Chapter 496: Deadly Recklessness
As the twenty-eight imperial snakecharms entered Liege Beast, immediate transformations occurred. He was bathed with primal-chaos paleo-energy, and the new snakecharms began to fuse with his original ones.
Once the fusion was complete, not even a Demolisher would be able to deal with him.
However, before anything else could happen, something strange began to play out.
The aura of the twenty-eight snakecharms erupted with power and the animadestiny branding marks that Yang Qi had placed on them suddenly revealed the image of an ancient god, an entity more than strong enough to suppress the will of King Heaven-Devourer.
RUUUUUUMBLE!
It was a jade-like god who could transform the entire universe into liquid jade, and who immediately suppressed the forty-nine talismans that Liege Beast had long since collected.
Whizz!
The powers converged and the group fused together, but Yang Qi’s twenty-eight snakecharms were in the dominant position. Then, as one, they lurched free of Liege Beast’s control and shot out of his body.
In the blink of an eye, Liege Beast shrank down as if he had been drained of all his energy.
His human-headed, snake-bodied form shattered, and he anxiously shouted, “Come back! My snakecharms! My power! Come back to me! What’s going on? You belong to me, why would you leave me! Come back!”
Coughing up blood, he flew after the imperial snakecharms.
“Beat it!” Yang Qi said, waving his hand to create a heavenly canopy that blocked Liege Beast’s path. Then he reached out and grabbed the imperial snakecharms.
“Where did you get the will of an ancient god?!” blurted the young man in yellow. He stabbed through the air, becoming one with his halberd as he attempted to stop the imperial snakecharms from changing owners.
“You think you can stop me? Hah. King Heaven-Devourer and King Immortal-Slayer are like nothing to me. The will of an ancient god can crush anything and everything!”
It was no surprise to Yang Qi that the young man would try to stop him; he spun and threw the Infernal Deity Spear with all his might, causing it to spiral forward, radiating an intense gravitational force.
“Not good!” the young man shouted, sending out a stream of battle energy that became a huge vortex filled with an entire army of troops. Countless giant-spirits of battle lunged forward, filling the entire area with uncharacteristically brilliant light.
The two attacks met, and the Infernal Deity Spear shattered into pieces.
However, Yang Qi wasn’t injured at all. Instead, he took advantage of the moment to further harry the yellow-garbed young man. Flying into the air, he said, “Hand of the One God, Boundless Fist Technique. Halls of Heaven, Depths of Hell; Sun and Moon, Immortality!”
In the blink of an eye, boundless fist techniques were unleashed.
He went from Creation to Destruction, and on through the various stances all the way to Reincarnation and Pāramitā. The only thing he held back was the final move, Immortality.
Each move was more shocking than the last, and in the end they formed a perfect cycle of true energy. In that moment, the energy of the fist made it seem as though the One God had come, ready to destroy the universe in his fury.
With those eight stances, Yang Qi’s momentum reached the peak of its potential. He brought forth both heaven and hell, and as he did, netherworldly dragons and heavenly gods appeared.
RUUUUUUMBLE!
With one movement, he grabbed all of the imperial snakecharms.
Once they were in his hand, he made them his own, and the aura of countless primal-chaos elder-snakes raged through him. However, he quickly took control of them with his vital energy and the help of the God Legion Seal.
Crash. Boom.
The forty-nine snakecharms exploded, as all of the warding magics Liege Beast had placed on them were destroyed.
As it happened, Liege Beast coughed up mouthful after mouthful of blood.
He had fused deeply with those talismans, and being ripped away from them badly damaged his vital energy.
“My imperial snakecharms!” Liege Beast screamed hysterically. “I spent blood, sweat, and tears on them! Without them, I’ll never reach immortal ascension! That’s five hundred thousand years of work, gone! Five hundred thousand years!”
“You brought it on yourself,” Yang Qi said. “Not bad. Twenty-eight imperial snakecharms were strong enough, but now I have another forty-nine. Now, not even heaven-immortals could cause a problem for me. It's time to bury the lot of you!” He waved his hand and the space in the area began collapsing.
As of this moment, the twenty-eight imperial snakecharms combined with the forty-nine to make a total of seventy-seven, which could create a divine snake that pulsed with the most ancient of universal power.
It was a level of strength that dwarfed anything from before.
King Heaven-Devourer’s original form was on display, and it was so powerful that this part of the Immortal Army Battlefield couldn’t take it and began crumbling like soft tofu.
In the blink of an eye, Yang Qi’s primal-chaos elder-snake turned and shot toward Liege Beast, Chancellor Demi-Immortal, and the yellow-garbed young man.
“Not good!” the young man said. “Now that he has those imperial snakecharms, we're definitely not a match for him. We can only hope that other people gang up on him.” Because of his Horned King Armor, it was impossible to see how ashen his face was, but Yang Qi had an idea.
The young man had hoped to use Liege Beast’s snakecharms to steal Yang Qi’s. But in the end, he tried to steal a chicken only to end up losing the rice used to lure it.
It was impossible to even calculate how much Yang Qi had benefited. He had more than doubled the number of imperial snakecharms he had originally possessed. With his current primal-chaos elder-snake, he could dominate entire planes of existence, or even devour them. It was far beyond the level of an ordinary immortal item.
Whizz!
The young man in yellow quickly activated his World of Kings and sucked Liege Beast inside. He knew that he couldn't fight Yang Qi right now, and if he didn’t escape he would end up dead.
Yang Qi had nearly killed a half-Demolisher just now, which indicated that few people present were anywhere close to being a match for him. For all intents and purposes, he was unbeatable to anyone under the Demolishing level.
After grabbing Liege Beast, the young man drew on a powerful escape technique. “You just wait, Yang Qi! I can already draw on the power of the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart! I own that place now. I'm the king of all worlds!”
All of a sudden, a burst of power from a strange world descended and wrapped up the young man. Somehow, it seemed to contain the aura of the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart.
Yang Qi unleashed a fist strike that smashed the young man’s world to bits, yet the young man was already an illusory projection.
His shattered world faded away along with him, leaving behind no clue that it had ever been there to begin with.
Everything went still.
‘What a pity,’ Yang Qi thought, a very serious expression on his face. ‘He used some power of the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart to escape. He’s obviously a lot stronger than the last time we met. If he really gets control of the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart, I won’t be a match for him.’
Clearly, he would not be killing the young man in yellow today.
However, Yang Qi had taken note of the term ‘Fateless One’. It was a profound topic that he knew deserved further scrutiny, and likely pertained deeply to his own future.
All of a sudden, the yellow-garbed young man’s voice projected into Yang Qi’s mind, albeit quite faintly. “Yang Qi, I already spread word of your position. A lot of people are going to be coming to kill you soon….”
“That’s fine,” Yang Qi projected back. “It just so happens I feel like doing some killing. The souls of some top experts will do a lot to help refine this new primal-chaos elder-snake. It won’t be long before I get back into the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart. Then we’ll see who has the upper hand.”
As Yang Qi stood there, he intentionally released his aura to full effect, as if he were inviting people to come find him. All of a sudden, he was like a shining torch on a dark night.
After all, he really was in the mood to do some killing.
“What? It's Yang Qi? The same one from the Titan Emperor Collegium? I heard that he has a high-level godly-class energy art. If we kill him, we can take it! Who would have thought that the Titan Emperor Collegium would have a genius like that working for them? We have to kill him!”
“Are you serious? There’s no place for your Profound Yang Collegium in this matter! We from the Ignis Flame Collegium will handle it.”
“Hah. That will be up to whoever manages to kill Yang Qi first, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Let’s all attack. He’s like a cornered beast, so it's hard to say who will land the death blow. As for who will get all of his treasures, it will all come down to luck.”
In the briefest of moments, Yang Qi became the main target for everyone in the Immortal Army Battlefield, all of whom took him as little more than an animal to be put down.
He stood there amidst the craters and crevices, the Infernal Deity Spear in his hand, looking up into the sky as the numerous streams of divine will converged on his location.