Victory and Defeat

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Six figures clashed relentlessly above the frozen wasteland. Every exchange unleashed a raging tsunami of magma. The azure land, once frozen for a thousand miles, had now been transformed entirely into a boiling sea of lava.

Everywhere the eye could see was a scene of utter devastation.

Nothing—and no one—could survive this clash. Even a mere shockwave was enough to kill a powerful cultivator in the third stage of Tribulation Transcendence.

Fortunately, Medusa and the others had already been teleported away by Ye Shu.

The clan chiefs had not stopped them. At this moment, such insignificant figures were of no importance. Once Ye Shu was killed, there would be plenty of time to slaughter them as well.

Ye Shu wore a bright red wedding robe, flames of fire swirling around his body.

“Brat!”

“Your borrowed strength won’t last long, will it?”

Liu Shuyan sneered coldly, his gaze sweeping over the karmic flames surrounding Ye Shu. “I don’t know what method you used, but external power is external power. It can never compare to the solid foundation built one step at a time.”

Ye Shu stood there in his bright red wedding robe without saying a word. He merely glared coldly at the several scum before him.

“Hmph! How arrogant!”

Yan Kuang snorted coldly. “You truly have no idea how high the heavens are or how deep the earth is. Do you really think that merely surviving this long by sheer luck means you can stand against us? They’re nothing more than cheap tricks!”

With that, he stopped wasting words and called out loudly:

“Everyone, stop holding back! Let us kill this Little Thief today!”

Yan Kuang roared. The strange flames around his body abruptly condensed into a long spear, its blazing fire shooting into the sky.

“Good! Let us combine our strength!”

The others answered in unison.

“Want to fight?”

Ye Shu spat disdainfully. “Then come at me together, you pack of dogs!”

Boom!!!!!

A terrifying shockwave exploded in an instant. The surrounding space shattered inch by inch, and everything within a radius of ten thousand miles was reduced to nothingness, becoming an absolute forbidden zone for all life.

Meanwhile, far beyond the battlefield—

“Mommy... Is Daddy really going to be all right?”

Ye Xiaoxi gazed at the distant horizon with a worried look on her face. Although they were already hundreds of thousands of miles from the battlefield, they could still feel the earth trembling incessantly. From time to time, dazzling flashes of light streaked across the sky, making it impossible not to imagine the brutality of the battle.

“He should... be all right.”

Medusa’s answer was lacking in confidence.

No matter how much she trusted Ye Shu, he was facing five Mahayana cultivators working together. After all, Ye Shu was only a counterfeit whose cultivation had been forcibly elevated.

Forget winning—the fact that he could stay alive would already be remarkable.

“You have to win...”

Medusa clasped her hands before her chest and prayed silently. “If you survive, then I... I’ll dual cultivate with you and Danxia again...”

“Mommy, what are you talking about?”

Ye Xiaoxi curiously leaned closer, blinking her innocent, wide eyes.

Looking into those pure eyes, Medusa’s aged face instantly flushed red. “Shoo, shoo! Go play somewhere else.” She hurriedly waved her hand to chase her away and scolded, “You’re just a child. Don’t ask about things you shouldn’t. I’m praying for your father, understand?”

“What kind of prayer requires you and Mommy Danxia to...”

Ye Xiaoxi curled her lips disdainfully. “Isn’t it just that little business in your pants? Don’t act like I don’t understand.”

“You!”

Medusa’s willow brows shot up. She reached out and twisted her ear. “You little brat! You’ve really become insolent!”

“Ow! That hurts! Mommy, Mommy, I’m sorry!”

Ye Xiaoxi hurriedly begged for mercy.

Danxia, standing to the side, was completely speechless. “I say... Do the two of you have no sense of danger at all? Has the Snakefolk been evacuated? Have you brought enough supplies? Have you figured out where to run if your father loses? Have you?”

The matter had not yet been settled, yet the two of them were playing around as though nothing were wrong. They had absolutely no awareness that disaster might be imminent.

“What else can we do?”

Ye Xiaoxi spread her hands, her face full of helplessness.

“Given our situation, either Daddy wins and everyone lives happily ever after, or Daddy loses and we all die horribly.”

“No matter which one it is, there’s nothing we can do.”

Her reasoning made perfect sense, but that still didn’t make their carefree horseplay acceptable, did it?

Danxia sighed.

She was just about to say something more when her ears suddenly twitched.

“The commotion over there seems to have stopped.”

She turned her head toward the distance. The sky was still shrouded in dark clouds, but the deafening thunder no longer echoed across the land. Clearly, the battle had reached its conclusion.

Ye Xiaoxi and Medusa immediately stopped fooling around.

The three of them stared toward the battlefield, holding their breath. Not one of them dared blink, their hearts weighed down by a massive stone.

Who had won?

Who, in the end, had claimed victory in this battle?

Would it be the veteran powerhouses—the patriarchs of the five secluded families who had dominated the continent for so long?

Or would it be Ye Shu, who had lost the one he loved and now stood alone amid the ruins?

The distant horizon soon fell silent.

Then, golden light broke through the darkness.

Five figures appeared simultaneously above the forest, wrapped in golden radiance, their robes billowing in the wind. They hovered in midair, the pressure emanating from their bodies still as heavy as a mountain.

Yet, upon closer inspection, the five figures were nowhere near as composed as they had been when they arrived. Their clothes were torn and tattered, not a single part of their bodies left unscathed.

Yan Kuang was in the worst condition of all. His right arm had been severed at the root, and his entire body was covered in charred burns. He was nearly unrecognizable as a human being. He stood there in silence, cold and motionless, like a towering stone monument.

The appearance of these five men already revealed the outcome of the battle.

Ye Shu—had lost!

“How could this be?”

Medusa covered her mouth, her beautiful eyes trembling as she stared at the figures suspended in the sky. How could this have happened?

That man had actually... died?

“What? Surprised to see us?”

Liu Shuyan raised a brow, a smile curling across his lips.

Although he had suffered severe injuries and his very origin had been badly damaged—injuries that might take several hundred or even a thousand years to recover from—he had at least managed to completely eliminate that Brat.

And for that, there were only two words:

Worth it!

As long as someone like that was snuffed out before he could fully mature, no amount of time spent recovering would be too long.

“What a satisfying battle.”

He murmured softly, then glanced back at the frozen wasteland behind him, where the heavens had been shattered and the earth torn apart. A mangled corpse, almost impossible to identify, floated half-submerged in the lava.

It looked exactly like the drifting, agonized life he had led.

“I suppose I’ll never forget you, Brat.”

With that, he withdrew his gaze and looked down at Medusa and the others with a cold smile.

“Next, it’s your turn.”