Yang Kai gritted his teeth as the Space Laws surged around him, and he fled through the void.
An Ink Clan King pursued him relentlessly from behind, bombarding him with secret technique after secret technique that left him struggling to fend off each attack.
He had no idea how the battle in the Void Domain was going, nor did he know that the surviving Ninth-Order Patriarchs had sacrificed themselves alongside the Ink Clan Kings to clear the path for humanity's future—leaving only Patriarch Xiao Xiao and Wu Qing as the Human Race's remaining Ninth-Orders.
Even less did he know that the human army had already retreated from the Void Domain.
Right now, all he could do was run for his life!
Earlier, he had single-handedly intercepted the Ink Clan forces pouring out from the Void Domain battlefield into Wind Mist Domain, fighting with such ferocity that the heavens shattered and the earth cracked, blood flowing until it pooled into a sea.
This act had undoubtedly enraged the Ink Clan. Without hesitation, an Ink Clan King had crossed through the passage and descended upon Wind Mist Domain.
The moment Yang Kai sensed this King's aura, he didn't dare waste a single heartbeat. Without a second thought, he turned and fled.
Outside the Great Sea Celestial Phenomenon, he had indeed slain a ram-headed Ink Clan King single-handedly—but he was well aware that the victory had been riddled with lucky breaks and accidents. If that ram-headed King hadn't tried to use a King-level secret technique to Ink-transform him, he wouldn't have overexposed himself and been forced to take Yang Kai's Solar Lunar Divine Wheel head-on.
One misstep, and the entire game was lost.
Even so, Yang Kai had ultimately activated multiple Soul-Sacrificing Spikes in succession, fighting until his consciousness blurred. He couldn't even recall how he'd killed the ram-headed King—when he finally came to his senses, the King's severed head was already in his hand.
Yang Kai knew his own limits. Though his strength had grown enormously, he was still no match for an Ink Clan King.
It was almost absurd. When he was weak, stronger beings hunted him down.
When he grew a bit stronger, even more powerful ones chased after him.
Now, at his current level, only Ink Clan Kings could still hunt him—and in just a few short centuries, he'd already experienced this twice.
He swore silently to himself: the day he advanced to the Ninth Order, he would seek out isolated Ink Clan Kings and let them taste what it felt like to be hunted!
Back when he was only Seventh-Order, he'd needed the Purifying Light just to escape from that ram-headed King. Now, at the Eighth Order, even without the Purifying Light's aid, he was in a far better position than he had been that day.
In short, while he couldn't defeat an Ink Clan King, expecting a single King to kill him without a heaven-and-earth sealing technique was nothing short of a fool's dream.
"If you can't win, run"—this principle had defined virtually Yang Kai's entire cultivation journey, and he'd put it into practice time and again.
However, shaking this particular King was proving rather difficult. The opponent's aura was locked onto him like a vice, and without the Purifying Light's help, severing that connection with his current strength alone was no easy task.
Fortunately, Yang Kai hadn't actually intended to shake the King off entirely. His current predicament stemmed partly from being outmatched in strength, but it was also something he'd deliberately gone along with.
What truly weighed on his mind was Wind Mist Domain. Despite having killed countless Ink Clan soldiers, quite a few had slipped past him.
Without him there to block them, the Ink Clan army would surely press forward unopposed.
Wind Mist Domain would likely fall in a very short time, and from there, the catastrophe would spread to the surrounding great domains.
All he could do was hope that the human race had a timely and effective response. Matters concerning the survival of an entire race were no longer within his power to influence.
Amid the chaos, Yang Kai glanced back over his shoulder. The Ink Clan King Lord pursuing him this time was roughly equal in strength to the ram-headed King Lord from before—both were Innate King Lords born directly from the Ink Clan's origin realm, unlike Mo Zhao from the Great Evolution theater back in the day, who had climbed his way up step by step through cultivation.
Innate King Lords like these possessed formidable strength the moment they came into being, no less impressive than a human Ninth-Order master. But there was a fatal drawback: their growth was agonizingly slow, lacking the expansive potential of a King Lord like Mo Zhao who had forged his own path through cultivation.
Such was the case for Innate King Lords, and it was the same for the Innate Domain Lords.
In truth, virtually every Innate Domain Lord had zero chance of advancing to the rank of King Lord. It was true they were born with combat power rivaling the pinnacle of the human Eighth Order, but that very birthright sealed off any possibility of further progress.
One need only look at Domain Lord Chekong, whom Yang Kai had slain, to understand. He was an Innate Domain Lord who had existed for untold tens of thousands of years, yet remained nothing more than a Domain Lord to the end.
Every advantage came with a price. Even a primordial supreme being like Ink himself could not solve this dilemma.
The Ink Clan King Lord's physique was not particularly grotesque. Were it not for the churning darkness of Ink Power wreathing his body, he would not have looked all that different from a human at first glance.
He had received orders from the Ink-colored Colossus to cross domains and assassinate Yang Kai, an assignment he had expected to be a simple matter of showing up and delivering the killing blow. Who could have guessed that this human Eighth-Order would prove as slippery as a loach, his escape abilities unmatched under heaven—every time the King Lord was about to close in for the kill, victory slipped through his fingers at the last moment.
The chase had stoked the King Lord's fury to a blazing roar. He swore in his heart that he would tear Yang Kai to shreds.
Yang Kai had no idea how the battle in the Void Domain was unfolding, nor was he aware of anything beyond his own desperate flight—least of all that his pursuer had, by chasing him here, narrowly avoided his own death.
Because the very instant the King Lord had crossed into this domain, the human Ninth-Order masters had launched their assault, cutting down every single Ink Clan King Lord present except for him.