Situ Haotian forced himself to stand straight.
Even under that weight, the Divine Emperor's bearing did not break. Giant Demon bloodline roared in his veins; the Battle Demon Emperor Body flooded his muscles with demonic power. His double pupils burned like twin suns.
He cupped his hands, voice deep and steady.
"Esteemed friend," he said slowly, wariness and dignity intertwined, "this Haotian is the Asura Divine Kingdom's Divine Emperor. I wonder from what Holy Land Senior has come, and for what purpose you cover my kingdom with your aura?"
Ren's gaze slid over them.
He didn't hurry to answer.
He simply looked.
Haotian, with his imperial might and Giant Demon blood.
Bonan, with his folding space and bronze spirit.
Yaoxi, soul force like a cold ocean, spiritual arts sharp enough to tear minds apart.
Qingzhao, beautiful and deadly, Darkness Laws coiled like blades.
Demon Envoys. Imperial Scholars. Bi Ruyu's curses. Younger generation lights—some bright, some dull, all of them thinking themselves apex predators in their own jungle.
His eyes lingered on Yaoyue for a heartbeat, tasting the Extreme Violet Dantian and the heavy darkness around it.
Then his gaze returned to Haotian and Bonan.
He smiled.
"To be honest?" he said, tone lazy. "I'm just a wanderer passing through."
He gestured vaguely to the kingdom below, to their killing fields and demonic palaces.
"I saw something interesting."
His eyes flicked toward Yaoyue again, then sideways over Yaoxi and Qingzhao, a brief, appreciative warmth in his gaze that did not match the oppressive sky at all.
"You've got some talent here," he went on. "Extreme Violet Dantian. Heavy Darkness Law. A few other sharp little things."
He shrugged.
"But overall?" His smile tilted. "Your Asura Divine Kingdom is… limited."
The word landed like a slap.
The air tensed.
Demonic path experts all around the capital felt their blood heat with anger. In the palace plaza below, Demon Envoys clenched their fists. Imperial Scholars' brows twitched.
Limited?
Asura Divine Kingdom?
Situ Haotian's pupils narrowed.
The Battle Demon Emperor Body's phantom behind him shuddered, giant muscles flexing. His dragon-robe-like aura vibrated, the demonic patterns on it twitching as if wanting to tear free and attack.
Situ Bonan's Bronze Battle Spirit flared, the bronze giant behind him standing straighter, its eyes lighting with bright battle light.
Ren continued as if he hadn't noticed their reactions.
"This so-called Divine Emperor…" His gaze flicked to Haotian.
"…and Emperor Uncle…" His eyes slid to Bonan.
"…are nowhere near enough for the upper realms. Barely enough to keep up with the other Divine Kingdoms, never mind surpass them."
Murderous intent surged.
Haotian's double pupils flashed.
Bonan's grip tightened on the Wishful Green Spear; the Space Concept at its tip warped more violently.
Around them, Demon Envoys and Imperial Scholars bristled.
Situ Yaoyue's brows drew together.
Arrogant.
But…
Her heart beat faster.
Someone standing above their capital, stepping on their Divine Kingdom, calling their Divine Emperor "limited" with that casual tone… it was the first time she'd seen such a thing. The Extreme Violet Dantian in her dantian responded instinctively, turning faster, as if hungry for this pressure.
"Senior's words are too much," he said. "Even Old Man Good Fortune would not casually judge the Asura Divine Kingdom as 'limited'."
Ren's smile showed a hint of teeth.
"Old Man Good Fortune. Divine Sea Supremes. Demon Envoys…" he said easily. "I've seen worse. I've seen better."
He lifted a hand, palm up, as if weighing them all.
"But you, Haotian, Bonan…" His fingers closed. "With the Demon Emperor inheritance in hand, with all this demonic potential—"
He shook his head.
"You've only raised a kingdom of half-grown wolves who think they're tigers."
Bonan took half a step forward, spear humming, killing intent rising.
Haotian lifted a hand without looking at him.
"Ancestor," he said quietly.
They both held back.
Because they couldn't see it.
Ren's realm.
His True Essence didn't feel like Divine Sea. His soul didn't feel like something they recognized. The aura was crushing, yes—but also… strange.
They thought of Old Man Good Fortune.
They thought of the terrifying figures of Nine Furnace and Sublime Smelting.
They still couldn't measure him.
Ren chuckled.
"You're thinking of testing me slowly," he said, amused. "Probe a few moves, drag the situation out, see what you're dealing with."
His brow lifted.
"I don't have time for that."
He raised his hand, index and middle fingers together, and curled them lightly.
"Haotian. Bonan. Come at me with everything. Show me what the Asura Divine Kingdom's arts should look like."
Situ Haotian took a breath.
His pride wrestled with caution.
He began to speak, mind reaching for the safety of formal words.
"This Emperor—"
"Haotian," Ren cut in flatly. "Not 'this Emperor'. I don't care about your titles."
The Asura Divine Kingdom's elders seethed.
A Divine Emperor, addressed like a junior.
Situ Haotian's jaw tightened.
Bonan's killing intent crept higher, Bronze Battle Spirit growling silently behind him.
They still hesitated.
Ren's smile thinned.
"Fine," he said lightly. "I'll give you a little… motivation."
He flicked his fingers.
There was no blaze of light.
No thunder.
Just two slender streams of killing intent, birthed from that casual motion.
They were small—thin halberd shadows, each the length of a human forearm, barely visible. But their structure was terrifying. The core destruction concept of the Great Desolate Halberd Art condensed into a narrow spear of annihilation, then wrapped in Heavenly Demon Lotus petals and Grandmist currents that turned that annihilation into a higher-order Law.
They shot out.
The air wailed.
They crossed the sky faster than any spear thrust, too fast for most Divine Sea experts to even track.
Haotian and Bonan's instincts roared before their minds caught up.
"Careful!"
Haotian's Battle Demon Emperor Body flared to its peak.
His halberd shadow erupted, God Murder's destructive edge forming in an instant at the tip—meant to cut not just flesh but destiny.
Bonan's Bronze Battle Spirit surged to full size, a towering bronze phantom wrapping around his body. The Wishful Green Spear flashed to intercept, Space Concept dislocating the air to divert the attack.
The two finger-streams hit.
It was like a child's stick striking a river, and the river discovering it was only painted on the surface.
Their defenses cracked.
The God Murder phantom split with a shriek, its destruction concept undone at the root. Battle Demon Emperor Body patterns along Haotian's arms flared wildly as the killing stream drilled through his halberd shadow and slammed into his guard.
Bones popped.
Flesh split in spiderweb patterns from fingertips to shoulder.
Demonic true essence went berserk, rushing to contain the damage before his arm was torn off.
Bonan's Bronze Battle Spirit took the second stream.
The towering phantom shuddered, its metallic torso denting inward with a sound like a gong being crushed. The Wishful Green Spear's Space Concept collapsed where the killing stream passed, its carefully arranged spatial nodes shredding like silk.
The stream hit Bonan's arm.
Bones cracked.
Flesh burst in thin lines, blood spraying.
The two old monsters were driven backward midair, half-kneeling in empty space.
Their arms trembled violently.
Their faces went pale.
The Asura Divine Kingdom's elites stared in horror.
They had just seen their Divine Emperor and Old Ancestor nearly lose their arms to a lazy finger flick.
Ren's aura hadn't even spiked.
He just smiled.
"That was just a greeting," he said softly. "Now you understand how far the gap is."
His eyes cooled.
"So drop the useless posturing," he went on, voice gentle and merciless, "and attack."
The humiliation burned hotter than their injuries.
Situ Haotian's teeth clenched.
Situ Bonan's eyes narrowed to slits.
Their pride, their position, their entire kingdom's face demanded they answer.
Before they could move, two other auras surged forward.
"Haotian!"
"Ancestor!"
Situ Yaoxi stepped out, soul force rising.
Her aged face was cold, but her gaze burned. Soul chains and curse marks around her body flared—Nether Bone Claws concepts, Monstrification Devil Art, spiritual curses all twisting together into a net that could pin even Divine Sea enemies. Her killing intent turned bitterly sharp.
Beside her, Situ Qingzhao floated forward.
Her youthful features tightened, the light in her eyes turning razor-sharp. Darkness Laws and Asura energy plaited together behind her, forming a storm of dark-green blades.
Ren's gaze slid to them.
His tone shifted—still mocking, but warmer, openly appreciative.
"Now that's better," he said, eyes flicking from Yaoxi to Qingzhao. "Charming ladies joining in always make things more fun."
He lifted his hand, palm up toward them in invitation.
"Come on, Yaoxi, Qingzhao," he said, saying their names as if they'd already shared drinks. "Let me see what your Asura Devil arts look like when you're actually serious."
Situ Yaoxi's heart skipped.
"Charming?"
For decades, she had been "old witch," "Royal Princess Elder," "that vicious woman"—feared, cursed, respected, but rarely described with that light, casual warmth. To hear it from a man whose aura made even Haotian cautious…
The cold lake of her soul rippled.
Situ Qingzhao felt her cheeks heat for the first time in many years.
She had traded cultivation for beauty. Countless times, she'd heard praise that was either leering or empty. To have a stranger above their kingdom, who shattered their defenses with two finger flicks, speak her name like that—casual, amused, like he was already including her in some future trouble—sent an odd thrill through her chest.
Haotian and Bonan's hatred deepened.
He had insulted them.
He had nearly crippled them.
And now he flirted with their elder female relatives in front of the entire kingdom.
Ren didn't care about their fury.
He simply waited.
Situ Haotian roared.
Giant Demon bloodline erupted.
His frame swelled, muscles thickening, bones creaking as they grew denser. Demonic patterns crawled across his skin, Battle Demon Emperor Body fully awakening. The phantom demon behind him merged with his frame, turning him into a walking war god of blood and iron.
He raised his halberd.
The Great Desolate Halberd Art howled.
Halberd true essence surged to the tip, condensing into a black-red phantom—God Murder. It pulsed with the weight of countless slaughtered lives, the blood essence of enemies burned into Blood Drinking Seals along its path.
"God Murder!"
Haotian's roar shook the clouds.
Beside him, Bonan stepped forward.
The Bronze Battle Spirit behind him roared soundlessly.
It fused more tightly to his body, turning his muscles into bronze, his bones into forged metal. The Wishful Green Spear lengthened, aquamarine light turning sharper, Space Concept gathering around the tip until it was like a star dragging the surroundings into its orbit.
"Wishful Green Spear!"
Bonan thrust.
Space rippled in front of the spear, collapsing into a corridor that aimed straight at Ren's heart.
Situ Yaoxi spread her hands.
Soul force burst outward.
Nether Bone Claws, Monstrification Devil Art, curse seals—her lifetime of demonic soul cultivation twisted together into a vast, pale skeletal hand in the sky. It formed not from flesh, but from soul chains and curse marks, each finger a net of Dao lines.
It reached for Ren's soul and body simultaneously, aiming to drag him down, to weigh him with curses that could pin even Divine Sea experts.
"Emperor, Old Ancestor," Yaoxi said coldly, voice calm despite the raging aura, "let this old woman pin him down for you."
Situ Qingzhao lifted her hand.
Darkness thickened.
Asura energy braided through it.
Countless slender dark-green blades appeared around her, each one carrying a strand of Darkness Law and Asura killing intent. They floated for a heartbeat, then turned, all tips pointing at Ren.
"Asura Blade Rain."
Her voice was soft, but in it there was no mercy.
The blades fell.
To the onlookers, it was annihilation.
Divine Emperor Haotian, unleashing God Murder at full strength.
Old Ancestor Bonan, Bronze Battle Spirit and Wishful Green Spear at their peak.
Two Divine Sea Supreme Elders, one crushing the soul, one tearing the body.
The arrays on the palace walls trembled, demonic totems flaring to full brightness. The skies warped, demonic clouds twisting under the clash of Laws.
In the plaza below, juniors could barely breathe.
Situ Yaoyue's heart pounded.
She had never seen her elders all strike together except in the worst wars.
Imperial Scholar Xuan watched with narrowed eyes, measuring the incoming power and Ren's aura, making rapid calculations.
Bi Ruyu's gaze was serious for once.
"Even another Divine Emperor enemy…" she thought, curse sense tasting the combined attack, "would die here."
The attacks closed in.
Ren didn't move.
He laughed softly.
"That's more like it."
Behind him, unseen by most, a lotus bloomed along his arms and back.
Heavenly Demon Lotus petals—dark-rainbow, edged in blood-red and thunder-violet—opened in layers. Grandmist currents coiled around him, thickening space until every inch of air around his body felt like it weighed a mountain.
His True Essence surged.
He reached out and gathered it.
Not in a spear. Not in a sword.
In a halberd.
True Essence condensed along his arm, shaped by the Great Desolate Halberd Art he'd just digested—but stripped of its impurities. Slaughter path at the core, wrapped in Grandmist space and his own annihilation concept. A halberd that didn't blaze bright, but drank light instead.
Grandmist Primeval Halberd.
He swung once.
The world seemed to skip a heartbeat.
God Murder struck first.
The black-red halberd phantom screamed as it met the Grandmist edge. Its destruction concept tried to bite into that heavy gray light—and vanished. Blood Drinking Seals along its path disintegrated, their accumulated resentment burned away like dry leaves tossed into a star.
The phantom halberd unraveled, lines of killing intent peeling apart into raw true essence that the Grandmist aura swallowed.
Haotian's arms shook.
Bronze Battle Spirit hit next.
The towering bronze giant slammed its fist, Wishful Green Spear's thrust following, Space Concept collapsing the distance between intent and target.
The Grandmist edge touched that collapsing space.
Space stopped.
Then it rippled outward like a bubble popping, the carefully arranged nodes of the spear's Concept melting back into ordinary distance. The Bronze Battle Spirit shuddered, cracks spiderwebbing across its torso. The spear's aquamarine light dimmed, the spatial corridor disintegrating around it.
The bronze giant shattered.
Bonan coughed blood as if his chest had been struck by a cosmic hammer, his body jerking.
Yaoxi's soul hand crashed into the halberd path.
She expected impact, expected clash.
Instead, she felt her soul techniques brush against something… higher.
Not a simple barrier, but a Law that looked down on her own. For a heartbeat, the net of curses and soul chains she had built her entire life was pushed aside, not by brute force, but by a superior structure. Her soul's senses flared; she saw glimpses of her own limitations—places where her art twisted back on itself, where fear and habit had bound her.
The skeletal hand disintegrated.
Shock widened her eyes even as the backlash flung her backward.
Qingzhao's Asura Blade Rain fell.
Each dark-green blade carried her years of cultivation, her Asura refinement, her stubborn clinging to beauty at the cost of power.
The Grandmist halberd passed through them.
They did not shatter.
They… turned.
Blades straightened, thinned, and were drawn along the halberd path, refined into purer true essence as if they had always been fragments of his Dao waiting to be reclaimed. For a single instant, Qingzhao saw what her art could have been if it had not bent to vanity—sharp, clean, a blade that cut not just flesh but delusion.
Then her blades dissolved into the halberd's wake.
The sound that followed wasn't a normal clash.
It was a verdict.
Thunder rolled through the kingdom—not from clouds, but from the Laws themselves.
The halberd light didn't stop.
It continued forward, a single sweeping arc that felt like it divided the world.
It hit Haotian and Bonan.
Their auras crumpled.
Battle Demon Emperor Body patterns shattered across Haotian's skin, the Giant Demon phantom behind him collapsing. His halberd flew from his hands, God Murder's shadow gone. True essence rampaged through his meridians, structures tearing. Bones broke in several places; his Divine Sea foundation cracked like a plate dropped on stone.
Bonan's Bronze Battle Spirit finished collapsing, its fragments raining down like dust only he could feel. The Wishful Green Spear's Space Concept core was gouged out; its Dao patterns screamed as they were forcibly erased in one swath of Grandmist.
The two of them were slammed downward like meteors.
They crashed into the palace plaza with bone-shaking force, carving twin craters into the stone.
Dust and rubble erupted.
Divine Sea foundations—those that had stood at the peak of this kingdom for so long—were left hanging by threads. Bones broken. Meridians torn. Lifesoul trembling on the edge of collapse.
They were alive.
Barely.
They could not stand.
Yaoxi and Qingzhao weren't directly struck.
But the shockwave caught them.
Their bodies were flung back, blood spraying from their lips, true essence shields shattering. Curses around Yaoxi's body unraveled; Darkness blades around Qingzhao burst like bubbles.
They stabilized far away, breath ragged, true essence in chaos.
Yet…
Their eyes were bright.
Where their soul net and blade rain had touched that halberd path, they had seen.
Yaoxi felt something inside her loosen.
Chains she had put on her own soul—the ones born from fear of aging, fear of being left behind, fear of losing her status—cracked. For the first time in decades, her Soul Sea felt like it could grow instead of just deepen in place.
"Such… Laws…" she whispered hoarsely, voice barely audible even to herself. "This old woman… has been playing with scraps…"
Qingzhao's fingers trembled.
She had always told herself that sacrificing part of her cultivation for beauty was necessary, that she could never regain what she'd given up.
In that moment of contact, the halberd path showed her a different road—a way to integrate the Laws she'd twisted, to rebuild her foundation without letting go of the face she'd clung to.
"So this is…" she breathed, eyes locked on Ren, "…what a true master of Asura-type destruction looks like…"
Silence.
Dust settled slowly.
In the plaza, Haotian and Bonan lay in their craters, blood seeping from their mouths, unable to rise.
Around them, Demon Envoys and Imperial Scholars were frozen.
Bi Ruyu's wrinkled hands shook.
Situ Chuan's face was ashen, his teeth chattering as he stared at the man in the sky.
Situ Meiyue's fingers dug into her palm hard enough to draw blood.
Situ Yangon didn't even realize he was kneeling.
Situ Luosha's fists trembled, his Asura ferocity strangled by something older and more absolute.
Imperial Scholar Xuan's famed calm cracked.
"Impossible…" he whispered, Samsara Devil Arts trembling inside his Sea of Consciousness. "Even Old Man Good Fortune… can't do this…"
Situ Yaoyue's heart pounded so hard it hurt.
Her Extreme Violet Dantian spun wildly, Darkness Law straining under the pressure of that Heaven.
She had grown up believing herself the greatest hope of the Asura Divine Kingdom.
That even if the kingdom fell one day, she could stand at the peak of the lower realms, maybe even step into the wider world and carve out her own legend.
Looking at Ren Ming now…
She realized the gap wasn't a canyon.
It was an entire cosmos.
Her Heavy Darkness Law felt like a child's trick lamp under the night of his Dao.
She couldn't even see his end.
Her fingers curled at her side.
Fear, yes.
But also something sharper.
Desire—to chase. To break. To step onto that level where such a man walked.
Above it all, the sky was clear.
Ren let the dust settle.
Then, slowly, he withdrew his aura.
The oppressive weight lightened, though not completely; the kingdom's demonic martial artists could breathe again, but they still felt something heavy resting on their souls, like a hand that could squeeze whenever it wished.
He stood alone in the sky, hands once more in his pockets, as if he hadn't just broken countless years of Asura Divine Kingdom prestige with a single swing.
He smiled.
"Good," he said lightly. "Now we can talk clearly."