Like a yaksha of Buddhist lore, Fear Heavenly King's skin was jet-black. Eight arms fanned out behind him, wielding a saber, spear, sword, staff, halberd, and ring, while the two arms of his original body were clenched into fists. His two secondary heads flanking him had eyes wide as bronze bells, broad mouths, and high noses—ferocious in the extreme.
Empowered by the formation, his strength had received a significant boost. This made the already demigod-tier Fear Heavenly King extraordinarily terrifying; the mere aura rolling off him caused even the iron-willed Fu Qingyang and Demon Eye Heavenly King to feel a slight sense of suffocation.
Under these circumstances, killing Fear Heavenly King without paying a price was virtually impossible.
Thus, Demon Eye Heavenly King hoped Fu Qingyang would lead the charge. After all, Money Prince was not the Lord of the Sun and was not someone he had pledged his life to serve. At worst, he would praise him as a brave man and wait eighteen years for him to reincarnate, roll a new character, and level up again.
Fu Qingyang held the exact same mindset.
He had even mapped out two simple tactics in his mind. The first was a war of attrition: an Ancient God of War had high defense and deep health reserves, but their stamina was not infinite. If Demon Eye Heavenly King could hold Fear Heavenly King off in a frontal clash, Fu Qingyang could continuously deal damage from the side using the rule power of his Slash.
In a barren wasteland devoid of living beings, an Ancient God of War could not sustain Bloodthirsty Berserk; Fear Heavenly King would undoubtedly die.
Of course, the weaker Demon Eye Heavenly King would fall first.
For someone obsessed with cleansing the world, giving his life for the orthodox faction would be a worthy death.
The second tactic was a quick, decisive battle: both sides would throw out their trump cards in rapid succession, dumping their maximum damage output all at once to see who would have the last laugh.
This tactic relied purely on luck unless one knew both oneself and the enemy, yet Fu Qingyang had no idea how many trump cards Fear Heavenly King possessed.
In the silence, both men looked at each other with eyes that said, *You are welcome to die heroically.* After several seconds, Fu Qingyang said coldly:
"Then we go together!"
"My thoughts exactly!"
With that, Demon Eye Heavenly King retrieved a ten-foot-tall pitch-black statue from his inventory.
The statue stood atop a black dragon and held a pale leg bone. Dressed in imperial robes, its face was blurred, yet it exuded an ineffable depth, vast and immeasurable like an abyss or an ocean.
Before the statue stood an animal-hide drum.
The leg bone in the statue's hand descended, striking the drumhead.
*Dong!*
As the soul-stirring drumbeat rolled outward, dark clouds surged across the sky, covering a radius of a hundred li and forming a tempestuous barrier of driving rain and flashing lightning.
A rule-based item—the Rain Master Drumming Statue.
This item had been reforged from the Rain Master Statue and Kui Ox Drum belonging to the First Elder of the Water God Palace among the Nine Elders.
Its greatest function was to create a home-field advantage tailored for a Rain Master while suppressing opponents of the same rank. Demon Eye Heavenly King was not a Rain Master, so he could not harness the endless downpour.
Even so, the drumbeats, wind, and rain possessed the power to shake the spirit, spawn pestilence, and repel the spiritual power of other classes, drastically weakening Fear Heavenly King.
*Whoosh!*
A deluge poured from the heavens. Bean-sized raindrops battered Fear Heavenly King's towering, imposing physique, kicking up a misty spray and quenching his surging aura.
At the same time, Fear Heavenly King's chest heaved violently, scorching breaths puffing from his nostrils.
He had fallen ill!
Fear Heavenly King raised an eyebrow and said in a thick, congested voice, "This feels a bit like that old fellow from the Water God Palace's Rain Master Statue. How do you have this item?"
As he spoke, he opened his mouth and exhaled a great breath of thick mist. The pure white fog surged like a tidal wave, cloaking him first to block Demon Eye Heavenly King's sight and sever Fu Qingyang's lock-on before spreading out in all directions.
In an instant, the dense fog rose up, blanketing the sky and threatening to engulf the entire instance.
For Fear Heavenly King, cloaking an entire city in fog was an effortless feat.
Dense Mist was one of the most terrifying skills of a Bewitching Demon. It enabled teleportation, mist form, and sensory concealment; within it, Mist Lords and Ancient Gods of War could slaughter enemies of the same tier with ease.
However, countering the mist was just as straightforward: all it took was wind—wind that was strong enough.
Demon Eye Heavenly King did not hesitate to control the Rain Master Drumming Statue, whipping up furious gales that set the rain across the world swaying violently.
The wild winds seized the fog and swept it high into the heavens.
No sooner had the mist dispersed than Demon Eye saw the red-eyed figure of Fear Heavenly King reflected in his field of vision. Fear had used the mist to teleport right in front of him.
Demon Eye Heavenly King acted on pure instinct. His vertical eye rolled and locked onto Fear Heavenly King, abruptly unleashing a golden beam of light.
At such close range, he was confident he could control Fear Heavenly King.
Yet his usually infallible Eye of Bewitchment failed this time.
Fear Heavenly King ducked as though he had predicted the attack, evading the beam. His cheeks puffed out, and with a sharp puff, he spat a blast of sword qi that pierced and blinded Demon Eye Heavenly King's vertical eye.
A sharp pain lanced through Demon Eye's forehead as warm liquid trickled down his face.
Seizing the opening, Fear Heavenly King snapped his eight arms inward like a closing peacock's tail. Saber, spear, sword, and halberd slashed toward Demon Eye from different angles and directions.
Demon Eye Heavenly King spread his own eight arms, raising his conjured weapons to parry.
A frantic clatter of clashing metal ended in less than a second as Demon Eye's conjured weapons exploded into flecks of light.
In the next second, the long saber impaled his chest, the long sword thrust beneath his ribs, the staff caved in his shoulder, the halberd severed the four arms along his left side, and the spear plunged into his lower abdomen, hoisting him into midair.
Fear Heavenly King was a demigod-tier combatant after all; in a direct clash, Demon Eye could not survive even a single exchange.
Demon Eye Heavenly King let out an agonizing roar, sinister golden-red vertical eyes abruptly splitting open across his body.
At the same time, Fu Qingyang stepped forward in the distance and slashed out two swift sword strikes.
The sword lights melted into the void and vanished.
*Splurt!*
The Achilles tendons on both of Fear Heavenly King's heels suddenly snapped open in clean, neat incisions.
A Slash elevated to a rule could not be dodged even if anticipated; it was an absolute hit!
Fear Heavenly King's massive, imposing frame inevitably crashed toward the ground. Yet as if foreseeing the enemy's next move once again, the moment he fell, he dismissed his weapons and braced his eight arms against the ground like the legs of an arthropod, scuttling nimbly across the dirt and actually evading the disco-ball-like golden-red beams.
Fu Qingyang's bright black eyes reflected Fear Heavenly King's silhouette. Having seemingly locked onto something, he executed another slash.
*Bang!*
An explosion erupted from one of Fear Heavenly King's palms as a bronze disk engraved with a star chart shattered into pieces—the hand that should have held the Vajra Ring.
Fear Heavenly King's gaze narrowed.
This astrolabe was a replica of the Turtle Back Chart, gifted to him by the Lord of the Stars. Compared to the original, the counterfeit could only provide warning of dangers within the next five seconds.
Moreover, it possessed no rule power and could be disrupted by Taiyin concealment. Against Demon Eye and Fu Qingyang, however, who lacked concealment abilities, it was more than sufficient.
He had not expected Fu Qingyang to discover it so quickly and destroy it with his Slash sword technique.
Bereft of the astrolabe's warning, Fear Heavenly King could no longer dodge the wild crisscross of the Eyes of Bewitchment. He froze stiffly in place, his gaze dull and vacant.
Fu Qingyang reached into the air with his left hand, and a four-foot sword burning with pale flames emerged from his inventory into his grip.
The pale flames possessed a strange inertia, flickering far slower than normal fire, as if played back at half speed.
This was a Ninth-Level rule-based item—the Liangyi Demonic Blade!
Reforged from the flaming mask, the Liangyi Demonic Blade had two forms: the Fire-Stealing Sword and the Blazing Flame Sword.
The function of the Fire-Stealing Sword was to steal a target's flames, temperature, and figurative heat.
The function of the Blazing Flame Sword was 'burning' and 'exploding.' Any target struck by it would erupt into unquenchable flames across their body, whether or not their defenses were pierced. Continuous slashes would accumulate fire spirits and trigger an explosion.
Fu Qingyang planted the white-flame sword before him. White fire poured forth in torrents, racing across the ground in a straight stream until it reached Fear Heavenly King's feet.
*Crack, crack...*
Amid the faint sound of forming ice crystals, a thick coat of white frost appeared over Fear Heavenly King's body, and a thin crust of ice glazed his crimson pupils.
Like a drunkard collapsed in freezing snow, he stiffened from the inside out.
Fu Qingyang bellowed, "Finish him quickly!"
He abandoned all plans for a war of attrition; their side simply did not have the means. In a frontal confrontation, Demon Eye could not even survive a single exchange.
The gap in power was just too immense.
A demigod-tier combatant was simply not something Ninth-Level Dominators who wielded rules could stand against.
Demon Eye leapt dozens of meters into the air, his eight arms manifesting saber, spear, sword, halberd, staff, and ring as he plunged fiercely toward the frozen Fear Heavenly King.
Fu Qingyang drew out his bronze soldier puppets, flicking all ten fingers. Sword-wielding bronze soldier puppets leaped from their box one after another, their clanking armor ringing in crisp unison.
Fu Qingyang's gaze hardened as crimson blood flushed his face. Sword qi shot from the crown of his head straight into the clouds, and the sword qi encircling him surged violently.
A swordsman's Burning Bridges, like a Night Wanderer's Howling at the Moon, was a skill that briefly stimulated potential in exchange for an explosive surge in power.
The swords held by over a hundred bronze soldier puppets erupted with sky-piercing sword qi as they unleashed a hundred Slashes imbued with rule power at Fear Heavenly King.
Right then, however, the bronze soldier puppets abruptly wrenched their heads around to look up at Demon Eye Heavenly King in midair.
Fu Qingyang realized he could no longer control the puppets.
A hundred swords slashed out.
Yet their target was not Fear Heavenly King—it was Demon Eye.
Over a hundred sword lights vanished into the unseen void. In the next second, Demon Eye's body disintegrated in midair.
*Splat, splat, splat...*
Severed pieces of Demon Eye Heavenly King rained down from above.
...
Dikong Formation.
Holding the quilt, Xiahou Aotian was just about to drape it over Zhai Cai when he saw a figure suddenly drill out from within the sole-heir Knight. It was none other than the Southern Illusion God, clad in black robes with a hidden face.
The Southern Illusion God lifted his head slightly and opened his mouth.
An invisible, terrifying sonic wave expanded outward, sweeping over surrounding living beings like ripples on water.
Shadow Roar!
A demigod-tier Shadow Roar!
Even weakened by Sunrise, it was still far more than an Eighth-Level Dominator like him could endure.
Without a second thought, Xiahou Aotian unfurled the quilt and wrapped himself inside.
At the same time, he heard a piercing, agonized shriek from the Palace Master of Halting Slaughter in the distance.
Chapter 1006