"Xue Ji—fuse with me! Let us cut this overgrown fish to pieces with the Asura God's blade!"
Tang San's cold, murderous roar echoed across the lightning-torn expanse of the Devil Whale Trench, cutting straight through the deafening boom of collapsing tidal waves and the crackle of purple-black thunder.
Fifty feet above his left shoulder, hovering amidst the lashing rain and freezing salt spray, the reshaped three-hundred-thousand-year Dark Golden Three-Headed Bat King shivered from head to toe with fanatical, bloodthirsty delight. At her Master's call, the tattered black cloak wrapped around her broad shoulders whipped away into the howling gale, exposing her coarse, grayish-gold leathery body and the thick, worm-like dark-golden veins pulsing furiously along her neck and arms.
"Yes, Master! Xue Ji is coming! Use Xue Ji's flesh and blood however you please!"
With a shrill, triple-layered ultrasonic screech that shattered the falling raindrops within twenty yards into white mist, Xue Ji folded her clawed limbs inward and dove straight down toward Tang San's back like a falling crimson meteor.
Down on the churning purple-black surface of the sea, Tang San planted his boots against the surging waves, holding the one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty Sea God Trident vertically in his right hand while throwing his left arm wide open to receive the diving bat-woman.
His crimson-tinted blue eyes blazed with unhinged hatred as he circulated the divine imprint etched into his spiritual sea during their covenant on the sea stack:
"Asura God Secret Art — Blood-God Fusion!!"
BOOM—!
A towering column of pitch-black and dark-red slaughter light erupted from Tang San's spine as Xue Ji's diving body slammed directly against his shoulder blades!
However, a thousand yards away at the center of the boiling abyssal crater, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King had no intention of sitting back and watching its prey complete a bizarre transformation right in front of its nose!
Having lived, hunted, and slaughtered at the bottom of the northern ocean for nine hundred and ninety thousand years, the colossal, two-hundred-meter-long leviathan possessed combat instincts honed through tens of thousands of brutal life-and-death battles. The instant Xue Ji dove into Tang San's back and the sword-shaped seal on her chest flared with a razor-sharp, ancient law of slaughter, the Whale King's single, twenty-meter-wide purple-red right eye narrowed with ferocious killing intent.
Unlike the deities in the Divine Realm or the High Priests who guarded the ancient temples, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King had spent nearly a million years isolated at the bottom of the northern ocean trenches. It had never heard of the Asura God, nor did it know anything about Slaughter City or Hell Road on the mainland.
To the ancient sea overlord, it only knew two things: first, that this human boy was holding its mortal enemy Poseidon's hated golden trident; and second, that the boy was now merging his flesh with a mutated, three-hundred-thousand-year blood-bat using some sinister, forbidden blood-sacrifice secret art that gave off a repulsive, spine-chilling aura of pure termination!
"Playing with disgusting blood method tricks in front of This King?!"
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's booming mental voice thundered across the storm-choked sky, vibrating with tyrannical disdain and rising murderousness.
"This King does not care what hideous bat monster you are gluing onto your back! In This King's ocean, do you think This King will politely wait for you to finish your little fusion ritual?! Turn to ash along with that broken fork!!"
CRACK—BOOOOOOM!!
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King did not merely swing its tail this time.
The two-hundred-meter-long crystal-and-bone torso of the half-step Divine Beast sank halfway into the purple-black sea, and the massive dorsal fin along its spine—which resembled a jagged mountain ridge forged from dark-violet amethyst—lit up with blinding, apocalyptic brilliance!
"Abyssal Demonic Whale — Ten-Thousand-Fathom Purple Thunder Prison!!"
With a deafening roar that caused the ocean floor five thousand meters below to fracture and spew volcanic magma, seventy-two pillars of condensed, nine-hundred-thousand-year purple-black demonic thunder—each as thick as an ancient fortress tower—erupted simultaneously from the sea and the storm clouds above!
Unlike ordinary lightning that dispersed after a single flash, these seventy-two pillars of purple-black thunder were formed from compressed abyssal water and half-divine thunder law. They wove together in mid-air at the speed of light, forming a shrinking, inescapable cage of purple plasma that slammed straight down from all four directions toward the pillar of blood-light where Tang San and Xue Ji were fusing!
Merging a human Super Douluo's body and meridians with a three-hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast's flesh through the Asura God Secret Art — Blood-God Fusion required five full breaths of uninterrupted skeletal and spiritual restructuring.
Right now, only two breaths had passed! Xue Ji's leathery torso had only sunk halfway into Tang San's back, her ribs and spine actively weaving around his internal organs. If those seventy-two pillars of nine-hundred-thousand-year purple thunder struck them mid-fusion, the violent interruption would detonate both of their cores from the inside out!
"Protect Xiao San!! Buy him three breaths of time!!"
From the northern perimeter of the encirclement, Tang Chen let out a thunderous roar that shook the storm clouds!
The legendary founder of the Clear Sky Sect did not hesitate for a fraction of a second. Even though his ninth Spirit Ring slot was empty after the mainland escape and his internal pathways were only eighty percent recovered, he burned his Level 99 Limit Douluo vital essence without reserve, leaping straight across the northern sky to intercept twenty-four of the incoming purple thunder pillars!
"Seventh Spirit Ring Ability: Clear Sky Avatar! Clear Sky Nine Absolutes — Absolute Shatter! Absolute Shield!!"
Tang Chen swung his colossal, hundred-meter-long dark metal hammer in a blurring, hurricane-like arc!
He did not use the Asura God's sword projection—knowing that without the Asura God possessing his body, his hammer was his sturdiest defensive wall. He chained eight consecutive rotations of the Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer into Absolute Shatter and Absolute Shield, erecting a spinning, impenetrable wall of crimson-black kinetic force directly in front of the northern thunder pillars!
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Twenty-four tower-thick pillars of nine-hundred-thousand-year demonic thunder slammed into Tang Chen's spinning hammer wall like twenty-four falling stars!
Sparks of purple lightning and dark kinetic shockwaves exploded across five miles of the sky! Tang Chen let out a muffled groan as the sheer, overwhelming elemental weight of the Whale King's half-step divine power traveled straight up the shaft of his Clear Sky Hammer. The tiger's mouth between his thumb and forefinger split open, spraying dark red blood across the handle as his aged arms trembled violently, yet the old Limit Douluo locked his knees in mid-air and refused to retreat a single step!
At the exact same instant, from the western perimeter, Tang Hao and Tang Xiao charged forward to intercept the western wave of twenty-four thunder pillars!
"Third Elder, Fifth Elder, stay back and guard the wounded!" Tang Hao bellowed over his shoulder to the two remaining uninjured Clear Sky Sect elders who were holding up the unconscious, heavily burned Seventh Elder Tang Haien and the Eighth Elder. "Brother Xiao, with me!!"
"Right behind you, Hao'er!!"
Tang Xiao's single remaining right arm bulged with corded muscle as his Level 97 Super Douluo spirit power erupted, his eight Spirit Rings flashing as his Clear Sky Hammer expanded into a colossal azure-black giant in the sky:
"Eighth Spirit Ring Ability: Sky-Splitting Overlord Smash!!"
And right beside Tang Xiao, Tang Hao's eyes turned the color of fresh blood as the dark-red cleaver brand on his chest flared with the brutal, life-burning power taught to him by Hypros, the God of Slaughter!
"Annihilation Slaughter Domain! Slaughter God's Wrath! Bloodthirsty Demonic Strike!!"
Tang Hao merged his eight pitch-black Spirit Rings directly into the blood-red mist of his domain, igniting his own blood to multiply his physical strength tenfold as he swung the colossal, jagged God-Slaughtering Blood-Cleaver horizontally alongside Tang Xiao's giant hammer!
KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!!
The blood-red cleaver wave and the giant hammer smash collided head-on against the twenty-four western pillars of purple demonic thunder!
For one breath, the two brothers of the Clear Sky Sect held the lightning at bay.
Then, the terrifying gap between mortal Spirit Masters—even a Limit Douluo missing his ninth ring and a one-armed Super Douluo—and a nine-hundred-thousand-year overlord whose body was ninety-nine percent divine made itself brutally clear!
CRACK—!
The purple demonic thunder did not vanish after the initial impact; it exploded into millions of serpent-like arcs of compressed abyssal electricity that devoured Tang Hao's spectral blood wave and crawled straight over Tang Xiao's hammer avatar!
"Ugh—!!"
Tang Xiao's Clear Sky Hammer Avatar shattered into fragments of light! The one-armed Sect Leader was blasted backward for half a mile, his robes catching fire from the purple lightning as a mouthful of bright blood sprayed from his lips!
Beside him, Tang Hao took the remaining brunt of the explosion squarely on the flat of his God-Slaughtering Blood-Cleaver. The linen bandages wrapped around his chest burst into shreds as his barely healed mainland wounds tore open once more, soaking his muscular torso in fresh crimson blood as he was driven three hundred yards back across the waves, his boots carving two deep troughs into the electrified seawater!
Meanwhile, on the eastern flank, the final twenty-four pillars of purple-black thunder—accompanied by a thousand-meter-tall whirlpool of crushing abyssal water controlled by the Whale King—surged toward Tang San's exposed right side!
"Sea Dragon! Sea Spear! Lend your spirit power to my staff!"
High Priestess Bo Saixi floated at the forefront of the eastern sky, her blue robes billowing in the hurricane wind as her eight black rings and one hundred-thousand-year blood-red ninth ring shone with blinding golden-blue radiance.
Behind her, Sea Dragon Douluo (Level 95) and Sea Spear Douluo (Level 94) placed their palms firmly against the back of Bo Saixi's shoulders, pouring every drop of their Super Douluo oceanic spirit power into her vessel!
"Sixth Spirit Ring Ability: Sea Burial! Eighth Spirit Ring Ability: Ocean's Roar!!"
Bo Saixi raised her silver staff with both hands and struck the empty air in front of her!
Space itself tore open above the eastern sea, manifesting a colossal, five-hundred-meter-wide dimensional gate that emitted a terrifying suction vortex, while a sonic-aquatic tsunami carrying the weight of the ocean trenches rolled forward to meet the Whale King's thunder pillars!
BOOOOOOOM—!!
Twelve of the purple thunder pillars were sucked straight into the dimensional vortex of Sea Burial, while the other twelve collided with Ocean's Roar and shattered into a blinding rain of purple and blue sparks!
Yet, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King had only used those seventy-two thunder pillars as a feint to tie down the elders!
"Too slow, Poseidon's puppets! Even when all of you join hands, you cannot even scratch This King's scales! Watch as This King crushes your precious inheritor in a single bite!!"
While Tang Chen, Tang Hao, and Bo Saixi were all reeling from the shockwaves of blocking the seventy-two thunder pillars, the two-hundred-meter-long Deep Sea Demonic Whale King propelled its mountainous body forward through the churning sea at a speed that defied its gargantuan mass!
In a single blink of an eye, the colossal leviathan crossed the thousand-yard gap!
Its cavernous, fifty-meter-wide maw—lined with rows of jagged, dark-purple crystal teeth that looked like rows of inverted mountain peaks and swirling inside with a black hole of devouring abyssal lightning—opened wide directly in front of the blood-red light pillar where Tang San stood, clamping down to swallow Tang San and Xue Ji whole!
"Xiao San, dodge!!" Tang Hao's voice tore with sheer terror across the western sea!
"Tang San!!" Bo Saixi's face turned deathly pale as she tried to channel her ninth Spirit Ring ability, Divine Oceanic Obliteration, knowing she was half a breath too far away to stop those jaws from closing!
The shadow of the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's upper jaw blotted out the sky above Tang San's head. The rank, suffocating stench of nine hundred thousand years of devoured sea beasts and ozone washed over him, and the devouring gravitational pull inside the whale's mouth began dragging the seawater beneath his boots upward into its gullet!
Five breaths had passed.
Inside the pillar of blood-light right between the Whale King's closing jaws, the sickening sounds of snapping bone and merging flesh suddenly ceased.
A single, vertical blood-red eye snapped open in the center of a grotesque, dark-golden forehead.
"You want to swallow me, you one-eyed piece of rotting meat?"
A voice that sounded like three abyssal demons and a cold executioner speaking in overlapping unison boomed from inside the closing jaws!
SHING—KA-BOOOOOOOOOOM!!
Before the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's upper and lower jaws could snap shut, a blinding, two-hundred-meter-long cross-shaped slash—half dazzling golden oceanic light, and half pitch-black crimson slaughter law—erupted straight out from the center of its mouth!
"Golden Thirteen Halberds, First Strike: No Constant Wind and Clouds!!"
"Asura's Heaven-Severing Strike!!"
Two divine-tier weapon techniques, wielded simultaneously by the left and right hands of a single monstrous entity, exploded right against the roof and floor of the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's closing mouth!
CRACK—ROOOOOAAARRR!!
For the first time since the battle began, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King let out a deafening, earth-shaking roar not of arrogance, but of sharp, stinging pain!
Three of its three-meter-long purple crystal teeth on the left side of its upper jaw were sliced cleanly in half at the root by the crimson sword light, while the chaotic, space-twisting golden current of the Sea God Trident blasted its fifty-meter-wide jaws violently apart!
Purple-gold blood—thick as molten lava and crackling with violent thunder—sprayed out of the Whale King's bleeding gums as its two-hundred-meter head was forced backward by the point-blank internal explosion, sending thousand-foot waves crashing across the trench!
And hovering in the clear pocket of air directly in front of the Whale King's bleeding snout, bathed in the flashing purple lightning of the storm, stood Tang San in his complete Asura God Secret Art — Blood-God Fusion state!
Seeing that form appear under the lightning flashes, Sea Dragon Douluo, Sea Spear Douluo, and the Clear Sky Sect elders—who had only seen Tang San and Xue Ji separated earlier on the northern shore—stared in utter, petrified silence.
Tang San was no longer a human youth.
Standing nearly three meters tall in mid-air, his towering frame was encased in a thick, leathery hide of coarse grayish-gold scales and muscle, over which thick dark-golden and blood-red veins wriggled like living serpents. Sprouting from his broad back were a pair of twelve-meter-wide, scarred leathery bat wings inscribed with burning crimson runes that beat slowly against the hurricane winds, each flap scattering sparks of corrosive blood-mist across the sea.
His head had widened into the hideous, angular contour of the Three-Headed Bat King. Two long, hairless, scabby bat ears twitched above his tangled mane of midnight-black and blood-red hair. Four sharp, yellowed fangs jutted over his dark lips, and above his two slitted, crimson-blue eyes sat that third, vertical blood-red bat eye in the center of his forehead, radiating a cold, inhuman calculation.
Most unsettling of all were the two raised, grotesque relief-faces of the Bat King formed from living flesh on either side of his neck just above his collarbones.
Those two bat-faces were Xue Ji's fused consciousness and three-hundred-thousand-year beast origin! With every breath Tang San took, the two bat-faces on his collarbones opened their fanged mouths to inhale the violent, meridian-tearing conflict between the Sea God's power in his right arm and the Asura God's power in his left arm, coughing out tiny spatters of dark-golden blood onto his chest armor so that Tang San's own internal pathways remained completely unharmed!
In his clawed right hand, Tang San held the golden, one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty Sea God Trident.
In his clawed left hand, he gripped the two-meter-long, jagged crimson greatsword projection of the Asura Demon Sword!
And radiating from his three-meter-tall hybrid body was a spiritual pressure that had surged past his base Level 96 rank to stand firmly at the peak of a Level 99 Limit Douluo!
Two hundred yards away in the churning sea, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King shook its mountainous head, spitting out a mouthful of purple-gold blood and the broken halves of its three severed crystal teeth.
Its single, twenty-meter-wide purple-red right eye locked onto Tang San's three-eyed, bat-winged form—and then narrowed sharply onto the two-meter-long crimson greatsword projection humming in Tang San's left hand!
"What... what kind of blade is that in your left hand?!"
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's booming mental voice no longer carried the lazy, teasing arrogance it had shown a moment ago. For the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, a trace of genuine shock and solemn wariness echoed in its roar!
Because the Whale King had lived its entire nine-hundred-and-ninety-thousand-year life at the bottom of the ocean, it had no idea who the Asura God was, nor did it recognize the name of the Asura Demon Sword.
However, ninety-nine percent of the Whale King's body had already transformed into a true Divine Body! Its sensitivity to the fundamental laws of heaven and earth was infinitely sharper than any mortal Spirit Master's.
Earlier, when Tang Chen had swung his hammer using the Asura Domain, and when Tang San had struck it with the unawakened Sea God Trident, the Whale King had brushed them off easily because their attacks still carried mortal-tier spirit power. Its ninety-nine-percent Divine Body was naturally immune to seventy percent of all mortal-tier damage!
Yet just now, when that jagged crimson greatsword in Tang San's left hand had slashed across its teeth, the Whale King had felt a razor-sharp, cold, and tyrannical Law of Supreme Slaughter and Termination that completely ignored the natural damage-immunity of its Divine Body and sliced straight through its nine-hundred-thousand-year crystal teeth like hot iron through tallow!
"That crimson sword does not belong to Poseidon's ocean lineage!" the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King roared, the purple-black thunder around its two-hundred-meter torso coiling tighter as its combat alertness rose to the maximum. "To think a human boy holding Poseidon's trident would turn himself into a hideous, three-eyed bat monster just to wield a second, evil divine blade! No wonder you dared invade This King's trench tonight! You actually possess a weapon that can injure This King's Divine Body!"
"Injure you?"
Tang San's three eyes—two slitted crimson-blue eyes and the vertical red eye on his forehead—locked onto the colossal whale without a shred of emotion.
When he spoke, his voice resonated with Xue Ji's raspy, ultrasonic triple-tone:
"Tonight, I am not here to injure you. I am here to skin your hide, pry out your bones, dig out your Whale Core, and turn your nine hundred and ninety thousand years of cultivation into my ninth Spirit Ring!"
"Hehehe... yes, Master! Let us drink its blood and eat its eyeballs!" the two grotesque bat-faces on Tang San's collarbones giggled in shrill, bloodthirsty harmony, licking the dark-golden blood from their lips as Xue Ji enthusiastically channeled the Asura Divine Energy into his left arm.
"Great-Grandfather! Father! High Priestess!" Tang San barked across the sea without turning his head. "Tighten the triangular domain lock! Do not let this fish dive back into the five-thousand-meter trench! I will break its scales at close range!"
"Understood!!"
Seeing that Tang San's Asura God Secret Art — Blood-God Fusion had genuinely given him the power to slice through the Whale King's ninety-nine-percent Divine Body, Tang Chen, Tang Hao, and Bo Saixi felt their morale soar! Ignoring their internal injuries, the three Limit Douluos immediately flared their domains to the maximum, locking down the northern, western, and eastern waters so that the surrounding sea became as dense and inescapable as solid iron!
At the center of the locked basin, Tang San did not wait for the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King to gather its next wave of thunder.
FLAP—BOOM!!
The twelve-meter-wide leathery bat wings on Tang San's back beat once with explosive force, while the hundred-thousand-year Abyssal Netherworld Octopus Left Leg Spirit Bone beneath his dark-golden leg armor flared with deep purple-red light!
"Left Leg Spirit Bone Ability: Netherworld Phantom Flash! Abyssal Trench Mire!"
Tang San's three-meter-tall hybrid body vanished from the air in an instantaneous spatial-water teleportation step, leaving behind an exploding toxic water-clone while his true form reappeared directly above the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's mountainous skull!
At the exact moment he appeared above the whale's head, he stomped his clawed left foot downward in mid-air, simultaneously activating his Left Leg Bone's second ability (Abyssal Trench Mire) and his hundred-thousand-year Titan Giant Ape Left Arm Spirit Bone's Gravity Control!
HUMMMMM—!
A hundred-meter-wide dome of pitch-black abyssal swamp darkness and thirty-fold overlapping gravitational distortion slammed straight down onto the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's two-hundred-meter back, dragging its colossal body downward into the churning sea as if ten mountain peaks had been dropped onto its spine!
At the same time, keeping his primary martial spirit—the Deathly Sea Emperor Vine—active first, Tang San lit up six pitch-black Spirit Rings and three blinding blood-red hundred-thousand-year Spirit Rings behind his bat wings!
"First Spirit Ring Ability: Abyssal Maelstrom Bind!"
"Second Spirit Ring Ability: Necrotic Parasitic Spores!"
"Fourth Spirit Ring Ability: Phantom Sea Restraints!"
"Sixth Spirit Ring Ability: Ten-Thousand-Fathom Vine Prison!"
"Seventh Spirit Ring Ability: Deathly Sea Emperor Avatar — Abyssal Soul-Devouring Tentacles!!"
Because Tang San could only use one of his twin martial spirits at a time, before switching to his Clear Sky Hammer for the final execution, he unleashed the full, suffocating control arsenal of his nine-ringed Deathly Sea Emperor Vine—amplified to the Level 99 Limit Douluo tier by his fusion with Xue Ji!
ROOOOOAAARRR!!
The ocean beneath the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King exploded!
Thousands of metallic-blue, thorn-covered Deathly Sea Emperor Vines—each now as thick as a temple pillar under the amplification of his Deathly Sea Emperor Avatar—erupted from the churning seawater below!
The Abyssal Maelstrom Bind and Ten-Thousand-Fathom Vine Prison twisted together into a colossal, spinning cage of dark-blue iron cables that wrapped tightly around the Whale King's fifty-meter-wide tail fin and pectoral fins! Simultaneously, hundreds of semi-ethereal Phantom Sea Restraints phased straight through the Whale King's outer thunder barrier to latch onto its internal meridian nodes, while eight gargantuan Abyssal Soul-Devouring Tentacles manifested from Tang San's avatar, clamping their jagged suction cups directly onto the Whale King's back to frantically siphon away its purple demonic lightning and convert thirty percent of it back into Tang San's own spirit power!
"Mere vines and seaweed dare try to bind This King's Divine Body?! BREAK FOR THIS KING!!"
Trapped inside the overlapping cages of thirty-fold gravity, abyssal mire, and thousands of hundred-thousand-year vines, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King thrashed its two-hundred-meter torso with earth-shattering fury!
Purple-black demonic lightning exploded from every scale on its body! Dozens of pillar-thick Deathly Sea Emperor Vines snapped and burned to ash every second under the terrifying brute force and scorching thunder of the nine-hundred-thousand-year titan!
Yet Tang San didn't expect the vines to hold the Whale King forever—he only needed them to slow the beast's movement by two breaths!
"Right Hand — Golden Thirteen Halberds, Second Strike: Thousand Years of Space!!"
"Left Hand — Asura's Void-Shattering Arc! Asura's Heaven-Severing Strike!!"
Hovering thirty meters above the Whale King's thrashing back, Tang San swung both divine weapons in a brutal, synchronized combination!
First, the one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty Sea God Trident in his right hand swept out in a dazzling golden circle. Reinforced by his Level 99 fused cultivation and the binding vines below, the golden cage of Thousand Years of Space solidified around the Whale King's upper body, freezing the surrounding space and time into a viscous golden amber that halted the leviathan's thrashing head in place!
And in the very next heartbeat, Tang San's clawed left hand—bulging with throbbing dark-golden veins as the two bat-faces on his collarbones screeched and vented billowing clouds of blood steam—swung the two-meter-long crimson projection of the Asura Demon Sword in two consecutive, world-rending slashes!
SHING—!
KRA-BOOOOOOOOOM!!
The first upward slash—Asura's Void-Shattering Arc—tore a spinning black hole of pure slaughter law straight through the dense purple-black thunder barrier protecting the Whale King's neck, swallowing the defensive lightning into nothingness!
The second horizontal slash—Asura's Heaven-Severing Strike—followed directly behind through the gap in the thunder barrier, striking the thick, dark-violet crystal scales right behind the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's head with the full, unbridled sharpness of Asura Divine Energy!
SPLATTER—!!
A sound that had not been heard in the northern ocean for thousands of years echoed across the storm!
The invincible dark-violet crystal scales—which had easily deflected Tang Chen's Clear Sky Hammer and Tang Hao's Blood-Cleaver without a scratch—were sliced open like tough leather under the edge of the Asura Demon Sword projection!
A jagged, twenty-meter-long, four-foot-deep trench was carved straight across the back of the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's neck! A geyser of scorching, purple-gold divine whale blood erupted thirty meters high into the night air, staining the rain and the ocean below a blinding violet-crimson!
"AAAAAARRRRRGGGHHH—!!"
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King let out an agonizing, heaven-shaking bellow that shattered the clouds for twenty miles around!
And at the exact same moment, fifty meters above the bleeding whale, a violent tremor ran through Tang San's three-meter-tall hybrid body!
Pfft! Pfft!
The two grotesque bat-faces of Xue Ji resting on Tang San's collarbones simultaneously spat out two thick jets of dark-golden blood!
Unleashing Thousand Years of Space with the Sea God Trident in his right hand while simultaneously executing two consecutive divine sword strikes (Asura's Void-Shattering Arc and Asura's Heaven-Severing Strike) with the Asura Demon Sword in his left hand had generated a catastrophic internal collision of opposing divine laws inside his body.
Had Tang San been alone, that single combination would have blown his heart and dantian into minced meat. Even with Xue Ji acting as his living sword sheath and absorbing ninety-nine percent of the backlash into her three-hundred-thousand-year beast origin, the sheer intensity of channeling Godking-tier slaughter energy twice in one breath tore dozens of bloody fissures across her fused internal meridians!
"M-Master...!" Xue Ji's raspy, triple-layered voice echoed weakly inside Tang San's skull, laced with both agonizing pain and sick, fanatical pleasure. "That big fish's scales are so hard... channeling the Lord God's sword twice tore thirty percent of Xue Ji's blood veins! Give Xue Ji another mouthful of your vitality... Xue Ji can still take more!"
Tang San didn't even blink as he felt Xue Ji's fused flesh spasming around his ribs.
"Third Spirit Ring Ability: Abyssal Miasma Eruption! Ninth Spirit Ring Ability: Imperial Sea Death Domain — Sovereign Regeneration!"
While diving backward through the rain of purple-gold whale blood, Tang San directed the eight Abyssal Soul-Devouring Tentacles attached to the whale's back—along with his hundred-thousand-year Dual Poison Fangs—to suck in a massive mouthful of the Whale King's spilled purple-gold blood and lightning energy!
Refining that stolen nine-hundred-thousand-year whale blood instantly through the furnace of his Mysterious Heaven Skill and the boundless plant vitality of his ninth God-Bestowed Spirit Ring, Tang San pumped a scorching torrent of restorative life energy straight into Xue Ji's torn meridians inside his chest, forcibly stitching her ruptured blood vessels back together in three seconds flat so she could keep serving as his meat-shield!
Down in the boiling sea below, however, the twenty-meter gash across the back of its neck had driven the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King into a state of complete, apocalyptic madness!
For nine hundred and ninety thousand years, it had reigned as the undisputed god of the ocean depths. Aside from Poseidon thousands of years ago, no living creature had ever made it bleed! And now, a human junior who hadn't even ignited a divine fire had carved a four-foot-deep trench into its neck using a borrowed divine blade!
"YOU DARE MAKE THIS KING BLEED?! YOU DARE SUCK THIS KING'S DIVINE BLOOD?!"
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's single twenty-meter purple-red eye turned completely bloodshot, bulging with a murderous frenzy that made the entire five-thousand-meter Devil Whale Trench beneath them roar like an erupting volcano!
"THIS KING WAS SAVING THIS ORIGIN POWER TO RESIST THE HEAVENLY TRIBULATION! TODAY, EVEN IF THIS KING HAS TO SLEEP FOR ANOTHER THOUSAND YEARS TO RECOVER, THIS KING WILL ANNIHILATE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU ANTS!!"
BOOOOOOOOOOM—!!
Deep inside the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's two-hundred-meter chest cavity, its fist-sized, nine-hundred-and-ninety-thousand-year Whale Core suddenly ignited with blinding purple-gold divine light!
In an instant, every single remaining Deathly Sea Emperor Vine and Abyssal Soul-Devouring Tentacle wrapped around the Whale King's torso was vaporized into nothingness! Even the golden spatial lock of Thousand Years of Space shattered like brittle ice!
"Nine-Hundred-Thousand-Year Demonic Whale Origin Art — Abyssal Thunder Purgatory & Star-Crushing Extinction Wave!!"
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King raised its two-hundred-meter body vertically out of the ocean like a pillar holding up the heavens, and then slammed its entire mountainous mass back down into the sea while releasing an expanding, spherical tsunami of pure, purple-gold Half-Divine Origin Thunder!
This was no longer an ordinary spirit beast attack. By burning a fraction of the九百九十万年 (nine-hundred-and-ninety-thousand-year) origin stored inside its Whale Core, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King unleashed an attack that genuinely touched the threshold of a First-Class God!
The spherical purple-gold shockwave expanded outward across all thirty miles of the Devil Whale Trench at the speed of teleportation!
Wherever the purple-gold origin wave passed, the seawater itself was instantly ionized and evaporated, leaving a three-hundred-meter-deep dry crater in the ocean!
"Watch out!! All hands, full defense!!"
On the northern flank, Tang Chen's expression changed drastically. Seeing that purple-gold wave of half-divine origin thunder hurtling toward him, the old Limit Douluo knew his Absolute Shield alone would be pierced. He immediately ignited his own Asura bloodline, merging his body with his hammer to execute the strongest defensive-offensive clash he could muster without a ninth ring:
"Clear Sky Nine Absolutes — Nine-Ring Fusion Smash!!"
BANG—!
The purple-gold wave slammed into Tang Chen! Even with all eight of his black rings channeling their power into a single point, the colossal Clear Sky Hammer was blasted back against Tang Chen's chest with the force of a collapsing mountain! Three of Tang Chen's ribs cracked audibly, and the ninety-nine-rank Limit Douluo was sent tumbling backward through the storm clouds for two miles, coughing up a stream of dark blood!
On the eastern flank, High Priestess Bo Saixi gritted her teeth as her ninth hundred-thousand-year blood-red Spirit Ring flared to its absolute limit!
"Ninth Spirit Ring Ability: Divine Oceanic Obliteration!!"
Bo Saixi condensed the weight of the surrounding eastern sea into a single, blindingly bright blue teardrop of divine water energy and fired it straight into the oncoming purple-gold wave, while Sea Dragon Douluo and Sea Spear Douluo threw up seven layers of oceanic shields behind her!
KA-BOOOOOOM!!
The blue teardrop blew a hole through the eastern section of the purple-gold wave, neutralizing seventy percent of its might—yet the remaining thirty percent still crashed fiercely into the three Sea God Island experts!
Sea Dragon Douluo and Sea Spear Douluo both shrieked as their Martial Spirit Avatars shattered completely, their chests scorched black by the purple-gold lightning as they fell onto the waves below, while Bo Saixi's face turned snow-white, a trickle of bright red blood leaking from the corner of her lips as her silver staff hummed violently in her trembling hands!
And on the western flank, the situation was even more catastrophic!
Because Tang Hao and Tang Xiao had already been injured blocking the earlier thunder pillars—and because they had to shield the four Clear Sky Sect elders behind them—when the purple-gold Star-Crushing Extinction Wave swept over the western perimeter, their defenses were pushed past the breaking point!
"Great Sumeru Hammer!!"
Tang Hao and Tang Xiao roared in unison, channeling the supreme secret art of the Clear Sky Sect into their weapons and smashing them down together against the purple-gold tsunami!
CRACK—BOOOOOOM!!
They managed to split the main crest of the wave in two, saving the unconscious Seventh and Eighth Elders behind them from being vaporized.
However, a stray, ten-meter-wide bolt of purple-gold origin lightning glanced off the edge of Tang Xiao's hammer and struck the Fifth Elder of the Clear Sky Sect—a Level 91 Titled Douluo who was trying to prop up the defensive barrier on the left!
"Fifth Brother, no!!" Tang Xiao's eye nearly split open!
The Fifth Elder didn't even have time to scream before the purple-gold origin lightning blasted straight through his Clear Sky Hammer and struck his lower body! Everything below the Fifth Elder's left hip was instantly blown into charred mist! Had the Third Elder beside him not tackled his bleeding torso out of the air and sealed his severed femoral artery with spirit power on the spot, the Fifth Elder would have died in a single breath!
Meanwhile, right at the very center of the crater—less than a hundred yards away from the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's chest—Tang San took the concentrated epicenter of the Abyssal Thunder Purgatory & Star-Crushing Extinction Wave head-on!
"Eighth Spirit Ring Ability: Blood-Armored Thorn Phalanx!"
"Hundred-Thousand-Year Torso Spirit Bone Ability: Blood Demon Unbreakable Carapace! Abyssal Blood Purge!"
Tang San folded his twelve-meter leathery bat wings tightly in front of his three-meter body like a double shield, crossed the Sea God Trident and the Asura Demon Sword projection over his chest, and activated every single defensive ability of his primary martial spirit and his hundred-thousand-year Blood-Armored Demon Crab Torso Bone!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!
A blinding sphere of purple-gold, golden, and blood-red light swallowed the center of the Devil Whale Trench!
Inside that sphere of annihilation, Tang San felt as though he had been struck squarely in the chest by a hurtling star!
First, his Blood-Armored Thorn Phalanx shattered into fragments in half a breath!
Second, the crimson crystal armor of his hundred-thousand-year Blood Demon Unbreakable Carapace Torso Bone—which carried the special property of negating the first lethal blow he suffered in battle and reducing subsequent damage by sixty percent—let out a piercing crack and shattered across his sternum, sacrificing its one-time lethal negation effect to keep his chest from caving in!
Third, he immediately triggered Abyssal Blood Purge from the Torso Bone, forcefully expelling the invasive nine-hundred-thousand-year purple-gold thunder that had drilled into his heart and detonating it outward as a blood-lightning shockwave to offset the remaining impact!
Even so, as Tang San's three-meter bat-winged body was hurled backward across the dry, blasted ocean floor crater for half a mile, the two grotesque bat-faces of Xue Ji on his collarbones let out a shrill, agonizing wail!
Splat!
Blood sprayed from Xue Ji's fused pores across Tang San's shoulders as her three-hundred-thousand-year beast origin absorbed the terrifying vibrational shockwave that tried to shatter Tang San's spiritual sea! One of the twelve-meter bat wings on Tang San's back was scorched black and torn halfway through at the joint, hanging crookedly behind him!
"STILL NOT DEAD?! WHAT KIND OF MONSTER SHELL ARE YOU WEARING, BOY?!!"
Before the smoke had even cleared from the center of the crater, the two-hundred-meter-long Deep Sea Demonic Whale King surged forward through the cascading walls of returning seawater!
Although unleashing that origin wave had slightly dimmed the purple-gold glow inside its chest, the Whale King wanted to finish off this dangerous human inheritor while the surrounding elders were all blown back and crippled!
Like a purple-black mountain hurtling through the storm, the Whale King slammed its colossal head forward to crush Tang San into pulp before he could catch his breath!
Half a mile back across the churning waves, Tang San stabilized his skidding boots on the water surface.
His chest heaved violently, blood dripping from his four yellowed fangs and from his third vertical bat eye on his forehead. Inside his torso, Xue Ji's fused consciousness was trembling on the verge of collapse from taking the brunt of that origin wave—yet her raspy, triple-layered voice still shrieked with crazed obsession inside his mind:
"Master!! Don't worry about Xue Ji! Even if Xue Ji's core cracks in half, Xue Ji can hold on for three more strikes! Look at the left side of its head—!"
Xue Ji's sharp, ultrasonic sonar perception—combined with her instinct for blood and wounds—pinpointed a crucial detail that had just appeared on the charging Whale King's skull!
"When it burned its Whale Core to unleash that purple-gold wave just now, the old golden scar across its blinded left eye socket split open from the internal pressure! There are no crystal scales inside that thirty-meter eye socket, and Poseidon's old divine law is still festering inside the wound, stopping its Divine Body from protecting that spot! Master—strike its blinded left eye socket!!"
Hearing Xue Ji's frantic warning, Tang San's three eyes—and the Boundless Purple Demon Eye layered beneath them—instantly locked onto the left side of the charging Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's head!
Sure enough!
Along that thirty-meter-long jagged chasm where the Sea God had blinded the Whale King's left eye thousands of years ago, the violent internal eruption of its Whale Core just now had caused the ancient golden scar tissue to tear open by several feet, exposing raw, pulsing purple-red flesh and cranial nerves that lacked any dark-violet crystal scale protection!
That was the fatal Achilles' heel of this nine-hundred-and-ninety-thousand-year half-step Divine Beast!
'Its blinded left eye socket leads straight to its brain!' Tang San's mind moved with the cold, lethal speed of a lifelong assassin of the Tang Sect. 'However, the Whale King knows its left eye socket is its weak point—if I simply charge at its left side with the Asura Demon Sword, it will turn its armored skull to block with its right side!'
He needed a way to force the two-hundred-meter leviathan's head to stay completely still and exposed for a single second at point-blank range!
And to do that, his primary martial spirit—the Deathly Sea Emperor Vine—was no longer enough. He needed overwhelming, mountain-crushing physical weight to pin its snout, followed by an unavoidable internal detonation!
Without a microsecond of hesitation, as the two-hundred-meter Deep Sea Demonic Whale King charged within three hundred yards of him, Tang San retracted his Deathly Sea Emperor Vine and its nine Spirit Rings completely into his body!
In the exact same instant, his second martial spirit erupted!
"Clear Sky Hammer — Manifest!!"
BOOOOOOOOOM—!!
Eight colossal Spirit Rings—Three Pitch-Black Rings (65,000, 68,000, and 72,000 years), Two Hundred-Thousand-Year Blood-Red Rings (4th and 5th from Er Ming and Da Ming), One Pitch-Black Sixth Ring (89,000-year Dark-Gold Bone Dragon), and Two Hundred-Thousand-Year Blood-Red Rings (7th and 8th from the Hellfire Behemoth and Abyssal Nine-Headed Hydra)—exploded into existence around Tang San's three-meter-tall hybrid form!
Because Tang San's right hand was holding the Sea God Trident and his left hand was gripping the Asura Demon Sword projection, how could he wield the Clear Sky Hammer?!
He didn't need to hold it in his hands!
"Fifth Spirit Ring Ability: Clear Sky Dragon Coil!"
"Seventh Spirit Ring Ability: True Clear Sky Avatar — Behemoth's World-Splitting Roar!"
"Eighth Spirit Ring Ability: Nine-Headed Annihilation Flurry!!"
Three hundred-thousand-year blood-red Spirit Rings—the fifth, seventh, and eighth rings of his Clear Sky Hammer—ignited simultaneously in the storm clouds directly above the charging Deep Sea Demonic Whale King!
ROOOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR—!!
First, from the fifth red ring, a colossal hundred-meter-long phantom of an azure bull-horned dragon descended from the heavens, coiling its energy-sealing body tightly around the charging Whale King's massive snout!
Second, from the seventh red ring, a thousand-meter-tall True Clear Sky Hammer Avatar wrapped in dark-crimson Hellfire Behemoth slaughter flames materialized directly in the sky above the Whale King's head—and under the activation of the eighth hundred-thousand-year red ring (Nine-Headed Annihilation Flurry), that thousand-meter-tall giant hammer split in mid-air into nine overlapping, mountain-sized phantom Clear Sky Hammers carrying nine corrosive death poisons and tenfold multiplied physical mass!
"Smash its head down!!" Tang San roared!
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Nine overlapping, thousand-meter-tall Clear Sky Hammer Avatars—each carrying the Behemoth's World-Splitting Roar and the Bone-Shattering Death Impact of his sixth ring—slammed straight down from the heavens like nine falling meteors onto the top of the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's skull!
Even with a ninety-nine-percent Divine Body, being hammered on the crown of its skull nine times in a single breath by a Level 99 fused Limit Douluo's four-red-ring Clear Sky Hammer Avatar caused the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's forward charge to violently stall!
Cracks spread across the dark-violet crystal scales on top of its head, and its two-hundred-meter snout was smashed ten meters downward into the churning sea, tilting the left side of its massive head—and that torn, thirty-meter-long blinded left eye socket—directly upward toward Tang San!
"YOU DARE HAMMER THIS KING'S HEAD?! SWALLOW THIS KING'S EXTINCTION BEAM AND DIE!!"
Furious beyond reason and sensing the danger to its left side, the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King unhinged its jaws wide and gathered a blinding sphere of compressed purple-gold annihilation lightning at the back of its throat, preparing to fire a point-blank beam to vaporize Tang San before he could approach its left eye!
Yet, right as the purple-gold light gathered in the Whale King's throat and the beast tried to jerk its head sideways to protect its blinded left socket—
Tang San's Hundred-Thousand-Year Sky Azure Bull Python Right Arm Spirit Bone flared with dazzling azure light!
"Right Arm Spirit Bone Ability: Sky Azure Slowing Divine Claw! Sky Azure Fading Thunderclap!!"
An ethereal azure dragon claw phased across the short distance and clamped directly onto the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's head!
Against a nine-hundred-and-ninety-thousand-year half-step Divine Beast, the temporal-slowing restraint of the Sky Azure Slowing Divine Claw could not freeze it for several seconds like it had done to the fifty-thousand-year Leviathan—it could only slow the Whale King's head movement by half a second!
Wait—for the pinnacle grandmaster of hidden weapons from the inner Tang Sect, how much time was half a second at point-blank range?!
It was an eternity!
"Your mouth is open, and your eye socket is wide exposed—swallow the wrath of my Tang Sect!!"
During that crucial half-second where the Whale King's jaws were open and its torn left eye socket was frozen sixty yards in front of him, Tang San temporarily tucked the Sea God Trident under his right arm, and both of his clawed hands turned into purple-gold blurs as he executed Mysterious Jade Hand, Controlling Crane Catching Dragon, and the supreme throwing art of the Tang Sect: One Thousand and One Nights!
From his Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges belt and his sleeves, every single peerless hidden weapon he had painstakingly forged in the volcanic caves of the Dead Bone Archipelago using hundred-thousand-year beast toxins and deep-earth divine metals shot out at the same time!
First: one pitch-black Buddha Fury Tang Lotus—infused with a compressed thread of his Asura Divine Energy so its outer casing wouldn't be melted by the whale's lightning—was hurled straight down the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's open throat, right into the gathering sphere of its extinction beam!
Second: the remaining two Buddha Fury Tang Lotuses, followed by sixteen bone-piercing dragon-spine needles from the Godly Zhuge Crossbow, all three hundred and sixty-five abyssal-poison needles from the Peacock Plume, and the three colorless crystal needles of Yama's Invitation—where the King of Hell demands your life at the third watch—were fired in a single, pinpoint spiral stream straight into the torn, unarmored flesh of the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's blinded left eye socket!
"Hidden metal trinkets?! You think mortal iron needles can—?!"
The Deep Sea Demonic Whale King barely had time to form a mocking thought as the tiny objects entered its throat and its torn left eye socket.
Then—
"Detonate!!" Tang San's cold voice pronounced the sentence of death!
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!
Deep inside the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's unarmored throat, the first Buddha Fury Tang Lotus detonated right against the gathering sphere of its own extinction beam! The thirty-six layers of hundred-thousand-year Hydra-venom blades and unstable Netherworld Blasting Fruit cores destabilized the whale's breath attack, causing the purple-gold lightning sphere to explode backward inside the Whale King's own mouth and esophagus!
And simultaneously, inside the raw, unarmored thirty-meter chasm of its blinded left eye socket—where no crystal scales existed and where Poseidon's ancient divine wound had already weakened the flesh—the other two Buddha Fury Tang Lotuses exploded in unison, driving nearly four hundred armor-piercing needles of the Peacock Plume and all three drops of Yama's Invitation ten feet deep into the soft tissue and optic nerve tunnel leading toward the Whale King's brain!
"GAAAAHHHHHHH—!! MY EYE!! MY THROAT!! WHAT POISON IS THIS?!!"
A scream of sheer, unimaginable agony—so piercing and violent that it caused the seawater within ten miles to explode into mist—tore from the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King!
Even a ninety-nine-percent Divine Body did not have scales growing on the inside of its torn eye socket or its internal nerve channels!
The dual detonation of the Buddha Fury Tang Lotuses blew a ten-meter-wide crater straight through the back wall of its blinded left eye socket, spraying chunks of scorched purple flesh and rivers of golden-purple divine blood into the sky! Worse still, the king of Tang Sect poisons—Yama's Invitation, distilled from seven ancient venomous herbs and hundred-thousand-year Hydra blood—rapidly corroded along its optic nerve, temporarily paralyzing the left half of the Whale King's head and causing its ninety-nine-percent Divine Body's internal defense barrier to collapse in chaos!
"Now, Master!! Its cranial barrier is broken!! Kill it!!"
On Tang San's collarbones, the two blood-soaked bat-faces of Xue Ji shrieked at the top of their lungs!
Tang San did not need her reminder!
Seeing the ten-meter-wide bloody crater blown open inside the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's blinded left eye socket while the colossal beast thrashed in blind, poisoned agony, Tang San's three crimson eyes flared with a light that eclipsed the lightning in the sky!
He transferred the Sea God Trident to loop securely behind his shoulder, and gripped the hilt of the two-meter-long crimson projection of the Asura Demon Sword with both of his clawed hands!
He did not hold back a single drop of his Level 99 fused spirit power, nor did he care how much of Xue Ji's three-hundred-thousand-year beast origin would be burned to ash by the backlash!
He ignited the deepest secret sword technique of the Asura Godking—the ultimate move that united the wielder, the living sheath, and the divine blade into one unstoppable strike:
"Asura Blood Sword — Asura's Apocalyptic Judgment!!"
SHING—BOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
In front of the awe-struck eyes of Tang Chen, Tang Hao, Tang Xiao, and Bo Saixi watching from the perimeter, Tang San's three-meter-tall bat-winged body violently dissolved into a blinding, hundred-meter-long colossal greatsword of pure, solidified crimson Asura Divine Law!
Man, Sheath, and Sword became one!
Carrying the boundless, crazed hatred of a man who had lost everything, and the sharp, world-severing authority of the Divine Realm's chief enforcer, the hundred-meter-long crimson Asura Blood Sword tore down from the storm clouds like a bolt of crimson judgment from the Ninth Heaven!
Aiming straight into the blasted-open, bleeding crater of the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's blinded left eye socket—
SPLATTER—CRACK—!!
The hundred-meter crimson divine blade plunged straight into the torn left eye socket, slicing cleanly through the weakened inner cranial bone and driving fifteen meters deep into the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King's mountainous skull!
~~
A/N: Check out 20 Chapters Ahead for this fanfic on my P.atreon. [Check Out Art Of Characters On My Patreon. It's Free To View btw.]
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