The Second Hell was an ocean hell—no land, no sky, only boundless azure seas stretching endlessly above and below. Yaxiu flew between sea and sea like walking beneath a chasm with only a thread of sky, with just a single narrow gap through which to evade misfortune. But that gap before his eyes was already blocked by hundreds and thousands of demigods.
A wall materialized in front of Yaxiu, forged from lightning, blazing flames, frost, time, storms, necromancy, and every great authority capable of destroying life. It was not a true wall, but rather a concentration of stacked wonders so dense that not even a sliver of space was left for air, dominating Yaxiu's entire field of vision like an impenetrable barrier.
If this wall had a name, it would surely be Death. In theory, sorcery wonders honed to their absolute limits could never merge; they ought to clash, annihilate, and weaken one another. The more powerful and pure they were, the more sorceries resembled sorcerers—forever bound to the zero-sum jungle of survival.
Yet the greatness of life lay in its capacity to achieve a balance transcending all else. Under the moderating influence of the Serpent's Stomach, this legion of mighty demigods—who in life would have beaten each other's brains out—had their colors harmonized into a state of seamless coexistence. What a magnificent miracle. Even though his avenue of escape was sealed shut, Yaxiu could not help admiring this sublime crystallization of civilization and intellect. And it was not just ahead; all directions—behind, left, and right—were entirely barricaded by wonders.
Only now did Yaxiu truly feel the reality of being trapped in Hell. The enemies before him were endless, yet he was completely alone, living like a fly in a sterile room, with nowhere between heaven and earth to take shelter.
Demon Form! Refraction Ward!
Soul Screech Sonic Wave! Soul Reflection! Overturn! Soul Pressure! Thunderbird Transformation!
Trump cards that major organizations relied upon as core reserves were flung out by Yaxiu like basic attacks. Lacking the moderating power of the Serpent's Stomach, his sequentially unleashed wonders grated against and neutralized one another, releasing shriek-like roars. Like a cornered, desperate beast, he bared his fangs and claws without reservation; even if the heavens caved in or wild tides surged, he would tear them to pieces!
The normally peaceful Soul Kingdom of Heaven suddenly erupted into frantic chaos. Almost every wonder within operated under severe overload, and every single sorcery spirit wailed over being forced to work overtime. The source power in his fifth Hell Wing boiled and surged, but as source crystals shattered and detonated one after another, his depleted reserves were rapidly restored!
Perhaps since the birth of Hell, a divine battle of this scale had never occurred. On one side stood a dream legion composed of thousands of demigods; on the other was a newly ascended demigod bearing demigod Hell Wings, a Divine Lord's Kingdom of Heaven, and a Supreme Tail Feather. As wonder collided against wonder, a vast void seemed blasted straight out of the ocean. A ten-kilometer-thick mass of churned sea water vaporized in midair into a pale, ghastly mist, kicking up towering tsunamis layer after layer. Wild gale-force currents tore at the air like millions of ravenous beasts, while chaotic hues bled together into a murky, filthy black. In the real world, the tsunamis spawned by the aftershocks alone would have been enough to obliterate surrounding coastal cities.
Suddenly, two hundred Thunder Rain Demons charged out from the white mist. Though slaughtered down to the last after a dozen breaths, they succeeded in tearing open a tiny rift in this lethal trap, allowing Yaxiu, concealed among them, to slip away with his life!
The price was the utter collapse of the wonder "Rain Demon Den" in his Soul Kingdom of Heaven, its sorcery spirits scattering across the ground. Such was the nature of consumable wonders: once their reserves were spent, they automatically broke down, and reconstructing them was exceptionally difficult. Building the "Rain Demon Den," for instance, required the live sacrifice of at least one rain demon, and rain demons throughout the entirety of Hell were likely already extinct.
Yaxiu skimmed low over the ocean. The white vapor he exhaled froze the surging waves into blossoms of frost, and layers of rime spread across his skin.
Chaotic hallucinations assaulted his mind, auditory illusions persistently disrupted his judgment, and every emotional ripple was magnified into a monstrous wave engulfing his thoughts... He had broken out of the encirclement, but he had not escaped the malice of the demigods.
In the divine realm, there was no longer any Sanctuary capable of defending against everything. So long as one still needed to gather external information, demigod sorcerers had means to distort vision, pierce eardrums, and corrupt thoughts. Every demigod was a fiend who had honed the craft of slaughter to perfection, stopping at nothing.
"Left," Dead Frenzy said.
Yaxiu shifted into Demon Form in an instant, his twin arms morphing into sharp blades to meet the meteor hurtling in from the left. It was a colossal red dragon. Whether it was a parasite sorcerer or a Void Realm creature made no difference to Yaxiu; his blades carved through its claws like a hot knife through butter, and a Bladestorm erupted within its body, flaying it into a bloody skeleton without delaying his momentum for even a second! Yet blood itself was a lethal weapon.
The drifting crimson rain coalesced into chains that bound Yaxiu's body. As expected, this red dragon was indeed a sorcerer—and a demigod versed in Parasitism and Blood sorcery at that... In the few breaths it took Yaxiu to shatter the chains, the first wave of pursuers from behind had already caught up. Countless dazzling fireworks burst over him, knocking him out of Demon Form once more. His Refraction Ward charges were exhausted in an instant, and the Sanctuary he barely sustained with source power was on the verge of melting away. Another massive batch of source crystals detonated to replenish his power; in just a few minutes, he had burned through half of the vast cache plundered from the First Hell.
Yet he had no room to complain. He was challenging an entire level of Hell by his own strength alone; staying alive was already an extraordinary stroke of luck... This was his one-man war.
"Below," Dead Frenzy said. "Don't bother defending. Kill yourself."
Yaxiu entered Demon Form for the third time. On the battlefield, the demon was the only formal attire.
A golden spear thrust upward from the deep sea below, wielded by an imposing young sorcerer clad in armor shimmering with eerie light. With sharp brows and starlike eyes framed by a dashing haircut, Yaxiu immediately pegged him as a demigod of the ruling class. Not merely because of his bearing, but because even before the spear pierced Yaxiu, Yaxiu's heart had already shattered. The destiny of a pierced heart occurred first; the physical act of thrusting the spear was merely filling in the process.
A Destiny wonder!
This demigod was a practitioner of the Destiny school—the most formidable and rarest of the three esoteric factions!
Indeed, there was no point in defending, for defense was utterly futile. Before the tip of Destiny's spear, every barrier was no sturdier than paper. Yaxiu had no method to withstand Destiny sorcery; even evasion was in vain.
Sound suddenly drifted far away. Total darkness fell over his sight, as though he were marooned at the center of an empty void. Sensation drained from his body starting at his fingertips, blood vessels freezing inch by inch... Destiny could hardly wait to drag him across to the far side of the Curtain of Death.
Then let me die!
Blades jutted out from Yaxiu's chest, tearing his own heart to pieces. With his heart already destroyed in advance, he broke free of the fate of being pierced by the spear's tip and returned from the Curtain of Death!
This was the simplest way to defy destiny... Walk destiny's path so that destiny had nowhere left to go!
As the Soul Screech Sonic Wave unleashed from Yaxiu's throat rippled through the air, Soul Pressure took hold. Yaxiu's soul foundation was likely unmatched among demigods past and present; the effect of Soul Pressure scaled linearly with soul mass. Paralyzed under the twin brunt of the screech and the soul pressure, the Destiny demigod froze midair, helplessly watching as Yaxiu severed his head with a single stroke!
He had to be eliminated. Destiny sorcery was a school Yaxiu had no means of countering; against others, he could rely on Refraction and his Sanctuary to endure, but a single slip against Destiny sorcery meant certain doom. Besides, he could no longer stomach having his destiny toyed with.
Even as Yaxiu ripped the Destiny demigod apart, the second wave of attacks arrived right on cue. Looking back, he felt as though he were gazing upon a kaleidoscopic downpour falling from all directions, bound to converge directly into his eyes.
Gritting his teeth, he unleashed every defensive wonder at his disposal, but set against the heavens full of radiant splendor, his line of defense was as fragile as a paper umbrella caught in a tempest.
Crack!
All defenses melted away in an instant. Demon Form shattered, Refraction Ward proved powerless, and his Hell Wings—parched of source power—drooped limp and listless. Yaxiu decisively crushed more source crystals to recover, but while source power could be refilled, wonders could not be mended so easily—inside his Soul Kingdom of Heaven, the wonder "Demon Form" was already tottering; using it once more would inevitably cause it to disintegrate.
No wonder could be deployed indefinitely, for sorcery spirits had their limits, and those integrated into a wonder wore out their stamina far more rapidly. To put it in perspective, a sorcerer using a solitary spirit was akin to having it work overtime alone—exhausting, but entirely within its manageable scope. Using a wonder, however, was like forcing a crowd of spirits into complex collaborative labor; not only did each have to perform its own role, but it also had to handle tasks channeled over from others. Under such compound exploitation, their endurance drained in no time.
The threshold for the wonder "Demon Form" was three uses; after three, it required rest without exception. Yet circumstances granted Yaxiu no luxury to hold back.
Multiple Body Arts demigods broke the surface of the sea. Yaxiu could not afford to get bogged down by them, or the third wave of bombardment would be enough to lay his soul to rest in Hell!
Accompanied by another Soul Screech Sonic Wave, Yaxiu assumed Demon Form once more, swinging his blades to butcher his way through the demigods!
At the same moment, the "Demon Form" wonder collapsed with a resounding crash, bone-weary sorcery spirits dropping to the ground. The Substitute sorcery spirit promptly materialized at the ruin, directing gentle, radiant spirits possessing healing abilities to tend to the exhausted ones and restore their vigor as quickly as possible—all so Yaxiu could keep exploiting them, lest he soon turn his demands upon the rest.
Bladestorm! Soul Reflection! Soul Pressure!
Without a breath of hesitation, Yaxiu carved a path of blood through the Body Arts demigods' encirclement, the spraying gore unable to even brush against him. He realized he must look breathtakingly fierce right now—a terrifying demon, steaming crimson blooms unfurling around him, not a soul in all of Hell capable of matching him for a single exchange... a quintessential fantasy power-trip straight out of a webnovel.
"You're done for," Dead Frenzy said calmly.
Yaxiu looked up and saw a wall of seawater surging ten thousand li into the air. In that moment, the boundary between up and down vanished completely, and all light was swallowed by the ocean. It was as though the sea below were crashing upward into the sky, while the sea above surrendered to gravity.
As the churning tides converged, heaven and earth fused into one, leaving no crevice through which Yaxiu might escape. Trapped without recourse, he watched helplessly as the pitch-black ocean swallowed him whole. Sometimes that was just how the world was: it didn't merely shut the door on you; it nailed the windows shut too... because no one wanted you to survive.
Yaxiu felt as if his entire body were being pulverized by the crushing pressure of the sea. His ribs groaned in brittle agony, the wound over his heart had yet to knit together, and his blood seeped away into the dark. He plummeted through the freezing waters, yet countless eyes still pursued him... The murderous intent converging from all sides was as painfully conspicuous as a nail inside one's underwear.
Yaxiu had been loath to enter the ocean not just because he was ill-suited for underwater combat, but even more so because Water sorcery demigods were practically untouchable in such an element. If he guessed correctly, every single demigod in the Second Hell besides himself was a master of Water sorcery. There was truly nowhere left to turn.
Yaxiu had no desire to surrender his soul, which was why he had resolved to fight on even knowing the odds were hopeless. If only he could hold out for twenty seconds to disengage, if only he could stall until the exploration time expired, if only... Under normal circumstances, he was often capable of pulling off a miracle in pinches like this—such as opening Aurora's Sorcerer Handbook, where drawing an item capable of resolving his immediate crisis was practically guaranteed.
Yet not all miracles came free. At least this time, they intended to charge a price.
Chapter 1066