The "Black Guards" of Moon Lake Castle were all elites — upper-tier gods selected through rigorous screening.
Crumpton and his two fellow demons had barely managed to scrape by against a single Black Guard. Of course, the main reason was that Crumpton was too weak, while the other two demons were only average among upper-tier gods.
"We've only killed one, and now two more show up? If they catch us, we're dead!" Crumpton was frightened nearly to the point of madness, fleeing frantically upward through the hidden passage.
"What the—?" Crumpton's expression changed.
The end of the passage ahead was sealed shut!
"How is that possible? This tunnel shouldn't be sealed — there should be an exit!" How was Crumpton to know that Lin Lei and his three companions had fled through here and moved the wall to seal the passage behind them, preventing Crumpton from giving chase?
Now Crumpton was flying for his life!
How could he possibly stop to check whether there was some mechanism in the wall at the end of the tunnel? He didn't have time! Two Black Guards were right on his heels — if he hesitated even for an instant, he would be finished.
He had only one option — brute force!
In his panic, Crumpton threw everything aside and smashed a full-power punch straight into the wall at the end of the tunnel, holding nothing back — "BOOM!" The wall shattered apart. Crumpton burst through the rubble and into the room beyond, but his speed dropped slightly in the process. The two Black Guards behind him were already stronger than he was, and in that single instant, they caught up!
"Think you can run?!"
With a furious roar, a black figure shot through the broken wall and brought a blade crashing down in midair with the force to split heaven and earth. The space around the strike twisted violently, rippling outward in waves like rings spreading across water.
Crumpton's face went pale.
"No!" he snarled through gritted teeth, making one last desperate stand.
"CLANG!"
Crumpton held his war blade above his head and barely managed to block the other's savage strike, stopping the blade from pressing down any further.
But...
The Black Guard's strike carried a strange, oscillating wave that passed straight through the war blade and slammed directly into Crumpton's skull. A deep hum reverberated as Crumpton's head vibrated countless times in an instant, reduced directly to powder!
"Nooo!" Crumpton's wretched scream still echoed through the room.
The destruction traveled downward from his head to his waist — all of it ground to dust.
The black figure steadied itself. It was a cold-eyed man with short silver hair gripping a war blade. The other Black Guard behind him spoke in a low voice: "Big Brother, just now we only saw Old Five's divine clone corpse, but this bald one wasn't dead yet. Old Five must be gone."
Both Black Guards felt a heaviness in their hearts.
The silver-haired man said quietly, "Out of the ten of us brothers, most are probably dead already. Those demons — in a one-on-one fight, they aren't necessarily our match. But they simply outnumber us!"
Indeed, more than twenty demons had come, while the Black Guards numbered only ten.
Weaker demons — two or three of them could handle one Black Guard. And among the demons there were also the strong ones. Setting aside the three Five-Star demons, even among the Four-Star demons there were quite a few whose strength could rival the Black Guards'.
Suddenly, the sounds of violent fighting erupted from another section of the fourth floor.
"Let's go." Without a moment's hesitation, the two Black Guards rushed toward the commotion.
The fourth floor of Moon Lake Castle held a grand hall nearly a hundred meters across, its interior filled with long tables. There were so many tables that they could clearly seat several hundred people. It was likely where the Gold Guards gathered for feasts and celebrations.
In a small room beside this grand hall.
Lin Lei, Dilia,
Listening to that piercing scream, Bei Bei's eyebrows shot up. "Boss, that voice — sounds like that bald bastard!"
Lin Lei's heart stirred, and a hint of pleasure crossed his face. "Right. Judging from the direction, it came from the room at the tunnel entrance. Crumpton probably discovered the body was missing and tried to chase us, but ran into someone else at the passage exit." Lin Lei knew that if Crumpton survived, he would definitely come after them.
Lin Lei had even prepared himself for a full battle with Crumpton.
Now it seemed someone had taken care of it for him.
Dilia turned to Regina with a smile and asked, "Regina, did you get the Moon Ring?"
"Not yet. If I had, I would have left this castle already — no need to keep taking risks here. But it seems like the Gold Guards have all been killed. We couldn't find any of them later." Regina shook her head helplessly.
Lin Lei had noticed this too.
"Although some of the demon candidates died at the start, our numbers still outnumbered the Gold Guards," Regina remarked. "Most importantly, a lot of the demons probably killed Gold Guards along the way!"
Lin Lei silently agreed.
The demons had been hunting the Black Guards, and when they encountered Gold Guards, they certainly wouldn't have let them go easily.
"BOOM!" A powerful tremor shook through the building, so violent that the floor beneath Lin Lei and the others rattled.
"Right next to us!" Lin Lei startled.
Fighting within Moon Lake Castle was frequent, and Lin Lei didn't care about battles in distant areas. But this fight was happening in the hall just beside them. Lin Lei and the others cracked the door open just a sliver and peered through the gap.
"Three Black Guards against eleven demons?" All of them were shocked.
The three Black Guards had fled here first, with the demons in pursuit.
"The Black Guards are too few — they're definitely going to lose," Bei Bei declared. Lin Lei and the others were talking, but they had deployed their Divine Domains to isolate the sound. At least nothing would leak out into the hall beyond.
Lin Lei, meanwhile, was marveling at something else: "That Black Guard — especially the one with short silver hair — he's incredibly strong. Does he... cultivate the Wind Elemental Law?"
Lin Lei's attention locked onto the leader of the Black Guards.
Just moments ago, after the two Black Guards had killed Crumpton, they heard the sounds of fighting and rushed over, only to discover another Black Guard surrounded by three demons. Naturally, they joined the fight — but the moment they did, even more demons showed up.
There were far too many demons!
In the end, it became eleven against three.
In that vast hall, eleven figures and three figures clashed in a brutal melee.