“It was only a close-range smash with the floating heavenly palace itself. Attack!”
The remaining Ji family half-step Martial Saint gave a cold snort. His sword cleaved through the air, unleashing an unrivalled sword beam that slashed towards Lin Xiao, who now had no palace shielding his back. The void itself trembled violently, emitting a fierce whistling roar.
As expected of a half-step Martial Saint, he seized the opening instantly despite the unexpected turn of events. The Sacred Heaven Gate half-step Martial Saint followed immediately, sending a blade beam like a blazing rainbow across the sky, likewise slashing at Lin Xiao.
A direct smash from the palace was dangerous because of the restrictive clouds, but as long as they kept their distance, Lin Xiao could not threaten them.
Lin Xiao himself was astonished by the palace’s might. He had never imagined that a single smash could kill a half-step Martial Saint outright. It was practically a murderous weapon.
With this realisation, he no longer felt much dread towards half-step Martial Saints.
He even began to suspect that Long Tutian had known exactly how useful the palace would be and had deliberately tossed it to him.
Shock aside, Lin Xiao’s senses remained sharp. The palace had already swung out some distance and could not return in time to block. He instantly activated his Indestructible Defence martial technique, forming a golden, scale-like barrier of light around his body.
His current posture had him facing away from the pair, head twisted to the side, but the Indestructible Defence created an omnidirectional shield of righteous energy with no weak point.
At the same time, he ceased controlling the palace for a moment. A second spiritual-force barrier condensed within the golden light, creating double-layered protection.
This was already his strongest defence.
Against two half-step Martial Saints, he had to go all out.
Boom! Rumble!
Boom! Rumble!
The sword beam struck first. Lin Xiao blocked it completely; his body did not even sway.
The following blade beam, however, sent both him and his barriers flying.
Yet when the blade beam finally shattered, a faint golden glow still clung to Lin Xiao’s skin.
In other words, his defensive technique had fully withstood the combined assault of two half-step Martial Saints. Even though neither had used their strongest moves nor attacked simultaneously, this was still extraordinary.
It also proved that, after breaking through to the Martial Emperor realm, Lin Xiao’s vital-energy combat strength was now extremely close to the half-step Martial Saint level.
With the addition of spiritual force, he could probably fight a half-step Martial Saint on equal terms.
This surprised even Lin Xiao himself. He could not help bursting into laughter. “Half-step Martial Saints? Nothing more than this! Hahaha!”
The two attackers frowned deeply. Even without the palace blocking, their joint strikes had failed to breach Lin Xiao’s defence?
The last time in the Domain of Evil, had Lin Xiao not been utterly helpless against half-step Martial Saints?
How had he become this powerful in just two months?
“He has broken through to the Martial Emperor realm!”
The Ji family half-step Martial Saint finally realised the reason. His expression grew grave. Stronger vital energy circulated within him as he swung his sword again.
This time he directly unleashed the Ji family’s supreme technique, the first form of the Heaven-Illuminating Sword.
The Sacred Heaven Gate half-step Martial Saint likewise employed a terrifying martial skill. His blade beam arced like a heaven-spanning rainbow, a bolt of lightning across the sky, slashing once more at Lin Xiao.
Yet the instant Lin Xiao had blocked their previous blows, he had already begun pouring spiritual force back into the palace. He swung it sideways through the air, perfectly intercepting both the sword beam and the blade beam just as they arrived.
Boom!
Boom!
Both attacks were stopped dead by the floating heavenly palace.
Lin Xiao’s brow immediately creased again, however, because several Ninth Layer Martial Emperors had now caught up behind the two half-step Martial Saints.
With the palace, he could still hold off two half-step Martial Saints, but adding several Ninth Layer Martial Emperors would make things extremely difficult.
And behind those Ninth Layer experts, an even larger tide of pursuers was approaching.
Lin Xiao’s expression hardened. He spun around and shot towards the horizon.
The palace followed closely behind under his control, ready to block any further attacks.
But at that very moment,
Several hundred li ahead of him, an enormous vertical rift over ten thousand zhang tall suddenly appeared in the void, spewing thick white mist.
Behind the mist, the hazy outline of a colossal tree, ten thousand zhang high and a hundred zhang thick, could faintly be seen.
In mere moments the mist dispersed, revealing a towering giant tree that pierced the heavens clearly in Lin Xiao’s sight.
He was now only two or three hundred li away from it.
The sudden emergence of this heaven-reaching tree left Lin Xiao stunned.
What shocked him even more was that a long vertical fissure split the trunk, and right in the centre of that fissure stood a figure.
Or rather, it was not quite human. Its body was twice the size of an ordinary person, clad in strange, multi-layered ancient robes stained dark with long-dried blood.
Half its head had been shattered. The left eye and left ear were gone; only the right half of its face remained, with an intact nose and lips.
That remaining half was twisted and hideous, barely recognisable as human.
Long white hair hung from the right side of its head, reaching its waist.
A ghastly white cavity gaped in its chest where the heart had been gouged out, surrounded by dead-white flesh and exposed bone.
From the waist downward, long vertical wounds ran the length of its abdomen, exposing two rows of ribs.
Its hands gripped the sides of the fissure as though trying to tear the giant tree apart.
Yet the tree showed no further sign of splitting; there was not even the slightest sound of tearing.
The instant Lin Xiao saw the figure inside, horror flooded him. He cried out involuntarily, “Yin Demon!”
It was unmistakably the Yin Demon! The same Yin Demon whose demonic energy had once leaked in the Southeast Domain, rendering ten thousand li completely lifeless.
After Lin Xiao had lured it into the Demon Sect, the Lord of the Southeast Domain’s Destiny Temple had used a teleportation array to hurl it away.
Between the Southeast Domain and the Central Continent lay an ocean and spatial restrictions. Anything too powerful would be destroyed by the spatial barriers when passing through a formation.
Yet this Yin Demon had reached the Central Continent, and its body appeared unchanged.
It had clearly surpassed the limits of those restrictions.
What Lin Xiao found even more baffling was that the Yin Demon, having come from the Southeast Domain, had appeared inside the Domain of Evil, trapped as though wedged within this colossal tree that had materialised out of nowhere.
But Lin Xiao did not believe for a second that this tree could truly contain the Yin Demon.
After the initial shock, he immediately turned, carving an arc through the sky as he prepared to flee in another direction.
“Sizzle! Sizzle!”
At that instant, countless branches suddenly burst from the towering tree, extending towards them at lightning speed. In the blink of an eye, several branches stabbed straight at Lin Xiao.
