Top of the Jade Chamber.
When the extreme frost within the arrow was compressed to the precise limit of Ganyu's perfect control, a razor-sharp glint like an ice edge flashed across her tranquil, deep-blue eyes.
She adjusted her breathing slightly, jade-white fingers steady as bedrock, and then—she lightly released the taut bowstring.
"Whoosh—"
No earth-shaking detonation, only a whisper-soft crack of air.
The ice-blue arrow vanished from the string and, in the next instant, had become a ghostly blue meteor slicing the heavens. It dragged a near-invisible trail of space-warping cold, moving faster than thought, ignoring distance, and speared toward the vague, massive dragon silhouette within the distant clouds.
Where the arrow passed, water vapor froze instantly, leaving a briefly lingering thread of delicate ice crystals, which the pursuing energy eddies then shattered to powder.
Ganyu slowly lowered her moonlit longbow, her pale-blue eyes tracking that ice-blue streak across the sky.
This shot carried over seventy percent of her refined soul power and had been compressed and tempered for minutes. The annihilating cold within could freeze a thousand km of mountains and halt the flow of great rivers.
If the real Beast God Di Tian took this arrow head-on without guard, even with his unmatched dragon physique and profound cultivation, he would suffer grievous injury in an instant—likely fatal.
After all, Ganyu was now a level 99 Limit Douluo, in full command of the ultimate laws of frost, standing at the summit of this world's power.
Even peak Di Tian facing her in a frontal, all-out clash would find the result uncertain.
Yet Ganyu's mind was clear.
This rampaging "Di Tian" was no true body—behind it stood a far more terrifying being: the Lord Ravager, Phantylia.
Phantylia's true strength was unfathomable and far beyond Di Tian. This was why Lu Jingming had repeatedly urged them to avoid a head-on fight and evacuate as soon as possible.
Ningguang's heart was equally clear.
Strictly speaking, Shrek Academy, as a representative of traditional soul master forces, might become a potential obstacle to Haiyuan City's future path.
Her intervention now was driven more by compassion for the countless helpless civilians below, and respect for life itself, than by any favoritism toward Shrek Academy.
Above the clouds, Phantylia—who had been toying with Yan Shaozhe, Shi Xing, and Elder Lin like a cat with mice—felt her massive golden dragon pupils constrict. A bone-deep crisis, enough to threaten the very existence of this black dragon body, washed over her.
Though the black dragon's body was vast and brimming with power, under Ganyu's extreme-range precision sniping it had become the most conspicuous target imaginable.
That ice-blue meteor of death ignored distance and arrived in a flash. The ultimate cold within—able to freeze all things, even the source of the soul—forced her to abandon mockery and respond with full effort.
"Dragon God Claw!"
Without hesitation, Phantylia forcibly drew upon the deepest, most hidden trace of Dragon God power within the black dragon body—at a strength and efficiency far beyond Di Tian's true self.
The massive dragon claw, once shrouded in dense black miasma, suddenly burst with dazzling gold divine light. Seven-colored flames ignited within the enormous golden pupils. A Dragon God's majesty from primeval antiquity, transcending all beings, erupted and swept across heaven and earth.
This was Di Tian's greatest trump card as the foremost of the Ten Great Ferocious Beasts: the Dragon God's inherited divine art, Dragon God Claw.
If Di Tian himself unleashed it, it would be incomparably mighty, yet still limited by his own cultivation and affinity with Dragon God power, with a ceiling to its might.
But now the wielder was the higher-ranked Phantylia. Her understanding and control of energy and law far surpassed Di Tian's. In her hands, Dragon God Claw was brutally elevated by a terrifying degree.
The gold claw, blazing with sovereign radiance, tore the void, carrying an aura that crushed laws and obliterated all things, and it seized with perfect precision the ice-blue meteor rushing in.
"Crack—!"
At the instant Dragon God Claw collided with the meteor, the terrifying cold compressed within the arrow could no longer be bound. Like an ice river breaking after ten thousand years, like a slumbering polar ocean roused to fury, it exploded as a cataclysmic glacial tsunami.
Centered on the impact, space for hundreds of meters around froze at once into a colossal, crystal-clear block of ice.
The once-turbulent black clouds locked in place midair, preserving their previous savage shapes.
The purple lightning that had been surging and roaring within them froze solid as well, becoming countless eerie, gorgeous sculptures of violet thunder.
Next, unimaginable cold poured down. Fist-sized hailstones fell like heavenly punishment, and a blizzard capable of freezing everything sprang from nothing—like a roaring white behemoth—raging out from Shrek City across hundreds of li.
On the walls, Shrek's soldiers shivered violently despite their soul tool shields; teeth chattered, soul tools bit their hands with icy pain, nearly slipping from their grip.
Below, the charging soul beast tide suffered indiscriminate punishment. Countless beasts howled as they were frozen in an instant into lifelike ice statues, locked in mid-pounce across the battlefield. The entire front seemed to hit pause, the world sealed in deathly ice.
"Di Tian!"
Emerald pupils shrinking, Bi Ji's beautiful face blanched, filled with unprecedented fear and worry.
She could clearly sense that the vast life force within the black dragon had not dissipated—but it was sealed and suppressed by a law-level, unimaginable ultimate cold.
That mountain-like body, along with a great swath of surrounding cloud, was perfectly entombed in ancient ice like a prehistoric behemoth, completely losing all mobility.
"Who… who aided us with such power?!"
Yan Shaozhe, Shi Xing, and Elder Lin froze midair together, staring in disbelief at the immense black dragon sealed solid—its Dragon God Claw unable even to break the ice. Their eyes brimmed with shock beyond words.
They had seen it clearly—the tide-turning ice-blue meteor had shot from the city center. To freeze a Di Tian capable of using Dragon God Claw in one strike—this strength likely surpassed the ordinary demi-god level.
"Protect Di Tian!"
Bi Ji was the first to recover from her shock, her anxious voice ringing across the battlefield, with a faint tremor she could not hide.
She knew too well: if their commander and soul, Di Tian, remained frozen for long, the beast tide—stripped of unified command and ultimate deterrent—would descend into chaos, and the initiative would swing back to the humans without suspense.
Her jade wings beat at full force. No longer caring for the tide's casualties, she gathered all her emerald healing and life light into one massive, hyper-condensed pillar of life, like a bridge spanning the heavens, and fired it at the frozen dragon, seeking to disperse that dreadful absolute frost with a flood of life energy.
"Roar—Sky Splitting Claw!"
Almost as Bi Ji acted, the colossal Darkgold Dreadclaw Bear—Bear Lord—let out a thunderous, violent roar.
He abruptly abandoned his clash with Cai Meier. Raising golden talons harder than fine steel, he gathered and compressed his race's ultimate power at the tips, forming five massive golden claw-lights that could shred sky and pulverize earth.
This was his innate killing art—the terrifying trump that could even tear Di Tian's scales and wound his flesh—the foundation of his dominance in Star Dou Forest.
Those long-prepared golden arcs, brimming with pure destructive will, ignored distance and slashed toward War God Douluo Xian Lin'er, who had grown slightly distracted by Di Tian's freezing.
In the earlier fighting, Xian Lin'er had harried him repeatedly with peerless speed and sharp strikes, doing little real harm but sorely trying the Bear Lord's foul temper.
Now, seizing the perfect moment when all eyes were drawn to the frozen Di Tian, he chose without hesitation to eliminate the most vexing opponent first.
"Lin'er, look out!"
Black Dragon Douluo Qian Duoduo, who had been splitting his focus across the field, went ashen, bellowing with a heart-rending desperation.
He knew all too well the terror of the Bear Lord's enraged strike. Xian Lin'er's attacks were swift and fierce, but her defense was not top-tier among Title Douluo; she could not possibly withstand Sky Splitting Claw head-on.
At the split-second brink, Qian Duoduo's body moved on instinct, thought lagging behind.
He hurled out the pinnacle eighth-tier defensive soul tool he had forged over years with countless rare materials—the Light of Spatial Aegis.
A brilliant silver spatial shield blossomed at once, like a giant energy bubble rippling with space waves, just barely enveloping Xian Lin'er before the claws struck.
It was the strongest instant defense Qian Duoduo could deploy, able to withstand the full-power strike of most Super Douluo.
And yet—
"Shrrrip!"
Those golden claw-lights, infused with the Bear Lord's berserk power and rending laws, sliced the seemingly sturdy silver shield like a hot knife through butter, tearing it into a shower of sparkling energy shards.