Facing Du Busi's obstruction, Kong Deming's expression turned ghastly in an instant—ashen to iron-blue, with a pallor beneath.
His heart burned with anxiety. He tried to look past Du Busi toward the distance, where destructive energy was gathering. Xu Tiannan's situation was hanging by a thread.
"Du Busi, out of my way!"
Kong Deming roared. The Silver Moon Divine Light Shield flared again, countless soul tool beams primed to fire.
"Out of the way? Dream on!"
Du Busi grinned savagely, emerald light surging skyward, refusing to yield.
"Why didn't you step aside earlier? Now you want to leave? Too late. Stay right here and watch with me as your Regent King… turns to smoke and ash."
In an instant, offense and defense reversed.
Moments ago, Kong Deming sat firmly in command, blocking Du Busi from striking Xu Tiannan.
In the blink of an eye, Du Busi was the one riding high, pinning the frantic Kong Deming in place.
This dramatic reversal filled Kong Deming with helplessness and rage, yet he could only watch as that sun of ending in the distance prepared to pass final judgment upon Xu Tiannan.
However, at the very instant Karna's god-slaying strike was about to hit Xu Tiannan, the unexpected occurred.
A destructive force far surpassing the Douluo plane's limit erupted from nothing.
A hazy, purple-black phantom with a bizarre smile quietly stepped in front of Xu Tiannan. She merely extended a single finger.
Finger and spearpoint met.
There was no earth-shaking explosion—only suffocating annihilation.
The light of the God-Slaying Spear—an attack enough to slay a god—was erased as if by a rubber, crumbling inch by inch from the spear's tip, disintegrating into nothing.
Moreover, a cold, eerie power raced back along the link between the Noble Phantasm and Karna.
"Urgh—!"
Karna grunted. His golden armor groaned under unbearable strain, cracks spidering across it.
His core, already destabilized by his Master's death and his own ultimate sublimation, was pushed to the brink of collapse by the Lord Ravager's power.
The light faded completely.
Xu Tiannan collapsed to the ground, still shaken, staring at the purple-black phantom that had saved his life.
In the distance, Karna's figure turned ghostly thin, golden armor shattered. He dropped to one knee, using the divine spear to barely support himself.
He lifted his head. His molten-gold eyes seemed to look at Xu Tiannan, and also into the void, full of regret and deep self-reproach.
"Utterly… sorry… Master…"
His voice was barely a whisper, weighed down by the unspeakable.
"In the end… I still failed… to fulfill your wish…"
"This contract unfulfilled… this entrusted task undone… is… Karna's… greatest dereliction…"
Bearing crushing regret and guilt for failing to avenge his Master, the Sun God's child dissolved into countless motes of golden light, like extinguished stars, slowly fading into the cold ruins.
In the end, he could not shine the sun's radiance upon the destination his Master had hoped for.
Within the Silver Moon Divine Light Shield's isolated domain, Du Busi was blocking Kong Deming, preventing him from rescuing Xu Tiannan.
Yet when the apocalyptic wave from Karna's unleashed Noble Phantasm suddenly erupted—only to snuff out as if squeezed dead by an invisible giant hand—
A terror beyond a Limit Douluo's comprehension, a presence that made his very soul tremble, flared outside.
"What… is that?!"
Du Busi blanched in shock. He could even feel that Karna's presence—brilliant as the sun—was rapidly dimming and vanishing under that sudden power's interference.
Even a Servant that strong, god-like, was instantly defeated and dismissed?!
Overwhelming horror swallowed Du Busi.
His resolve for a fight to the death was doused in ice by this incomprehensible terror, chilled to nothing in an instant.
He wasn't afraid of battle; he simply knew that before a being of that tier, his death would be meaningless, not even leaving a ripple.
The Body Sect's legacy must not be severed here.
"I have to go."
The thought seized his mind like instinct.
At the instant when the external energy quakes subsided, and Kong Deming's mind wavered from the sudden appearance of the phantom and Karna's exit, introducing the slightest slack in his control over the Silver Moon Divine Light Shield—
"Open, damn you!"
Du Busi let out a beast-like bellow. Emerald light blazed around him, his blood and qi boiling as if aflame.
Regardless of cost, he triggered the Body Sect's most domineering secret art, permanently damaging his foundation to force his strength to a never-before-seen peak in a single instant.
"Ninth Soul Skill: Yellow Springs Emerald Starfall."
He transformed into a green, wildly unstable orb of terrifying energy and slammed hard into the inner wall of the Silver Moon Divine Light Shield.
Kong Deming snapped back, face changing, pouring power into his soul tools: "Don't even think about it!"
Hum—!
The Silver Moon Divine Light Shield flared, runes racing, locking tight.
But Du Busi's desperate strike was too fearsome, and together with the minute slack from the prior disturbance—
Crack!
A crisp shattering sounded. The incredibly tough inner wall of the shield was forced open—a hairline fracture.
"Pu!"
Du Busi spewed a mouthful of blood laced with bits of viscera. His body crazed with countless fissures like cracked porcelain, his aura plummeting—he'd paid a brutal price.
Yet madness flashed in his eyes.
Now.
He turned into a near-collapsing emerald streak and forced himself through the crack, heedless of everything.
"Stay!"
Shock and fury in one, Kong Deming condensed a searing soul tool beam in an instant, firing precisely at Du Busi's fleeing back.
Du Busi made no defense at all, only pouring every last shred of soul power into speed.
Ssst!
The beam pierced his shoulder blade, spraying blood.
Du Busi's body shuddered, but he borrowed the impact to move even faster, fleeing toward the distant mountains beyond Mingdu without a backward glance, shrinking to a speck on the horizon in a blink.
Kong Deming withdrew the Silver Moon Divine Light Shield with an ugly expression, stared after Du Busi, and finally sighed helplessly.
A fleeing Limit Douluo burning his very source is indeed hard to keep.
He turned, gaze heavy, toward Xu Tiannan—more precisely, toward the purple-black phantom that had saved him and chilled the bone.
Xu Tiannan sat limp on the ground, still shaken, glaring after the fleeing Du Busi, eyes full of viciousness and unwillingness.
"Why didn't you keep him?!"
Unable to help it, he looked to the phantom at his side.
That hazy, smiling purple-black phantom didn't so much as glance toward where Du Busi had vanished.
"A startled ant, nothing more. Why waste the effort? His existence does not affect the larger game—in fact… he may yet bring a sliver of negligible… amusement."
A bewitching voice sounded softly, with a detached scorn that looked down on all beings.
In the Lord Ravager's eyes, even someone as strong as the Body Sect Master, a level 99 Du Busi—his life or death was dust, unworthy of her attention.
...
"So Karna has exited as well… As expected, Phantylia intervened."
Lu Jingming stood atop a relatively intact tower, eyes half closed. His mental power, far beyond ordinary, spread like an invisible web, carefully catching every residual ripple from the palace.
The once-vast auras of Long Xiaoyao and Ye Xishui had been completely snuffed out, and Karna's blazing sun, impossible to gaze at directly, had gone dark.
Through his link to the Holy Grail, he clearly confirmed the Sun God's son had retired from the field.
Given Karna's strength, even the strongest Servants in this Holy Grail War—Feixiao, Jing Yuan, and the like—could not easily slay him.
Therefore, only Phantylia, who had obtained the Golden Tree's flesh, could have done it. Though wounded by Acheron, with her recovery ability, she had likely already regained part of her power.
"It seems she still hasn't abandoned the chess piece that is Xu Tiannan."
A look of understanding flickered in Lu Jingming's eyes.
He knew Phantylia's style all too well—she loved to guide civilizations into self-destruction rather than crushing them with her own hands.
Preserving Xu Tiannan and the Sun-Moon Empire's framework was precisely to ignite a continent-spanning war, letting this world topple itself amid endless strife and ruin.
"When the Holy Grail War ends, the continent's wars will reignite."
He murmured, a faint, indifferent curve on his lips.
He seemed already to see, upon the ruins of the Heavenly Soul and Dou Ling empires—and after the Star Luo Empire had all its edges worn off by war—how his Haiyuan City forces would rise with the tide and seize the final reins of power.
War would inevitably be accompanied by mountains of corpses and seas of blood—he knew this well.
The highest throne has always been piled atop white bones.
Lu Jingming saw himself with perfect clarity—he was selfish and ravenously ambitious—a villain, at least in the eyes of those with unrealistic ideals.
To achieve his goals, he cared not how many died along the way.
Granted, he believed he retained a sliver of a bottom line. For instance, during the Mingdu catastrophe, he had indeed left behind some contingencies that might save many civilians.
But that was more to soothe the faint remnants of his conscience than out of true mercy.
"Since ancient times, who among those in power did not have a black heart?"
He sneered. "So long as I can reach the ending I desire, a blackened conscience may as well stay black."
Every man for himself, or heaven and earth will destroy him.
That was his creed.
"Better I betray the world than let the world betray me."
Everything seemed within his calculations; the situation was developing as he had foreseen.
He was ready. Once the Sun-Moon Empire launched its war, aside from the Star Luo Empire, the Heavenly Soul and Dou Ling empires wouldn't be able to stop it—their fates already sealed. As for Star Luo, one war would silence all dissent.
At that time, Haiyuan City would take the stage.
Just as all was about to settle, Lu Jingming couldn't shake a twitching eyelid, as if he'd forgotten something.
With the palace battle over, there were only three fronts left: Jingliu versus the Sea God Tang San, Feixiao versus Celenova, and Shrek Academy versus the Holy Spirit Cult.
As for the others, they had either left the powder keg of Mingdu via Haiyuan City or died at the hands of the antimatter legion.
Civilians? Few remained in Mingdu. Before the antimatter legion, ordinary people were no different from ants.
One could say that Mingdu was now a purgatory. The overwhelming negative energy from the deaths of millions was practically a dream feast for evil soul masters.
The situation was clear. The Holy Grail War would end soon. Lu Jingming couldn't think what he'd overlooked to make him so uneasy.
Over the chaotic battlefield of Mingdu, streams of destructive energy and the thunder of battle wove a doomsday symphony.
Yet beneath the clamor, a more farcical feast was quietly being prepared.
"Hee-hee~ So lively! Such big 'fireworks'—wouldn't it be a shame not to set them off?"
The Masked Fool—agent of chaos and consummate fun-seeker—Sparkle, hummed an off-key, cheerful tune, flitting through the ruined armories and hidden munitions depots across Mingdu like a sprite at a festival.
Where she passed, the Sun-Moon Empire's town-suppressing superweapons—ninth-tier fixed-installation soul-guided shells capable of vaporizing a city—vanished like magic.
In their place, she left goofy, brightly colored Sparkle dolls wearing eerie grinning masks.
These dolls were casually "forgotten" on street corners, rooftops, even atop the wreckage of destroyed soul tools. Stuffed not with cotton, but with horrific explosives reworked and compressed by Sparkle via the Masked Fool's unique Path of Elation.
A prank on an unprecedented scale—turning all of Mingdu into a powder keg—was complete.
"Aiya, prep work done~ Next I'll need my 'good big sis' to help."
Sparkle clapped contentedly, a pure yet perilous smile blossoming. Her figure rippled like water and melted into the shadows.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere on another front was entirely different.
The golden Valkyrie, Durandal, wielded Abyss Flower. Her offensive was like a storm, each thrust bearing the power to sunder mountains and split the sea.
Her opponent, Vita, moved with unruffled elegance—as if dancing a waltz.
"Remarkable strength and spirit, Miss Durandal," Vita said with a light laugh, gracefully sidestepping a direct thrust. "But sometimes, wisdom is more effective than brute force."
Before her words fell, the massive mech, Lone Planetfarer, swung a heavy mechanical arm with crushing force, forcing Durandal back for the moment.