Chapter 668 Entering The Palace

It needed hardly be said that, of the four elders, the strongest one was the Chief Elder who had acquired seventy percent of the power of Fringe Holy Will.

The Chief Elder raced for Darren with the swiftness of a howling wind and struck him with both palms.

The mighty blow sent Darren hurtling like a meteor down toward the Sea of Sand and Fire.

Not satisfied, the Chief Elder snorted with contempt and followed him down.

He had no interest in playing fair or in prolonging the fight. If he could simply throw his victim into the sea of fire and incinerate him in an instant, that would satisfy him.

Without hesitation, the Chief Elder fell through the air with the speed of an arrow.

Despite the speed at which Darren was falling, his assailant nimbly caught up to him in a matter of seconds.

"That bastard," said one of the onlookers, dismayed. "Here's the greatest Chief Elder of the Dragon Chasing Sect, stooping to the level of killing an ordinary disciple!"

The others who were present agreed and murmured among themselves. The Chief Elder's conduct struck them as petty and unbecoming of a man of his station. "That young man is doomed, no matter he is in dragon form or not," another one remarked. "It's unfortunate for him that he had to cross paths with this merciless old freak."

Standing with the observers, Hobson watched the spectacle with a sinking heart. He hadn't expected the Chief Elder to attack with such lethal intent. 'Damn it! Darren doesn't stand a chance of surviving!' he thought ruefully to himself.

The knowledge of his own helplessness tormented him. He wasn't strong enough even to fly above the raging fire, let alone to help his friend. There was nothing to do but watch.

Just then the Chief Elder closed the distance between himself and Darren, slamming him with a blow even more terrible than the last one.

An awful lattice of chinks and cracks spread across the armor of Darren's dragon scales.

The air rang with his ear-splitting scream.

Desperately, he spun, lifting his tail to lash the Chief Elder right in the face.

There was no time to dodge. The strike hit the Chief Elder so hard that he blacked out for a brief moment and fell limply toward the awful fires below. With only seconds to spare, he recovered his wits and swooped away from the hazard.

Meanwhile, the rebound force of the tail strike had propelled Darren away, but he quickly swerved around and came at the Chief Elder again, picking up speed.

While still approaching, Darren intensified his dragon blood aura and his demonic internal force, pushing them to their limits.

The Chief Elder saw this, but was too haughty to notice the terrible black flame at Darren's command as well. 'His skills are insignificant, ' he thought to himself. With his seventy percent of the Fringe Holy Will, he thought he had nothing to be afraid of.

Thinking it was time to finish the duel for good, the Chief Elder concentrated all his power into a single palm strike and flung it at Darren as they crashed together.

All the spectators staggered as a thunderous boom smote their eardrums.

Their eyes, too, were dazzled by a terrific blaze as the Fringe Holy Will struck its target.

With the noise of the impact, however, there was another sound.

It was a terrible, blood-curdling scream.

"So much for that young man—poor thing!" bewailed one of

ugh, Darren and Hobson could see blackened ruins in front of them.

"Even this palace had been destroyed?" Darren murmured.

He knew no more than anyone else about what had happened in the ancient times. But judging from the scattered Holy Will Crystals outside and the barren, ravaged landscape, he could guess that the war of annihilation there had been truly unprecedented in its cruelty.

Still, he hadn't expected to find that its effects had spread to the inside of the bronze palace as well.

For a long time Darren and Hobson simply stared at the devastated remains, unsure of what to do next.

In fact, there was little even that was recognizable, except for a huge, lone pillar that loomed off in the distance.

For some minutes, Hobson studied the ground. "Darren, look at this!"

Saying this, he took a multicolored crystal out of the dirt.

Darren took the rock from his friend and studied it. He soon recognized it as a Holy Will Crystal, clearly one from ancient times.

"I have no use for this. You can keep it," he said, handing it back.

Hobson accepted the crystal gladly, regarding it as a great treasure. "What should we do now?" he asked, staring into its mesmerizing glow.

"We fly north," Darren said after thinking it over.

"Why? Did you sense something up there?"

Darren shook his head and pointed at the earth. "Look, there are no tracks going that way. That means that the five sect leaders who came here before us all went in other directions. So we need to go north if we want to avoid running into them."

"Oh, I get it," replied his companion. Hobson smiled awkwardly, realizing he ought to have noticed something so obvious himself.

Without trading any more words, they confirmed the direction and took flight, aiming north.

After several days of travel, they seemed to reach the boundary of that land. Before them they caught sight of a great, lofty wall. On closer inspection, though, it appeared to belong to the outskirts of a palace.

Then, without warning, Hobson cried out in pain and fell from the air.

He struck the ground and rolled about, covering his eyes as though he was in great pain there.

Without wasting a second, Darren hurried down to his side. "Hobson, what's wrong?"