288 Flame 5

"Whoosh…!"

A burst of black light shot through the sky.

Shangyang Jinshi flailed as he dropped to the ground, yet managed to land lightly.

He was covered in blood and had a few sharp spikes protruding out of his back. They were all weapons, looking like arms and legs of bugs. This was the price he paid for giving his all and killing two clones of a devil spirit.

Below was a small group of Painters from the Shangyang Family, trying to defend against the devils' attacks.

Each Painter had a black membrane around him similar to a tortoise's shell as they fought desperately against the slime-like monsters attacking them.

Each slime monster was about seven or eight meters tall, and when they moved their limbs, it was as if a huge tree was crashing down. The thinner black membranes immediately cracked, leaving the Bind level fighters gravely injured.

The deadly poison of the black membranes splashed out, getting into the devils' bodies thanks to cuts made by the broken shards, causing much fizzling and damage. Both sides dealt damage to each other at the same time, falling into a stalemate.

As soon as Shangyang Jinshi landed, a smaller slime monster jumped out from behind him. From within the murky slime, a single huge eye glared at him cruelly.

"Hiss…" Red light formed in the eye, as if it was ready to fire a projectile.

"Squelch!" With a flash of golden light, the eye exploded, instantly freezing the slime as if it had turned into a sculpture, completely stopping all of its movements.

Shangyang Jinshi looked towards his family members in the distance and waved his hand. Bursts of golden beams shot out, immediately freezing all of the slime monsters present.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief and started cheering.

One of the young, strong members of the Shangyang Family hurried over and asked politely, "You are?" 

Shangyang Jinshi stayed in seclusion all-year-round, so it was normal for ordinary disciples not to recognize him. He pulled out a red-and-green command token from his waist and dangled it in front of the young man.

"A family esteemed emissary!" The young man's expression changed quickly as he lowered his head to pay his respects.

"Where's Shangyang Fei? I thought she was around here. She should have arrived before me," Shangyang Jinshi asked in a deep voice.

"Hiss…"

The few people who also gathered around heard his tone and immediately realized that he had to be one of the higher-ups in the family.

"Master Fei… There's still no news of her. All we know is that she left a message saying she was going to cut off and kill a group of devils, but she hasn't come back yet…" another family member who just got there responded.

"Shangyang Fei has gone missing??" Shangyang Jinshi was shocked. Shangyang Fei, the greatest prodigy of the Shangyang Family, the pinnacle of power that was most likely going to be the next head of the family or succeed the position of Divine Weapon Master, yet she went missing...

He looked around. This was a rural area tens of kilometers away from the City of a Thousand Sails, but even so, he could see wisps of black smoke rising sporadically, almost as if they were signal alarms.

"Shangyang Fei actually went missing…" Shangyang Jinshi knew who this person was. Although she was among the younger generation, her influence, power, and strength were all top-notch, and she had the credentials to stand up to powerful elders like him.

As if this strong of a person would just die without a trace? He refused to believe that!

"Where is the rest of the family?" Shangyang Jinshi asked seriously.

"To answer your question, the rest of the family… after the Painters were defeated and the Judge was sieged, everyone else basically died… only a few members and some of the disciples from the sects are still fighting at the center of the city…"

"Whatever. Gather everyone, we're leaving!" Shangyang Jinshi ordered without hesitation. From where he was standing, the entire City of a Thousand Sails was filled with black smoke. All the smoke spiraled above the city, forming devilish shadows of people, circling around the city and howling.

He and the Secondary Weapon Masters from the Huang and Lei Families came as reinforcements, but got cut off halfway through. Although they managed to kill the clone of the Devil Spirit, he and the other two people got seriously injured, becoming unable to continue fighting. This trip was obviously a failure, and it would impossible to continue into the center of the city to rescue the Judge and the others.

In the distance, he saw the mass of poisonous smoke and shadows fly towards a tall black tower and circle around it.

The tower was slowly growing. At the top of it was a huge blood-red diamond-shaped eye.

"Devil Light Tower… this fast!?" Shangyang Jinshi's expression just got uglier.

"Retreat!!" He waved his hand and took command once again.

*******************

Shangyang Jiuli slashed the devil in front of her into two pieces. Shadows of snakes swimmed around on her black membrane; that was the outside symbol of reaching the realm of Snake.

Behind her was a huge group of family members tackling devils that had the bodies of humans but the heads of bulls. However, the situation here was slightly different than other places.

The people here were all frighteningly strong, and after just a few attacks, the few hundred devils were all dead.

After the last devil fell, there was a brief silence. The entire devil army was temporarily eradicated.

The ten-odd people gathered around Shangyang Jiuli.

"Big Sis, what do we do now?" a strong, bulky man asked.

"There are still a lot of brothers and sisters in danger. There's no way to get into the city, but maybe we can rescue the people at the border. At the very least, let's try. We need to gather as much of the remaining strength as we can." Shangyang Jiuli sheathed her curved blade and glanced around icily, also taking in the huge, growing black tower in the distance.

"We need to hurry. Keyu, find the quickest route. Save the four vice-commanders first! On the way, we'll rescue as many brothers as we can!"

"Yes!"

"Everyone else, protect our two sides. Let's go!" Shangyang Jiuli's gaze shot towards the huge number of devils crawling out from around the corner.

This type of devil was over three meters tall and ten meters long, the classic fighting weapon. Just one of their bites could destroy a black membrane and tear any opponent below the realm of Snake to shreds.

Shangyang Ruo was standing with a group of her sisters and cousins, her pretty face deathly pale. Their fathers and grandfathers were all fighting devils in the city. Before, they could still hear the thunder and huge noises, but now everything was silent. Shangyang Ruo's grandfather was one of the Resident Elders and was extremely powerful. She refused to believe that her grandfather would perish by the hand of the Devil Army.

But… but why… why were there no more sounds from the center of the city?

She tried to stay calm. Her grandfather was in charge of the entire information net of the family, and would definitely get news and updates before anyone else. He would be okay. Right now, she shouldn't be worrying about her grandfather but herself.

Their group cut through the Devil Army like a sharp knife. Under Shangyang Jiuli's lead, they almost instantly destroyed the devils. It only took a few seconds for them to reach the road leading to the city gates.

Soon, a group of people trapped by huge scorpions came into their view.

Shangyang Jiuli rushed up first with the others following behind.

"Little Ruo!" Shangyang Kanyu was among them. He looked over, pleasantly surprised. One of his arms was completely torn off and his clothes were stained with blood as he fought for his life under the lead of another Snake realm family member.

********************

Inside the huge pitch-black cave.

A large number of weird nude people, all of them having black wings instead of ears on the sides of their heads and dark, black skin, rushed towards Lu Sheng from all directions.

Most of them held sharp spears with a blood-red line of symbols glowing on them, giving off an evil murmur.

"Are these the Polluters recorded in the old texts? The Preachers of the Devil Qi? …To think that the Devil Qi here gave birth to such weirdos." Lu Sheng lifted his foot, and a bunch of Preachers fell to the ground, completely flattened.

There were hundreds of thousands of Devil Qi Preachers, but once they came within a few meters of Lu Sheng, they immediately let go of all of their defenses and Devil Qi like they lost their soul, allowing threads of Qi of Lu Sheng's Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies Skill into their bodies and falling to the ground. Before they could even reach the floor, all of their bones and internal organs had melted away and they were no more than just flesh pancakes.

It got to the point where Lu Sheng didn't even have to attack. All he needed was the automatic mind-confusing force field, his frightening defense, and the blood net that came with his Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies Skill.

Put together, the three formed the most efficient killing machine.

Groups and groups of Preachers flew at him and got melted by the Ultimate Crimson Nine Furies Skill, falling to the ground as pieces of melted flesh.

Threads of Devil Aura flowed into Lu Sheng's body. Although each Preacher didn't offer much, their numbers were large.

"Not enough… still not enough!" Lu Sheng's bulky body kept moving forward, growing as he moved.

Every cell in his body was absorbing the Devil Aura around him and converting it into nutrients to improve his devil body.

Before, his body was around fifteen meters, but now, it was as big as eighteen meters.

An eighteen meter long body. What did that mean? It was tall as six stories of a building.

Even Lu Sheng himself didn't think he would be able to grow so big. That huge white wolf he saw in the snow previously was over ten meters long, but that was a demon, a Great Demon! And yet he was only human!

"Bang!"

Lu Sheng reached out with his fat hand and grabbed a few Preachers, stuffing them into his mouth, and chewed slowly. This way, he could absorb more of the Devil Aura—he needed food to supplement his body, anyways.

To him, although these devils were in human form, they weren't human. They were devils.

And to the Lu Sheng right now, as long as they weren't human, they were food.

"Bang!"

He grabbed another bunch of Preachers, at least five of them, and stuffed them into his mouth.

"Ahhh!!!" Suddenly, a piercing scream sounded.

A Preacher who had dark gold wings as ears was staring at Lu Sheng in fury and distress, with tears flowing down his face.

"Kakaenda! Holiyusita la!"

He shouted some sort of rhythmic sounds. It seemed to be the language the Preachers communicated to each other with.

"What?" Lu Sheng was confused. Then he remembered that in the bunch of Preachers he just grabbed, there seemed to be two pretty girls.

Um… these were monsters corrupted by Devil Qi. Could it be that they had feelings?

Slightly confused, Lu Sheng reached out to grab more Preachers. Wherever his hand moved, all the Preachers there immediately just gave up resisting due to the mind-confusing force field and let him take them.

"Rumble!!"

A huge golden metal pincer shot out from the dark and hit Lu Sheng on the arm.

With one hit, the pincer that was only slightly smaller than Lu Sheng's hand knocked his hand aside and rescued the Preachers underneath.

"Kill him! Kill this monster!" The owner of the huge pincer slowly crawled out from the dark. It was a huge black monster shaped like a crab. It had four pincers and stood over thirteen meters tall. It wasn't as tall as Lu Sheng, but it was wider. A cluster of half-transparent black crystals was growing on its back.

The voice came from inside the crystals.

Before Lu Sheng could figure out what was going on, he heard the Preachers around him start cheering, as if the arrival of the huge crab gave them hope.

"A bigger devil?" Lu Sheng took a moment to size up the big crab, then suddenly reached out and grabbed one of its huge pinchers.

"Crack!"

With a huge noise, before the huge crab could realize what happened, it had already lost a pincer.

The huge crab finally realized what happened, and threw the rest of its pinchers towards Lu Sheng.