Chapter 162

"Believe me, if we don't run right now we are going to die badly!"

Liana's pupils tightened, her face went blank.

"What could possibly be that bad?"

Orathis was serious enough that his voice shook. "Don't ask! Just come, Sis!"

"If we stay we're dead weight, and he can't fight without holding back!"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Out on the field, a hundred-odd withered-gray fireballs came down at once.

Their timing was perfect, no measurable gap between the first detonation and the last, under the eyes of Kain and Azel, Soren disappeared into a sea of fire.

"Heh."

Kain raised a defensive formation and stood beside Azel, both watching the heart of the inferno with the same cold smile.

"That's the price of offending the Kunpeng Beast Tribe."

"Little brat, don't whine that two Upper-Tier Beast Ancestors ganged up on you."

"You waded into this water yourself."

Kain pulled his gaze away.

Hanging in the void, he turned his back.

In the fraction of a second it took him to complete the turn, a shriek tore out of the fire and through the space behind it.

The Heavenly Resentment Demonic Sword came out of the heart of the blaze.

Loaded with demonic energy, coated in a layer of absolute bloodline suppression, sharp past reason. Its penetrating force pushed to the edge of what the blade could carry.

It went through Immemorial feather armor like the armor wasn't there, and then through his heart.

Heat spilled out of Kain's chest, he looked down and the world tilted, pain tearing after it, worse than the wound was what the sword was doing.

It was drinking, beast blood and spiritual energy, pulled out in a steady draw.

The eye-shaped crimson gemstone in the hilt pulsed with greedy red light, it gave every impression of intending to finish the job.

Get it out, now.

Azel understood at a glance.

Whether Soren had survived to throw the thing stopped mattering.

He crossed the distance and appeared behind Kain, he reached for the hilt.

Before his fingers touched it, blood-contract lightning threw him off and left his whole arm dead.

That was the moment both understood how bad this had become.

"This is wrong."

"Something here is very wrong."

"That sword belongs to Soren."

"So why is it carrying the fluctuation of..."

"...our own Kunpeng Beast Tribe's foundational bloodline?"

"And it's overwhelming. It suppresses my biology outright, I cannot put a hand on the hilt."

Kain felt death standing on his chest, which was fair, since he was the one with a blade through it.

Azel was only being kept from touching the thing, Kain was being drained where he stood.

"I understand now."

"Origin blood essence."

"Soren has refined the Origin blood essence of our tribe."

"Our old scrolls say it, scattered through the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea are crimson Nether Pearls condensed from pure Origin blood essence."

"The Nether Sea holds our Primal Source, it's one of the cradles the Kunpeng Beast Tribe was born from."

"That's why what he's refined suppresses us at the level of the body itself."

"He coated a demonic artifact in our own Origin blood essence to break our Immemorial armor."

"Damn it, we came after the wrong person."

"The Destiny Nether Pearls and the coordinates are in Soren's hands, not Liana's."

Azel's scalp went numb the moment the conclusion settled.

No wonder the boy had broken through to Middle-Tier Demon Ancestor this young, he had walked out of the Kun-Heaven Nether Sea with an unimaginable haul.

How did I miss something that obvious?

"Kain! I'll give up an arm and rip the sword out of you."

"Then I trigger my Ancestor Technique and rewind."

Kain nodded, grim. "Good, I'll take the window and use mine to move before it comes back."

Azel gathered spiritual energy into his remaining hand, it took the shape of an enormous glowing claw.

The claw closed around the hilt, with a wet, dragging sound, the Heavenly Resentment Demonic Sword came out of Kain's chest.

In the same instant, sword qi erupted off the blade.

Carrying the suppression of their own primal bloodline, the crimson qi detonated and took Azel's arm off clean.

Azel cried out, he didn't hesitate, he triggered the reversion.

Time snapped back exactly one second.

His arm was whole again, perfect, as if nothing had touched it.

By any logic, everything inside that bounded space should have gone back with it, including the sword, it should have been sitting in Kain's chest again.

Instead the Heavenly Resentment Demonic Sword was buried to the guard in a boulder.

The boulder hit the ground with a crash.

Kain walked casually out of the shadows nearby.

A sneer touched his mouth. "Innate Ancestor Techniques really do save lives, I swapped places with a rock."

Both were pleased to be alive, and both their faces got heavier anyway, that Soren, he had gone well past what either of them had imagined.

They had come in assuming they would crush him without effort, what actually happened was that they ate a large and bitter loss, and the fact that he still had the capacity to throw that sword proved Kain's supreme Beast Technique hadn't done real damage at all.

Devilish was the only word for it.

The withered-gray waves of fire began to churn, something invisible took hold of them, and the whole sea of flame drew itself in, condensing into a colossal fire dragon.

The dragon poured toward the epicenter, then a pair of eyes burning blood-red cut through the smoke like two blades of light.

Soren's pupils shone the color of fresh blood, demonic patterns cutting straight through the veil of the void.

The entire inferno was swallowed clean by his right eye, it kept swallowing as he walked out of the middle of it, he looked exactly as composed as he had before any of it started, he looked like a man holding the world in his palm.

The Strategy Encyclopedia gave him that, make contact with an opponent and everything about them lay open, stripped bare, ready to be taken apart.

In the melee minutes ago, he had made contact with both Kain and Azel.

Their biology, their history, their techniques, all of it was now written out on the interface.