Niu Tian's true soul-beast form was overwhelmingly strong. His dragon scales rivaled or exceeded the finest defensive soul tools—but before the Seven Thunders' bullet, they were meaningless. The round pierced clean through to the core.
As a level 99 Titled Douluo, Niu Tian had achieved the soul masters' dream—dual soul cores in resonant equilibrium. This was the source and foundation of his power.
But one soul core was instantly disassembled into atoms by the Seven Thunders' bullet, while the perfect balance of the other was utterly broken. Its energy ran amok, accelerating his demise from within.
This pincer strike—physical and energetic—was the true cause of the fall of this peerless powerhouse.
"Is it… over?"
A streak of lightning cut through the settling dust and became Raiden Mei.
She glanced with curiosity at the strange rifle dancing with violet arcs in Lemuen's hands, then looked to Lu Jingming.
"Mm. Good work, Mei."
Lu Jingming nodded with a light smile, his tone calm, as if merely finishing a minor task.
The force the Clear Sky Sect brought to Mingdu—including the specially positioned Tang Wutong—had been wiped out.
No personal grudge? Perhaps.
But their fate was sealed from the start—they had tied themselves to the chariot of Sea God Tang San.
For that alone, their destruction was inevitable in Lu Jingming's eyes—no personal vendetta, merely the cold rules of factional conflict.
The same applied to Shrek Academy.
He had let Phantylia destroy Shrek City for this reason.
Aside from the promising and moldable younger generation—Ma Xiaotao, Han Ruoruo, and the like—he had no intention of sparing those ossified elders of the Sea God Pavilion who obeyed Tang San unquestioningly.
Cut the old trunk, and the new branches can grow in accordance with his will.
Once Xuan Zi and the old guard vanished, who would lead the rebuilt Shrek? That would be anyone's guess.
Shrek's millennia of prestige were a massive asset. Lu Jingming needed that brand and the rallying power it conferred to reduce resistance to unifying the continent.
A Shrek annihilated outright had no value, but a reborn Shrek—cleansed and obedient—would be an excellent aid.
…
Yet just as Lu Jingming thought the battle here had ended—with the fall of Tang San's divine sense avatar, Tang Wutong, and Niu Tian—and was about to clean up…
A grand finale far beyond anyone's expectations—enough to overturn all of Mingdu and the wider situation—had been quietly prepared beneath the ruins.
The instigator was that freewheeling, joy-seeking, chaos-loving masked Fool—Sparkle.
"Mm… naughty spoilers, disobedient actors, and boring audience~"
Humming a nonsensical tune, Sparkle's slender figure flitted like a wraith through the shadows across Mingdu.
From her hands popped one cute, harmless-looking fireworks doll after another, like stage magic.
But inside those dolls, she had artistically replaced the cores with what would make any soul engineer's soul flee in terror: level-9 fixed-installation soul-guided shells.
She placed them at Mingdu's underground weak geonodes, soul-guidance pipeline junctions, and even the spatial weak points torn open by the earlier apocalyptic battle.
Dozens of such dolls, like malignant tumors buried within the dying city, formed a destructive array spanning the entirety of Mingdu.
"Hehe~ Ugly freaks from the Anti-Matter Legion, strutting around and messing up my perfect script."
Sparkle pouted, but her face beamed with excitement and anticipation.
"Since the stage is a mess, then… let's blow it all up! And then set a bigger, more interesting stage."
Her goal was never just revenge or destruction.
She would use the simultaneous detonation of dozens of level-9 shells—enough to erase Mingdu from the map in an instant—as a key to pry open a parallel-world spacetime node, precisely marked by Vita's all-seeing eye.
She would harness this raw, violent annihilation to blast open a stable passage to an unknown parallel world.
This would be her gift—a shocking, earth-shaking surprise—for every survivor, friend or foe alike.
"Ready—!"
Sparkle stopped at a relatively safe vantage point and made an exaggerated conductor's opening pose, as if summoning the climax of a symphony of destruction.
The next second, she snapped her fingers playfully.
No sequence. No delay.
As if a silent signal hit all at once, the ground of Mingdu—both the districts of shattered ruins and the scorched battlefield center—lit up with dozens of searing red points that made the heart seize.
Then—
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumble!!!!!!!!!!!!
Words could not describe the terror. Explosions erupted from every corner of Mingdu, all at once.
It wasn't a single blast, but dozens, layered until they fused into one ultimate roar that tore heaven and earth and stole all hearing.
Blazing light and violent heat swallowed everything in sight in an instant.
Buildings, corpses, metal wreckage—even the air—were vaporized, annihilated.
A colossal fireball of absolute ending swelled at unimaginable speed, threatening to erase everything within its range.
But this energy of ultimate destruction did not discharge fully.
At the peak of the explosion, the hidden spacetime node precisely located beneath Mingdu by Vita was forced open by the brutal torrent.
Bzz—!!!
A churning, twisted, chaotic passage more profound and eerie than the explosion's light ripped open reality at the heart of the fireball.
Like a ravenous black hole, it devoured the vast majority of the blast's energy—and everything within the blast radius.
The terrifying energy was twisted, absorbed, and repurposed to sustain the passage's existence and stability.
The annihilating fireball collapsed like a pricked bladder. Its horrifying energy and all it carried—
"W-what is that?!"
Xuan Zi and the others, battling the undead legion and the Borisin legion, were petrified by the sudden apocalypse before them.
They looked back to see the annihilating light surging at terrifying speed and fled in panic, no longer thinking about chasing the Holy Spirit Cult—only running for their lives.
Even though most of the energy had been redirected into the node, the overflow from dozens of level-9 shells was still enough to erase any Titled Douluo with ease—including level-98 Xuan Zi and Zhongli Wu.
"Run!!! Run!!!"
Xuan Zi screamed hoarsely. He could barely save himself; how could he care for Ning Tian and the others?
"My lord is here!"
Jeanne's face was solemn, but she didn't flee alone. She unfurled her holy banner and unleashed her Noble Phantasm true name.
Brilliant golden light became a solid bulwark, shielding the weaker Ning Tian, Wu Feng, and the others.
She knew at this blast's speed, the kids stood no chance.
Aglaea turned as well. Countless golden threads wove a second vast shield, gently but firmly wrapping Ning Tian and the rest layer by layer.
Cerydra's gaze flashed. A strange chess piece dropped into the void, and a blue halo lit up beneath Aglaea and Jeanne—their just-used defensive skills were reset briefly and triggered again. Jeanne's aura of invincibility and Aglaea's golden-thread shield overlapped, forming double insurance.
Hysilens's lutesword sang brighter. A giant phantasmal whale of sound and mist let out a ringing call and charged the annihilation wave head-on, buying the shields a heartbeat.
"Bastards!"
Huo Yuhao couldn't help cursing.
The Holy Spirit Cult's vileness was laid bare. Faced with mortal danger, Zhongli Wu and the higher-ups abandoned their subordinates and even him, the Holy Son, bolting for their lives.
Thanks to the undead legion and Borisin's interference, the cult's main force had already fled farther—and they sprinted faster still.
"Yuhao!"
A pink figure broke the sound barrier, barreled through chaotic currents, and appeared in front of Huo Yuhao—Xiao Wu.
She seized him and bolted.
Even she dared not face the blast head-on or tear space—attempting teleportation amid such turbulence would be suicide.
"Mr. Jing Yuan!"
Bei Bei was pale. Though he had left Shrek, he couldn't watch his former teachers and classmates die. He turned pleading eyes to Jing Yuan.
"…Very well."
Jing Yuan sighed. He could have taken only Bei Bei and Tang Ya to safety, but if Bei Bei's heart clung to old ties, he wouldn't stand by.
"Radiant spirit, heed my word—!"
As Jing Yuan's usually half-lidded eyes opened, majestic golden thunder coalesced into a sky-filling Divine General.
The giant raised a spear of pure lightning and hurled it into the onrushing wave of destruction.
Thunder crashed, myriad serpents of lightning ravaged the void.
The wave hit.
Hysilens's sound-whale shattered almost instantly.
Aglaea's golden threads, along with Cerydra's reset shield, tore apart with a shriek.
Just as the wave was about to consume Ma Xiaotao and the others, the golden thunder-spear collided head-on.
Boom—!!!
Half the wave's power was erased by the titanic strike.
But the remainder was still dreadful. Ma Xiaotao and the others were flung like leaves in a storm.
Without Jeanne's two layers of invincibility at the last instant, Ning Tian, Wu Feng, and the other lower-level students would have been torn apart on contact.
Even so, the shock knocked them out cold, their bodies drifting helplessly in chaotic currents.
And the blast wave was only the beginning.
As the core energy collapsed, a more terrifying suction—like a black hole—surged from the chaotic passage.
The remaining Anti-Matter Legions, Xuan Zi, the Sea God Pavilion elders, Ma Xiaotao, Han Ruoruo, Aglaea, Jeanne, Cerydra, Hysilens, Xiao Wu pulling Huo Yuhao, Bei Bei carrying Tang Ya, Jing Yuan, and countless ruins…
Everything within range was caught and dragged by the passage's stabilized gravity, pouring into that deep unknown.
"What is this?!"
Even Lu Jingming was taken aback.
Just when everything seemed settled, an upheaval like this erupted.
It was completely beyond his expectations.
Beside him, the newly cowed Vita couldn't hide the curve of a satisfied smile.
"Looks like little sister Sparkle pulled it off…"
Facing the wave, Gu Yuena and Jingliu appeared in front of Lu Jingming at once.
A surging dragon's roar and a clear sword-song erupted together, easily holding the annihilating wave at bay.
The following terrible suction couldn't budge them either. With Jingliu and Gu Yuena shielding him, Lu Jingming and his group were safe.
"Xiao Ming, that's a spacetime passage."
The Herta's teasing voice echoed in Lu Jingming's mind, clearly amused at his expression when things slipped beyond his control.
"Did you forget? Among the summoned Servants this time, there's an ungovernable masked Fool."
"Sparkle!"
Lu Jingming's mouth twitched. He had indeed nearly forgotten the one who'd made almost no waves from the start—only to cause the biggest one.
"The passage to a parallel world has been blown open. You should know which world it links to—we used Cosmic Juggernaut to anchor it before."
The Herta's voice continued, tinged with the excitement of a scientific madwoman.