As the punch landed, Liu Xing's brain rattled, his vision darkened, and he was lifted to the sky, his body rotating like a wheel. Before he could hit the ground, the former emperor appeared behind him and punched him in the back, sending him flying in the opposite direction. He became a pinball, batted back and forth hundreds of times in less than ten seconds. Though his body was encased in stable qi, the damage was severe. His nose caved in, the bones in his left hand shattered, and his spine screamed in protest.

As Liu Xing desperately tried to summon his shield, he finally understood the prince's warning about distance. The greater the gap, the faster and stronger the emperor's next attack became. He also realized the time between each strike was constant; distance didn't matter. Whether Liu Xing was ten meters or a kilometer away, the former emperor covered the ground in roughly the same amount of time. The sheer power of it made Liu Xing imagine that if he stood on a mountain several kilometers away, the emperor's punch could probably destroy it entirely.

He desperately tried to escape, cycling his qi faster to sharpen his senses and make sense of the blurry world around him. He was in the sky. Then, his back slammed into something hard, forcing the air from his lungs. He looked and saw he'd hit an orange barrier like a fly hitting a window. Looking down, he saw the giant meatball rotating like a cultivation core far below. Inside the wide hole where they'd fought Lihuo's army, a twelve-headed bird of fire rampaged, loosing torrents of flame. He didn't know the distance between himself and the former emperor, but he knew one more hit would kill him.

An explosion sounded in the distance. A small dot rocketed toward him. In less than a second, the former emperor would arrive.

Liu Xing poured more and more qi into his Lightning Cloak Technique, slowing the world just enough. In this brief window, he tried to think, but only the obvious came to mind. He couldn't be too far from the emperor.

The former emperor arrived, his body bathed in a pure dark light like black ink. He unleashed a punch straight at Liu Xing's face. Liu Xing gritted his teeth and, with all his might, wrenched his head to the side. The punch missed by centimeters, but the force of it hitting the orange barrier made the air explode, throwing him sideways as the barrier reverberated like a gong.

Liu Xing summoned his shield beneath his feet and landed on it, his breath ragged. Seeing the Royal Barrier still vibrating gave him an idea—not about defeating the former emperor, but about using him. His eyes snapped down. The spinning meatball was right below him, its two eyes sizing him up as if trying to read his mind.

"It's all coming together," Liu Xing muttered, his heart hammering with anticipation.

Inhaling deeply, he reined in his excitement. While he could use the emperor to help him destroy the rotating meatball, the emperor might have some internal restriction preventing him from attacking it. Still, there was no harm in trying. As he thought this, the former emperor rotated and kicked the Royal Barrier to lunge at him. The speed wasn't as great, and the punch was probably weaker than before, but he still arrived in less than a second and threw a punch at Liu Xing's chest.

Liu Xing gripped his stone blade with both hands and ducked. The fist passed right over his head, rustling his sweaty, bloody hair. He jumped to the side and landed on his shield again. The former emperor detonated fireballs beneath his feet to propel himself forward, while Liu Xing once again focused all his mind on dodging. They flew through the sky like streaking lights, one shrouded in blue lightning, the other in an inky black aura like two falling stars of peculiar colors chasing each other. Liu Xing's mind was sharp as a knife. He discerned the former emperor's rhythm and attack patterns, carefully planning his positioning. After skillfully dodging a dozen attacks, he finally saw an opportunity.

Their positions were like this. The meatball on one side, the former emperor in the center, and Liu Xing on the other. He needed to swap positions, putting himself in the center and the emperor on the far side. He also wanted his enemy as far away as possible and himself as close to the meatball as he could get. To do that, he needed time—time he could buy with his gun.

He stood atop his shield and licked his lips.

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Truth be told, after being thrown into the Royal Barrier, he'd lost his gun. But luckily, it was soul-bound. He dismissed and resummoned it to his left hand, filled it with bullets made from the qi saved in the Ethereal Pearl, and readied himself.

The emperor kicked off fireballs, flying at him with tremendous speed while the meatball with eyes stared at him. Liu Xing flooded his Lightning Cloak Technique with qi to enhance his own speed. Then, when the emperor was only several meters away, he pulled the trigger six times.

Lightning bullets shot out, hitting the former emperor in the face. The six bullets encased him in lightning as thick as ropes. While they didn't hurt him, they imparted force, shifting his trajectory slightly to the left. And with his body paralyzed, he couldn't correct his course.

Liu Xing leaned to the side and allowed the former emperor to rush past him. His heart raced, his damp black hair rustling in the wind of the emperor's passage.

Everything began lining up. Liu Xing kicked his shield and accelerated toward the meatball. Its red eyes shifted toward him and narrowed slightly, as if it knew what he was planning.

When he was only a dozen meters from the meatball, he summoned his shield to kill his momentum. He then resummoned the shield below his feet and turned just in time to see the former emperor launch himself from far away. The emperor's muscular body rushed toward him, the mad smile on his face never faltering, his lips stained red with Prince Yang Jinyan's blood.

When he was close, Liu Xing hit him with six Lightning Palm bullets again, encasing him in thick ropes of lightning and shifting his trajectory slightly to the left once more.

This time, when Liu Xing dodged, the emperor rushed like a jet plane toward the meatball, his punch still cocked. When he collided with it, a rumble like an avalanche reverberated through the air. The meatball's shape distorted like a soccer ball kicked by the world's best player, but surprisingly, it didn't move from its position, as if tethered by invisible threads.

Seeing his simple plan succeed, Liu Xing smiled and prepared to repeat it.

The former emperor, while strong and dangerous, had a simple attack pattern. Since his speed was relatively uniform regardless of distance, predicting his movement was actually quite easy. If the emperor were still a thinking human, he might use feints or tricks, but the longer they fought, the more Liu Xing realized his movements were robotic. He suspected the situation would be different if Lihuo or Wei Yi were close enough to command him.

And so, the meatball became the former emperor's punching bag. Not every attack made it rumble, but each made a loud sound like a hammer hitting a corpse. A large blue bruise pulsed below its left eye, as if giant worms were wriggling under its skin. One of its eyes was now bloodshot, and its formerly round shape was now uneven. Liu Xing sometimes slashed at the meatball too, creating several large, gushing gashes.

At first, he was confident that the meatball's destruction was just a matter of time. But after more than a minute, his confidence wavered. Despite taking so many hits from a Sun Refining abomination, the meatball remained intact. Its durability was through the roof. The fact that it was still coated in a gigantic amount of qi was also worrying. Soon, Lihuo or Wei Yi would catch on.

A punch from the former emperor made the giant meatball stagger, its eyes widening like a man punched in the stomach. Then, as if it could no longer hold it in, a horizontal slit appeared, opening wide to reveal hundreds of giant tongues trembling like seaweed in a chaotic current. A loud wail, like a sorrowful whale song, echoed from its large mouth.

Upon hearing this, Liu Xing's fear skyrocketed. It was clearly calling for help!

Then, confirming his anxiety, a rumble could be heard. At first soft, it grew louder and louder, like a mountain collapsing. Another wail, this one full of anger yet also deep and sorrowful, answered from below.

Standing atop his shield, Liu Xing's heart hammered against his ribs as he looked down like a man on a small raft seeing the silhouette of a great shark beneath him.

A giant white hand suddenly emerged from the ground. Its sheer size was mind-boggling; it could hold the large meatball in its palm. Another hand emerged, rising higher and higher. Then, a moment later, a huge face rose from the underground levels. It was pale, like a corpse, with hollow eye sockets revealing only pink holes.

It rose from the ground like a zombie from a grave. From his position, he could see Yang Hongyin's twelve-headed fire bird fleeing while escorting a group of cultivators. They were tiny compared to that face, like fleas fleeing a normal-sized human.

Every strand of Liu Xing's hair stood on end. His stomach lurched. Fear surged through him like a tornado, and his eyes and mouth opened wide, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

"What the hell," Liu Xing muttered.

A giant had emerged from the ground.

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