Chapter 278 - 277: Demon Kings (4)

High above the devastated amphitheater of the Grand Court, the sky was a fractured tapestry of bleeding purple miasma and blinding orthodox Qi. The battle between the Nine province’s greatest experts and the Demon Kings of the Hollow Beyond was tearing the very fabric of reality apart.

Emperor Tianxu and Emperor Beiming were locked in a desperate struggle against the Rat Demon King, Mo Du. The hunched, wretched entity fought with an expanding domain of absolute, necrotic plague.

Thousands of screeching, incorporeal shadow-rats swarmed the Qilin and Black Tortoise domains, their sickly green fangs gnawing away at the Void Refinement Qi. Every time Emperor Tianxu blasted them to ash, Mo Du simply laughed—a grating, infectious sound—and summoned thousands more from the purple rift.

"Your Dao laws are so rigid, so fragile!" Mo Du hissed, his voice echoing like scraping metal. "You cannot kill my plague! Breathe the rot, Emperors! Let your Dao Hearts wither!"

A few miles to the west, Emperor Nanheng and Emperor Dongyu were faring no better against the Thousand-Eye Eagle Demon King, Qian Yan. The Vermilion Bird flames and Azure Dragon lightning were completely ineffective against a demon who manipulated the conceptual structure of space.

Qian Yan’s cloak of metallic feathers shifted constantly, and the thousand golden eyes covering his face blinked in chaotic, hypnotic sequences. He dragged the two Emperors into overlapping, paradoxical dimensions of torment. Their divine senses were scrambled, their attacks striking empty air while invisible, razor-sharp spatial blades systematically dismantled their defensive auras.

"You are blind birds trapped in a labyrinth of my design!" Qian Yan’s thousand overlapping voices shrieked, the sound physically piercing the eardrums of the cultivators huddled in the ruins below. "I will dissect your meridians and feed your cores to the abyss!"

The Four Emperors were fighting with everything they had, but the grim reality of the Hollow Beyond was becoming agonizingly clear. The demonic entities possessed combat power equivalent to Early Void Refinement, but their inherent corruption granted them a suppressive advantage over the clean, orthodox laws of the Nine Provinces. It was a war of attrition the Nine Province was destined to lose.

But then, the ambient resonance of the battlefield violently shifted.

A massive, foundational pillar of demonic Qi—the oppressive, mountain-crushing aura of the Ape Demon King, Yuan Kong—suddenly vanished from the material plane. It was completely extinguished.

Mo Du’s grating laughter choked in his throat. The plague shadows momentarily froze.

Qian Yan’s thousand golden eyes widened simultaneously, the overlapping dimensions of his illusion domain stuttering in pure shock.

The two Demon Kings ignored the Four Emperors, their horrifying gazes snapping downward toward the eastern terrace of the Grand Court.

Through the swirling dust and the dissipating frost of Bai Qingyue’s arrays, they saw the unthinkable. The towering, ten-foot-tall, seemingly indestructible behemoth of the Ape Demon King lay dead on the pulverized floor, his neck snapped, his massive demonic core entirely hollowed out.

And standing casually over the corpse was a human in pristine crimson and black robes, casually brushing off his sleeves.

"Yuan Kong is... dead?" Mo Du rasped, his beady green eyes practically bulging out of his rotting skull. The Rat Demon King’s mind could not process it. "His core is completely drained! Who... what manner of beast could drain a Demon’s King demonic core in the span of a few breaths?!"

"Killed by a human?!" Qian Yan shrieked, a thousand voices harmonizing in absolute disbelief. The Eagle Demon King stared at Lin Yuan, sensing the Early Soul Transformation aura radiating from his True Elemental Body. "A Soul Transformation insect snapped the neck of a Demon King?! Impossible!"

The realization that their brother had been butchered like a common beast sent the two Demon Kings into a frenzy of homicidal rage. The arrogance of the Hollow Beyond was shattered, replaced by a desperate, venomous need to eradicate the human standing in the crater.

"I will melt the flesh from his bones!" Mo Du roared, abandoning Emperor Tianxu entirely. He raised his clawed hands, commanding the entirety of his necrotic plague domain to funnel downward like a sickly green tornado aimed directly at Lin Yuan.

"I will shred his soul into ten thousand pieces!" Qian Yan screeched, his metallic feathers flaring as he prepared to unleash a localized spatial collapse upon the eastern pavilion.

Down on the star-iron floor, Lin Yuan looked up at the two descending attacks. He did not flinch. His deep purple eyes were cold, analytical, and utterly devoid of fear.

"Do not worry about the ape," Lin Yuan’s voice echoed upward, amplified by the inexhaustible power of his internal Origin cycle. His tone carried the heavy authority of a sovereign delivering a death sentence. "He was merely the appetizer. I am coming up there to kill you as well."

Lin Yuan did not wait for the attacks to reach him. He took a single step into the empty air.

[Immortal Cloud Step]

Because his True Elemental Body was fundamentally immune to the spatial suppression of the mortal plane, Lin Yuan did not just fly; he conceptually erased the distance between the earth and the sky. He shot upward like a reversed meteor, a streak of blinding golden-purple light that pierced directly through the center of Mo Du’s descending plague tornado.

"Lin Yuan, fall back!" Emperor Tianxu shouted, his Qilin aura flaring as he desperately tried to catch up. "Their corruption is absolute! Your Primordial Spirit is newly formed; it cannot withstand direct exposure to the plague!"

"Do not let the eagle lock his eyes on you!" Emperor Nanheng warned, her Vermilion Bird flames trailing behind her. "He will drag your mind into the void!"

Lin Yuan ignored the warnings of the Emperors. He emerged from the top of the plague tornado, entirely untouched, the Azure Dragon in his liver instantly purifying the microscopic traces of rot that dared to touch his skin.

He halted in mid-air, hovering perfectly between the Rat Demon King and the Eagle Demon King.

"You arrogant dust-mite!" Qian Yan shrieked. All one thousand golden eyes on the demon’s face locked onto Lin Yuan simultaneously.

"Domain of the Thousand-Fold Labyrinth!"