"I am very curious."
At that moment, Xu Tianran, who had been watching coldly, suddenly spoke.
His tone carried a lofty amusement and scrutiny, as if he were observing a trapped beast in desperation.
"We should be strangers. Why are you so set on killing me that you'd even pay the price of dying together?"
He had countless enemies; those who wanted him dead could line up from the Mingdu palace all the way out of the city.
But someone like the man before him—eyes burning with the purest, most uncompromising fire of revenge, willing to burn himself out to drag Xu to hell—this was a first.
"Hahaha… Don't know me?"
He Caitou threw his head back and let out a laugh filled with sorrow and fury, echoing over the ruins, dripping with irony and pain.
"Then—what about this?!"
He jerked up a hand and ripped off the headscarf that had always wrapped his head.
At the same time, his other hand pressed to his cheeks; soul power rippled as he deactivated the highgrade soul tool that had hidden his true face for years.
The disguise vanished in an instant.
Revealed to all was a darkskinned, sharply contoured face with the distinctive features of the Sun Moon imperial bloodline.
Especially those eyes—now blazing with a decade's worth of hatred, almost erupting.
At the same time, a blazing, resplendent golden sun rose behind him, radiating endless light and heat.
A scorching, pure aura spread at once—the toptier martial soul that only the direct royal blood of the Sun Moon Empire could inherit—the Sun.
"The Sun martial soul?!"
Xu Tianran, who had been calm throughout, suddenly narrowed his pupils. For the first time, shock broke through his composure.
Across the entire Douluo Continent, only the royal family of the Sun Moon Empire possessed the Sun martial soul.
His gaze locked onto He Caitou's face—familiar, yet made strange by years and hatred. Those hallmark royal features…
After a brief surprise, Xu Tianran's lips slowly, slowly curled into a cold, knowing smile. His tone grew thicker with mockery and cruelty.
"So it's you… the 'great' late Emperor's trueborn blood. The esteemed… former Crown Prince."
He dragged out the words, each one a saltcoated knife carving into He Caitou's heart.
"So, in that palace coup back then, you really were the fish that slipped the net and escaped with your life."
Every doubt vanished at once.
He finally understood why the other carried such a wild, allcosts, doordie vendetta.
If it were him—kicked from the apex of the Crown Prince's seat, watching kin slaughtered, everything seized, hurled from the clouds into the filthy mire—he might also become a grim revenant of revenge.
He Caitou's fists clenched tight, veins bulging over his dark hands like knotted roots.
His nails had already pierced his palms; warm blood dripped soundlessly through his fingers, spotting the scorched earth with dark marks that evaporated at once.
That bloody night ten years ago broke free like a beast and tore at his soul.
His mother's shriek as she pushed him into the secret passage, his sisters' despairing cries, the rebels' and usurpers' hideous laughter, the cold and fear of fleeing alone with a sea of blood on his back…
All those shards of memory surged into a flood, nearly devouring and incinerating his reason.
"Xu! Tian! Ran!"
The three words were squeezed through his teeth, flecked with blood and carved with hate.
"Everything you and yours owed me and my family ten years ago… today, I'll make you pay a hundred, a thousand fold!!"
His voice, twisted by extremity, rasped like a torn bellows, yet carried a madness that made hearts quake.
The sun behind him swelled with his roar, its light turning tyrannically bright. The heat distorted the very air. It was as if he himself would become a sun of vengeance, burning all before him.
Karna gazed quietly at the pain in his Master's eyes and the resolve to burn the world with himself. The last trace of doubt in his golden eyes faded, replaced by understanding.
He spoke no more.
He only raised, slowly and solemnly, the godslaying, demonreaping golden spear in his hand.
Hum—!
The vast solar wheel behind him began to spin faster. Rays purer and brighter than a star's core poured forth, lighting the ruined palace like day and stinging every eye.
"As you wish, my Master."
With those calm words, boundless power erupted like a waking volcano from his upright form.
Golden divine fire no longer merely twined—it became a worldsweeping storm of flame.
Karna held nothing back. The supreme godhood of the Sun God's son was awakened and unleashed.
The solar sigil at his brow flared too bright to face, as if he had, for a moment, drawn the distant star's might down to the mortal realm.
The ultimate, terrifying sunfire licked the void. Air itself ignited, crackling ceaselessly.
Within hundreds of meters, temperature soared at an inconceivable rate.
Granite beneath his feet softened, reddened, and ran as darkred magma.
Scraps of metal soul tools melted like wax, merging into streams of molten iron.
Even space seemed unable to endure such apocalyptic heat, rippling with violent distortion, on the verge of tearing.
Shrouded in endless light and heat, Karna's face was calm, tinged with a god's detachment.
Only one goal remained in his eyes—to fulfill his Master's wish, pledged with life and all things: take Xu Tianran's head.
He no longer spared a thought for He Caitou's safety. Unbound divinity made his movements absolute, merciless, like a supreme god enacting heaven's punishment and judging sin.
"Yes! That's it! Karna! Kill them! Kill every last one of them—!!"
He Caitou howled like a madman, flinging his last treasured highgrade defensive soul tools into the air like trash.
Trinkets that would usually drive soul masters to frenzy were now crude tools to buy a few more moments—not to live, but from a stubborn, crazed need to see his enemy fall into hell before he did.
The soul tools unfurled in the air, weaving a thin energy shield that barely held against the onrushing tidal wave of annihilating heat, already groaning under the strain.
"Xishui, be careful. Full defense."
Across the way, Long Xiaoyao's face was grave to the extreme. In his clouded eyes burned reflections of the worlddevouring golden fire.
He could feel with perfect clarity—Karna now was not the Karna from moments ago. The level of power had risen to a point that truly threatened them and could incinerate all.
Without hesitation, he stepped forward.
Roar—!!!
A dragon's cry shook heaven and earth. Pitchblack soul power erupted from him in an explosion.
His body expanded and warped midair. Jetblack scales swept over him, gleaming with a dark, indestructible sheen.
In the space of a blink, a black Holy Dragon over a kilometer long, blotting out the sky, coiled above the ruins.
Its colossal body loomed like a mountain range. Vast wings spread a shroud of darkness.
He sheltered Xu Tianran, Ye Xishui, and a handful of core members beneath his mountainlike form, forming the last, seemingly unbreakable bulwark.
The massive dragon's head dipped, rumbling a threat as it faced the oncoming solar judgment.
"Roooar—!!!"
The Dark Holy Dragon loosed a skyrending roar. Torrents of darkattribute soul power surged forth, congealing into nearly tangible black mist, rolling and bellowing as it sought to build an absolute barrier against light, to hold back Karna's allpervasive, allconsuming sunfire.
When the blazing gold fire struck the black mist, there was no earthshaking boom—only a teethsetting sizzle of annihilation.
Black steam billowed, reeking with a soulscalding char, as if opposing laws fought to erase each other.
"O Scorched Skies, curse my flesh!"
Karna's voice held no feeling now, like a god high above pronouncing sentence—absolute, indifferent.
Endless light and heat gathered from the void, which he forced with unmatched will into compression and refinement, pouring it all into the spear's tip.
Hum—!
The golden shaft thrummed, becoming a lance wrought purely of ultimate radiance.
Its length flowed with the glare of liquid starfire, as though an entire sun's rage had been crushed and caged within. Every inch of it radiated power enough to vaporize mountains and boil seas dry in an instant.
At this moment, it was no longer a spear. What Karna gripped was no mere weapon, but a compressed sun.
The terror of its power could chill the heart.