The Tripod Captures the Five Great City Lords

Li Wentian slammed his fist into the void, causing cracks in space to shatter and spread rapidly toward the Southern City Lord.

The Southern City Lord used heaven-grade martial arts to counter the fist momentum while employing divine inscriptions to neutralize the assault. Yet before the lofty Li Wentian, he suddenly felt a fleeting impulse to submit.

“Treacherous cur! Who gave you the audacity to persecute the Crown Prince?”

“Damn it! Are we even from the same era?! And who are you calling a treacherous cur?!”

“Dominating Overlord Fist!”

An even more terrifying imperial might swept across the scene. Li Wentian clenched his right hand, concentrating absolute imperial tyranny entirely on the Southern City Lord.

Because of that momentary lapse, the Southern City Lord lost his combat opportunity. Li Wentian struck him in the head with a punch from across the void.

This punch caused his entire body to tremble violently, his spirit to shift out of alignment, his vision to blur, and his mind to become dazed.

The multicolored armor the Southern City Lord wore automatically protected its master, wrapping him in a cocoon of colors that withstood Li Wentian’s subsequent attacks.

At the same time, more divine inscriptions surged forth to counterattack Li Wentian.

Realizing his opponent was tough, Li Wentian glanced at the open entrance to the Cauldron Realm and swept the Southern City Lord over with a kick.

Chen Yi leaped up.

“I’ll catch him!”

Chen Yi used the Cauldron Realm entrance to receive the Southern City Lord.

The Great Demon was locked in battle with the Northern City Lord.

In a direct confrontation, the Northern City Lord was no match for the Great Demon at all. With one strike, the Great Demon corroded his multicolored armor with a burst of baleful aura, and the next blow could shatter his protection completely.

The Northern City Lord could only rely on agile movement and speed, continuously releasing divine inscriptions to restrain the Great Demon.

The Great Demon found the Northern City Lord’s divine inscriptions utterly infuriating.

“You rodent! Besides drawing these ghostly scribbles, can you do anything else?”

“The famously notorious Great Demon, who once ruled supreme in the human realm and even inexplicably became a protector, still can’t take down this ‘rodent,’ can he?”

Another wave of divine inscriptions spread across the sky, branding themselves onto the Great Demon’s body and glowing with sacred radiance, causing immense pain to this demonic cultivator.

“You’re asking for death!”

The Great Demon transformed into a baleful aura, dispersing himself as much as possible to cover the surrounding area like a vast black fog.

At the same time, a somewhat whiny voice rang out.

“Be careful, Great Demon brother~ If you use me to fight, I won’t be able to suppress your remnant soul~”

“No matter! This isn’t the outside world; the power of the underworld can’t reach here just yet! Let me crush this man!”

The black mist coalesced, and the Sun-Moon Tower descended from the heavens.

The Northern City Lord fought with all his might, but everything around him was pitch-black. Not only was his vision stripped away, but even his spiritual sense was restricted. Continuing like this, he would inevitably be suppressed by the Sun-Moon Tower, and then he’d be finished.

His instinct was to escape this black fog; otherwise, he’d be too passive.

“Path-Opening Divine Inscription!”

A road paved with divine inscriptions extended out from beneath the Northern City Lord’s feet.

He stepped onto the divine inscription path, heading beyond the baleful aura.

“Great Demon! You think petty tricks like this can trap me? What wishful thinking!”

The Northern City Lord successfully burst out of the Great Demon’s baleful aura blockade. But the moment he emerged, he charged headlong into the Cauldron Realm entrance that had been prepared for him.

“No!!”

Chen Yi sealed the entrance, locking the Northern City Lord inside.

“Demon brother, that was flawless teamwork!”

“Hmph.”

Shen Yang’s opponent was the Eastern City Lord.

The battle here was relatively chaotic.

Because Shen Yang had thrown out so many things.

Mechanisms, puppets, battle arrays, spirit tools, beast taming devices, talismans...

The ground was littered with broken fragments and crystals drained of their essence.

“Hundred-Battle Ghost!”

Shen Yang pulled out a large yellow banner and shook it vigorously, summoning a solid-flesh ghost creature dozens of meters tall, clad in black armor and wielding a massive cleaver.

“Don’t you ever stop?!”

The Eastern City Lord was genuinely exasperated by this Doraemon Shen. Mostly, he felt a twinge of envy and resentment.

You, Shen Yang, mastering a bunch of different skills—I don’t begrudge you that; it’s your talent, and even if I tried to learn, I might fail. But having abundant resources to fuel every single one of those skills—that’s just too much!

Even among the ancient wasteland remnants who had seized the Ascension Path and gained partial knowledge of the real world, the powerful and high-ranking among them couldn’t afford such luxury.

“If you use fire attack, your divine inscriptions show a water tendency. When you lack speed, you use them to accelerate. The divine inscriptions you wield—they’re borrowing some kind of power, aren’t they?”

Old Shen studied as he fought.

“Actually, the divine inscriptions themselves aren’t all that impressive. It’s just that you use them just right. A skill that requires thinking—I rather like it…”

Shen Yang even reached out to actively touch the divine inscriptions.

“It’s a type of script, but not one from the human realm. A script from the real world? Why does the script have such an effect? Ah, maybe I don’t need to care why. I just need to carve this same script myself.”

Seeing that this Patriarch Shen was on the verge of fully understanding divine inscriptions, the Eastern City Lord realized that if the fight dragged on, Shen might even learn them!

He had to finish him off quickly!

The Eastern City Lord seemed to possess the highest mastery of divine inscriptions.

He integrated divine inscriptions with his martial arts, causing the entire ancient wasteland secret realm to tremor subtly.

The Eastern City Lord wielded a pair of golden maces as weapons.

Now, his entire aura soared skyward, and the images of dragons and tigers roared atop his golden maces.

“Spirit-Subduing Maces!”

The Eastern City Lord’s twin maces suddenly expanded to a thousand meters in size, carrying infinite destructive force as they shattered the surrounding space and crashed down with a thunderous roar.

The dragon and tiger images surged forth, pinning Shen Yang in place, preventing his escape.

A panicked expression appeared on Shen Yang’s face.

“Oh no!”

“Boom!!!”

The Eastern City Lord’s strike obliterated the entire environment, even causing the misty outlines of the outside world to appear.

“Hmph. See if you survive that!”

“Sorry, old Shen is still alive.”

The Eastern City Lord didn’t even have time to celebrate. He turned his head and saw Shen Yang slowly walking toward him.

“You… you…”

“What you struck just now was nothing but a puppet substitute.”

“Puppet… the way of puppetry, is it…”

“Interested? But this old man doesn’t take just any disciple.”

“You damn—ah!”

Beneath the Eastern City Lord’s feet, Chen Yi seized the moment when the guy was mentally shattered by Shen Yang. He burst out from underground holding the Nine Continents Cauldron and directly absorbed him into the Cauldron Realm.

Hua Wuyan’s opponent was the Western City Lord, who was also female.

“Our ancestors’ faults were theirs. Their descendants should have found the right path, not gone further astray or refused to turn back…”

Hua Wuyan was subjecting the Western City Lord to therapeutic conversation.

The Western City Lord wielded a whip weapon that strongly resembled an Immortal Binding Rope. Every crack of the whip extended over a kilometer, leaving clear marks in the air.

“Shut up! What right do you have to lecture me?!”

Hua Wuyan vanished from her spot and inexplicably reappeared from another direction. She continued walking slowly with her staff, earnestly remonstrating.

“As a human protector, I naturally have both the right and the duty.”

“We don’t acknowledge any so-called protectors! We have our own way!”

“Copying a few techniques from the real world doesn’t qualify as a way. Thirty thousand years—if you hadn’t been fixated on the Ascension Path, perhaps the human race would have regained its former glory by now.”

“Wishful thinking! The foolish Human Emperor buried all the great inheritances in the demon realm, and there’s no retrieving them. What glory would there be to regain?! Without the Ascension Path, we’d be even more hopeless!”

Hua Wuyan, while preaching, gradually lured the Western City Lord into the poisonous illusion trap she had set.

As a Martial God, the poison's effect on the Western City Lord lasted only an instant.

But that was enough.

When she regained her senses, what she saw was a giant cauldron crashing down upon her.