Chapter 1522 - Nine Nether Hellfire

“It’s about time. Let the Chaos Fire God Realm learn that they can’t do whatever they please here.”

“That’s right! Go, Shangguan Heavenly Clan, bring down the Chaos Fire God Realm!”

Hearing the voices of the crowd, Xiao Anshan’s face turned grim. He raised his head toward Shangguan Wan’er, ready to strike back, but then felt a hand pat his shoulder.

“That’s enough. Go tend to your injuries,” Xu Zimo said as he stepped forward slowly.

“Be careful,” Xiao Anshan said solemnly.

Xu Zimo smiled and nodded, then continued forward. His gaze met Shangguan Wan’er’s, the two locking eyes like two forces that could split heaven and earth.

“I make the rules here,” Xu Zimo said evenly. “The sealed ground of this domain is not to be opened. That’s final.”

But Shangguan Wan’er ignored him. Her right hand descended, wreathed in roaring black fire.

This fire was dense and viscous, like flames drawn up from the depths of hell itself. Within it burned death, pure, absolute death. Merely gazing upon the flames made one feel their life force draining away.

“The Nine Nether Hellfire!” someone in the crowd gasped.

“It’s said that thirty million meters beneath the surface, someone once built a Nine Nether Prison. All who opposed that person were thrown inside and tortured alive until death. Over time, countless lives perished there, so many that no one could count them. That place made hell itself pale by comparison. Eventually, when the endless resentment of those dead souls ignited, a flame was born, the Nine Nether Hellfire.”

It was the return of death itself, the embodiment of true extinction.

When Shangguan Wan’er’s palm struck down, the air quaked with unimaginable force. The blazing hellfire surged forth, intent on annihilating everything.

Xu Zimo merely chuckled coldly and raised his own palm to meet hers. From his hand surged the Flame of Zhurong, the ancient divine flame few in the world truly understood.

The instant Shangguan Wan’er felt the heat radiating from that fire, her brows furrowed slightly.

With a thunderous crack, their condensed spirit palms collided in midair.

This time, the Nine Nether Hellfire proved fragile like paper before the divine Flame of Zhurong, it shattered instantly. Xu Zimo’s palm strike pressed on, unbroken, surging straight toward her.

Shangguan Wan’er retreated several steps and drew her sword with a graceful motion. A blinding sword aura erupted from the void.

With a resounding boom, the sword energy split the descending palm apart, finally halting its advance.

In her hand now gleamed a long black sword, but calling it a “sword” seemed insufficient. Chains wrapped around its hilt, and each link bore a tiny skull that screamed in agony.

“So you’re the one who injured my sister,” Shangguan Wan’er said, her eyes narrowing slightly.

When Xu Zimo had defeated Shangguan Jin before, Wan’er had not been present, but she had certainly heard of it.

“I am,” Xu Zimo replied with a faint smile. “And if you’d like to experience the same, I don’t mind sending you to join her fate, or worse.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a bit too arrogant?” Wan’er asked quietly, her tone icy.

“Arrogant?” Xu Zimo sneered. “I was born domineering. What can you do about it?”

Wan’er raised her black sword, sword intent swirling around her hand. “Nightfall of Three Worlds, First Night, Heaven Sacrifice.”

The blade began to wail mournfully. Around her, waves of dark mist rose, each carrying an aura of ritual and sacrifice. Wherever that black miasma spread, it devoured the world itself.

Someone in the crowd brushed against the mist by accident, and was instantly swallowed whole.

“Be careful!” someone shouted in panic. “That black aura is sacrificial energy! Touch it, and you’ll become an offering!”

Everything could be offered up in that sacrifice, humans, plants, air, even the heavens and earth themselves.

The sacrificial aura grew denser and denser, until it condensed into a colossal black greatsword that cleaved down toward Xu Zimo, intending to swallow him whole as an offering.

“This is rather interesting,” Xu Zimo said with a grin.

He lifted his blade, Shadow Tyrant, and slashed upward toward the heavens.

“Eightfold Sky-Split,” he shouted softly. “Let’s see who devours whom.”

He hadn’t used this technique in a long time, not since someone had passed it to him when he was still at the Grand Emperor Realm. The blade carried the power to rend the skies themselves.

Radiant light burst forth, blazing like a newborn sun. When the blade descended, the sky cracked open. Chaotic void currents surged violently all around.

When the sky-rending blade light met the devouring sword aura, the explosion everyone expected didn’t happen. Instead, the two powers clashed and wrestled endlessly, each refusing to yield.

The devouring sword aura engulfed the blade light, yet the next instant, Xu Zimo’s power erupted once more, splitting the sword energy apart in a violent detonation.

Wan’er’s brows furrowed. Xu Zimo was far more troublesome than she had anticipated.

“Nightfall of Three Worlds, Second Night, Royal Summon,” she intoned.

This time, she held the sword before her eyes. All the entities that the black mist had devoured earlier were now being completely sacrificed.

That sacrifice served to summon something far greater.

“The demon from the Nine Nether Prison?” someone whispered in horror.

The Nine Nether Hellfire came from the underworld itself, and this black sword, surely, it too was an infernal weapon.

Even from a distance, one could sense what it did: devour living things and offer them as sacrifices to summon a demon from hell.

As the sacrificial offerings were consumed, the surrounding darkness surged upward, engulfing half the heavens.

Xu Zimo lifted his gaze. A massive creature slowly emerged from the black haze.

“Little girl,” a deep, commanding voice rumbled from within the darkness, “why have you called for me?”

“King of Hell,” Shangguan Wan’er said coldly, pointing her sword toward Xu Zimo, “grant your punishment of darkness, destroy him.”

The voice chuckled. “Next time, bring something more appetizing. These offerings are hardly to my taste.”

Then the darkness churned, and the monster revealed itself.

Its body was enormous, towering like a mountain, wreathed in a dense aura of death. But more horrifying than its size was its composition, it wasn’t made of flesh and bone, but from countless human corpses stacked together.

Faces, limbs, broken skulls, every inch of it was writhing with remnants of the dead.

Many in the crowd turned away, gagging in disgust.

The monster lifted its head, locking its gaze on Xu Zimo.

“Wait,” it growled suddenly, its expression shifting. Its hollow eyes fixed on Xu Zimo with something like shock, almost fear.

“You… You’re that one?”

Xu Zimo frowned slightly, puzzled.