As Weina was consumed by despair, she felt a sudden warmth on the back of her hand.
She looked down in a hurry—the three crimson command seals still burned bright on her skin, showing no sign of fading.
The contract remained—Feixiao… was still alive!
A flood of relief washed over Weina; her legs nearly gave out.
She was profoundly grateful to have summoned such a powerful being as Feixiao.
The Arbiter-General from Xianzhou was not only straightforward in character, but possessed strength beyond all imagination.
To survive such an annihilating blow… Weina could not fathom such a realm of power.
She did not doubt that even the legendary gods would suffer if struck head-on by such an attack.
Top-tier Rank 99 Douluo's full-power blow was said to match a ninth-grade fixed soul-guided shell.
Yet the aftershock of Celenova's casual strike surpassed the combined detonation of over a dozen such shells.
The true core of its power was incalculable.
Even more chilling—no one knew if Celenova was even at her limit.
After all, she had not once revealed her true form.
If it came to a direct clash might hold her own. But in this world, both existed as special memory constructs formed from negative energy.
Clearly, as the embodiment of Destruction, Celenova gained and recovered power far faster than Feixiao.
Feixiao and Jing Yuan, as Xianzhou generals, drew power from faith and duty, bound by their conscience.
They could not, like Celenova, recklessly slaughter and destroy to absorb power.
Destruction and slaughter were Celenova's nourishment. Thus, her seemingly endless might now seemed almost inevitable.
…
"Ugh! Damn, that was… intense!"
A pained, lingering exclamation rose from the rubble.
Childe Tartaglia barely propped himself up with his thunder-wreathed spear; his ornate, dangerous demon armor was covered in cracks, ready to shatter.
Wiping blood from his lips, he looked toward the abyss hacked into the city, for the first time showing not excitement, but visceral fear and dread.
"This isn't even a battle anymore…"
He muttered, the usual fighting spirit in his eyes replaced by apprehension.
"This is… a natural disaster!"
He loved the thrill of the edge, craved duels with the strong, but had no desire to die meaninglessly in such incomprehensible annihilation.
Nearby, Kong Deming's face was also pale.
His exquisite tenth-grade soul device, "Silver Moon Divine Shield," had grown dim, its surface warped.
Had he not deployed it in time, diverting most of the blast to another dimension, even as the Sun-Moon Empire's Supreme Elder and a tenth-grade soul engineer, he might not have survived.
His gaze was fixed on the voided city, his cheek twitching uncontrollably.
For all his preparation and overestimating of Celenova's power, reality had slapped him hard, laying bare the limits of his imagination.
Yet this despairing gap did not crush his will—if anything, it strengthened his resolve and clarity.
Xu Tianran's chosen path, the power he sought, perhaps… truly could bring final victory, no matter the cost.
Now, he must seize this moment of utmost chaos, when all eyes were drawn to higher-level battles, to eradicate the last resistance of the old Douluo Three Kingdoms—for the Sun-Moon Empire, for the future he believed in.
On the ruins, survivors—civilian, soul master, or servant—could only stare in silence at the hellish scar carved across Mingdu.
Celenova's casual strike not only destroyed a third of the city, but planted seeds of despair and smallness in the heart of every witness.
Their previous struggles, factional strife, and grudges now seemed laughable and insignificant in the face of such power.
Yet, even this overwhelming blow did not end the slaughter in Mingdu.
As the smoke of destruction lingered, the whine and roar of soul cannons once more shattered the air from the palace ruins.
Across the city's shattered remains, soul masters and antimatter troops still clashed, death and resistance persisting.
In the heart of the devastation wrought by Siegfried's dusk sword, the scene was even more tragic.
The antimatter soldiers used as shields by Fei Yan were now but drifting black ash—nothing left, not even the largest Voidranger: Trampler.
The ashes drifted on the breeze with a stinging odor.
At the bottom of a vast crater, Huo Yuhao knelt in a pool of blood.
The right side of his body was almost entirely sliced away, blood and shattered organs exposed, as if flayed by countless invisible blades.
Warm blood dripped from his broken ribs and arm, pooling darkly on the ground.
Each shallow breath wrenched at his broken chest, bringing agony near to fainting.
Around him lay countless shards of ultimate ice—his last defense.
In the final moment, he'd spent all his energy and spirit to encase himself, Bei Bei, and Tang Ya in a shell of ultimate ice.
It was the last barrier he could raise.
Even so, standing at the front, he could not fully withstand the final outburst of a dying hero.
Destructive sword energy, alive with malice, tore through the ice, shredding half his body to pieces.
Were it not for the resilience of his new form, he would have been a corpse already.
Bei Bei, protected behind him, fared little better—his chest wound worsened, deep sword marks everywhere, blood-soaked, his face deathly pale.
Tang Ya, at the very back, still had an arm slashed open to the bone, blood flowing endlessly.
And at the very front, Sakura, who'd shielded them from Siegfried's final fury, was in the worst shape.
The beautiful, fox-eared shrine maiden knelt, supported only by her spirit blade, blood-soaked robes clinging to skin crisscrossed with sword wounds, like cracked porcelain.
Even her agile fox ears drooped, their luster gone.
Most dangerous, thick black negative energy poured from her wounds, her memory-form body close to collapse.
To protect Tang Ya, she had taken the brunt of a dragon-slaying hero's final strike.
With her own strength and Higokumaru's, she'd been mortally wounded, her existence now a flickering candle in the wind.
Each breath was a struggle, blood frothing on her lips.
Higokumaru herself had not reappeared—clearly depleted or wounded in the last clash, unable to manifest.
Sakura had no strength left to summon her.