Chapter 658: Ten Monsters (Two-in-One)

Ning An and Zheng Youlan's eyes flashed.

Under these circumstances, such a unique fluctuation of weird energy left only one possibility.

One of the Ten Monsters had arrived.

Though they had no idea why a monster would appear in such a remote Domain at a time like this, the moment they saw that fluctuation of weird energy, their hearts pounded.

Even though they had just fought Yan Jing, and the memory of facing death was still replaying in their minds...

This was one of the Ten Monsters.

The ten people most likely to attain a Divine Throne on Advent Day.

Ten who already held a Demigod Realm Divine Throne, merely waiting for Advent Day to officially step into the Demigod Realm.

Ten who had never suffered a single defeat in the Central Region.

With the weight of such titles behind the newcomer, a ripple of hope finally stirred in their hearts.

What if...

What if this worked?

They fixed their gazes on the distance.

Only to see a black robe "slowly" floating toward them from afar.

The robe was massive, its hem and sleeves so wide it didn't seem meant for an ordinary person to wear.

At a rough estimate, even a man over two meters tall would be completely swallowed by it.

Threaded patterns and bloodstains dotted the gray hem. Clinging to the back of the robe was a handful of pale-gray soil, and resting within that soil was a single strand of long hair.

They could see it clearly—not because their eyesight was exceptional, but because the figure was approaching far too fast.

Despite appearing to float "slowly," its actual speed was much faster than they could have imagined.

In a mere instant, it crossed several li to bear down on them.

Gray mist billowed from beneath the robe, churning in the air before transforming into weird energy thick with the twilight stillness of death. Anything it touched instantly rotted away.

Any living creature in the air was reduced to white bone the moment it made contact.

The soil inexplicably clinging to the back of the robe shook loose, scattering and transforming into seeds as it fell.

From the ground, all sorts of bizarre things sprouted.

A severed hand stripped down to the bone.

A massive tree draped with corpses.

A rabbit with only half its body.

A flayed lamb, stripped of its fleece to reveal raw meat and terrifying eyes.

...

...

The aura of death grew wild across the land, ultimately weaving a gray prologue beneath the open sky.

The robe's arrival was like the unveiling of this gray Screen.

Splash—

The flowing stream abruptly stopped.

Equally abrupt was the halt of Yin Tianhuang's figure.

Watching this eerie scene unfold before him, he felt joy instead of shock.

"Are you one of those ten lords? I am Yin Tianhuang. I accidentally fell into a scoundrel's trap and became trapped here. I hope you can—"

Yin Tianhuang didn't finish, because the robe opposite him wasn't listening at all.

While he had been choosing his words, the figure had already closed in on him.

That aura—identical to death itself—made him tremble violently. On sheer instinct, he used spatial traversal to dodge to the side.

"Huff... huff... huff..."

He stared at his hand in disbelief.

Having brushed against just a sliver of that deathly aura, half of his hand had completely withered. It had turned pitch-black, the flesh shriveling and vanishing until only skin clung tightly to the bone.

"What is this thing?!"

He looked up, but the figure still didn't spare him a single glance, continuing to drift forward.

In just a few seconds, that line of mist—the very symbol of death—had swept sideways across hundreds of meters.

Yin Tianhuang had no choice but to move again.

He had no other option. The figure seemed incapable of understanding human speech, and he didn't want to cause extra trouble at such a critical moment. He could only follow the figure's path, retreating in the direction he had just fled from.

But...

After moving in the same direction several times, he opened his eyes only to find that he had somehow arrived right at the edge of that boundary of death.

He was a mere few meters away from the death line.

This was impossible!

He instinctively rejected the thought.

He had been moving in the exact same direction as the death boundary spreading from the black robe; how could he have gone backward?

At that thought, a flash of insight struck him, and he finally figured out the crucial detail.

Immediately, the final red gemstone on the forehead of the giant beast phantom over his shoulder lit up.

A blood-red radiance flared in the sky, dissolving into countless beams of light that slowly drifted down to shroud the heavens.

Nothing else happened. It seemed this ability was simply meant to emit light and illuminate the world.

Yet a second later, a wisp of black mist slowly rose from the top of his head and drifted into the distance.

"Oh?"

Directly above, Yan Jing watched this unfold, the corners of his mouth curving up as genuine intrigue filled his eyes.

"That ability is quite interesting too. However... seeing it and being able to dispel it are two different matters, aren't they?"

As his voice fell, another gemstone on the giant beast over Yin Tianhuang's shoulder lit up again. A pure White Crystal flashed, and ripples of energy crashed toward it.

"Bang, bang, bang—"

Three consecutive cracks rang out, and in the next second—

The pure White Crystal shattered.

Yin Tianhuang's expression changed.

The gap in power between the two was simply too vast—a true difference between clouds and mud. He had used this ability to shatter countless illusions in the past, but now, he couldn't even shake his opponent.

But before he could come up with a solution, an overwhelming premonition of death exploded in his mind.

The violent palpitation made his scalp go numb.

Ignoring everything else, he blinked into the distance.

But this time was different.

The black robe swept out, its corners elongating and its fabric stretching until it completely surrounded Yin Tianhuang on all sides.

The aura of death continuously spread and closed in, sealing off all of Yin Tianhuang's escape routes.

"Why did you wake me?"

A voice echoed from within the black robe, causing Yin Tianhuang's pupils to shrink in shock.

He had considered the possibility that there was a person inside the black robe.

But he had never imagined that the person would be standing this close to him.

It was a man. His face was as pale as a sheet of paper, his hands so emaciated they seemed like nothing but bone. His cheeks were hollow, his eye sockets deeply sunken.

"Why did you wake me?"

The man asked again.

Yin Tianhuang gradually calmed down.

It seemed the man hadn't been ignoring him on purpose earlier, nor was he actively trying to kill him.

He had simply been in a completely unconscious state, something akin to sleepwalking.

Realizing this, Yin Tianhuang repeated his original request.

To his surprise, although the man was awake this time, he seemed to both hear and completely ignore Yin Tianhuang's request.

"You want to leave this place? Is this place not good? Or... do you want to go with me?"

The man raised his eyes, looking at Yin Tianhuang as a glimmer of pleasant surprise filled his gaze:

"Do you mean you want to be my friend?"

Looking at the man's innocent expression and hearing his incredibly friendly tone, alarm bells blared in Yin Tianhuang's mind.

He didn't know why, but his years of wandering through Dungeons told him that there was absolutely something wrong with the man before him.

If he didn't run now, it likely wouldn't end well.

But... where could he possibly run to now? In the end, he could only force a smile at the man:

"Yes, let's be friends. We'll be friends."

"Really?!"

The light of joy in the man's eyes grew even brighter.

He stepped forward and reached a hand out toward Yin Tianhuang.

"Since we're friends..."

"Then we can hold hands, right?"

The man shot his hand out with blinding speed, catching Yin Tianhuang off guard and grabbing his hand directly.

"Ah! Ahhhh!!!"

Watching his hand wither instantly, Yin Tianhuang screamed on the spot:

"Ah! What are you doing?! Let go! Let go right now!!!"

But the man acted as if he hadn't heard a thing. It was as though he had slipped back into that deaf and blind state from earlier. He just stared blankly at Yin Tianhuang, a smile plastered across his face.

"Besides holding hands, we can hug too, right?"

Hearing this, the blood drained entirely from Yin Tianhuang's face in sheer terror:

"No, no, no, no!!! Get away! Get away from me!!!"

But the man's strength was absurdly massive, and every direction had long since been sealed off.

In the next second, the man pulled Yin Tianhuang straight into a deep embrace.

Death.

The suffocating aura of death crushed Yin Tianhuang's body almost instantly.

A red gemstone on the giant beast phantom over his shoulder lit up.

It was the same one he had used when fighting Lin Mo earlier.

A water-like mirror surfaced, and an aura of death just as dense as the man's poured out from within the glass.

But when that aura landed on the man, it didn't act like it had found an enemy.

Rather, it acted like it had found home.

The man's expression was pure bliss, looking as refreshed as if he had just chugged an ice-cold cola on a scorching summer day. Thrilled, he looked down at the dying Yin Tianhuang in his arms:

"You really do treat me as a friend, to give me such a wonderful gift! Now I must give one to you!!!"

As he spoke, weird energy surged from him for the very first time. A storm of death blossomed entirely, sweeping through the surrounding space.

Just as Yin Tianhuang—whose body was already mostly reduced to white bone—was about to give out completely, Yan Jing finally moved.

With a single step, he appeared directly opposite the man.

Then, the man's vision blurred, and Yin Tianhuang vanished from his arms.

...

It took the man a very long time to finally process what had happened.

He stared at his empty hands. Across his ghostly pale face, an unnatural flush of red appeared for the first time.

It was the red flush of erupting fury.

The man was truly furious. Rage surged to his head—he had never been so angry in his life.

He turned toward Yan Jing, his eyes locked onto the half-dead Yin Tianhuang in Yan Jing's grasp.

"Let my friend go!!!"

He roared at Yan Jing.

Yan Jing smiled softly.

"I'm saving him."

"I said, let him go!!!!"

The aura of death churned around the man like a sea of clouds, sweeping straight toward Yan Jing.

From a distance, it looked as if dark storm clouds, formed from piles of rotting corpses, were converging from all directions, descending to drag Yan Jing into a living purgatory.

Yan Jing tapped his foot lightly, his blink ability flaring, retreating just as Yin Tianhuang had.

Except, unlike Yin Tianhuang, he hadn't been afflicted by the power of Folly.

Moreover, his traversal speed and distance were far greater than Yin Tianhuang's.

Because the current Mao Si had found his own path, reaching the same Tier as his opponent, his traversal ability had directly leveled up to the Demigod Realm.

It was safe to say that as long as Yan Jing willed it, his speed could truly match the speed of light.

"Halt!!!"

This sight drove the man completely mad with rage.

He bolted after Yan Jing. The deathly mist billowing from his robe surged violently, transforming everything in his wake into a dead zone.

Watching this, Ning An and Zheng Youlan were simultaneously filled with shock.

The power displayed by both men had long surpassed the Tier of Divine Envoy.

It had reached a level neither of them could even comprehend.

"From the looks of it, the Ten Monsters truly are powerful."

Ning An let out a long sigh of relief.

At least, Yan Jing's first reaction upon meeting the man had been to flee rather than fight head-on.

Even though it was equally difficult for the man to catch up to him.

"Can a monster like him actually fear anything?"

Zheng Youlan also managed a rare smile.

"Shall we go?"

Ning An looked at Zheng Youlan.

Zheng Youlan shook her head:

"That guy hasn't gone far yet. Do you really think we can get away?"

"Even Yin Tianhuang couldn't escape. How can you be sure he hasn't already used the same method on us?"

"Let's follow them. We'll tail them from a distance and see how this ends."

Hearing this, Ning An nodded in agreement.

The mist of death had already spread to their surroundings; this truly was the safest option.

...

...

It took the pair quite some effort to finally catch up to Yan Jing and the man.

Or rather, they hadn't really caught up—they could merely see the man's shadow in the distance.

As for Yan Jing...

They couldn't spot him at all.

"I hope he escaped."

Zheng Youlan muttered in a low voice.

Yan Jing fleeing was the best outcome for both of them.

It meant they could avoid being captured by Yan Jing, and they wouldn't have to deal with the strange man either.

But in the next second...

As if to outright refute her words, Yan Jing's figure appeared at the very edge of their vision.

"You look tired from all that running."

Yan Jing smiled, looking at the faintly panting man.

The man's eyes were freezing cold:

"Is running away all you know how to do?! Let him go!!"

As his voice fell, streams of deathly aura unfurled from his sleeves. Taking advantage of the brief window where Yan Jing wasn't blinking away, the aura instantly enveloped him completely.

Facing the exact same situation Yin Tianhuang had just been in, Yan Jing's expression remained perfectly calm. He just chuckled and shook his head:

"I just wanted to see if your death had a limit."

With that, he gazed into the distance:

"It covers a space about... a hundred li by a hundred li by a hundred li? Any further than that, and your mist begins to dissipate."

...

Having his limit exposed by Yan Jing, the man's expression darkened even further.

"You're courting death!!"

The mist surged toward Yan Jing from all directions.

An abyss of death slowly parted directly above Yan Jing's head, ultimately transforming into a massive chasm that spanned the heavens, plunging down to swallow him whole.

"Is it over?"

Ning An and Zheng Youlan's hearts tightened. Both were fully prepared to bolt the very instant Yan Jing died.

But in the next second...

The black mist vanished into nothingness, and the yawning chasm in the sky gradually sealed shut. That wasn't all—the barren wasteland stretching from beneath his feet all the way to the horizon was entirely restored. Withered trees sprouted fresh green buds, dried-up streams began to gurgle again, and even the dead, scattered bones regrew their flesh, blood, and souls.

Yes, not just flesh and blood.

The meaning of life inherently included the soul.

Green—a crisp, refreshing green—spread outward from around them in all directions, rolling into the distance, passing the hundred-li mark, and covering every single patch of land the man had walked across.

Flowers bloomed in profusion. All things revived, teeming with boundless vitality.

To Ning An and Zheng Youlan, this sight was nothing short of a miracle.

"It seems my range is a bit larger than yours."

Yan Jing smiled. Then, looking at the man opposite him, he murmured softly:

"My turn."

"I will only throw one punch."

"If you can take it, you win this round."