An image flashed first—"Phantom Qilin".
Within the dark crimson domain, the armor's bright scarlet glare looked violently out of place.
Huo Linfei raised his right arm. Ability Energy compressed and collapsed in his palm, condensing into a dazzling red star.
"Firecloud Art!"
BOOM—!!!
His clenched fist launched the red star forward. The energy sphere tore through space and blew a hole clean through Shuhu's thousand-faced trunk, a piercing wound dozens of meters wide. The projectile kept going, slammed into the edge of the domain—and the Blood-Smeared Prison Realm melted like snow, leaving behind a second gaping void, identical to the one punched through Shuhu.
Even standing behind him, Jingliu and Dan Feng were forced back several steps by the heat wave.
Dan Feng—still recovering from dragon frenzy—reverted to human form and steadied himself.
"This… what kind of power is that?"
Huo Linfei didn't answer.
His gaze locked on Shuhu. In his other hand, the short blade trembled violently. Flooded with Ability Energy, the blade elongated, becoming a crimson longsword. He braced the tip against the ground; liquid fire streamed along its length and ignited the roots beneath his feet, flames crawling toward the trunk with a will of their own.
If he weren't turned away, hiding the hilt, Dan Feng and Jingliu would have recognized it immediately—
That short blade was the one Yingxing had forged for him.
"Gotta say," Huo Linfei muttered as Shuhu burned, lifting the sword before him and feeling its vibration, "top-tier craftsmanship."
"The quality's insane."
[System Notice: Ability Energy output stabilized at 0.6 black holes. Combat-mode adaptation in progress—]
Shuhu's wound writhed. Flesh regenerated—
But the fire shaped by Ability Energy would not go out, and the healing speed was far slower than before.
The Abundance Emanator's thousand faces—so smug moments ago—finally showed gravity for the first time.
"An… anomaly…"
Huo Linfei sneered. Flames surged under his boots, bursting outward in a ring of pressure.
"Senior Jingliu. Lord High Elder. Fall back."
"You—" Jingliu started to snap—
But Dan Feng grabbed her arm.
"We're nearly spent," he said low. "If we fight now… then first we recover our state."
Shuhu's trunk twisted violently. The Blood-Smeared Prison Realm's whispers erupted again.
"You think… you can win?"
Illusions swept across Huo Linfei's visor like a cold wind—lion-tribe soldiers, the Scorpion King, the Whale Shark King—one face after another.
Though his earlier memories were sealed, seeing them again still lit an unnamed fire in his chest.
"So you're good at pissing people off," he said flatly.
[Detected: host emotional fluctuation]
[Ability Energy threshold rising]
[0.8… 0.9…]
Shuhu felt something wrong.
The red-armored brat was clearly caught in the illusion—so why was there no reaction at all?
Worse: Shuhu seemed unable to sense the Ability Energy surging inside him.
"Why?!" Shuhu's voice cracked. "Why isn't the Blood-Smeared Prison Realm working?!"
No answer came—only a simple, almost casual sequence of motion.
Raise the sword. Step forward. Swing.
No fancy forms. No technique.
Just raw power—detonated.
The crimson blade extended again, growing into a giant sword dozens of meters long. It fell like a guillotine. Along its path, the air ionized from heat; before the edge even touched down, the roots and rotten ground of the realm split open into a trench glowing like magma.
"Firecloud Art: Skyfall."
He spoke the five words softly—his voice drowned beneath the hiss of things melting and vaporizing.
Shuhu's trunk was split lengthwise. Fire raged inside the cut, eating inward.
Faces on the bark screamed as they dissolved—
But what terrified Shuhu far more was this:
The wound did not regenerate.
"That energy destroys faster than Shuhu can heal…" Jingliu, breathing in the distance, was shaken despite herself. "Even in General Teng Xiao's battles with Shuhu… I've never seen something so overwhelming. Is he… even human?"
"At least he isn't our enemy," Dan Feng murmured—because now, with the giant sword extended, he could finally see the pattern carved into the hilt.
Shuhu panicked.
"You—!"
Huo Linfei didn't give it the chance to speak.
He drove in, feet exploding with force. The blade's trajectory changed—then the crimson greatsword swept sideways.
In recent days, he'd learned a few follow-up fundamentals from Jing Yuan. He wasn't as smooth with heavy cleaving, but he could chain the next strike cleanly.
"Firecloud Art: Scorching Wildfire!"
The sweeping blade struck the trunk and erupted into a fan-shaped inferno, chopping the already-split Shuhu from two halves into four. The blood-red sky behind them was burned clean through.
The whispering stopped—cut off as if the flames had seized its throat.
Jingliu and Dan Feng felt it at once: their bodies suddenly lighter. The crushing pressure of the Blood-Smeared Prison Realm vanished.
Shuhu's thousand faces collapsed, no longer even human-shaped.
And then it started laughing—a mad, broken sound.
"Useless… I am Shuhu… I am ten thousand ages…"
The laughter spiraled into hysteria.
"The Abundance's gift is infinite!"
The entire giant tree exploded apart. The remaining branches and leaves reverted into Abundance monstrosities—waves of abominations surged forth:
Borisin, winged creations, Huayin, Sowers… even snake-bodied hybrids the others had never seen before.
They flooded toward Huo Linfei.
And the part that mattered most—
A crystalline seed, the core that had escaped, shot toward the depths of the Scalegorge—toward the Ambrosial Arbor itself.
"Haha! Didn't expect it, did you?" Shuhu crowed. "That's my escape route!"
"Trying to run?" Huo Linfei's left hand clenched, then became a claw. Another type of Ability Energy compressed to its limit in his palm—
"Three parts to strike the enemy—seven parts kept for myself…"
Cold spread from him like an expanding tide. Everything it touched—ground runners or sky fliers—was seized by frost and locked in place.
"Frostshadow Art!"
The extreme cold didn't form solid ice crystals. Instead it raced along the frost like a living wire—everywhere it passed, frozen abominations shattered instantly.
Firecloud Art surged again along the crimson greatsword, power coiling, ready.
"Open!"
BOOM—!!!
Crimson flame became thrust—launching Huo Linfei like a cannon shell. He closed the distance to the fleeing seed at terrifying speed.
[WARNING! Ability Energy has breached the critical threshold: 1.5 black holes—]
"It's over," Huo Linfei's voice came from impossibly close behind.
The seed tried to sense backward—
But the heat blocked everything.
The crimson greatsword was gone.
In its place, above his raised right hand, was a sphere—
A miniature star.
Hnnng—
There was no explosion.
Centered on the seed, within a hundred-meter radius, all matter—air, water, dust, even light—
Was burned away to nothing by that miniature sun.
The Arbor's roots were swept by the aftershock and charred instantly.
The Phantom Qilin Armor disengaged automatically. Ability Energy bottomed out. Huo Linfei fell forward under inertia—
And the thing in his mind wasn't victory.
It was dread.
"Crack… crack-crack…"
The ground split.
A tender sprout punched through the earth—
And grew at a horrifying speed, turning into a towering tree in the blink of an eye.
And this time—
Its roots were directly connected to the Ambrosial Arbor.
"Hah… hahaha…" Shuhu's voice was exhausted, but returning from death again only made it more crazed. Faces twisted into expressions of fervent devotion.
"The god of Abundance… is watching me!"
Out in the void, the entire Xianzhou Luofu trembled.
Every Abundance abomination dropped into a posture of worship.
Even some ordinary Luofu citizens felt their thoughts slipping into madness—their bodies began to mutate, wooden grain rising under their skin, golden ginkgo leaves blooming with terror.
Shuhu's trunk split open. The many faces vanished—
Revealing a single, gigantic golden eye, staring unblinking at the free-falling Huo Linfei.
"Anomaly… you will become… the sacrifice… for my ascension to godhood!"
Join here to read ahead.
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