Indestructible Cup

Moment Queen was overjoyed for a short while. She had not expected Xie Qing King would be able to actually open ten gene locks and defeat Gold General.

But whether or not he'd live to see another day had yet to be determined. He had exhausted far too much strength and energy in unleashing that devastating hit, and it had left him on death's door. At the very least, he had helped turn the tides on the enemy and give them a hope of pulling through to emerge victorious.

"If that little girl can drive the final few nails into Demon Cup Emperor's coffin, we might just pull through this," Moment Queen thought to herself, as she looked on Zero with hopeful eyes.

Cup Demon Emperor had been killed by the Bone Dagger again, but just like last time, he had been brought to life out of another bug.

He had been killed four times by now, but no matter what Zero did, he kept coming back a few seconds later.

It was as if a bug took on his appearance, lifeforce, and everything about him. They behaved like him and even made use of his powers to the same strength and extent.

Moment Queen watched the bugs intently, whenever she could. There had to be something she could learn through observation, a trick or a puzzle she could decipher, which could lead to a solution they could employ in taking out Cup Demon Emperor for good.

The bugs that turned into Cup Demon Emperor did not look all that special compared to the several others that were buzzing around. It seemed to her as if any random bug of his could serve as a re-animation host.

"What is this power he wields? Gah! We need information if we are to solve this conundrum." Moment Queen wracked her mind for a possible solution.

She watched the proceedings for a while, but she was unable to learn anything.

If Serpent Throne was with them, things would be considerably easier, she believed.

Moment Queen wondered where it was, and recalled it was currently in Thunder Hell Shelter. Even if it was to come over and aid in the battle, it would take a good long while to arrive. There was a great distance separating this shelter from the others.

Cup Demon Emperor frowned, seeing his beloved Gold General be killed.

For a berserk super creature like that to be killed by a spirit that had just opened ten gene locks, he thought it was humiliating.

"I need to hurry up and end all these vermin," Cup Demon Emperor said to himself, as his eyes flashed with an ominous thunder.

Suddenly, countless bugs appeared, each of them turning into a carbon copy of Cup Demon Emperor. They all flew forward in a swarm to put an end to the girl that had caused him so much strife.

Moment Queen's face turned grim when she saw this. She thought he could only copy himself once.

But all of a sudden, there were now six Cup Demon Emperors coming for the girl. With the real one, that made seven.

She observed each of them, noting how they were all as powerful as each other, all as powerful as the real Cup Demon Emperor.

Moment Queen was worried, thinking the girl might end up getting killed. The girl had defied her expectations, but what she was faced with now was far greater than anything that had come before.

But with events concerning Zero, a defiance of expectations was a common occurrence. Moment Queen almost had her socks blown off, when she saw Zero slay each and every copy of Cup Demon Emperor with ease. It truly was as if she was swatting a bunch of bothersome flies.

Every time she attacked, there'd be one Cup Demon Emperor less to deal with.

But when these Cup Demon Emperor copies died, more and more were summoned to take their places.

Moment Queen was flabbergasted. Even when she was at her strongest, at peak performance before her fall from grace, not even she had achieved such wild amounts of power.

Although the girl could not kill Cup Demon Emperor entirely, she had easily exerted what was necessary to do so many times over. And she had greatly suppressed Cup Demon Emperor and his plans by killing him over and over, not letting him go free to deal with other matters on the battlefield.

"So, how do we kill him once and for all?" Moment Queen was still searching for the answer.

She noticed ten was the max number of copies he could create of himself at any given time.

"I may not know what power he possesses, but there is no way he can keep respawning so easily. Unless his true body is not connected to these or something? Would that mean none of those bodies are real? And if that was so, where does his true self lie?" Moment Queen's mind was a tangled brush of questions right now.

Moment Queen's eyes then flashed. In her mind, she recorded the precise moment a bug turned into a copy of Cup Demon Emperor.

She kept replaying the sight in her mind, over and over again, desperate to learn something new or find the trick to this entire shenanigan.

And eventually, she did catch something strange.

She smiled, thinking she might have learned something. She said to herself, "They really aren't real. They're little more than doppelgangers."

Moment Queen was not entirely correct. If it was a doppelganger, Zero would have been able to kill the real one just as easily. The Asura Sutra could destroy the spirit stone when killing the spirit itself, after all.

The fabricated emperors were like pets of Cup Demon Emperor himself.

He placed his power in one bug and turned it into a copy of himself. When that "cup" was killed, he could make another one just as easily as he had made the first.

And because Cup Demon Emperor had opened ten gene locks, he could create ten active cups at the same time.

Unfortunately, that did not matter much. Moment Queen only wanted to find out where the real Cup Demon Emperor was. Cut off the head of the snake, and the body dies, after all.

Suddenly, she smiled again, saying, "Aha! I found you."