Before the terrifying power of the Sky Splitting Claw, the immensely thick wall barrier was like glass struck by a giant hammer—instantaneously webbed with cracks, then, in a flash of blinding energy, it blew apart into drifting motes of light.
Immediately after, a section of the southern wall—stacked from giant hard stones—lost the protection of the energy shield and couldn't withstand the residual force. With a tooth-aching groan, the masonry came apart and collapsed.
Huge stones mixed with dust blasted upward, then fell like a torrential rain.
When the murk cleared a little, a ghastly gap yawned where the majestic wall had been. It was several meters deep, shaped like it had been raked by a titanic bear claw.
Through the opening, one could faintly glimpse the panic within the city.
The garrison cried out in despair and fear. Many, too slow to dodge, were buried or crushed by the falling stone. Crimson blood stained the shattered ruins; screams rose one after another.
"Duoduo—!!!"
Xian Lin'er's heart-rending cry, laden with boundless grief and despair, finally cut through the battlefield's din.
At that moment, she was bound fast by countless tough vines split off by the Myriad-Demon King. Even as she blasted wave after wave apart with frenzied soul power, she could only watch helplessly as that fatal claw light pierced straight through Qian Duoduo.
Limitless regret and fury scorched her heart.
She burned her soul power without regard for anything. Azure flames erupted from her like a volcano, vaporizing every vine that touched her.
She became a shrieking streak of azure, flashing to Qian Duoduo's back. With trembling arms, she tried to catch his limp, falling body.
"Lin'er… live…"
Qian Duoduo's broken body sagged in Xian Lin'er's cold arms. His blood-smeared face twisted with extreme pain, yet his eyes were full of endless affection and reluctance.
He opened his mouth; more blood gushed like a spring, soaking the front of Xian Lin'er's clothes crimson. The harsh red stabbed at her eyes.
The soul-tool armor he'd designed himself—enough to withstand the full-force strike of a Title Douluo—had already shattered and warped in the prior impact. The exposed skin was crosshatched with countless torn cuts.
By his fallen side lay fragments of several eighth-level defensive soul tools, flickering with broken light.
Those were every last life-saving measure he had triggered on instinct in his final moment.
But the Bear Lord's Sky Splitting Claw was a terror not even Ditian would take lightly. Famous for his defense as he was, giving everything, he still could not stop that second blow.
Before he finished, Qian Duoduo's body convulsed violently. He spewed another mouthful of thick blood, again laced with organ bits. The wounds bored through his chest by the claw light suddenly widened, deep enough to reveal bone, with glimpses of shattered viscera within.
That was the residual tearing force of Sky Splitting Claw detonating inside him.
The last spark in his eyes guttered like a candle in the wind. The hand that had gripped Xian Lin'er's arm slackened and fell. His breath ceased.
Only those half-closed eyes still held a trace of longing for the one before him.
"Duoduo—!!!"
Xian Lin'er clutched Qian Duoduo's swiftly cooling body and let out a scream so riven with pain and despair it seemed to tear eardrums and pierce the heavens. Even the distant beast tide's roars faltered.
Azure flames burned out of control around her, exploding wildly. The extreme heat ignited the air itself, forming rings of distorting heatwaves, turning the space around her into a domain of annihilating blue fire.
Blood threads and killing madness stained her eyes completely. She fixed on the massive Dark-Gold Dreadclaw Bear not far away. The hatred and venom in her gaze seemed almost tangible—as if she would, in the next heartbeat, pounce and devour it alive, grinding it to dust.
"How could… this be…"
Cai Meier, Shi Xing, Yan Shaozhe, and the others watched the carnage, their faces filled with disbelief and bone-deep sorrow.
In a single moment's lapse, they had lost an old comrade who had fought by their side for decades, a pillar of Shrek Academy's Soul Tool Department, an indispensable Elder of the Sea God Pavilion.
The holy light burning around Yan Shaozhe flickered, wavering violently. The time-space silver disc revolving behind Shi Xing rippled with chaotic energy.
Everyone's heart was smashed by the sudden, heavy loss. Boundless grief surged like a tide.
"Roar—!!!"
The instant the wall barrier shattered and the great breach opened, hundreds of vanguard soul beasts, long-scenting blood and slaughter, howled in bloodthirsty excitement.
Greed and cruelty flashed in their eyes. Like starving sharks catching the scent of fresh blood, they lost all reason and trampled each other in a mad rush for the fatal gap.
Break this last line, and the defenseless humans inside would become lambs for wanton butchery and feasting.
"Don't even think about it!"
Time Douluo Shi Xing tore himself from grief, a cold killing intent flashing in his eyes.
He knew better than anyone this was no time to drown in sorrow. If the beast tide broke through, Shrek City would become a living hell in an instant, and Qian Duoduo's sacrifice would be for nothing.
His hands formed complex, profound seals at a speed the naked eye couldn't follow. The silver-disc martial soul etched with space-time runes shot skyward, hanging directly above the breach.
Silver light of time and space burst forth, like a small silver moon suddenly descending, radiating mysterious, vast waves.
All nine soul rings on him lit at once—yellow, yellow, purple, purple, black, black, black, black, black.
Five deep-black ten-thousand-year rings emanated a vast soul power that made hearts race, marking him clearly as a Super Douluo.
"Eighth Soul Skill—Chaotic Spacetime Current!"
With a full-throated roar, his eighth black ring erupted in a dazzling darkness that seemed to swallow light.
The suspended time-space silver disc began spinning with unprecedented frenzy. Silver radiance grew ever more blinding; the surrounding space warped, folded, and collapsed like a lake struck by a stone.
At last, a colossal silver vortex over a hundred meters wide formed, its interior filled with flickering shards of light—like a cosmic maw opened into a deep abyss.
A vast, invisible suction surged into being, locking precisely onto the breach.
The charging beasts—whether mere hundred-year weaklings, massive and savage thousand-year brutes, or even the occasional ten-thousand-year leader in front—were seized by this power that touched upon time and space.
They screamed and thrashed in terror, claws gouging deep furrows in the ground, but like flies in a spiderweb, they were torn from the earth with no resistance, swept up like leaves in a gale, dragged helplessly into the silver vortex.
Once swallowed, even ten-thousand-year beasts, thick-skinned and iron-boned, couldn't manage a single full scream before the vortex's internal storm of chaotic time-space fragments sliced, dissolved, and annihilated them into primal particles—erased without a trace.
In just a few breaths, the hundreds of beasts surging toward the breach were cleared away as if they had never existed.
With this earth-shaking strike, Shi Xing wrested a precious moment of breathing room for Shrek City.
Shi Xing's time-space silver disc was a one-in-hundreds-of-millions Soul Tool that touched both the laws of time and space. Its rarity and might commanded reverence from any who knew the name.
In any world, time and space stand among the supreme laws at the pinnacle of power—"time sovereign, space king." Even if the silver disc channeled only a trickle of their power, the might it displayed was far beyond ordinary martial souls.
Because of this, Shi Xing, not yet fifty, could ascend to the lordship of Shrek City and become one of the youngest Sea God Pavilion Elders in history.
Among all Soul Tool on the continent, the time-space silver disc stood no less exalted than the Clear Sky Hammer's dominance, the Seven Treasure Glazed Pagoda's support, the Star Crown's defense, or the Seven Kill Sword's peerless edge—a top-tier Soul Tool beyond dispute.
However, forcing such a vast Chaotic Spacetime Current exacted an unimaginable toll.
His face blanched visibly, sweat beaded on his brow, his body trembled. Even the light from the hovering disc grew unstable and dimmed.
In the distance, the Myriad-Demon King and Scarlet King would not let the chance pass.
Countless terrifying vines, as tough as diamond and tipped with rending maws, lashed out again like serpents, seeking to bind and tear the exhausted Shi Xing.
The Scarlet King's central head vomited another pillar of hellfire, adjusted its aim, and blasted it at the silver vortex to shatter it.
Shi Xing clenched his teeth, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. He struggled to maintain the collapsing vortex while twisting space around him to dodge. The situation turned perilous once more.