"What's the rush? Let me savor that look of despair and terror on his face a little longer. Otherwise, my grand entrance as the finale would be completely wasted."
Zhai Cai flicked the hem of his black mink coat like a flamboyant general swishing his cape.
Though his mouth spouted frivolous banter, his actions were not sluggish in the least. His knees sank slightly, and he rested his knight's broadsword at his side in a posture poised for a drawing slash.
Channing Lu took a deep breath to steady his nerves. While scanning his surroundings, he turned over what he knew about the youth in the black mink coat.
According to intelligence from the Hunter Guild, this man was the sole heir of the Holy See's chivalric order—passed down through a single disciple for six generations. A level-seven Paladin. Going purely by level, Channing was one rank higher than him.
However, this was the vault housing the Eye of the Sky. Forcing an escape was out of the question; no escape arts or blasting techniques could breach these walls.
For a Lightning Mage, fighting a Knight in an enclosed space was perilous in the extreme.
By this point, the single-heir Knight had finished channeling his power. With a sudden burst, he swung the yard-long greatsword. A brass-colored radiance erupted along the blade and swept out with his swing, transforming into a crescent of sword qi that slashed toward Heaven's Punishment's administrative head.
Channing Lu instantly raised his feather fan, conjuring a wall of wind before him.
The crescent of brass sword light ground against the wind wall for a long moment, whipping up wild, chaotic currents of air before its force finally spent itself and dispersed.
Channing Lu flicked his feather fan toward Zhai Cai. Amid sharp, mournful wails, wind blades shot forth like a barrage of arrows.
Zhai Cai planted the broadsword in the floor in front of him. A brass glow flared, coalescing into an ethereal barrier before him.
An active skill of a level-seven Paladin: Wall of Protection!
This defensive skill was even more formidable than a Wind Mage's wind wall.
The translucent wind blades slammed violently into the brass wall, splashing ripples like pelting rain.
Taking advantage of the Wall of Protection deflecting the wind blades, Zhai Cai retrieved a suit of brass armor from his inventory. Amid clinking and clattering, the helmet, breastplate, vambraces, visor, and fauld rose into the air of their own accord, outfitting him like a medieval knight.
This armor was named the Paladin's Battledress, an item handed down from the third-generation Paladin. It amplified a Knight's skills and functioned as a walking Wall of Protection.
Donning this battledress effectively placed a Knight under the perpetual aegis of the Wall of Protection, turning him into an armored tank on the battlefield.
Channing Lu swung his fan again, unleashing wind blades that slashed toward the oncoming single-heir Knight.
This feather fan was one of Channing Lu's only two Dominator-quality items. Its functions were Violent Hurricane and all the skills of a Wind Mage below the Dominator stage.
This essentially allowed him to wield the skills of two different mage classes simultaneously. Thus, even though the feather fan was not an incomprehensibly bizarre top-tier artifact, it was still exceptionally precious.
For instance, even now, with his lightning-attribute spiritual power suppressed, he could still fight on equal terms with this single heir of the Holy See.
He could, in truth, forcibly commandeer lightning power to shatter the Knight's rule. But doing so would inevitably trigger the opponent's Judgment, needlessly buffing his enemy.
Granting a buff to a melee-specialist Knight in such a cramped vault would spell certain death for him.
A dense flurry of wind blades clattered relentlessly against the Knight, throwing up blinding sparks. Zhai Cai transformed into a streak of brass light, closing the distance to Channing Lu in the blink of an eye and thrusting his sword toward his chest.
Channing Lu rode the wind backward. The feather fan in his hand snapped fully open, shifting into the shape of a miniature plantain fan, and he swept it fiercely upward.
*Wuuu—*
A hurricane five meters across surged from the floor, releasing a deafening, frenzied howl.
Violent Hurricane! He had triggered the fan's active skill.
Caught up in the hurricane, Zhai Cai slammed hard against the ceiling with a dull thud.
Seizing the opening, Channing Lu harnessed the furious winds and darted toward the vault door at breakneck speed.
His line of reasoning was crystal clear: with two defensive artifacts, Winnie Berendt could not be killed in short order, and as a Lightning Mage, he could never defeat a Knight in this confined chamber.
Therefore, after successfully luring the Knight into close range, he had unhesitatingly deployed the Wind Mage's wind-riding ability, resolving to abandon the assassination and flee the vault.
Suspended in midair, Zhai Cai uttered a low incantation: "The rule of this battle is a one-on-one duel; fleeing the vault is forbidden."
Channing Lu felt the lightning powers around him surge back to life, no longer suppressed by the Knight's decree.
Yet he hesitated in his heart for less than a second before abandoning any thought of turning back to fight. The reason was simple: even with his full strength restored, killing a level-seven Knight remained an uphill battle.
Moreover, there was still the "blinded" Winnie backing the enemy. Blind or not, she was still an eighth-level Lightning Mage.
This assassination had been doomed to fail the moment Zhai Cai showed himself.
*Clang!*
Channing Lu slammed open the vault door and burst outside. Ten meters ahead lay the elevator, with the stairwell just to its left.
The instant he battered through the steel door, Zhai Cai's deep condemnation sounded behind him:
"In the name of the Knight, I sentence the deserter to death."
He hurled his broadsword violently forward, turning it into a ribbon of brass light that chased after Channing Lu at blistering speed.
Having just escaped the chamber, Channing felt the howling gale at his back. Every hair on his neck stood on end. His face shifted, and he hastily flicked his feather fan to raise a wind wall.
Simultaneously, he snatched two items from his inventory: a piece of dark-gray jade inscribed with Void runes, and a round horn shield.
The round horn shield had been exchanged from the Hunter Guild using a Dominator-quality item from his own class along with accumulated merits.
The moment the two items were brought out, the bright yellow light reached him. The wind wall instantly collapsed into a violent draft. In Channing Lu's pupils, the brilliant brass radiance was reflected.
He hurriedly lifted the small shield and thrust it forward.
*Clang!*
The broadsword struck the round shield, sending up a blinding flash of light.
Fine cracks spiderwebbed across the shield's surface, and Channing Lu was sent flying backward.
He felt immensely grateful that he had made the right choice in the vault—not forcibly breaking the rule to draw on lightning power.
This Knight, the sixth-generation sole heir of the Holy See, was far stronger than an ordinary Paladin—substantially stronger. Had he allowed him to invoke Judgment inside that room, Channing reckoned he would have already returned to the Spirit Realm.
While hurtling through the air, he crushed the teleportation jade without hesitation.
The jade disintegrated into specks of light that enveloped Channing Lu's body, then vanished.
*Thud!* Channing Lu, who should have been whisked away, crashed heavily onto the floor. He sat up in a daze, utterly baffled as to why the teleportation jade had failed.
Then he saw that the area around him was covered with talismans of black paper and red script.
The talismans formed a circular array, maintaining an invisible barrier that trapped him within. It was this barrier that had blocked his teleportation.
*A Dominator-level restriction...* Despair flooded Channing Lu's eyes. Worse still, ethereal chains snaked out from the six black talismans, coiling around his wrists, ankles, neck, and waist.
"Ahhh!"
The moment the ethereal chains wrapped around him, Channing Lu felt as though his soul were being scorched by raging fire, and an agonizing shriek tore from his throat.
*Crackle—*
Branching arcs of lightning erupted from his body, striking the floor, the ceiling, and the black talismans. The invisible barrier rippled with turbulence, but it held firm.
Enduring the torment of spirit refining, Channing Lu struggled to swing his feather fan, triggering the Violent Hurricane skill once more. A terrifying hurricane ripped up from the floor, tearing through both floor and ceiling and punching clean through to the roof above and the story below.
Yet even though the floor beneath his feet had been shredded, the six black paper talismans remained entirely unaffected, as though they existed in an entirely separate space.
The barrier formed by the Spirit Refining Talismans ignored physical destruction.
Next, a blinding surge of lightning burst from within him. His entire form coalesced into a sphere of brilliant blue light, and in the next second, the blue lightning orb detonated.
With a muffled pop, a translucent shockwave shorted out the power supply for the entire building, plunging every electrical appliance into malfunction.
As for the top-floor architecture, everything made of reinforced concrete—save for the reinforced vault beside them—was reduced to rubble.
Even so, Channing Lu discovered in despair that the explosion fueled by his overdrawn spiritual power still failed to damage the six black talismans.
Zhai Cai hovered in midair, leaning on his sword with one hand while stroking his chin with the other, studying the six talismans in pensive contemplation.
Earlier, when Channing Lu had attempted to destroy them, Zhai Cai had also poked at the barrier with his sword, discovering that physical attacks seemed incapable of harming the talismans or the barrier itself.
*Jingle—*
A crisp silver chime drifted up from the collapsed stairwell below. Channing Lu and Zhai Cai turned their heads at the same time, seeing a woman in a red dress wearing a mask, swaying her hips as she approached.
Her fair, jade-like feet were bare, with dark gold bells clasped around her ankles.
The broadsword in Zhai Cai's hand slowly lit up with a brass halo. He stared at the woman in the red dress. "Who are you?"
The woman in the red dress giggled. "A friend of Xiaoyao Sword Immortal."
***
New York Harbor.
The pure white xenon lamps illuminated the harbor, bleak and chilling as frost, perfectly mirroring the mood of the evil faction Saints at this moment.
Absolute ice.
Typhoeus had returned to the Spirit Realm.
A legendary figure who had stood at the peak of the Saint rank for ten long years, roaming the Free Confederation with a reputation eclipsing most other Saints, had returned to the Spirit Realm just like that.
Brought down by a newly risen youth, his glorious life ended in a matter of two or three moves.
Even though the Saints present were seasoned veterans accustomed to violent storms, seeing this unfold before their very eyes still felt unreal.
*Smack!*
Cocktail slapped himself across the face, leaving his cheek stinging with fiery pain.
He stared blankly at Typhoeus's corpse, his expression petrified.
"It isn't an illusion..." Mengmo murmured under his breath.
Cocktail's lips began to tremble.
Just then, the nocturnal veil blanketing the yin corpse dispersed; the duration of the Slumber Demon Bullet had expired.
Zhang Yuanqing bent down, picked up the Chaotic Oil Painting, and flung it into the sky.
The riot of colors within the painting tore free from the frame, spraying out in every direction. The intense hues rapidly bled into their surroundings, warping reality itself.
The men in black engulfed by the painting's colors collapsed one after another with dull thuds. Some had their heads displaced between their legs, some had their buttocks relocated to their chests, some had their heads twisted backward, and some had their genitalia sprouting from their faces.
Their bodily anatomy was thrown into utter chaos.
Mengmo, physically frail, was the first to fall. His mortal body perished, and his soul slipped free of its shell, rapidly floating toward the night sky.
The short blade in Zhang Yuanqing's hand flared with pitch-black light. He made a grasping motion toward Mengmo's spirit body, pulling a translucent phantom from across the distance, and hacked viciously downward.
"Ahhh!"
Mengmo screamed piteously as his spirit body shattered, then dissolved into nothingness.
The Form and Spirit Annihilation Blade's Soul Cleaving was the ultimate bane of Illusionists.
Among the remaining peak Saints, Jealousy Divine General—the strongest in close-quarters combat but devoid of life-saving skills—was the first to die, his body resembling a haphazardly assembled doll.
The Water Ghost, the Stargazer, and Cocktail managed to escape the painting's range by the skin of their teeth, relying on their respective survival abilities.
As for Sect Master Tongtian, he had already fled long before.
Enduring the agonizing pain of torn genetics after beast transformation, Zhang Yuanqing cast a frigid gaze over the orthodox Saints behind him. "What are you staring at? Leave none alive!"
*Boom!*
The emotions of the orthodox faction's Saints erupted like a volcano, surging with unprecedented excitement and fighting spirit.
Chapter 724