Chapter 159

Spiritual energy blasted upward and knotted itself into the phantom of a colossal Immemorial Kunpeng, ten times the size of Orathis's dragon frame.

The phantom tilted its body, barely more than a shrug.

It hit the charging dragon and broke his momentum in half, and Orathis went spinning backward through the air spitting blood.

"Stop... IT!"

Liana tried to scream it, the grip on her throat strangled the words into a rasp.

"Fine," Kain said.

"Open your mouth and hand over everything you know about the Nether Pearls and the coordinates, and I'll spare the two of you."

"Otherwise there's nothing to discuss."

Orathis came back like something with a needle in its arm.

Kain didn't bother being polite, a sweep of his hand blew the dragon backward again.

Once, twice, three times.

By the fifth or sixth pass Orathis had nothing left, his body couldn't hold even the partial transformation.

He dropped out of the sky in human form, falling like a rock with the wind stripped out of it.

With injuries like that already through his torso, hitting the ground at that speed would finish him.

Liana watched him fall and felt the last of it go out of her.

Boom!

Where Orathis should have landed, a column of dirt and pulverized rock several thousand meters high went up instead.

Kain and Azel had already written the broken dragon off and were turning back to the interrogation, both stopped and frowned.

Demonic energy? A Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor?

Kain laughed and looked toward the boiling dust.

"How interesting."

"Let's see what blind fool crawled out of his hole to throw his life away today."

Soren had arrived in the last second before impact.

He had torn straight up through the void from the stronghold below, which was why nothing had announced him.

Under the rolling dust, he used his demonic energy as a cushion, catching Orathis's broken body and holding it off the ground.

His footsteps were even and unhurried, each one landing like a mountain being set down.

The coercion coming off him warped the space he walked through, the heavy cape on his shoulders snapped and rolled in air that had nothing to do with wind.

The moment he had Orathis, his mind turned.

The Strategy Encyclopedia opened, the Six Paths Form Diagram came online.

He poured the life-giving power of the Human Path Demonic Form straight into the dragon.

Wounds that should have killed twice over began closing at a speed that made no sense, and not just closing over.

The shattered shoulder and arm, the leg stripped to bare white bone, all of it built itself back from nothing while the dust was still settling.

Soren's voice came out of that dust, cold, carrying an intent that ran with the laws of the Grand Dao and left no room to argue.

"You dare beat my people?"

"And you enjoyed it, didn't you?"

"What kind of small thing do you imagine you are?"

"Did you ask me? Did I ever say you could touch him?"

He walked out of the cloud with eyes like ice off a glacier.

The pressure climbed with every stride, his gaze cutting a hundred times sharper than any divine sword.

Even men of Azel and Kain's standing, meeting those deep blood-red pupils, lost a beat to the battle intent rolling off him.

How does a Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor carry intent like that?

Neither could account for it, the daze lasted a fraction of a second before both hauled their minds back into order.

Battle intent had to stand on real strength or it stood on nothing, a man who showed that much arrogance without the foundation under it was only making himself a joke.

"Kain, let's take care with this one," Azel sent.

"I don't believe this demon can threaten our lives, but there's something about his methods that doesn't sit right."

"Look at Orathis floating in that demonic energy."

"His injuries have stabilized, the severed arm has grown back from nothing."

"There's a good chance that regeneration is his Innate Ancestor Technique."

"Which makes him a stubborn thing to kill."

Kain sneered the warning off.

"Brother Azel, why are you wound up over one Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor?"

"The gap between an Upper-Tier Ancestor and a Middle-Tier one is roughly a hundredfold."

"And the Upper-Tier Ancestor Realm has been formally divided by the supreme powerhouses of our four continents into nine operational tiers, one-Turn through Nine-Turn."

"The gap between a One-Turn and a Two-Turn alone is around tenfold."

"You and I are both genuine Two-Turn Spirit Ancestors, against something like him, we're better than a thousand times over."

"Across a chasm that size, an Innate Ancestor Technique that only patches flesh is worth nothing."

Azel turned the argument over and decided on the spot that he had been overthinking.

However heaven-defying the boy might be, no support technique in existence was going to bridge a thousandfold gap in raw strength.

"Little brat, you stumbled into Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor and you're still this stupid."

"With any brains at all you'd have found a hole and stayed in it."

"Running out here alone to die, first time I've seen it done."

Kain chuckled and tossed Liana aside.

With Azel watching, he had no worries about her running, her dantian was sealed, she wouldn't get more than a few steps.

Liana tried to move her Spirit energy, nothing answered, she tried again, and again, and accepted what the seal had done to her.

She steadied her mind and looked at Soren.

So that's Soren, the one who signed a master-servant blood contract with Orathis.

Hmph, he's young.

Not that it matters, today's the end of the road for all of us.

And he came out here anyway, for Orathis.

Her feelings were tangled, underneath sat a small, stubborn thread of pride that her little brother hadn't followed the wrong man, whether or not Soren could do anything about this, walking into a fight this one sided took something most people didn't have.

"Mm..."

Orathis came back to himself wrapped in fierce, overbearing demonic energy.

There was no pain anywhere.

He flexed his fingers, then his toes, and found the limbs that had been destroyed were whole again.

Then he caught a familiar fluctuation.

His eyes snapped open, he looked ahead and took a moment before he spoke.