All she needed was to wake up naturally and she'd be fine. Yang Kai paused for a moment, recalling what had just happened, and vaguely guessed that the reason Li Shiqing had emerged unscathed was likely connected to that glow emanating from her chest.
As a Disciple of the Flower Shadow Great Emperor, she certainly carried quite a few life-saving treasures on her. Even though everything had been stripped from her when she arrived in the Demon Domain, anything that had been refined into her body couldn't be taken away.
That said, Yang Kai felt genuinely relieved. If something had happened to Li Shiqing because of this, he'd have had no way to face the Flower Shadow Great Emperor.
He lifted his head and looked around, catching sight of Xiao Wu staring at him with a face full of panic. He immediately called out: "Take care of them!"
Xiao Wu snapped back to her senses, nodded vigorously, and rushed over. With one girl in each hand, she grabbed Bo Ya and Li Shiqing and retreated rapidly toward the rear of their formation. In the meantime, Yang Kai also stuffed a handful of spirit pills into Bo Ya's mouth. Her injuries looked serious, but they weren't actually threatening her foundations — a few days of quiet recuperation would see her recover.
Straightening up once more, Yang Kai turned his dark gaze toward the sprawling blood mist. With a fluctuation of the Space Laws, he vanished from sight.
When he reappeared, he was hovering above the blood mist that blanketed an area stretching a thousand li in every direction.
He raised a hand, and a cyan gourd materialized in his palm — the Wind Gourd he had obtained from the depths of the Wuhua Temple's forbidden grounds. He popped the stopper open, and his Emperor Yuan poured frantically inside. Aiming it at the blood mist, the very next instant, heaven-and-earth-raging gale winds transformed into cascading blades of wind that slashed deep into the mist's interior.
A flash of black light — his Avatar, attuned to Yang Kai's will, had already broken free of the blood mist ahead of schedule.
The unending torrent of wind blades carved relentlessly into the blood mist, shredding it across a vast swathe. Interspersed among them were muffled grunts, clearly the work of Yue Sang taking hits.
In barely ten breaths' time, the blood mist began to churn. It suddenly contracted inward, coalescing at its center, and Yue Sang's figure reemerged. Without pausing, he transformed into a blood-colored streak of light and shot straight at Yang Kai.
As he raised his arm, the entire limb morphed into a colossal blood serpent — a horn sprouting from its forehead, jaws gaping wide as it lunged to bite down on Yang Kai, clearly intent on swallowing him whole in a single gulp.
The Avatar possessed Half-Saint cultivation, and Yue Sang had been unable to deal with it in the short term, which was why they had fought to a standstill. But Yang Kai's demonstrated strength was merely that of a mid-grade Demon Lord — if even this much was beyond Yue Sang's ability to handle, he had no business calling himself a Half-Saint.
The blood serpent arrived in the blink of an eye. Its gaping maw tore through the void, giving Yang Kai absolutely no time to react before engulfing the space he occupied. As the jaws snapped shut, Yang Kai had vanished without a trace.
Yue Sang sneered: "Pathetic fool!"
If Yang Kai had simply hidden himself, Yue Sang truly would have had no good counter — the man was a master of spatial arts, after all, and not so easy to kill. But he'd gone and jumped out on his own. That was just asking for death, and it suited Yue Sang perfectly.
The blood serpent's body began to twist and reform. But at that very moment, Yue Sang's expression suddenly changed. He fixed his gaze on the serpent's head. Inside it… an inconceivably powerful aura seemed to be awakening, involuntarily sending a chill of dread through his heart. At the same time, a whisper-like roar reached his ears: "Dragon Transformation!"
The serpent's head swelled violently. An enormous, monstrous shape abruptly appeared inside its maw, physically prying the already-closed jaws back open. Pure, undiluted dragon's breath radiated outward in all directions.
From what Yue Sang could see, he couldn't make out the exact technique Yang Kai had employed, but that aura belonging to the foremost among the Sacred Spirits — he was intimately familiar with it. On the Two-World Battlefield, he had once fought a Dragon Girl whose bloodline wasn't particularly high-ranked, yet she could still match him blow for blow.
Dragon Clan! That human actually carried Dragon Clan blood!
And this dragon's breath, in this very moment, seemed even more pure, even more potent than that of the Dragon Girl…
The blood serpent's mouth had been stretched to its absolute limit. Two gleaming, razor-sharp dragon claws materialized in Yue Sang's field of vision — one gripping the upper jaw, the other the lower — then wrenched savagely apart. With a sickening tear, the enormous blood serpent was ripped clean in two starting from the head…
Blood sprayed in every direction. A towering, monstrous silhouette was seared into Yue Sang's eyes — and into the view of the millions of soldiers below.
The clamorous battlefield fell into a brief, eerie hush. Nearly everyone had their heads craned upward, staring at that colossal figure with expressions of blank disbelief.
Over thirty zhang tall, the body was sheathed head to toe in golden dragon scales that gleamed resplendently. A pair of dragon horns crowned the forehead. Both hands had become razor-tipped dragon claws, and behind the hips, a massive dragon tail swayed, stirring the very winds and clouds.
A dragon's roar erupted — heaven-shaking and earth-rending. Yang Kai reached out with one hand, seized the mangled remnants of the blood serpent he had torn in two, and hauled them violently toward himself.
An irresistible, overwhelming force surged through, and Yue Sang's body was dragged forward against his will.
The blood serpent was the transformed extension of his arm — indivisible, and thus incapable of resisting such power. In terms of pure cultivation, he was indeed far above Yang Kai, but in a contest of raw strength, he was no match whatsoever.
In desperation, the blood serpent detonated, collapsing into a cloud of blood mist that recoiled back and reformed into his arm. However, thanks to the ordeal, a wound a foot long now gaped on his limb, blood streaming freely.
The pain sent fury surging through him. To stumble like this in a ditch — it was pure humiliation. Borrowing the momentum of Yang Kai's pull, instead of retreating, Yue Sang charged forward, closing the distance in an instant.
His diminutive figure formed a stark, dramatic contrast with Yang Kai's towering frame, yet his gaze held not a shred of retreat. If anything, he looked down at Yang Kai from above, as though he were the one standing taller.