The crimson-gold pupils flared with beams of radiant light, striking twelve Dominators across the field with unerring precision. Except for the beam directed at the Dominator of Eternal Night, which was swallowed and dissolved by thick, abyssal darkness, none of the other Dominators were spared. Including Stephen Simpson and Cowboy Locke, the spiritual energy within the Dominators went instantly out of control, ropy veins and sinews bulging beneath their flesh.
The cells throughout their bodies seemed to awaken and develop wills of their own, while their conscious minds collapsed in an instant. A low, chanting voice echoed in their heads:
"Do not put up meaningless resistance... Do not put up meaningless resistance..."
The Dominators of the evil faction were caught completely off guard.
Suppressing eleven Dominators with a single move—this was Demonic Eye's Eye of Bewitchment, an ocular power that not even Fear Heavenly King could resist.
*Clack, clack...* Fu Qingyang pulled a heavy black iron chest from his inventory. Amid the whirring of gears and mechanical releases, the chest sprang open to reveal twelve hiltless longswords displayed within.
Twelve flying swords whistled into the air, automatically splitting into two streams as they shot toward the two Wind Mages: Seraph and Fury of the Hurricane.
This was a new technique recently devised by Money Prince, combining sword manipulation with Skill Nigh Divine Dao to claim a head from a hundred meters away.
The frail Wind Mages could neither evade his swords nor withstand the ferocious sword qi contained within the twelve flying blades.
*Bang!*
A gunshot echoed across the colosseum.
The instant the gunshot rang out, Demon Eye Heavenly King's head exploded, showering bone, flesh, and brain tissue everywhere.
His body teetered for a moment before crashing down, and the crimson-gold demonic eyes across his flesh snapped shut.
The Ancient God of War, possessor of bronze skin and iron bones, had perished to a gunshot.
No one saw a bullet trajectory; the bullet seemed to have traversed the void itself to strike Demon Eye Heavenly King directly—even while space was locked down.
In the distance, Cowboy Locke blew the gunpowder smoke from his gun muzzle. He had recovered from the hard crowd control of the Eye of Bewitchment just in time.
Free from the gaze of the Eye of Bewitchment, the enemy Dominators snapped back to their senses. A Dominator of Chaos immediately raised a hand to warp the trajectories of the flying swords, yet his usually infallible Chaos ability failed to take effect.
At the critical juncture, Seraph and Fury of the Hurricane erected flowing walls of wind before themselves.
The flying swords crashed against the wind walls one after another and shattered. Seraph's wind wall dissolved into a dissipating breeze, and the final flying sword pierced straight through his chest.
Fury of the Hurricane's wind wall, however, stood firm, defusing the crisis.
Seraph looked down. Blood gushed from his chest, but the flow was quickly stemmed. The immense vitality of a level 8 Dominator went to work repairing his body, closing the wound in rapid order.
At his level, even with a frail physical body, he had long become impervious to most physical damage.
Unless he was decapitated outright, not even a pierced heart would claim his life.
The Palace Master of Halting Slaughter retrieved a small, verdigris-mottled pot and caressed it gently, causing it to emit rippling rings of golden halo.
As the halo swept over Demon Eye Heavenly King's corpse, fragments of bone, brain tissue, and blood instantly reversed their flow, returning and reassembling.
This was the core skill of the Arbiter of Fate stage—Resurrection!
Resurrection could target living beings or inanimate objects, physical matter or souls.
As long as something existed in reality, an Arbiter of Fate could revive it—limited to three times. Furthermore, it was not true resurrection; each revived state lasted only fifteen minutes, after which death would claim them once more.
However, the Demon Refining Pot turned resurrection into reality, granting genuine life from death.
Yet there was only one chance.
Back from the dead, Demon Eye Heavenly King opened his eyes, touched his forehead, and pulled his lips into a strained smirk. "No way to fight this. Not a chance. That old cowboy can one-shot me, which means he can one-shot any of you."
Had he been at peak level 8, he might have stood a chance against that peak Dominator by relying on his Eye of Bewitchment, which could even affect demigods.
Right now, however, despite having maxed out that single skill, his base attributes fell far too short.
Fu Qingyang and the others exchanged grim glances, a chill running from head to toe. While they certainly possessed defensive props, unless they were high-quality Dominator-stage defensive props, they would never stop Cowboy Locke's shots.
And high-quality Dominator-stage defensive props were beyond even Money Prince's reach!
*Even though the Boss has his cloak and the Palace Master has administrator privileges, if we can't defend against Cowboy Locke, we're nothing more than sitting ducks. One shot per person—a shot that erases distance renders most defensive props completely useless...* Zhang Yuanqing's heart grew heavy. For the first time, he clearly comprehended the terrifying might of a peak Dominator.
When he killed Cai Qinhe, he had wielded three kinds of demigod-level power and crushed old Cai like an insect, sending him back to the Spirit Realm. Back then, a peak Dominator had seemed no different from a stray dog.
At that moment, the high-and-mighty Cowboy Locke raised his gun again, aiming straight at Demon Eye Heavenly King.
The peak Dominator had realized that Demon Eye Heavenly King posed the greatest threat among their enemies.
At the critical moment, Panxi Edison grabbed an item from his inventory and hurled it toward Cowboy Locke.
*Bang!*
A gunshot cracked, echoing over the colosseum.
A silver trajectory flashed through the air, shooting toward Demon Eye Heavenly King's head.
*There's a trajectory now?* Demon Eye Heavenly King tilted his head slightly, letting the bullet graze his cheek before blasting a shallow crater into the ground behind him.
Panxi Edison said in a deep voice, "Leave Cowboy Locke to me. Do what you need to do."
He had just used the Merchant class's Trade ability to forcibly purchase Cowboy Locke's Distortion power. The bullet had previously erased its trajectory because Cowboy Locke had distorted the rule that a bullet requires distance to travel, causing the bullet to hit its target instantly.
*Phew...* The stone in Zhang Yuanqing's heart dropped slightly. If they couldn't counter Cowboy Locke's gunshots, they wouldn't even have the chance to stall for time.
As long as they could buy time, they still had a chance to survive. Once the President sensed that something was amiss, he would surely try to break free of his opponent and enter the Spirit Realm to rescue them.
Inside the fish tank, Ruth shrieked, "We should defend, not attack! Only defense will buy us time!"
Her words represented Chris's thoughts.
As the only Siren on the orthodox side, with neither seawater nor sea monsters around and nothing but brute physical strength to rely on, she was under the greatest pressure of all.
Just then, lightning-attribute spiritual energy converged rapidly in the air. Six pillars of lightning, each as thick as water vats, plummeted from the sky, enveloping the group in terrifying thunder strikes.
At the Saint stage, Thunder Mages could only summon branching lightning, but what loomed before them were pillars of lightning—horrific thunder pillars.
Winnie immediately opened her arms, turning herself into a lightning rod to draw the descending thunderbolts toward her.
However, her opponents were two fellow level 8 Thunder Mages. She managed to draw only half of the thunder pillars; the other half inevitably rained down among her teammates.
Demon Eye Heavenly King, Fu Qingyang, and the others scattered in haste.
Zhang Yuanqing had the slowest reaction speed. The lightning strike exceeded the limits of his reflexes, so he simply gave up on dodging. Opening his inventory, he pulled out the Lightning Vambraces and Lightning Armor and threw them into the air.
The thunder pillar struck the two Saint-grade items. Like water encountering a dam, the lightning-attribute spiritual energy was madly absorbed.
Yet the two items held out for only a split second before their charge reached its limit. Unable to absorb any more electrical energy, the thunder pillar pierced right through them and came crashing straight down at Zhang Yuanqing.
Using the precious moment bought by the two items, Zhang Yuanqing grabbed the Purple Thunder Shield and thrust it toward the sky.
*Boom!*
Holding the Purple Thunder Shield high, Zhang Yuanqing's knees buckled, and he dropped to the ground.
Yet he had weathered it without disaster.
The Purple Thunder Shield was covered in cracks, but the purple glow cloaking the surface of the shield had reached two-thirds capacity.
A single lightning strike had directly charged the Purple Thunder Shield by fifty percent.
*Whoosh, whoosh...*
A shrill howling of wind arose. Wind blades swarmed like an overwhelming storm of arrows across a battlefield, slashing down like torrential rain from all angles, leaving no room to dodge or maneuver.
*Again?* Having just neutralized the lightning strike, Zhang Yuanqing felt his heart tighten. Against an attack with such wide coverage, he had no choice but to summon the Purple Gold Suit.
They were only in the second exchange of blows, and he was already being forced to play his trump card.
Against Dominator-stage wind blades, without the Purple Gold Suit, death was certain.
Veins throbbing furiously on his forehead, Fu Qingyang struggled to pull a half-man-tall stone tablet from his inventory and cast it down before the group.
*Thud!*
The earth shook violently as spiritual energy from the ley lines formed a hemispherical defensive barrier.
*Clang, clang, clang...* Countless wind blades shattered against the barrier, causing the notoriously sturdy earth-attribute spiritual energy to shudder visibly, yet it held its ground.
Fu Qingyang's body trembled violently, as if bearing an unimaginable weight. He gritted his teeth and straightened his spine, refusing to let his knees bend even a fraction of an inch.
This stone tablet was an Earth Monster item of medium quality at the Dominator stage, but it was already the very first defensive prop Fu Qingyang had obtained after becoming one of the rulers of the Five Elements Alliance.
His foundation and background were too shallow. The vast majority of the Five Elements Alliance's items and materials were tightly controlled by the Nine Elders. Squeezing resources out of the Nine Elders required prolonged maneuvering and political struggle.
And he had been a ruler for a mere two months.
Seeing this, two Dominators of Chaos acted at once, twisting the rules to erase the flight trajectories of the wind blades in an attempt to bypass the defensive barrier.
Yet even though the overwhelming wind blades crossed a hundred meters in an instant, they still shattered themselves against the earthy-yellow barrier. The space inside the barrier could not be erased.
Naturally it couldn't: what the stone tablet generated was a force field defense, not a flimsy single-layer barrier.
Dominator-grade items were not so easily exploited.
Seeing that the wind blades failed to breach the defense, Fury of the Hurricane let out a soft scoff. He summoned a translucent crown woven from swirling air currents and placed it upon his head.
"The Crown of the Wind King!" Winnie exclaimed in a heavy, rapid voice. "Excluding rule-type props, this item ranks among the top ten in the Wind Mage class!"
Any veteran level 8 Dominator, taken on their own, was a peerless combatant who could roam unchecked.
Fury of the Hurricane spread his arms wide, the currents around him gathering swiftly into a tempest.
The air currents condensed, compressed, condensed again, and compressed further. After charging for over ten seconds, a murky, colossal wind blade roughly thirty meters long took shape.
Fury of the Hurricane gave it a gentle shove.
The murky, colossal wind blade surged forward with a terrifying gale, crashing into the earthy-yellow barrier with destructive force.
The hemispherical force field caved in immediately like a ball pricked by a needle, but the ball did not burst straightaway, stubbornly holding on.
Meanwhile, the giant wind blade eroded rapidly, shrinking from thirty meters down to ten.
In the distance, Fury of the Hurricane, crowned with swirling air, slammed his hands together. Howling air poured into the wind blade like reinforcements, swelling it back to thirty meters.
Throughout this process, the other Dominators of the evil faction did not intervene. They watched coldly from the sidelines, observing Fu Qingyang and his companions' techniques.
A team battle was not a street brawl. Mindlessly bombarding the enemy with skills was inefficient.
A true team battle was a matter of probing back and forth until one side ran out of trump cards and was thoroughly exposed, after which the fatal blow would be delivered.
The wind blade grappled with the earthy-yellow barrier for a few seconds before the latter could hold no longer. With a low hum, it dissolved into invisible waves of force and vanished.
The earthy-yellow spiritual energy on the surface of the stone tablet receded, leaving it dull and lusterless.
It would take fifteen minutes before its skill could be unleashed again.
Panxi Edison immediately tossed out two white feathers, kicking up a fierce wind that erected two wind walls before the oncoming blade.
As a peak Dominator of the Merchant class, items and consumables were the very last things he lacked.
Edison never expected two feathers to halt the blade entirely; he was merely buying time for his allies to dodge, countering each move as it came.
*Even a Dominator-grade item couldn't hold, so wind walls won't stand a chance...* Zhang Yuanqing turned to Demon Eye Heavenly King at once, his voice urgent: "Heavenly King, hit me!"
Demon Eye Heavenly King wasted no words. He drove a straight punch into the face of the shield.
*Bang!*
The already fracture-ridden Purple Gold Shield shattered instantly into countless droplets of liquid metal, sending Zhang Yuanqing flying backward through the air.
Right then, the wind blade sliced through the two wind walls as expected, cutting toward Fu Qingyang and the others.
Mid-flight, Zhang Yuanqing's astral projection emerged, darting toward the wind blade to interpose himself in front of everyone. The granular liquid metal swiftly converged, reforming into a brand-new shield in his astral projection's hands.
A purplish-gold halo washed over the surface of the shield.
The energy was fully charged!
Zhang Yuanqing thrust the shield forward, activating the skill of the Purple Gold Shield.
*Buzz!*
A massive, purplish-gold shield-shaped wall of light materialized to meet the colossal wind blade.
From afar, a sneer rang out. Air currents gathered furiously, inflating the wind blade to fifty meters—almost the entire radius of the colosseum.
Even a Dominator-grade item couldn't stop his wind blade. Did a mere Saint dare to seek the spotlight in a place like this?
Nothing short of courting death!
Chapter 761