After tearing through the silver spatial barrier, the dark-golden claw light formed by Sky Splitting Claw barely slowed at all. It still carried a despair-inducing, terrifying momentum as it drove straight for Xian Lin'er's heart.
"Black Dragon Shield True Body!"
Qian Duoduo's eyes bulged with bloodshot fury; his roar carried urgency and resolve.
Without a moment's hesitation, he activated a precious ring etched with spatial runes on his finger—a short-range teleportation soul tool.
A pale blue spatial glow flashed and vanished. Qian Duoduo's figure disappeared from where he stood and, the next instant, reappeared before Xian Lin'er without a backward glance.
His martial soul, the Black Dragon Shield, erupted with unprecedented ebon light, swelling in a burst to tens of meters tall, turning into a massive metal shield carved with ancient dragon patterns, heavy as a mountain, locking Xian Lin'er and himself behind it.
Ebon light flowed over the shield's surface; the dragon patterns seemed to come alive, letting out a low roar. This was his Soul Tool True Body.
"Clang—!!!!!!!"
A deafening metallic detonation tore through the skies, a shrill, piercing shriek like ten thousand blades scraping across the heart, making all nearby soul masters clutch their ears in pain; even their soul power circulation stuttered.
The golden claw light slammed into the colossal Black Dragon Shield.
An invisible shockwave spread like an annihilating ring. The ground beneath the two of them ripped like paper into several-meter-deep trenches, and even the far-off crenellations of the stout city wall shuddered, shedding bricks.
"Urgh—ah!"
Qian Duoduo braced both arms hard against the back of the giant shield. His feet drove into the ground like nails up to his knees. His bones groaned under the load; the muscles in his arms trembled violently, veins bulging like coiled dragons. His face went paper-white in a heartbeat, drained of blood.
He could feel with terrible clarity how savage and irresistible the force transmitted through the Black Dragon Shield was—the Sky Splitting Claw's might pressed down like a mountain.
From the shield's supposedly indestructible surface came a chilling crack. Fine fissures spread out from the impact point like a spiderweb, racing madly.
"Crack… crack…"
The sound of metal failing under strain rang clear in everyone's ears. The shield's cracks multiplied and deepened; its ebon glow dimmed rapidly, as if it would shatter into countless fragments the next second.
"Pff—!"
Qian Duoduo suddenly spat a mouthful of scalding blood. His martial soul's true body had been grievously damaged; as its master, his very soul felt torn, the backlash brutally severe.
Yet his bloodshot eyes were locked ahead. His knees bent to the limit but he still stood, using a shaking body and a martial soul on the verge of breaking to keep Xian Lin'er shielded behind him.
He knew better than anyone that if he fell, the one behind him would be laid bare before the Bear Lord's claws that could rip anything apart.
From the Bear Lord's sudden ambush, to Qian Duoduo throwing a soul tool, teleporting, and unfolding his true body to stand before Xian Lin'er—everything happened faster than most could even think. All in a spark of lightning.
"Duoduo!"
Only when warm blood splashed across her cheek did Xian Lin'er snap out of her shock.
Seeing Qian Duoduo's broad back tottering, spitting blood, yet still planted in front of her, her eyes reddened instantly. Heart-rending pain and a tidal fury drowned her reason.
Without hesitation, the spear in her hand was wrapped by a gale of azure—her martial soul was named Azure-Flame Dragon, but in truth it was a mutated wind-attribute soul.
When wind power is compressed to the extreme, it violently rubs against the air, producing a unique azure flame.
A raging tempest formed out of thin air, shrieking sharply. The extremely compressed wind-attribute soul power rubbed the air, bursting into that distinctive, ever-leaping azure fire.
Though this Azure Flame lacked the absolute domineering decay of Lu Jingming's Black Abyss White Flower, it shared a property of disintegration: anything it touched would be torn and reduced in an instant, broken down to primordial particles by the violent wind-flame.
"Azure Flame: Flood-Dragon Rend!"
Xian Lin'er gave a crisp shout. She hurled her spear, now fully wreathed in dense azure flames, with all her strength at the towering Dark-Gold Dreadclaw Bear.
She knew she could never meet the Bear Lord's Sky Splitting Claw head-on. The only chance was to save one by attacking another.
As long as she could force the Bear Lord to feel mortal peril, to make it defend or dodge, she could buy Qian Duoduo a sliver of life.
Once released, the spear seemed endowed with life and will. The azure flames surged and stretched, in an instant becoming a life-like, roaring azure flame flood dragon.
Where the dragon passed, the ground was melted into a scorched-black trench by terrifying heat and disintegrative force. Low-tier soul beasts brushed by even a fringe of the azure flame's aftershock didn't manage a full scream before the blue fire engulfed them and reduced them to ash in a blink.
However, at the critical instant between life and death—
"Rumble—!"
Without warning, the ground convulsed and split. Broken rock and earth geysered upward.
Next, countless thick, twisted ancient trunks of eerie blue-black burst from underground like tentacles from hell.
Their surfaces were wrinkled like aged skin, entwined with countless inky-green, ominous vines. They whipped savagely through the air, exuding a nauseating stench.
These uncanny roots wove, twined, and fused at a speed beyond reason, finally condensing into a malevolent, blue-black wooden giant over thirty meters tall.
Its torso was brute-twisted from dozens of the thickest trunks; its limbs were like the brawny boughs of millennial trees. Most horrifying of all, on its head and massive body, one after another, hundreds of scarlet, evil eyes snapped open, packed densely together.
Each eye turned independently and eerily, locking onto Xian Lin'er and the azure flame flood dragon she'd thrown.
This was the Myriad-Demon King, the Demonic-Eyed Devil Tree, ranked fifth among the Ten Great Ferocious Beasts.
A master of controlling forest flora and masking his presence, he revealed himself the moment he saw Xian Lin'er's all-out strike threaten the Bear Lord's vitals. His titanic right arm flared open.
That palm was braided from dozens of vine-serpents as thick as venomous pythons. In its center was set a basketball-sized scarlet eye radiating potent spiritual waves.
That monstrous hand, howling with wind sharp enough to tear eardrums, smashed down precisely at the unstoppable azure flame flood dragon.
He meant to crush any hope of human counterattack, leaving Qian Duoduo and Xian Lin'er not a single breath.
"Humans, today is your doomsday. Taste the sear of hellfire."
Almost simultaneously, the Scarlet King—the three-headed Scarlet Demon Mastiff—let out a rage-filled, tyrannical roar.
His three ferocious heads aimed at the most crowded sections of soul masters atop the city wall. Their bloody maws yawned open, spewing three pillars of scarlet hellfire hot enough to melt fine steel.
Though not yet at the ultimate grade, the flames were close. The heat warped the air into rippling layers. The three pillars converged midair, fusing into an even larger, gold-hued column of terrifying fire, blasting toward the defenders on the wall.
Where it passed, it left a stench of sulfur and charred flesh. The heatwave burned the soldiers' skin even from afar.
"Pathetic ants, die, foolish humans."
The Bear Lord's furred, ferocious face curled into a cruel, contemptuous sneer. He ignored the azure flame flood dragon that could threaten him.
He had absolute confidence in the Myriad-Demon King's power.
At this moment, his sole thought was to annihilate the meddlesome human Title Douluo before him—together with that loathsome shield—in the most brutal, crushing fashion, wiping them from the world.
His dark-golden talons rose high again. A tearing power, even more violent and concentrated than before, crazed at the claw tips. Air split under the ultimate sharpness with tooth-aching zzzts, as though even space itself whimpered.
Dozens of meters of dark-golden annihilating claw light, brimming with god-reaping, demon-slaughtering sharpness, ripped the air once more and hacked down at Qian Duoduo's Black Dragon Shield, now latticed with cracks and dim of glow.
"Pff—!"
Qian Duoduo's body convulsed. He spat another mouthful of blood mixed with organ fragments. His face, previously flushed from exertion, turned ghostly white.
He poured the last dregs of his soul power madly into the nearly-broken Black Dragon Shield in a final struggle.
But the shield that had accompanied him through a lifetime of battles was as fragile as fine glass art before this second, wrath-fueled Sky Splitting Claw.
"Crack… BOOM!"
The piercing shatter echoed across the battlefield.
The Black Dragon Shield could no longer bear the destructive force. It exploded into countless metal fragments glimmering with dim ebon light.
The claw light that tore all things did not slow after shattering the shield. Like red-hot iron through thin ice, it punched straight through Qian Duoduo's unprotected chest.
Its momentum unspent, the dark-golden claw light roared on and slammed into Shrek City's massive wall barrier.
"BOOOOM—!!!!!!"
A cataclysmic roar detonated, shaking the entire battlefield.