the cultivation of an Emperor Realm expert, and the leading figures boasted the strength of the third-order Emperor Realm.
The catch was that demonic energy coiled around every one of them — they had clearly all succumbed to the demonic corruption.
This group appeared without a word, immediately unleashing their techniques to bombard the spatial formation. Their intent was plainly to destroy it.
"Yang Kai truly is foresighted — he knew you would come long before this!" A cold snort rang out, and seven graceful figures darted from the flanks. All seven were women, every one clad in white, each emanating an aura of bone-deep frost. They had clearly cultivated ice-attribute techniques, and every one of them was an Emperor Realm powerhouse.
In the Northern Territory, only the Ice Heart Valley could field a lineup like this.
The speaker was none other than the Ice Heart Valley's founding ancestor, Bing Yun. She had brought her direct disciples — An Ruoyun, Sun Yunxiu, Ji Yao, Zhangsun Yun, and others — to meet the enemy as the situation demanded.
The Beast Martial Emperor had already warned Yang Kai that the Demon Race's objective this time was to destroy the spatial formation. How could Yang Kai have made no preparations at all? Sending a hundred thousand troops to face the enemy was no pretense, but he had naturally left people behind to guard the formation.
He had not forgotten that the Western Territory had already fallen and that the strong cultivators of its various Sects had long since been corrupted by demonic energy. Now that the great battle had begun, the demonic warriors of the Western Territory would certainly not stand idly by.