Inside the royal palace's Regency Hall, the great demons stood motionless like statues. Only two figures remained standing upon the brown carpet directly in front of the throne.
It was as though a corridor of history, sculpted from the heroic epics of demonkind and the Blood Clan, had been frozen in time, immortalized in the art of the Demon Realm.
"McCarthy, you..."
Standing on the raised dais of the throne, Fall Lord Caliera watched as a glimmer of light gradually returned to her dim silver pupils, staring blankly at the figure on the demon side who had been the first to awaken.
Because Fourth Progenitor Eduardo was somehow able to wield Sixth Progenitor's authority of Blood Annihilation for reasons unknown, she had been forced to expend every ounce of her power at all costs to hold back his self-destruction.
Now, the Blood Clan surely never expected that someone on the demon side would also be nearly immune to Fallen Land of Gentle Slumber!
"The palace barrier can only hold him off for a little longer! Hurry, wake the other great demons! True Night Lord will wake the fastest!"
Fall Lord Caliera urgently warned Lanqi.
"There might not be enough time. I'll handle him,"
Lanqi replied without looking back.
The instant he regained consciousness earlier, he had analyzed the situation and attempted to wake Thunder Lord beside him. Thunder Lord, however, was trapped too deep within his dream. By the time he managed to wake him, Tenth Progenitor Ulysses would likely have dismantled every layer of the palace barrier and reached the princess's throne.
This was the first time Lanqi had found himself in a situation where he had to face a bishop-tier, Tier 8 powerhouse alone. It was also the worst possible ultimate showdown that could occur in a Tier 7 Hell-difficulty Shadow World.
Under normal circumstances, victory would only be possible if a group of Tier 7 powerhouses coordinated seamlessly in a raid, executing specific mechanics flawlessly.
"You can't beat him!"
Fall Lord Caliera was burning with anxiety. She knew McCarthy's true strength better than anyone—he was merely Tier 4. Even if McCarthy could tear the palace down at this moment, the Tenth Progenitor standing beneath the sun could still effortlessly obliterate a non-combat demon like him.
After a brief thought, Lanqi turned his head and added:
"Rest assured. In your domain, I have never lost."
Lanqi still had to put the Fall Lord's mind at ease so she could maintain her hold on Fourth Progenitor Eduardo.
He had never caught such a big fish before, and he couldn't let a fresh Tier 9 Blood Clan progenitor slip away.
"?"
Gazing into those emerald eyes brimming with confidence, the Fall Lord could not comprehend what this Glow Demon meant.
Fallen Land of Gentle Slumber was clearly the ultimate spell she took pride in, an inviolable absolute domain of hers. Why did it feel as if the man before her had already claimed this magic as his own?
Yet at this moment, she had no choice but to trust him—or rather, she dearly wanted to believe him!
She wanted to see if another of her kind truly existed who could coordinate with her so seamlessly, compensating for the greatest flaw of her spell—its failure to distinguish friend from foe.
"Do your best...!"
Caliera held back her racing heart and shouted with all her might.
The princess had to be protected at all costs. Not only was she the final key to the ancestral land and a demon acknowledged by Fall Lord herself, but she was also the bridge that could establish communication with the human forces.
As long as the demons weathered this crisis today, they would spare no expense in waging war against the Blood Clan. When that time came, she, the Fall Lord, would personally travel as an envoy to the Polant Empire to demand an alliance with humanity!
"Oh? And how do you plan to deal with me? Although I would be quite interested in matching paintings with you once more, I'm afraid now is hardly the time."
Marquis Ulysses raised a brow slightly, inquiring with keen interest even as he concentrated on dismantling the barrier.
Ulysses's heart was filled with gratification.
He possessed the magnanimity of a supreme ruler—the very core of his pride—and cared nothing for past wins and losses.
Upon seeing another Epic-grade painting, far from feeling discouraged, he was indifferent to whether the Blood Clan could easily obtain the demon princess. Let alone the dejection of defeat, he felt not even a shred of jealousy toward Lanqi—only the satisfaction of a mission accomplished.
His greatest masterpiece was not any painting he had ever created, but the genuine artistry of his craft itself.
Precisely because he considered himself an unrivaled painter, he relished having opponents in this world capable of setting him off.
"No matter. As you wish, we can compete in painting through another method."
Lanqi stepped to a spot not far from True Night Lord and began interfering in her dream. At the same time, several orange, translucent streaks of light appeared between his fingers.
"In your eyes, didn't the painting selection ceremony earlier end without a clear victor?"
Lanqi closed his eyes, sensing True Night Lord's dream.
Waking up himself was easy, but waking someone else was difficult; last time, when waking Hyperion, he had spent several minutes inside her dream.
Although it was difficult to immerse himself completely in True Night Lord's dream while keeping an eye on Ulysses before him, he could still gather fragmentary clues from the dream and plant subtle hints to accelerate her awakening.
In the dream, True Night Lord was an extraordinarily beautiful young girl with white hair and blue eyes, her face free of the cursed scars left by researching forbidden magic, able to face her close friend Mist Lord—that young demon general with black hair and golden eyes—without shame.
"You are right. An undefeated, invincible painting technique is my pride. But someone like you—a merchant who fishes for undeserved fame—is not yet worthy of catching my eye."
Tenth Progenitor Marquis Ulysses cast his gaze downward, noticing the magical tool in Lanqi's hands, and briefly paused his dismantling of the barrier.
It seemed like something that shouldn't belong to this era.
Yet, possessing the authority of Blood Creation, which allowed the creations beneath his brush to temporarily materialize, Ulysses knew all too well that what the other party held was something similar.
Unfortunately, Ulysses also knew that this tool—part magic engineering construct, part painting—was just as low-tiered as McCarthy himself.
He didn't mind granting him a few seconds; after all, he was always keen on discussions of art.
Even though he knew perfectly well that this was a ploy to stall for time, he knew even better that giving McCarthy a few extra seconds would change nothing.
"You may have misunderstood. I just need to defeat you directly."
As Lanqi's words fell, the translucent card he threw out was enveloped in an eerie orange mist, as ominous as the abyss.
At that exact moment, the air inside the palace grew suffocatingly oppressive, bordering on solidifying, and bloodcurdling shrieks like weeps of blood echoed within the acoustically sealed space.
Countless ghosts, seemingly crossing over from another dimension, appeared. Their silhouettes overlapped indistinguishably, like a choir, their continuously reverberating voices so heavy that even the stone-statue demons trapped in sweet dreams trembled faintly.
Had they not been lost in sweet dreams, they would surely have clamped their ears in agony as if struck by lightning, trembling all over under a mental onslaught that surpassed all limits.
Enduring such mental torment while in the middle of a sweet dream would spoil even the sweetest illusion.
Lanqi instructed Boss Cat to use Sound-Sealing Barrier to confine the influence of the Purgatory Choir's Wonderful Notes to the middle section of the Regency Hall, excluding the front and back ends. Except for the seats near Fourth Progenitor Eduardo and the vicinity of Fall Lord Caliera on the throne dais, the entire area was plunged into the sounds of purgatory.
The shrieks pierced the boundary between reality and nightmare. The surging sound waves, intensifying by the second, drove like sharp daggers into the eardrums of the demons seated to the left and right, carving into their nerves, tearing at their bodies and souls even as they enjoyed their dreams.
Yet to Ulysses, all of this was nothing more than annoying background noise.
"What did you say? What sort of pointless joke is this?"
Marquis Ulysses stared blankly for a second, then finally couldn't help but laugh out loud.
The boy talked big, claiming he would defeat him, but when all was said and done, he was still relying on the other great demons, struggling desperately to buy time to wake them.
Although the noise from this Tier 3 summoned creature could slow his movements and accelerate the demons' awakening from their sweet dreams, with his formidable Tier 8 caster resistances, he would feel pain at most—he wouldn't be incapacitated by the noise.
Challenging a Tier 8 head-on at such a level held zero chance of victory. The only thing capable of matching a Tier 8 was another Tier 8.
"Before you made a name for yourself as a painter, were you a clown?"
Tenth Progenitor Ulysses's expression turned stern, knowing there was no need to waste any more time with him.
During the brief commotion, he had already advanced quite a distance.
He only needed to shatter a few more layers of barriers before he could reach this Glow Demon and obliterate him into a mist of blood.
"Is it really that funny?"
Lanqi asked with a faint, enigmatic smile.
"Enough. I have no interest in dealing with clowns."
Marquis Ulysses waved his hand lightly. A fingernail sliced his fingertip, and his crimson blood gradually congealed into a giant eagle before him.
The youth's recent move had already proven they were not in the same league. There was no need whatsoever for him to lower himself to fight in person.
Chapter 584