"How terrifying."
Shendu looked at the full single black hole's worth of hetero-energy erupting from the Cloud Bat Formation and said the words.
Yet, unfortunately, not a single trace of genuine fear could be found on his face.
The Cloud Bat Formation, or rather, the Concentrated Cloud Bat Formation, was capable of channeling the hetero-energy of subordinate Cloud Bat warriors directly into their vanguard leader, thereby forging a monster possessing an astronomical tier of hetero-energy.
Because the loss factor during this transmission process was extremely minimal, the Cloud Bat Legion was widely regarded as the most formidable military force across the Seven Parallel Universes.
The contingent that had presently manifested in the Third Parallel Universe was merely a preliminary vanguard squad.
Even so, the Cloud Bat Formation formed by these seven individuals was sufficient to push its hetero-energy output right up to the threshold of one black hole, a scale that was practically on par with the previous overlord of this domain, the Whale Shark King.
The power scaling was escalating rapidly.
Yet Shendu found himself quite amused.
"The true strength of the Cloud Bat Formation lies in its consolidated hetero-energy, making it exceptionally difficult to breach from a direct frontal assault. However, its fatal vulnerability lies in the remaining Cloud Bat warriors sustaining the formation from within..."
Inside the Black Tortoise, Thales was reciting the diagnostic breakdown regarding the Cloud Bat Formation generated by Lisa.
"Still," Thales shifted his gaze toward Shendu, who stood with absolute composure on the opposite side of the array, "this uncle over here probably doesn't even need to go through all that trouble."
"Hey, Fatty, you haven't even formally met the guy, so why are you calling him 'uncle' again?"
Kino draped an arm over Thales's shoulder. Since when did Thales and Shendu have such close ties?
"Besides, you're looking at a monster of this caliber, yet you can still casually address someone as 'uncle' with a straight face. Fatty, you've changed," Kino clutched his chest, putting on a dramatic display of heartbreak.
"Hey, let me ask you this," Thales pointed outward toward Shendu in the distance. "Is he this uncle's younger brother, or isn't he? If so, what's wrong with addressing him accordingly?"
"Besides, we shouldn't judge someone's inner character purely by their outer appearance. Sure, he might not look quite human, and his physique is rugged and grotesque, but..."
"But what?" Kino asked, looking puzzled.
"Our master is literally a turtle. Are you planning to judge people solely by their looks?" Thales puffed out his chest and declared bluntly.
"That... actually sounds kind of reasonable." Kino stroked his chin in thought.
Meanwhile, Master Wyatt's complexion abruptly darkened. If they wanted to chat, why did they have to drag him into it?
Besides, he wasn't a turtle either.
Remarks like that were genuinely a bit hurtful.
At the center of the battlefield, the moment Shendu articulated the name Nebula of Burning Fire, his overwhelming aura enveloped the entire planet without the slightest bit of restraint.
His Nebula Body mirrored the exact silhouette of his original demonic true form, which, naturally, was simply Shendu himself magnified to absolute cosmic proportions.
The coloration of Shendu's Nebula Body flickered between deep crimson and obsidian black, swelling and towering grandly into the firmament.
While the physical footprint of the Nebula Body he manifested at this moment wasn't inherently gargantuan, amplified by his formidable aura and hetero-energy, it loomed over the members of the Cloud Bat squad like an insurmountable mountain peak.
Gazing upon the looming Nebula of Burning Fire before them, the seven members of the Cloud Bat squad instinctively swallowed hard.
"How are we supposed to fight this?" One of the Cloud Bat warriors blurted out to their captain.
"Are you asking me?" The Cloud Bat captain replied instinctively.
The Cloud Bat Legion consisted of elite troops, and they were the elite among the elite.
"It looks like we genuinely took a wrong turn somewhere," the Cloud Bat captain let out a dry, forced laugh.
"Since you're already here, you might as well stay," Shendu laughed heartily, his Nebula Body extending a single finger outward.
"Form the formation! Defensive stance!" The Cloud Bat captain grit his teeth and roared the command.
The remaining six Cloud Bat warriors snapped into formation directly behind him, channeling their hetero-energy like cascading rivers straight into his body, ultimately converging to materialize a massive circular energy shield before them.
No sooner had this energy shield materialized than it made direct, unbuffered contact with the advancing onslaught of the Nebula of Burning Fire.
It failed to hold out for even a thousandth of a second before the entire Cloud Bat squad vanished instantaneously amidst the violent storm of churning dust and sand.
And with that, heaven and earth returned to an empty stillness.
Against a disparity in hetero-energy this astronomical, the Cloud Bat squad couldn't withstand a single blow from Shendu, getting wiped out in their entirety.
The Nebula of Burning Fire retracted in a flash, and Shendu shifted his gaze toward Zoran.
"Where is our next stop? I trust my elder brother has already purchased the tickets," Shendu stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking completely relaxed and at ease.
Zoran raised a finger toward the heavens, speaking in a soft cadence: "The Fourth Parallel Universe."
With a sudden flicker, his form materialized inside the interior of the Black Tortoise.
"My younger brother possesses a fondness for combat, and the Ultra Beast Warriors' objectives happen to align with his own. I'll leave the aftermath here in your hands. If your pace is swift enough, we might just cross paths again in the Fourth Parallel Universe."
Leaving behind those brief words, Zoran vanished in the blink of an eye.
The racial conflict between the Whale Shark tribe and the Golden Elephant tribe bore distinct differences from the strife between the Azure Dragon and White Dragon tribes in the Second Parallel Universe.
Here, they existed in a dynamic of mutual master and slave; although the Whale Shark tribe currently held absolute dominion over the Golden Elephant tribe, ten thousand years prior, those roles had been completely inverted. Strength and status had traded places, and the Golden Elephant tribe had once been the slave masters wielding the whips.
Their deep-seated racial grievances were virtually irreconcilable, and Zoran had no intention of intervening.
Of course, the primary reason was that within these two factions, aside from the Whale Shark King and Tyler, there was scarcely a single combatant worthy of entering the cycle of reincarnation.
Furthermore, Galvas remained right here.
Due to the direct intervention of Shendu and Zoran, Galvas had been spared his poignant, original fate of dying ignobly at the hands of a low-ranking Golden Elephant soldier.
Since that was the case, if this particular Nebula Body wielder wished to enlighten these ordinary people through deep, unconditional love, he would leave him to his own devices.
With that thought settling in his mind, Zoran reappeared beside Shendu.
The two demons exchanged a glance. Shendu pointed a finger toward the firmament, unleashing a strand of hetero-energy that pierced violently into the vault of heaven like a razor-thin thread, tearing open a spatial wormhole in an instant.
The two demons vanished directly into the depths of the wormhole.
What caught Zoran by surprise, if only slightly, was how instantaneously Shendu adapted to the laws of hetero-energy.
Moreover, the hetero-energy Shendu harvested within this realm surpassed Zoran's own output by a distinct margin.
"Your current hetero-energy tier..." Zoran inquired softly within the confines of the wormhole.
"Approaching eleven black holes," Shendu answered without the slightest bit of concealment.
An eleven-black-hole tier of hetero-energy, viewed across the breadth of the Seven Parallel Universes, this essentially constituted the absolute pinnacle of a Nebula Body.
Zoran pondered this for a moment before his brow suddenly unknotted.
He finally understood why Shendu, despite arriving as a latecomer, had been allocated an even greater share of hetero-energy than himself.
His gaze swept across Shendu's physical form, and the answer lay right there.
For otherworldly visitors like themselves, this world allocated hetero-energy based on the fundamental essence of their life hierarchy, utilizing it as a medium to assimilate and accept them.
And Shendu, apart from sharing the exact same demonic essence as Zoran...
Was also a true dragon.
It wasn't merely a simplistic, one-dimensional conceptualization of a dragon; within the lore of the Jackie Chan Adventures universe, Shendu's identity as a dragon held supreme, peerless nobility.
In that universe, Shendu represented the literal, primordial, and most original archetype of what a dragon was meant to be.
It was no wonder the amount of hetero-energy he could assimilate was substantially greater.
As expected, entities categorized as "demons" tended to thrive magnificently, no matter what world they found themselves in.
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