The other Celestial Demon patriarchs exchanged uneasy glances, their expressions uniformly grave. Clearly, the sudden ambush and fall of the Sixth Celestial Demon Ancestor had dealt a severe blow to their morale.
"Patriarch, it seems we've underestimated that brat." The speaker was the Fifth Celestial Demon Ancestor. The recent mishap had clearly shaken the confidence of the Celestial Demon bloodline.
The Celestial Demon Ancestor's chest heaved with suppressed rage, his features twisting into something vaguely savage. "I never expected that in addition to the Grand Colored Light Lamp, this kid actually possesses an even more formidable offensive treasure!"
Why were the human race so formidable? Not because their cultivators were inherently powerful. The humans' strength lay in their ingenuity — they could forge artifacts, refine pills, inscribe formations, and exploit every conceivable advantage.
This stood in stark contrast to the demon race. Demons relied primarily on the superiority of their bloodline for their might. When it came to leveraging favorable conditions, the demons still lagged considerably behind the humans.
"Patriarch, wasn't that strange burst of blinding light emitted by the Grand Colored Light Lamp?" The others wore confused expressions.
"It was not." The Celestial Demon Ancestor's tone was cold and menacing. "In the ancient era, I fought the Colored Light Divine Sovereign many times and became very familiar with the Grand Colored Light Lamp. The lamp has many wondrous uses, but it absolutely does not possess such terrifying offensive power. It can amplify other attacks, use the Colored Light to assail the divine soul, even seal the physical body — but it has nowhere near this level of direct destructive force!"
Indeed, the Celestial Demon Ancestor's understanding of the Grand Colored Light Lamp ran very deep, which was precisely why he was so perplexed.
What puzzled him even more was how the attacker had managed to approach within a hundred meters of them. With the level of spiritual sense possessed by the Celestial Demon bloodline, how could any opponent get that close without being detected?
Even the Colored Light Talisman shouldn't possess such fearsome stealth capabilities, should it?
Consider it for a moment — if an opponent could sneak up to within a hundred meters of you, that distance, for Divine Path cultivators, was essentially the line between life and death. Once an adversary closed to within a hundred meters undetected, they had far too many ways to strike at you — or even claim your life outright.
A hundred meters was well within striking range. For Divine Path cultivators, attacks could reach targets several thousand meters away, let alone a hundred. At a hundred meters, a simple raised hand or flick of the wrist could land a blow on the opponent.
The Celestial Demon Ancestor's heart churned with unease. Without question, Jiang Chen's attack had left him somewhat off-balance. The sheer variety of Jiang Chen's methods gave the Celestial Demon Ancestor the unsettling impression that this young man's depths were utterly unfathomable.
"This brat might be even more troublesome than the ancient Colored Light Divine Sovereign. The human race… what in the world is going on with them? Where on earth did this heaven-defying monster come from?"
The frustration roiling inside the Celestial Demon Ancestor was beyond description. In the ancient era, he had labored painstakingly, only to be lured by the humans into a seal, where everything had ultimately fallen apart.
Now, having launched the Second Demon Calamity, he had assumed he could sweep across the Divine Abyss Continent like a raging fire, crushing the human race once and for all.
Instead, he found himself repeatedly stumbling over a single young man.
He had previously thought Ancestor Golden Howl and the others were simply incompetent, repeatedly falling victim to Jiang Chen's ambushes. Now he understood — it wasn't that his fellow demons lacked ability. It was that the brat's methods were simply too extreme.
Most troubling of all, the kid had an astonishing nerve. He actually dared to press the attack this aggressively right in front of the Celestial Demon Ancestor himself.
There was no denying it — this young man was both bold and cunning.
Earlier, he had used the Colored Light Lamp to mislead the Celestial Demon Ancestor, making it seem as though the lamp's deployment was nothing more than a taunt.
Who could have guessed that the lamp was merely a diversion, and that the real killing blow was the strike that followed?
It was a classic case of the hunter becoming the hunted.
Back at the demon encampment, all the demon cultivators were visibly startled. Several Celestial Demon patriarchs had marched out together, yet when they returned, one of them was missing.