The excruciating pain twisted Mo Na Ye's expression into a grimace of agony. Through clenched teeth, he spat: "I laugh at you humans for being utterly ignorant of the Supreme One's power. No matter how you struggle, it is all meaningless. Everything you have worked for will ultimately come to naught!"
The words sounded like a statement of fact, like a vicious curse, and perhaps most of all, like a prediction of what was to come.
Yang Kai couldn't help but snort coldly: "Small in ability, but big on talk."
Mo Na Ye frowned: "Brother Yang…"
Yang Kai's spear jerked violently, cutting him off. Disgust clouded his face: "Who is your Brother Yang? What right does someone like you have to call me brother?"
Mo Na Ye's face fell in astonishment. He stammered: "I thought…"
Yang Kai cut him off again: "All these years, you and I have clashed repeatedly, each winning some and losing some. So you think that as rivals, we ought to share mutual respect?"
"Shouldn't we?" Mo Na Ye shot back.
The disgust on Yang Kai's face deepened: "It seems like the one who knows nothing is you! I, Yang Kai, have cultivated for thousands of years and faced many powerful opponents. Some of them truly earned my respect — it was their pressure that drove me forward, step by step, to where I stand today. But that does not include you, nor any member of the Ink Clan! For all of humanity, the Ink Clan are mortal enemies who must be destroyed!"
Mo Na Ye was silent for a moment, then nodded in realization: "Only rivals can share mutual respect. But enemies cannot."
"Good, you understand. Then answer me — where are the Ink Clan's reinforcements coming from? Has something happened at the Great Seal of Primordial Heaven? You only get one chance to speak!" Yang Kai's words cut like a winter gale.
A mocking smile curled at the corner of Mo Na Ye's lips. Looking past Yang Kai toward Mi Jinglun, he said flatly: "The Ink shall be eternal!"
Violent power suddenly erupted from Mo Na Ye's chest as the force of the Three Thousand Daos surged and crashed. This King Lord, who had commanded the Ink Clan for thousands of years, exploded into fragments. Blood and severed limbs flew in every direction.
Mo Na Ye — fallen!
Yang Kai had warned him he would only get one chance to speak, but Mo Na Ye had no intention of revealing any valuable intelligence. Yang Kai would certainly not show mercy. Besides, no matter what answer he gave, death was inevitable this time.
Yang Kai would never give him another chance to escape. Seven hundred years ago, he had failed to slay Mo Na Ye in the World within the Furnace, and that regret had lingered ever since. Later, when the Universe Furnace closed, he had thought there would be another opportunity to kill Mo Na Ye, but the man had been carried by the Universe Furnace to the ends of heaven and earth, narrowly escaping by sheer chance.
Mo Na Ye knew this perfectly well, and Yang Kai had long anticipated it.
All along, Mo Na Ye's greatest threat to humanity had not been his King Lord-level cultivation, but his mind — unrivaled among the entire Ink Clan. If he hadn't been the one commanding the Ink Clan, the battle for Bu Hui Pass would never have been so grueling. One could say that Mo Na Ye alone had cost the human armies at least thirty percent more in casualties.
And now, at last, this King Lord of the Ink Clan had finally reached the end of his life!
Mi Jinglun reached out and seized a severed arm — unmistakably a remnant of Mo Na Ye's body. He pried open the clenched fist and extracted an unhatched Ink Nest from the palm.
Looking up at Yang Kai, he asked: "So that was why you deceived him?"
Using the Void Guard's reconnaissance, the humans had learned of the Ink Clan reinforcements' movements, which was precisely why they had launched this decisive battle without hesitation.
Mo Na Ye had his suspicions but couldn't be certain, so he had wanted confirmation before he died.
In theory, since Mo Na Ye was about to die, there would have been little harm in telling him the truth — the dead couldn't do anything. But when he asked the question, Yang Kai had acted as though he knew nothing, and seeing this, Mi Jinglun had quickly played along.
In the end, even until the moment Mo Na Ye was slain, he never learned whether the humans had truly known about the Ink Clan reinforcements in advance.
Yang Kai nodded: "Just in case!"
Although admitting it wouldn't have mattered much, no one could have predicted how that admission might have changed the situation. So Yang Kai had always adhered to one principle: never let the enemy know what they wanted to know.
However, the fact that Mo Na Ye had been clutching this Ink Nest at the moment of his death meant that the news from Bu Hui Pass had already reached the Ink Clan reinforcements. Those reinforcements now knew their existence had been exposed, and that an Ink-Colored Titan had fallen in battle.
This left Yang Kai sighing in frustration. After joining forces with A Da to slay the Ink-Colored Titan, he had immediately stormed into Bu Hui Pass and destroyed every Ink Nest there, specifically to prevent news from leaking out. But judging by the results, he hadn't been entirely successful.
Ink Nests were simply too convenient for transmitting information.
The only silver lining was that the Ink Clan reinforcements had no knowledge of the Void Guard or the spatial formations, nor would they learn of the events that would follow on the battlefield.
The reinforcements, still advancing through the void, faced only two choices. The first was to accelerate toward Bu Hui Pass, hoping the battle would still be ongoing upon their arrival, so they could lend their strength to the Ink Clan forces here and perhaps turn the tide.