Demon God's return.

Yao Jun failed to notice this strange scene, he simply gathered his energy and shot forward like an arrow let loose. The head of his glaive dragged behind him, leaving a line in the earth, the edges of the line flaking away and turning to ash on the wind. Wyrmheart didn't want to let him take the initiative so she also charged forward and met him halfway, but Yao Jun's weapon had a longer range so he still had a slight advantage.

He swung his weapon upwards as Wyrmheart got close to him, forcing her to slam her fist down onto the sharp edge of the glaive. But just as Yao Jun had said, the battle was already over, Wyrmheart just didn't know it yet. Yao Jun's muscles bulged slightly, his Qi surging forth into his glaive in an unending stream.

He gathered his laws of earth and fire in the head of the glaive, foregoing all other laws as he focused entirely on those two. But no fire or earth spawned around the weapon, Yao Jun focused the energy to the utmost and aimed only for the purest of concepts hidden within the laws.

For his law of fire, it was extreme heat, the ability to incinerate everything until not even ash remained. But for his law of earth, it was weight, pure and simple weight. The weight of a lump of earth, the weight of a hill, the weight of a mountain, the weight of a continent, the weight of a planet. He sought the peak of heaviness, such heft that nothing in existence could resist it without being crushed.

And Wyrmheart may have good weapons, but how could those brass knuckles possibly compare to a weapon that had been formed out of the body of an ancient powerhouse. Yao Jun had no idea exactly what sort of level the Thousand Arms Master's brother had reached, but it would definitely be above something as small as a Godking.

And indeed, the brass knuckles were not something that could resist the force of the glaive. That was especially the case now that the glaive was being supported by Yao Jun's merged energy and twin laws, it pushed its power directly into a realm that the brass knuckles couldn't hope to reach.

Wyrmheart heard a soft clinking sound, her pupils shrinking until they nearly vanished when she saw the edge of Yao Jun's glaive cut through her brass knuckle. It sliced through her weapon and continued up along her hand and wrist, bisecting her arm all the way up to the elbow before the edge of the weapon finally left her flesh.

But the glaive leaving her flesh only meant that it had reached its actual target, her slightly hunched forward chest. The layer of scales on her chest immediately thickened tenfold, a violent blast of wind and fire erupting from the centre of her chest. The purpose behind the blast was twofold, to slow the ascent of the glaive while also launching herself away.

She successfully evaded the head of the glaive, the blood doping she had given herself quickly starting the healing process on her arm. But to her horror, she discovered that the edges of the cut were flaking away and turning to ash, the extreme heat gathered in the weapon had once again pierced through her so-called transcendency and wounded her. And this time the wound was much greater, the extreme heat was still impacting her as she flew into the air so she would have to expel it first if she wanted to heal.

Yao Jun simply raised his head to gaze at the ascending Wyrmheart, his glaive was already at the peak of its rise so the tip was pointed straight at her. She heard a faint crackling sound from behind her, her lips twisting in discomfort as she extended her senses backwards. Without her noticing it, the entire sky had turned dark with clouds, lightning flashing within them.

She simply couldn't figure out how such heavy thunderclouds could appear without a sound, not even the law of lightning was able to remove the sound after all. But the reason was quite simple actually, all sound was just vibrations travelling through the air. If you just used the law of wind to prevent the vibrations from travelling beyond a certain distance, you could shroud all sounds coming from a certain area.

She braced herself for impact, the dark clouds unleashing the gathered lightning into a single massive bolt that bore down on her. She unleashed some of the blood she had gathered up to form a conductive barrier, allowing her to at least redirect the worst of the lightning around her through the blood. Her body still felt numb and was sent crashing down to the earth thanks to what little lightning still hit her, but it was far better than taking the entire attack.

She landed face-first on the earth, the sound of Yao Jun reaching her back tickling her ears. She reacted instinctively and thickened the layer of scales on her back while unleashing another violent blast of wind and fire, her senses telling her that Yao Jun experienced the full brunt of the attack.

But she also sensed his hand piercing through the attack, a finger extending outward and touching down on her back. And it was now that she discovered the small hole in her scales, the edges still getting eaten away by the law of dissolving.

Yao Jun's finger passed directly through his hole, stabbing a few centimetres into her body. And as his finger entered her back, he unleashed his Qi, the law of space running rampant within Wyrmheart's back. She felt a good chunk of her flesh vanishing from her body, the entire right side of her back disappearing and appearing a few tens of metres away.

Her organs and spine were laid bare, had she not dabbled in body cultivation while also having the blood of the Final Fire clan then she would have died right there and then. But she survived, and Yao Jun was blasted back by the instinctual defence she had launched, so she knew that she had bought herself some time.

She quickly pushed herself up, using a bit of her Qi to make sure that her organs remained in place as she moved. Her aura started to quickly weaken as she drew upon the absorbed blood to regrow the lost flesh, it wasn't being eaten away by extreme heat so it was much easier than repairing her bisected arm. But before she even had the chance to turn around and check up on Yao Jun, she heard his cursed voice echo in her ears.

"I already told you, the battle's over."

The moment his voice reached her, Wyrmheart's still good arm suddenly rose, the brass knuckle smashing into her face and gouging out one of her eyes. She was instantly dazed, partly because of the pain and partly because she had no idea what was going on. But her body continued to move, not listening to her commands. Her good arm smashed into her face time and time again, one of her legs lifting itself before smashing down on her other knee and shattering it with a loud crunch.

She fell to the ground as a result, the force behind the punches she gave herself quickly starting to weaken. She forced herself to maintain a clear head and sent her senses into her own body, quickly discovering the culprit. Lightning was coursing throughout her body, hijacking her nerves and forcing her body to move against her will.

The lightning wasn't particularly powerful, it was so weak that it was being completely overshadowed by the energy of all of Yao Jun's other attacks. And in an instant, Wyrmheart realized the truth, Yao Jun hadn't just been using lightning so often because he liked the law, he had used it time and time again to force small bits of it into her body.

One round may not be enough, but more lightning would gather up with successive attacks, he would just have to unleash stronger attacks to keep covering up the weak traces. Wyrmheart spat out a glob of blood while lying on her back, both her eyes had already been gouged out by her own brass knuckle. But even so, she could sense Yao Jun standing over her, his glaive already at the ready.

"That... That's just unfair... There's no... honour in a tactic... like that..."

She spat out the words between globs of blood, a searing sensation emerging on her neck as Yao Jun placed the edge of his glaive on her throat. His eyes were as calm and cold as when the battle had started, not bothered in the slightest by the blood she was spitting at him.

"Honour doesn't win fights, honour kills friends and family members."

Those words were the last thing Wyrmheart heard before the searing sensation on her throat turned pleasantly warm. All of a sudden it felt as if she was being embraced by her mother, a gentle caress brushing her cheek, tugging at her consciousness. And she had no choice but to go along with that tugging, her consciousness sinking into darkness as her head left her shoulders.

The true Nine Heavens Demon God had returned to his original hunting grounds, and the decree that declared his return was the fall of a Godking. For the first time in several tens of thousands of years, an exalted Godking had lost their life in battle, and none could know how many more might follow.