Chapter 277 - 276: Demon Kings (3)

"I... I am a King of the Hollow Beyond!" Yuan Kong screamed, a desperate note entering his voice. "I will not die here! Blood Eruption: Demonic Core Detonation!"

The Ape Demon King’s chest began to glow with an unstable, blinding red light. Realizing he could not win in physical combat against Lin Yuan’s True Elemental Body, Yuan Kong intended to self-destruct, taking the entire eastern quadrant of the arena with him.

"He is detonating his core!" Lord Zhao yelled from the sidelines, rushing forward with his broadsword, though he knew he was too slow to stop an Early Void Refinement explosion.

Lin Yuan’s deep purple eyes turned completely frigid. He then stepped directly into the Ape Demon King’s guard. He did not draw away from the expanding, explosive energy. He placed his right hand flat against the center of Yuan Kong’s glowing, expanding chest, the heat of the unstable core searing against his palm without leaving so much as a mark.

[Devour Heaven, Swallow Earth]

The supreme devouring divine ability activated, but it was heavily modified by the absolute, stabilizing cycle of the Black Tortoise in his Kidneys.

A localized, terrifying vortex of suction manifested from Lin Yuan’s palm, the surrounding air itself bending visibly inward toward his hand. As the Ape Demon King’s core attempted to violently expand and detonate, Lin Yuan’s True Elemental Body aggressively, and violently sucked the explosive demonic Qi directly out of the beast’s chest.

"No! What are you doing?!" Yuan Kong shrieked, feeling his very life force, his cultivation, and his explosive payload being ripped from his soul. "You cannot devour a demonic core! The corruption will melt your meridians!"

The black and red explosive energy rushed into Lin Yuan’s arm, crawling up beneath his skin in writhing, visible veins of corrupted light. Instantly, the Five Great Secret Realms went to work. The corrupted energy was cycled through the blazing furnace of the Vermilion Bird, purified by the boundless life of the Azure Dragon, filtered by the Qilin, severed of its malice by the White Tiger, and finally, stabilized and washed clean by the Black Tortoise.

Within three seconds, the horrific detonation of an Early Void Refinement Demon King was entirely swallowed, digested, and converted into pure, orthodox spiritual energy that seamlessly merged into Lin Yuan’s boundless spiritual sea.

Yuan Kong’s massive body went entirely limp. His demonic core had been drained completely dry. He was now nothing more than a hollow, powerless husk of flesh and bone, his once-tyrannical eyes dimming into dull, lifeless orbs.

Lin Yuan withdrew his hand. He looked down at the shivering, defeated Demon King, his expression betraying nothing beyond mild, clinical disinterest.

With a casual, effortless swing of his leg, Lin Yuan delivered a roundhouse kick to the side of Yuan Kong’s head. The physical force snapped the demon’s neck with a sharp, resounding CRACK, instantly extinguishing the beast’s life.

The Ape Demon King fell backward, dead, his massive corpse hitting the star-iron floor with a dull, heavy thud that sent a faint tremor rippling across the terrace.

Silence fell over the eastern terrace, completely contrasting the apocalyptic, ongoing war in the sky above them.

Bai Qingyue lowered her hands, the crystalline blue light of her arrays fading into the air. She took a deep, steadying breath, her chest heaving slightly from the exertion of manipulating Heaven and Earth Luck-laced Qi against a Demon King entity, a faint sheen of sweat visible along her brow despite the cool evening air.

Lin Yuan turned to her, the terrifying pressure of his True Elemental Body instantly vanishing, replaced by a warm, approving gaze.

"Your control and use of the Heaven and Earth Luck-laced Qi is flawless," Lin Yuan praised softly, stepping over the corpse of the Demon King to stand by her side. "You anchored my offensive perfectly."

Bai Qingyue smiled warmly, a radiant, beautiful expression that defied the demonic chaos surrounding them, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten entirely under the warmth of his approval.

A few yards away, Bai Chen and Su Yin slowly picked their jaws up off the floor.

"He... he just beat a Demon King to death with his bare hands," Bai Chen whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at the massive, crushed corpse of Yuan Kong. "A being with cultivation equals to the Early Stage of the Void Refinement Realm."

Su Yin swallowed hard, her mind desperately trying to categorize the impossibility she had just witnessed. "The Five Great Secret Realms... it grants physical dominance that ignores the suppression of realms. Senior Lin and Lady Bai just executed a flawless, synergistic subjugation of a Demon King entity."

High above, Emperor Xiyan, who was rushing down to assist after recovering from his initial clash, came to a sudden, screeching halt in mid-air. The White Tiger sovereign looked down at the dead Ape Demon King, and then at the crimson-robed young man standing beside it, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and reluctant awe.

"He killed it," Emperor Xiyan muttered, his eyes wide with profound shock. "He didn’t just survive... he butchered a Demon King without breaking a sweat."

Lin Yuan looked up at the stunned Emperor hovering above.

"Are you going to stare at the corpse, Emperor Xiyan?" Lin Yuan called out, his voice echoing with mocking authority over the din of battle. "Or are you going to help the others seal the sky?"

Emperor Xiyan’s jaw tightened, equal parts offended and humbled, before he shook off his shock and surged back upward toward the burning rift without another word.

Lin Yuan turned his deep purple eyes back toward the bleeding, purple rift in the firmament, his True Elemental Body humming with the boundless, inexhaustible power of the Five Great Secret Realms.

The Demon Race had crossed the boundary, expecting to find a continent of fragile, orthodox cultivators ripe for the slaughter. Instead, they had walked directly into the domain of cultivators ready to match them head on. The war for the Nine Provinces had officially begun.