The ink-black flood dragon detonated with a thunderous boom, and the Alluring Domain Lord emerged looking thoroughly disheveled. Though the technique was formidable, it had been her own power that fueled it. Some unknown method Cang had employed had turned the backlash upon her, and even with the amplification, it was far from lethal.
Still, caught off guard, sustaining injuries was inevitable.
The instant she broke free, a blinding white sun exploded before her eyes, so brilliant she could barely keep them open. At the same time, an overwhelming sense of crisis enveloped her.
The Alluring Domain Lord unleashed a string of furious roars, ink force surging wildly from her body, but before it could even leave her skin, the purifying light annihilated it completely.
That white radiance seemed almost sentient, threading through her seven orifices and the pores of her flesh to burrow inside her body.
Her expression twisted into something monstrous in an instant, and a piercing shriek tore from her throat.
In that moment, she not only felt her ink force meeting its bane and rapidly dissolving, but her very body seemed to be melting like snow under a blazing sun. Her alluring features began to liquefy as though she were a candle placed before a furnace.
Cang's Dragon Spear drove forward like a bolt of lightning, punching straight into her eye socket.
Ink-black blood sprayed through the air. In that moment between life and death, the Alluring Domain Lord raised her palm and slammed it toward Yang Kai's chest.
Yang Kai neither dodged nor retreated. His whole body shuddered, and agony lanced through him.
Pouring every last shred of power into the Azure Dragon Spear, he thrust it forward without hesitation. "Die!"
The spear pierced clean through her skull. Violent waves of heavenly might erupted outward, blasting her head apart.
Yang Kai's body was sent hurtling through the air like a paper kite before crashing back down beside Cang, gasping for breath, his face contorted in pain.
Cang turned to glance at him, and upon seeing the massive dent caved into his chest, said with visible emotion: "You're fighting that hard?"
In that brief instant, the Alluring Domain Lord had not launched just a single palm at Yang Kai, but dozens, all striking the exact same spot. Had it been otherwise, even with his Dragon Vein physique, Yang Kai wouldn't have ended up like this.
Any other Seventh Order cultivator would have perished under that assault.
Overwhelming an opponent far above one's own rank wasn't something just anyone could pull off.
In Cang's eyes, the battle between Yang Kai and the Alluring Domain Lord was barely more than children playing house, but from their own vantage point, it was a true fight between life and death.
The moment the Alluring Domain Lord was struck by the backlash of her own technique, Yang Kai had charged forward without the slightest hesitation. That spoke volumes about the decisiveness of his character—he had spotted an opportunity in that fleeting instant, and he had not let it slip away.
Such resolve was not something just anyone possessed. The slightest hesitation and he would have missed his chance to kill the enemy.
When faced with a counterattack from an enemy far stronger than himself, he had not retreated an inch, trading grave injury for a kill on the spot. That only further demonstrated his ruthlessness.
Though the entire exchange had lasted only a heartbeat, it had truly been a razor's edge between life and death.
It was this that moved even someone of Cang's stature.
Yang Kai sat cross-legged, turned his head, and spat out a mouthful of blood. He bared his teeth in a grim grin. "Fighting the Ink Clan without putting everything on the line? If we didn't, our human race would have fallen long ago."
With that, he swallowed several healing pills and began recovering.
He had come to Cang's side precisely to seek his protection while he recuperated. Who could have guessed the Alluring Domain Lord would refuse to let it go—and that Cang would create the very opportunity for him to turn the tables.
Cang himself hadn't expected that casual strike of his to produce such a result.
After hearing Yang Kai's words, Cang turned his gaze silently toward the battlefield, watching human warriors locked in combat with Ink Clan forces across every front, watching Eighth Order cultivators project their might across the void, watching Ninth Order masters hold their ground without yielding.
Everyone was fighting for their lives.
For a moment, he felt a slight sense of wonder. So this was the human race of this generation.
Because they dared to sacrifice, they had made it this far. He had waited here for over a million years, and only this generation of humans had given him a glimmer of hope.
The battlefield raged with cacophony. The fading of life forces had never ceased for a single moment. Humans, Ink Clan—casualties mounted on both sides.
Even the King Lords had begun to fall.
The King Lords slain earlier while breaking through the gap hadn't lacked in strength—they had died because of the terrain. Any King Lord who tried to charge through that narrow breach would have to endure the combined assault of the human Ninth Order cultivators. Under those circumstances, losing a few King Lords was entirely expected.
But once they fought their way out of the gap, cutting them down became far more difficult.
Even so, thanks to the tireless efforts of the human Ninth Order masters, four King Lords had already been slain.
Yet the battle remained deadlocked. Four King Lords had fallen, but four more had poured through the gap to replace them.
With no Ninth Order cultivators guarding the breach now, the King Lords could charge out unimpeded.
By this point, the human side's powerhouses had realized that Mo was maintaining the balance of the battlefield. In the darkness beyond the gap, even more King Lords were surely lying in wait.
Mo simply hadn't let them all pour out at once. Instead, he was continuously replenishing the forces on the field, carefully engineering an appearance of evenly matched warfare.