Chapter 639: Faster Time + Praying for Death Evolution (Two-in-One)

It did not take long for Yan Jing to break through the soil.

With a single thought, he smoothed the bulging ground back to its original state.

Everything looked exactly as it had before, as if nothing had ever happened.

No one would ever guess that several of the world's most supreme beings were now buried beneath this very dirt.

"Ah, there you are."

Yan Jing looked toward a stone block in the distance.

The Mechanical Emperor sat perfectly straight atop it.

He showed no surprise at Yan Jing's emergence from the ground. His expression remained entirely calm.

"Are we fighting or not?"

Yan Jing looked at the Mechanical Emperor, not breaking his stride.

"If we're fighting, make it quick. I'm in a hurry."

"..."

The Mechanical Emperor shook his head.

"Next time."

"Alright."

Yan Jing didn't waste another word. His figure vanished from the spot.

The Mechanical Emperor only stood up slowly once Yan Jing's aura had completely vanished.

He looked into the distance, his clothes fluttering gently in the breeze. The cold sweat that had soaked his back slowly dried in the wind.

He hadn't revealed himself earlier because he had been busy setting a trap.

The subterranean layers were now riddled with the weird energy composite machines he had buried.

His original plan was to eliminate Yan Jing in one fell swoop the moment the trap was set.

But...

Once he finished his preparations, he discovered that every life signal beneath the soil had vanished—except for the Earth Saint's.

Through the retrieved fluctuations of weird energy, he sensed that the Earth Saint and Yan Jing were locked in combat.

The two clashed, seemingly evenly matched.

This unexpected development prompted him to alter his plans.

If possible, he didn't mind eliminating both Yan Jing and the Earth Saint together.

Conveniently clearing out potential rivals for Advent Day was hardly a bad thing for him.

Except...

Things quickly spiraled out of his expectations once again.

As time ticked by, their life signals gradually weakened until they hovered at the exact same level.

Just when he thought the time to strike had come, Mao Si's life signal abruptly skyrocketed.

Before the Mechanical Emperor could even react, the Earth Saint's life signal instantly vanished.

At first, he suspected Yan Jing might have dragged the Earth Saint into another spatial dimension. But then a thick, suffocating aura of death seeped out of the soil and drifted right up to him.

That aura carried an overwhelmingly heavy stench of dirt.

His back was instantly soaked in sweat.

The moment he saw Yan Jing, he had nearly lost his composure, almost throwing up his defenses out of pure instinct.

Fortunately, he had managed to restrain himself.

"Mao Si..."

The Mechanical Emperor muttered under his breath, his eyes filled with disbelief.

Just where the hell did this cat come from?

Single-handedly slaughtering six Tenth Tier experts... and before today, he had never even heard of a Tenth Tier cat existing anywhere!

"..."

After a few seconds of silence, the Mechanical Emperor turned and headed for the outskirts of Old Sin City.

The battle here was over as far as he was concerned.

Although this trip to Old Sin City hadn't yielded any tangible rewards, he had seen some of his potential future opponents. Gaining this advance warning made the trip worthwhile.

Xue Mo, Luo Sheng, Mao Si, the mysterious human...

These four were the ones he considered the most threatening.

The others remained to be evaluated, but he couldn't afford to let his guard down around them either.

Crunch, crunch—

His boots ground roughly against the gravel.

Before long, he reached the road leading out of Old Sin City.

The further he walked, the more alarmed he became. His mind had been entirely focused on Mao Si earlier, so he hadn't noticed the situation outside the city.

Only now, as he approached, did he realize something was wrong.

It was too quiet.

The dust drifting through the air hung like falling snow, slowly descending, every mote seeming to whisper a story.

What had happened outside? What was going on now?

For some inexplicable reason, the Mechanical Emperor felt nervous.

Images of what might have happened flashed through his mind.

"Huu— Huu—"

After several seconds of deep breathing, the Mechanical Emperor took a step forward, emerging outside the city.

"..."

There were no mountains of corpses or seas of blood like he had imagined.

Nor were there utterly devastated ruins.

It was just...

Spotless.

That was the adjective that popped into the Mechanical Emperor's mind.

Before entering Old Sin City, he vaguely remembered the outside being a wasteland of collapsed ruins and barren earth. Twisted rebar and crumbled concrete had littered the area like broken bones and spilled blood.

But now, all of it was gone.

The gray ground was as smooth as a mirror; he could slide across it if he took a few brisk steps. Looking ahead, the flat expanse stretched out boundlessly until it met the mountains at the horizon.

The only things left in this gray world seemed to be a dozen or so white skeletons scattered a short distance away.

They were huddled together, arms braced against one another, as if trying to withstand an inescapable natural disaster.

But it hadn't been a natural disaster.

The Mechanical Emperor looked to his right. A man in a suit sat in a chair there; beneath his curly blond hair was a flawlessly handsome face.

Luo Sheng held a newspaper, flipping through it page by page.

It was as if he hadn't noticed the Mechanical Emperor's arrival at all.

"..."

The Mechanical Emperor took a deep breath, didn't say a word, and spun around to sprint away.

Thick metal pipes extended from the flesh of his back, blasting out deep azure flames.

His speed instantly hit its absolute peak.

He only wanted to escape as fast as possible.

There was something terribly wrong with this place.

In these final few days before Advent Day, he would have to resort to the taboo methods he had previously shelved to boost his power.

Furthermore...

He debated internally whether to ask that demigod to intervene.

If one of those people really managed to claim the root power behind the Old Sin City mutation, things could get extremely ugly.

"..."

Yan Jing lowered the newspaper.

He watched the Mechanical Emperor shrink into a speck on the horizon, the corners of his mouth curling up.

The next second, he extended his Paintbrush, pointing it at the distance.

Bang!!!

A single drop of ink landed on the mirror-smooth ground.

It vanished.

The next moment, the Mechanical Emperor mid-flight seemed to sense something. He looked up, his eyes widening in horror at the "giant mountain" plummeting from the sky.

Boom!!!

The Mechanical Emperor was smashed brutally into the ground, coughing up a heavy mouthful of blood.

Yan Jing smiled at the illusory mountain peak in the distance.

It worked.

He had finally found Luo Sheng's path.

While fighting the coalition forces, he had painted endlessly with the brush in his hand. He painted from the past to the future, from soaring birds to massive leviathans, from the people beside him to the deities of his imagination. He had painted out his own past, and he had painted out his boundless future.

Finally, he had grasped Luo Sheng's path.

It was a path that reached the very pinnacle through painting.

It wasn't about mastering every technique and Dao imaginable, but about hiding all of them within his Brushstroke.

In that fleeting moment, the instant the ink struck the ground—

Beneath the surface, the ink had taken the form of Mao Si. Using Space abilities, it had teleported the ink drop directly above the Mechanical Emperor's head.

Then, it transformed into a mountain weighing hundreds of millions of tons.

Yan Jing stood up and walked back into Old Sin City.

The preliminary grunt work was finally done.

Now for the main event.

He looked up at the sky above the center of Old Sin City.

A pitch-black cloud cover had silently swallowed the sky above.

The lightning within it was fully restrained, and a dense, teeming mass of countless figures seemed to drift in and out of the clouds.

A vortex silently took shape.

The cloud cover was now massive enough to swallow the entirety of Old Sin City.

Clearly, something was about to come out.

"..."

"..."

At that moment, deep inside Old Sin City.

Tiger and Chen Nian didn't even dare to breathe.

The Electronic Tentacles in the Old Man's hands had been pierced into the center of Mantou's brow for dozens of minutes now. This was taking far longer than their rehearsals had predicted.

The Old Man frowned slightly, his eyes locked onto Mantou's forehead. His gaze seemed to pierce straight through her flesh to observe the situation beneath.

Yi Ji and Mao Si stood on either side of Mantou, completely ready to strike at a moment's notice.

Time trickled by, yet the Electronic Tentacles in the Old Man's hands showed no sign of being pulled out.

Just as Tiger and Chen Nian were sweating profusely from anxiety, the Old Man's eyes suddenly glinted.

In an instant, the Mao Si and Yi Ji identities simultaneously unleashed their weird energy.

"Up!!!"

The Old Man bellowed, both to signal Mao Si and Yi Ji and to channel his Martial Dao Momentum Boost.

He had actually found the demigod right on their expected schedule.

But what he hadn't anticipated was that, according to the feedback from the Electronic Tentacles, pulling the demigod out required far more weird energy and physical strength than they had estimated.

This wasn't something that could be solved by slowly tugging it out.

It had to be fast enough to deny the opponent any time to react.

Even though the distance from its location to the surface of the skin was only a few inches, pulling a demigod that quickly was an enormous trial for the Old Man.

That was why he had spent all that time building up his momentum.

That was no simple task, either.

He had to gather an immense amount of power without letting the demigod sense it.

His only advantage was the weird energy-dampening setup Chen Nian had prepared in advance.

A single Electronic Tentacle could barely conduct any weird energy; it felt like almost nothing at all. So, to avoid detection, he had to distribute the tentacles perfectly evenly around the deity.

And then...

Rip it out with everything he had!

"Up!!!!"

As the Old Man's roar echoed, a pitch-black infant breached the skin at the center of Mantou's brow.

It was smaller than half a palm and curled up into a tight ball with its eyes squeezed shut. Aside from its fingerless, toeless limbs and its translucent dark skin, it looked almost identical to a normal baby.

The moment it was yanked out, its eyes snapped open.

Its blood-red eyes seemed to harbor mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

It opened its mouth, but no sound came out.

Yan Jing had already made his move.

Yi Ji raised a hand, instantly chaining Freeze Frame Moment, Praying for Death Evolution, and Faster Time.

Click—

The infant's movements barely even paused; it was as though it had just shuddered slightly before returning to normal.

But its entire body was sent flying.

Under the overlapping effects of Faster Time and Freeze Frame Moment, Yi Ji unleashed a punch with every ounce of strength he possessed.

At the same time, Mao Si teleported Mantou away.

"Ah!!!"

The infant let out a shrill, piercing scream—and was abruptly cut off.

This time, it was Mao Si's Faster Time + Praying for Death Evolution + Space - Destruction.

The infant's body warped violently, as if a formless hand were squeezing it from all sides, trying to crumple it up like a piece of scrap paper.

Bang!

Unlike Mo Xuan, the infant wasn't crushed into pieces. Only a layer of bruising bloomed across its skin, its face twisting in agony.

The blow had clearly hurt it.

But that was all it did.

The infant spread its arms, swinging its palms out—and was halted once more.

This time, it was Yi Ji's second Praying for Death Evolution + Faster Time.

Each identity could only use Praying for Death Evolution and Faster Time three times per day. This was already Yi Ji's second use.

Within the accelerated dimension of Faster Time, Yan Jing Blinked right in front of the infant.

This time, his weird energy erupted completely. A green leaf mark bloomed between his eyebrows as he directly entered the Third Layer of the Fear Stance!

The Power of the White Stone and the Power of the Fear Bird erupted simultaneously.

The surrounding space collapsed around him as Yan Jing raised his fist.

A punch!

A punch channeling the Old Man's power!

Previously, he hadn't known exactly how much damage he'd done to the Mechanical Heavenly Kingdom's demigod when he used the First Layer of the Fear Stance + the Power of the White Stone + the Fear Bird Stance + this punch.

But now, this was the Third Layer of the Fear Stance!

Combined with the most monstrous physical strength below the Demigod Realm!

The sound of shattering ice rang out, and Yan Jing's body convulsed.

Divine Heart - Frost's death-evade passive had activated.

The Old Man's punch was a strike that used life itself as the catalyst.

The next instant, an unprecedented, terrifying explosion blasted out in front of them.

The Old Man, Tiger, and Chen Nian all widened their eyes.

The scene unfolding before them looked no different from the end of the world.

Countless formless barriers of light flared to life, attempting to combine their strength and block the strike, but they shattered into nothingness in a fraction of a second.

The punch smashed squarely into the infant.

Pfft!!!

Pitch-black blood sprayed from the infant's mouth. A web of cracks fractured across its body like shattered porcelain as three distinct marks materialized on its brow.

One of those marks vanished, finally allowing the infant to steady itself.

But before it could even unleash its fury, its body locked up again.

This time, it was Mao Si's second Faster Time + Praying for Death Evolution!!!

Yan Jing rushed forward as Mao Si. He didn't activate the Fear Stance; instead, he conjured a colossal beast's claw out of thin air.

It was an ability he had used several times before, but this time was different.

In the past, projecting a single segment of the beast's claw had been his absolute limit. Now, the conjuration didn't stop. A massive silhouette slowly extended from the void until an entire, complete giant beast materialized in the sky.

A punch!

Another punch!

This time, Mao Si's life force shattered.

Pfft!!!!

The infant staggered. Chunks of its already-fractured skin flaked and crumbled away.

Its expression twisted in horrific agony, blood pouring from its crimson eyes as its limbs spasmed uncontrollably.

Some invisible force was clearly tearing it apart, but finally... a second mark shattered between its brows, stabilizing its form once more.

"You're all going to die!!!!"

It finally spoke, shrieking a complete sentence.

This was the power of a demigod. Even fighting tooth and nail, trading life for life, Yi Ji and Mao Si's two "lives" hadn't been enough to claim the infant's one.

A vicious, cruel sneer crawled onto the infant's face. It could tell that the two men in front of it were at the end of their ropes.

It was its turn now.

But...

Luo Sheng's figure materialized in the distance.

Faster Time + Praying for Death Evolution.