Chapter 1379: Zhangsun Mi Perishes

"I'd like to see just how much of a beating it can take!"

Zhangsun Mi gave a piercing shout. His body suddenly stretched into a long shadow, coiling and twisting like a black dragon as he shot forward with thunderous force. Half the palace exploded in a storm of earth and stone.

Just as that black dragon plunged into the collapsing palace, a brilliant silver radiance burst from amid the flying debris, like an eternal lamp suddenly kindled.

Bang!

Zhangsun Mi came flying backward with blood at the corner of his mouth. He had underestimated his opponent and been caught off guard.

Amid the rain of broken stone, a silver glow rose into the air. The Holy Rakshasa, likewise bleeding from the corner of its mouth, ascended with both arms spread wide. Silver light shone from its demonic body, its eyes closed.

Granny Xue flashed forward. Her cane struck like thunder, aimed straight at the Holy Rakshasa's skull.

The Holy Rakshasa's eyes snapped open, endless coldness in their demonic glare. One claw shot out and seized the head of the incoming cane, stopping the thunderous blow dead in an instant.

A cold smile appeared on Granny Xue's face. Blue light flashed across the cane and spread over the Holy Rakshasa. In the blink of an eye, a mass of deep-blue ice sealed it completely.

"Shatter!"

Granny Xue reversed her palm and struck at the profound-ice seal.

Suddenly, dazzling silver light erupted from within the ice. Just before Granny Xue's palm could land, the entire frozen mass exploded apart.

A pair of radiant silver wings unfurled amid the flying shards, as though the mere opening of those wings had shattered the profound-ice seal.

The Holy Rakshasa spun violently.

Bang!

One great wing swept across Granny Xue and sent her flying before she could react.

Broken ice shot in every direction like arrows.

The others raised their arts and knocked the incoming shards aside. Before them, the Holy Rakshasa had finally revealed its silver wings. Like a brilliant star, it slowly rose again, turning in the air while traces of cold vapor still streamed from the body that had just been frozen. Its indifferent eyes looked down upon them.

The others stared.

At last they were seeing the Holy Rakshasa's complete form. It was exactly as Qi Wantong, Grand Elder of Myriad Beasts Sect, had said: a pair of wings glowing with silver radiance spread from its back.

"This monster cannot be allowed to live!" Mu Lianze shouted.

His figure moved and became a blur, shooting straight toward it.

The Holy Rakshasa plunged downward to meet him head-on.

Yet as Mu Lianze rushed in, he suddenly clapped his palms together. His entire figure became dizzyingly indistinct. In an instant, one man became more than a dozen, all of them identical Mu Lianzes.

The Holy Rakshasa's gaze flickered rapidly, unable to distinguish true from false.

When the first figure reached it, the Holy Rakshasa lashed out with a savage claw.

The man dissolved like a phantom.

Its strike fell on empty air.

The remaining dozen Mu Lianzes immediately surrounded it and attacked from every direction at once.

The Holy Rakshasa spun like a tornado, its wings sweeping furiously. Several thunderous collisions rang out in succession as it exchanged hard blows with Mu Lianze, whose true body remained impossible to locate. The violent wingbeats also kept him from closing in.

High above, a long dragon-shaped shadow plunged from the sky.

Zhangsun Mi had attacked again.

He struck downward with overwhelming force at the rapidly spinning Holy Rakshasa. Among the Nine Saints, he was famed for possessing the fiercest offensive power. When he attacked with all his strength, none of the others dared take the blow head-on.

The Holy Rakshasa abruptly shot straight upward, breaking free from the encirclement of Mu Lianze's dozen phantoms. Its body became a streak of silver piercing the heavens.

Boom!

A tremendous shock rang through the sky.

The Holy Rakshasa and Zhangsun Mi appeared at the same instant. Each had one hand locked around the other's wrist. Their legs and knees braced against one another as the two strained against each other in midair, neither giving an inch.

Zhangsun Mi's eyes suddenly flickered.

The Holy Rakshasa's wings were closing in around him from both sides, catching the air as they converged. Along their edges, bone spurs as sharp as silver needles stabbed inward.

"Hah!"

Zhangsun Mi's face twisted savagely.

His body suddenly exploded outward.

The claws gripping his wrist found themselves grasping empty space. They raked through a sheet of scales instead, leaving several bloody grooves, and tore away a single scale.

Before the Holy Rakshasa, Zhangsun Mi transformed into a colossal creature. The closing wings only pierced off several scales and carved a few bloody furrows.

Revealing his true form, Zhangsun Mi whipped his tail and arched upward like an enormous dragon.

Yet he was no dragon.

He was a gigantic black serpent, with glowing green eyes and a pair of blood-red wings beating from its back.

The giant serpent coiled through the air, opened its cavernous jaws, and spat out a mouthful of dark-green breath-mist that blanketed a vast area below.

Wu Chang, Granny Xue, Mu Lianze, and Yuan Se, who had been rushing up from beneath, were all badly startled. They immediately scattered to avoid being caught in it.

Others might not know what Zhangsun Mi had just spat out, but they knew it all too well.

Zhangsun Mi called it "Dragon Breath."

It could dissolve protective qi. Anyone contaminated by that dark-green breath-mist would fall into torment beyond endurance, a soul-melting, bone-corroding agony.

Every one of them had tasted it before.

They had nearly died from it.

The Holy Rakshasa plainly knew nothing about the danger. Instinctively, it crossed both arms in front of its eyes. When the mist passed and it lowered them again, the silver armor-like bone covering its body was hissing, bubbling as though eaten by acid.

A fierce light flashed in its eyes as it looked up.

"Hoh!"

The black serpent hovered on blood-red wings, lowered its head, opened its jaws, and unleashed another torrent of dark-green mist.

But at that very instant, the serpent's enormous head jerked.

Its green eyes widened in disbelief.

A silver streak was faintly visible rushing upstream through the dark-green mist. It flashed once, vanished, and shot straight into the serpent's open maw.

"Hoh...!"

The blood-winged black serpent seemed to suffer some immense and sudden agony. Its two crimson wings beat frantically as its colossal body rolled through the sky.

Wu Chang and the others, scattered around it, stared in astonishment and uncertainty.

Pop!

A violent blast erupted from the top of the serpent's head.

Silver light flashed.

The Holy Rakshasa burst out from inside Zhangsun Mi's body, tearing through flesh in a spray of blood.

"Hoh..."

The giant serpent wailed in midair.

It suddenly lost balance. Its head dropped sharply, its tail pitched upward, and its massive body plunged toward the earth.

The Holy Rakshasa flipped along the serpent's body, its claws gripping beneath the lower jaw. Its wings beat again and again, forcing the black serpent to accelerate toward the ground.

Boom!

The impact shook Heaven and Earth like a violent earthquake.

An enormous crater exploded open in the palace square. Earth and stone blasted outward. The ground around the crater continued collapsing and spreading as cracks raced away in every direction.

"Go!" Yun Ji warned sharply.

The three people inside the nearby building dropped to the floor at once. Amid the tremendous roar, Niu Youdao and Xi Haitang followed Yun Ji underground.

They had only just vanished beneath the earth when the building they had been hiding in collapsed like rotten wood. Half of it was blown away by the shockwave.

In a single instant, half the enormous palace city was destroyed beneath clouds of dust.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A succession of savage impacts rang out from the depths of the crater.

The walls around it collapsed again, half-burying the pit, yet dull blows continued pounding from underground.

The colossal serpent's tail remained rigid above the half-filled crater. It trembled violently for a time.

Then at last it went limp and sagged down.

The pounding stopped.

Bang!

A silver radiance broke through the earth.

The Holy Rakshasa rose into the air, its body smeared with blood and soil. One shake of its wings blasted the dirt and gore away.

Granny Xue and the others hovered around it, stunned.

Beneath that silver glow, the enormous serpent's body lay motionless.

Dead?

Had Zhangsun Mi really died just like that?

How could Zhangsun Mi possibly die so easily?

The remaining four looked at one another across the distance, disbelief plain in their eyes.

The Holy Rakshasa slowly lowered its head and examined the dense blackened spots where the dark-green breath-mist had corroded its body.

It spread both arms.

Silver radiance suddenly blazed from its body.

The countless damaged spots rapidly began shrinking, its surface visibly repairing itself within the light.

When the silver radiance faded, every blackened mark had vanished.

Its body had returned to normal.

The Holy Rakshasa swept its cold gaze across the others and fixed on Yuan Se, who had struck it the most.

Swish!

Silver light shot toward him like lightning.

Yuan Se immediately thrust out both palms.

Palm shadows thundered forth in an unbroken torrent, surging outward with the force of Move Mountains, Overturn Seas.

Boom-boom-boom!

Amid the continuous explosions, the silver streak pierced layer after layer of palm shadows like a bolt of lightning. One claw tore straight toward Yuan Se's enormous belly.

Yet Yuan Se, savage light in his eyes, did not dodge at all.

He let the claw come.

His fist clenched and blasted forward.

The instant the Holy Rakshasa's claw struck Yuan Se's belly, it realized something was wrong. That mass of fat was incomparably tough and elastic, and strangely slippery besides. Its claw shredded his clothing but slid across the surface of his body without getting purchase.

Boom!

Yuan Se's fist struck the Holy Rakshasa squarely across the cheek.

Blood burst from its mouth and nose as it was smashed backward through the air.

Yuan Se looked down at the tear in his clothing and saw several bloody furrows across his abdomen.

His heart jolted.

He had underestimated the strength of the Holy Rakshasa's claws. The bodily defense in which he took such pride had almost been torn open in a single strike.

Seeing the Holy Rakshasa falling, Mu Lianze, Granny Xue, and Wu Chang shot forward simultaneously, attacking from three directions.

Blood droplets sprayed from the Holy Rakshasa's mouth and nose.

Its eyes, which had been closed as it fell, suddenly opened.

Its wings flashed.

It shot away like lightning.

Thunderous blasts erupted across the sky.

Yuan Se lunged back into the fight as well. The four surrounded the Holy Rakshasa and attacked together. Within their encirclement, silver light flashed at incredible speed, meeting assaults from every side, moving far faster than it had before fully opening its wings.

Niu Youdao and the others had already tunneled back into one of the surviving buildings in the half-destroyed palace city and were secretly watching again.

Their hearts tightened.

They could tell that against the combined assault of four Saints, the Holy Rakshasa was gradually being forced onto the defensive.

"This monster can really take a beating!" Mu Lianze shouted.

Seeing that the battle still would not end, Wu Chang suddenly rose out of the encirclement.

He brought both palms together.

Dense black mist erupted violently from his body while his long hair whipped in the air.

The instant a gap opened in the siege, the Holy Rakshasa seized the opportunity and shot upward, charging directly toward the now-isolated Wu Chang.

Watching from hiding, Niu Youdao's heart sank.

Wu Chang would never expose himself alone without a reason.

Sure enough, just as the Holy Rakshasa reached him, the rolling black mist swallowed Wu Chang whole.

The Holy Rakshasa ignored the danger.

Its body became silver light and plunged straight into the darkness.

"Heh-heh!"

Granny Xue gave a cold laugh. Together with Mu Lianze and Yuan Se, she shot upward and vanished into the black fog.

Inside the darkness, the Holy Rakshasa searched in every direction.

Wu Chang was nowhere to be found.

After flying rapidly for a time, it sensed something was wrong.

The black mist seemed endless.

Even with its speed, it could not escape.

It stopped in midair and slowly turned, looking around.

Suddenly, blood-red light flickered ahead.

Within it, Wu Chang's figure appeared.

Now he seemed immeasurably vast, a hundred zhang tall.

Before him, the Holy Rakshasa felt no larger than a tiny ant.

Yet it refused to yield.

It shot toward that enormous figure.

No matter how fast it flew, however, it could not close the distance by even an inch.

Bathed in blood-red light, Wu Chang stood vast and towering like a heavenly god looking down upon all living beings. His long hair drifted as his palms remained pressed together.

He murmured, "Enter my Demon Domain!"

The phrase echoed again, each word drawn out.

"Enter... my... Demon... Domain!"

Then once more, vast and resonant:

"Enter...... my...... Demon...... Domain!"

The magnificent voice rolled endlessly through the world of black mist.

[End of Chapter 1379]