Chapter 156: The Kill!
The silver flash was incredibly fast, slicing through space wherever it passed.
A noticeable rift tore open, spatial turbulence surged from within, stirring up the blood-colored miasma in the gorge.
Pinned down by the force of the law domain, Jiang Zhe couldn't move. He could only watch helplessly as the silver light rapidly magnified in front of his eyes, finally revealing its true form.
It was a demon with a silver horn on its forehead, wielding a slender silver rapier. Golden patterns danced and faded across its exposed skin—signs of activating a powerful innate secret technique.
Jiang Zhe clicked his tongue in amazement.
So this silver-horned demon is actually a rare type—an assassin!
It's impressively skilled at concealing its life force, and with its explosive secret technique, it can close distances almost instantly.
In the blink of an eye, it was less than a kilometer away.
The silver-horned demon flipped its wrist and thrust the silver rapier toward Jiang Zhe's head.
It laughed wildly, mouth open in manic glee.
"Ha! You foolish golden-horned beast, I'm still one step ahead! Don't worry—I'll leave you just one bite. But only one, not a bit more—ha ha ha!"
Its other hand, shaped like a claw, reached out, already picturing the moment it would pierce through a headless corpse's chest and rip out a fresh, delicious heart.
But there was one thing the silver-horned demon had never considered:
Was Jiang Zhe truly restrained by its law domain?
The answer was no.
Oriana had already gauged the demon's law comprehension through the strength of its domain, and thus inferred the toughness of its divine body.
"Master, judging by the strength of this law domain, its law comprehension is only on par with a normal high-level immortal—roughly equivalent to the power of 300 times a realm lord.
Its meager grasp of the laws is nowhere near enough to forge an undying body.
With merely several dozen times the genetic level, its base power is just barely at the initial stage of a king-level immortal."
Armed with this intel, Jiang Zhe had a clear plan.
With the brute strength of a peak king-level immortal, I can easily harm the essence of these two demon dukes.
So he stopped playing dead.
"Seeing you laugh so smugly, I couldn't help but break the suspense. Popping the champagne halfway through the game—is that really wise?"
"It's a pity you've never experienced the marvels of technology, never known how handy detection devices are. I can't even share my joy with you."
"That flawless stealth you were so proud of? I've been watching it the whole time."
"By the way, once upon a time, you were also a realm lord with over tenfold life genes, weren't you? Then you should know—our world projections surpass the domains of many immortals."
As Jiang Zhe's voice rang out, the surroundings transformed.
Desolate mountain ranges unfurled in the void.
World projection, descended!
A colossal world with a diameter of 300 billion kilometers revealed just a fraction of itself, enveloping an area over ten thousand kilometers wide.
Under this oppressive force, the sharp, golden law domain instantly shattered and collapsed.
"No! How is this possible?!"
The silver-horned demon's arrogant grin froze, twisting into a mask of shock. It let out a harsh shriek in demonic tongue.
With the law domain crushed, Jiang Zhe's projection exerted overwhelming pressure, pinning the silver-horned demon in place just a hundred meters from him.
"Golden-horned brother, help me!"
The demon called for help even as it tried to spread its golden law domain again to break free.
It compressed its immortal power and fired a golden beam from its mouth toward Jiang Zhe.
Meanwhile, the golden-horned demon's face darkened as he summoned his innate weapon, forged from his secret technique [Edge].
Chains as thick as water tanks, drenched in blood, lashed toward Jiang Zhe. Their shifting ends sought to bypass his thunder stars.
But it was futile.
Like something that could influence time's flow—sometimes speeding up, sometimes slowing down—the thunder stars perfectly blocked each strike.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Time and again, the blood chains were stopped.
It was a contest of high-level law comprehension—
Space vs Time!
Jiang Zhe clearly held the upper hand.
Facing the immortal power beam almost point-blank, Jiang Zhe stood on his Void Core and activated his secret technique Tenfold Illusory Shadows.
Instantly, ten thousand clones appeared in the air.
Then each of these blurred, splitting again into ten more—
creating a swarm of 100,000 clones across the ten-thousand-kilometer stretch of the world projection.
With the burst speed from his flight technique, Jiang Zhe dodged the immortal power beam.
The illusions that took the hit were dispersed, but he was unharmed.
"Slow!"
Jiang Zhe growled.
The 100,000 illusions resonated in unison, disturbing time and space.
The flow of time slowed subtly; space thickened like a mire.
This, combined with the crushing world projection, placed unbearable strain on the silver-horned demon.
Not just on him—the golden-horned demon and his blood chains also suffered, though less severely.
This was the power of the spiritual technique Shadow Domain, now at its third layer.
It foreshadowed its ultimate mysteries at the fifth layer—time dilation and space sealing.
Having thoroughly restrained the silver-horned demon, Jiang Zhe unleashed a blood-hued gleam from his back, crossing a hundred meters almost instantly to appear at the demon's neck.
A cold flash of the blade—and the head flew off.
"Aaah! It hurts—so much!"
The silver-horned demon shrieked in agony, as if enduring the worst pain of its life.
The golden-horned demon, still tangling with the thunder stars, was bewildered.
Why such over-the-top screams just for losing a head? Even barons and marquises don't react like that...
He didn't know Jiang Zhe's blade was the Bloodbane, which injected blood poison into the wound—
a torment rivaling the pain of binding to a soul treasure.
Ignoring the screams, Jiang Zhe twisted his blade again, splitting the headless body cleanly down the middle, exposing blood and organs.
"Twenty! Twenty percent! Just one slash and I lost twenty percent of my divine body?!"
The silver-horned demon howled in terror.
"What? How much?!"
The golden-horned demon was aghast.
Sensing his brother's rapidly fading aura, he roared with fury.
"ROAR!!"
His ethereal power exploded outward, sending invisible soul shocks across nearly ten thousand kilometers. Space rippled like crumpled paper, nearly tearing.
But the shockwaves passed harmlessly through the illusions.
Even after being weakened by Jiang Zhe's armor, they couldn't stir the slightest ripple in his mind.
Still, the golden-horned demon achieved his aim:
among the illusions, he located Jiang Zhe's true body and fired a compressed ball of immortal power straight at him.
"Master, careful—there's something tricky inside that attack."
Oriana warned him.
"I see it."
Jiang Zhe deliberately held back with his previous slashes, destroying only 40% of the demon's divine body, to bait the brothers into staying for a fight.
He knew that to truly harvest intact immortal hearts, it wasn't easy—
especially since his soul attacks were still rudimentary.
As the ball of immortal power neared, Jiang Zhe simply shifted his stance slightly on the Void Core, effortlessly dodging it.
"BOOM—!"
Unexpectedly, the golden orb detonated right where he had just hovered, tearing apart the surrounding thousands of kilometers.
Terrifying energy waves erupted, crushing countless illusions.
This collapsed the spacetime slowdown, leaving only the world projection's suppression.
The silver-horned demon, who had barely reformed his divine body but lost 40% of it, was now under half strength.
Both he and Jiang Zhe were caught in the blast—like being struck by a thousand realm lords at once.
"Gah!"
The silver-horned demon spat blood, blown hundreds of kilometers away.
"Ha ha, I'm free!"
Even while badly injured and dazed by the agony, he laughed joyfully.
With the projection's hold weakened, he thought he could escape.
"Golden-horned brother, run! We—we can't beat him. See you in the Ninth Abyss!"
With that desperate message, he charged in a random direction.
But a voice whispered at his ear—
"The Ninth Abyss? No, I think you'll be meeting your brother again in my collection room—as a heart."
Thunder cracked behind him.
Before he could react, he felt emptiness below his waist.
Looking down, everything below his belly had been vaporized by a thunder orb.
Thunder star? Where did it come from? Wasn't it fighting my brother's chains?
Jiang Zhe's sinister voice echoed—
"Looking for your old friend? Over there. The one that just crushed you is another. I have ten of these."
The silver-horned demon caught a glimpse of a thunder star hundreds of kilometers away, its chains gone—his brother had already fled.
"Damn it... fine then."
At first he cursed, then found sudden peace.
The blood poison's agony had drilled into his genes and soul, muddling his thoughts. Now, finally, his mind grew quiet.
He knew he was dying.
That last strike had cost him another 9% of his divine body.
His immortal power was vast, but poor in quality.
Unlike king-level immortals who would only fall unconscious at 10% remaining, he would perish once under 50%.
Clinging to his last shred of awareness, he sneered—
"You want my heart? You'll get nothi—"
BOOM!
World power flooded into him, triggering a soul shock.
Combined with the poison, his mind went blank.
The self-destruction was stopped.
Before he could even try, Jiang Zhe drove his iron hand through the demon's back, ripped out a still-beating heart, and sneered—
"Disappointed? What I want—I always get."
"Why did I talk so much with you? Just to distract you."
"Now, die."
With that, he tossed the demon's half-body aside. A thunder star struck, reducing it to paste.
The divine body was too damaged to recover.
The silver-horned duke—completely dead.
In Jiang Zhe's hand, the demon's heart rapidly crystallized into a golden translucent gem, strangely beautiful.
"So these duke hearts have different effects from marquis hearts? And the color too... ah well, I'll study it later. Still have one more heart to collect."
Stowing away the duke heart, Jiang Zhe boarded his mechanical race starship to pursue the fleeing golden-horned duke.
By now, his detectors showed it had fled hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
As he gave chase, his world projection continued to spread, the endless mountain ranges extending in the direction of the duke's escape.
He didn't have to be cautious like Luo Feng on the outer battlefield.
This was the Abyss World, the Virtual Universe Company's own backyard.
The abyss demons were ignorant—no one would leak his secrets.
A world projection is, after all, a projection of one's internal world.
Meaning its max range could rival the diameter of his inner world.
Normal realm lords had projections spanning tens of thousands of kilometers.
But Jiang Zhe's, fused with Oriana, spanned 300 billion kilometers.
At light speed, it would take 11 days to cross it.
So a mere hundreds of thousands of kilometers?
A blink—and it engulfed the fleeing duke.
The duke's golden domain shattered.
Surrounded by endless mountains, crushed by force, he slowed dramatically.
His final escape route—cut off.
The golden-horned demon sighed.
Turning, he swung his massive blood chains, facing the silver pyramid that pursued him.
"Damn outsider. You killed my brother, and now you chase me down. Even if I die, I'll make you pay!"
The chains lashed out, aiming to smash Jiang Zhe's ship.
But from the hatch flew nine beads that grew rapidly.
Covered in purple runes, they soon were cloaked in thunder, transforming into...
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