Before the words finished, Feixiao became a streak of azure gale and struck first.
Her battle-axe raised a storm of wind that tore all before it, cleaving straight for the seemingly clumsiest Xia Xuancheng.
Boom!
Xia Xuancheng roared. His giant hammer, wrapped in thunder and destruction, slammed up to meet her.
A clangor to shatter mountains erupted at the moment hammer met axe.
The Silver Hammer Douluo staggered back, arm-armor cracking to splinters and exposing muscle coursing with destructive golden blood—yet he took the blow head-on.
Meanwhile, the other three attacks arrived.
Luan Feng's phoenix sword swept in from the left, unleashing a sea of violet flame imbued with a soul-scorching will of annihilation.
Wang Yiheng charged like a primordial beast, head lowered, cruel horns first. Space warped where he ran, dark-red flames scorching all.
Liao Mengkai moved like a wraith. His long blade cut for Feixiao's back without a sound, the edge so sharp it left fine black lines in the air.
Facing the quartet's assault, Feixiao neither dodged nor flinched. Her fighting spirit only flared hotter.
She cried out. Flying Aureus loosed a sky-shaking scream, and a mighty gale erupted from her, forming a heaven-piercing, earth-rending azure tornado.
Boom-boom-boom!
Swordlight, flame, and blade all struck the tornado almost at once, spawning an unending chain of terrifying explosions.
The entire subspace shook violently. Its edges began to collapse, exposing the outside's chaotic void.
At the tornado's heart, Feixiao danced her axe—each strike simple, direct, and savage.
As the axe sang, she split her focus to condense wind-lances and hurl them, using her lone strength to suppress four demigods at once.
Her style was wide-open and fierce—unyielding forward momentum and iron-blooded battlefield ferocity, turning defense into offense and forcing the four to guard instead.
Luan Feng's flames were scattered by the gale. Wang Yiheng's soul-guide high-heat beam was cleaved in half by a casual axe. Liao Mengkai's razor slashes were blocked or narrowly evaded.
Xia Xuancheng tried to press in with his hammer, but Feixiao reversed her grip and smashed the hammerhead with the back of her axe. The terrifying force split his tiger's mouth and nearly tore the weapon from his hands.
"Not enough. Is that all you've got?"
Feixiao fought fiercer the longer it went. Her axe thrummed in excitement. She swept aside the four-pronged assault, and her wild laughter echoed across the turbulent space.
"Put your backs into it."
Celenova, until then watching in stillness, flashed a sliver of cold light in her eyes.
She slowly raised her hand, a deeper, darker destruction gathering at her fingertip—ready to intervene personally and deliver a killing blow.
Yet in that instant, the unexpected happened.
Feixiao's and the four demigods' reckless, all-out clashes had already piled up energy beyond what the subspace could bear.
On top of that, Celenova, constantly siphoning legion-power to buff the four, was radiating energy far beyond this realm's tolerances.
Crack—rumble!
At last, the space could no longer hold, and shattered like a broken mirror.
The world spun. Underfoot fell away. The surroundings changed in a blink.
The cold star-glow and twisted void vanished, replaced by a dim sky and the endless, deathly silence of Mingdu's ruins below.
Broken soul-guide towers, collapsed grand edifices, vast craters… They had fallen out of subspace back into the Douluo primary plane, right above the ruins of Mingdu.
Almost the instant they appeared—
An invisible yet vast pressure—carrying the weight of the entire Douluo plane—swept in from every direction and pressed down heavily on Celenova and Feixiao.
This was not any living will, but the planet's own instinctive rejection of foreign powers that threatened its core existence.
Celenova and Feixiao's might had long exceeded what the plane could tolerate. Feixiao had been suppressing herself before, avoiding the plane's instinctive rejection.
But in fighting four demigods, she had unconsciously exceeded the limit, drawing the plane's backlash.
Against Phantylia and Archeron, the plane's will could only tremble. But facing Celenova and Feixiao, who had yet to ascend as gods, it finally dared to stand up.
The sky dimmed like ink. Clouds boiled in from every quarter, churning madly.
Colossal thunder-dragons, hued in ominous dark red and deep violet, raced through the cloudbanks, roaring like heaven's wrath—divine punishment descending.
The air turned heavy and viscous. Space itself tightened and hardened.
Feixiao's heroic face still burned with battle-heat, but her brows drew slightly together.
She could feel it clearly: her tempered, transhuman body felt shackled. Every breath, every surge of blood, every call on the ocean of power within was like opposing heaven and earth themselves—crushed beneath an omnipresent suppression from the world's fabric.
If she forced her full power, even leaving aside whether she could beat Celenova, she might first trigger the plane's most savage backlash upon herself.
Her long-hafted axe thrummed in frustration. The specter of Flying Aureus circled her restlessly, its azure glow flickering under the unseen weight.
On the other side, Celenova felt the same colossal plane-pressure.
Her perfect face remained impassive, but the abyssal, all-devouring destruction around her involuntarily drew in a few degrees.
Cold light flickered rapidly in her eyes as she computed the consequences and cost-benefit of deploying different power tiers under this suppression.
The four demigod-class soul mentors empowered by Celenova, however, were less affected.
Though their power's source was Celenova, their bodies and souls still belonged to this plane. And their output hadn't crossed the plane's limit, so they didn't trigger such a brutal backlash.
Seeing Feixiao constrained, the four's eyes flashed red—and they attacked again.
"Ha! Good—like a little shackling could bind me, Feixiao?"
Facing both the encirclement and the plane's suppression, Feixiao did not retreat. She laughed long, her eyes flaring even wilder.
In her right hand appeared a strange weapon—long-bladed, a gun-knife hybrid suited to both thrusting like a spear and slashing like a sword—while her left still gripped the heavy axe.
The axe was dominant; the gun-blade was nimble. She would dual-wield two distinct forms at once.
With the axe shearing all in its path in the simplest, roughest fashion, she hacked at Xia Xuancheng and Wang Yiheng.
No flourish—only extreme power and speed.
Where her blade passed, space itself groaned. The plane's heavy suppression seemed momentarily split by raw force.
Boom!
Hammer met axe again. Xia Xuancheng felt an irresistible force—his tiger's mouth fully tore, and the silver hammer flew from his hand.
Wang Yiheng was cleaved away, his flames guttering as he tumbled thousands of meters.
At the same time, the gun-blade in Feixiao's right hand moved as if alive.
Her wrist turned; the blade snapped forward, popping Luan Feng's flaming phoenix. Then, with precision, she caught Liao Mengkai's killing edge.
Ding-ding-dang-dang—impacts pattered like rain on plantain leaves, urgent and bright.
Her style was grand and sweeping—yet subtle to the finest detail.
Under the axe: the unmatched ferocity of a battlefield titan. In the dancing blade: the profound mastery of many martial ways.
Eighteen weapons—she'd long fused them into one, making every motion a killing stroke.
More terrifying still was her tempered body.
Stray flames licked her bare arm, and residual blade-qi scored her body, but left only pale marks—unable even to make her waver.
Her body itself was the strongest weapon.
Under plane-suppression and siege by four demigods, Feixiao still pressed the attack, growing fiercer by the breath.
Axe and gun-blade wove a storm of death, pinning the four.
Above, the dark-red thunderstorm raged stronger. Bolts of heavenly punishment began striking indiscriminately around the field, forcing Celenova to divert and evade.
Staring at Feixiao—rampaging through the encirclement with unstoppable momentum—Celenova's icy eyes finally rippled by a fraction.
This Arbiter-General was even more troublesome than she had calculated.
….
"Well now, since Celenova has taken the field herself, Great-Victory General's side must be going nicely."
Lu Jingming stood upon the ravaged ruins, gazing up into the ten-thousand-meter sky.
Within the layered thunderclouds, violet-black destruction clashed with azure gale, each exchange making the firmament tremble. Were the battle lower, even the spillover would have ploughed the ruins again.
His eyes were deep, as if they pierced the clouds to see the world-shocking duel.
"But this drama over Mingdu should be nearing its curtain."
His gaze fell back nearby—to a brilliant golden light shooting from Tang Wutong's brow and swiftly taking shape.
It became a majestic, awe-inspiring azure figure wreathed in endless ocean waves and holy radiance.
A tidal divine might surged, as if to overawe all creation.
Sea God Tang San—his long-hidden wisp of divine sense was finally forced to appear.
Lu Jingming drew a deep breath. His eyes turned keen as blades. He murmured, "So you finally appear… Fine—come. Let's see where our limit lies."
"As you wish, Xiao Ming."
A gentle, resolute voice sounded behind him.
Raiden Makoto had appeared without notice. She gazed at Lu Jingming's profile, eyes filled with unreserved trust and devotion.
As one who should have died, it was Lu Jingming who gave her a second life. For that, she would repay him in full.