“I didn’t set anything on fire this time!” he blurted as he backed up, heart pounding with fear.

It wasn’t exactly the best explanation, and it immediately led Bai Hao to ponder what calamities would be forthcoming. Unfortunately, he had waited too long before interfering to forestall disaster. The soul cultivators from the Giant Ghost Legion closed in, expressions of rage on their face. As they thought back to what had occurred with the explosion, it only got them angrier and angrier.

Of course, Mistress Red-Dust was the fastest of all. When she extended her hand toward Bai Xiaochun, her will instantly took control of the entire area, surpassing and replacing the will of the heavens. Right in front of her, the image of a huge palm appeared, which immediately began to rumble toward the low-lying mountain.

When it hit, the ground quaked, and the mountain collapsed into pieces. By that point, though, Bai Xiaochun had vanished and reappeared some 3,000 meters away in midair.

“Come on, be reasonable, Zhou Zimo! I didn’t set anything on fire!” Then he anxiously sent another message to the Giant Ghost King.

“Hmm?” Mistress Red-Dust murmured. The fact that Bai Xiaochun had evaded her palm strike was actually quite surprising to her. After all, she was a deva, and had replaced the will of the heavens in the area. She had assumed that Bai Xiaochun would be killed, and yet, contrary to expectations, he evaded her. “Seems father was right. His battle prowess really is beyond ordinary. Incredible actually....”

With a cold snort, she prepared to keep fighting, when all of a sudden, she frowned. Looking down at her bag of holding, she realized that the Giant Ghost King was sending her an angry message.

A grim expression overtook her face as she took out the jade slip and hovered there in midair, communicating with the Giant Ghost King. That sight caused Bai Xiaochun to immediately breathe a sigh of relief.

“I really can’t stick around this place. Mistress Red-Dust is completely unreasonable. I mean, come on, I didn’t start any fires this time....” Feeling very unlucky, and at the same time a bit guilty, he furtively studied Mistress Red-Dust.

As for the other soul cultivators from the Giant Ghost Legion, the fact that their sergeant major was taking the lead in dealing with this Bai Hao meant that they couldn’t do anything other than fan out to surround him and lock the area down. Then they stared at him with murderous auras surging, which of course only served to make him more nervous than before.

Mistress Red-Dust was not very pleased at all with how the discussion with her father went. In the end, she crushed the jade slip and looked over at Bai Xiaochun with an icy expression.

Bai Xiaochun waited there nervously to see what she would say.

“If you can survive one attack from me, then you can leave the army camp. And afterward, I don’t ever want to see you again. Ever!” Even as her words continued to echo out, she took a step forward and appeared right in front of Bai Xiaochun. There, she waved her hand through the air, causing a bright red wind to spring up and surround Bai Xiaochun.

That wind contained Mistress Red-Dust’s will, and was a deva-level attack that could easily crush any Nascent Soul cultivator. As soon as the wind appeared, it spun into a huge red tornado that rose up high into the sky.

It was as if Mistress Red-Dust had called upon all of the power of heaven and earth and fused it with her will. It became a deadly attack so powerful that her face appeared within the tornado itself!

The surrounding soul cultivators looked on excitedly, just waiting to see how this Bai Hao would handle a blow backed by the power of a deva.

Bai Xiaochun could instantly sense an incredible pressure weighing down on him. His aura slowed to a crawl, and his face fell. Heart pounding, he tried to back up, but realized that Mistress Red-Dust’s will controlled the entire area, locking it down and making his own teleportation abilities impossible to use.

He could do nothing to escape the red wind, and as such, an intense sensation of deadly crisis built up within him. There was no time to ponder how to deal with the situation. Instead, he roared, “You really think I’m scared of you, Zhou Zimo!?”

Instead of attempting to evade, he took a deep breath and then drew upon the full power of his cultivation base. At the same time, his fleshly body power all erupted out through his right hand in a fist strike!

It was no ordinary fist strike; as soon as it began, his aura shrank down, and a black vortex appeared around his fist. As the vortex spun, Mistress Red-Dust’s will was shattered and sucked into the fist, making everything around Bai Xiaochun a raging, illusory vortex.

Mistress Red-Dust’s face fell as she realized that instead of overestimating her opponent as she had assumed she had, she had actually underestimated him! The power of this fist caused her heart to tremble; clearly this was not a magical technique from the Nascent Soul stage. Furthermore, she could sense a bit of Bai Xiaochun’s will within the fist!

That was a hallmark of the Daoist magic of devas!

In the same moment that Bai Xiaochun’s will appeared, the image of a person appeared behind him, wearing imperial robes and an imperial crown. Almost as soon as that image appeared, it was also sucked into the fist strike. This was the... Undying Emperor’s Fist!

The fist struck out into the red wind, landing directly onto the image of Mistress Red-Dust’s face.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Everything in the area was shaken violently by the resulting boom. Even the populace of Arch-Emperor City was shocked. Furthermore, because it was entirely possible that there might be people in Arch-Emperor City who recognized the Undying Live Forever Technique, Bai Xiaochun used the powers of his mask to alter the image of the black vortex and the shadowy emperor.

What everyone else saw was a domineering fist strike that could shake heaven and earth.

RUUUUUUUUUUMBLE!

The contact between these two opponents caused heaven to shake and the earth to tremble. The enormous face shattered, and the wild wind began to disperse. As for Bai Xiaochun, despite the fact that he was physically tough, and was fully clad in fourteenfold spirit enhanced items, he was still sent flying backward 3,000 meters. As he did, he coughed up two successive mouthfuls of blood. And yet, he was still at peak battle prowess!

Mistress Red-Dust had not used all of the deva power at her disposal. Furthermore, the subsequent counterattack was far more stunning and spectacular than she could ever have imagined. Despite making a hasty attempt to defend herself, she was still sent staggering backward 300 meters, blood oozing out of her mouth, and her internal organs quivering painfully. After coming to a stop, she looked up in shock at Bai Xiaochun, her face ashen.

In her entire life, there had only ever been two people who were not devas that could fight her in this way. One was Bai Xiaochun, and the other was this Bai Hao. Furthermore, based on what she remembered, there was no way that Bai Xiaochun could pull off a fist strike like this. Despite the fact that a twinge of suspicion appeared in her heart, and she even knew that Bai Xiaochun had a mask of disguise, she still didn’t believe them to be the same person, the main reason being the fact that this Bai Hao had been sent to her by her father.

She refused to believe that Bai Xiaochun could fool the divine sense of a demigod. Therefore, the fact that the Giant Ghost King had approved of this Bai Hao made everything clear. As for the tiny suspicion that had just been born, she quickly buried it.

“I beat Granny Red-Dust half to death last time we fought,” Bai Xiaochun thought, “and I’m a lot stronger now than I was then. How could I possibly be afraid of her now? Hmph. Maybe I can’t beat her, but I’m definitely not going to let her stomp me like she did last time!! However, based on the expression on her face, it’s possible she might be suspicious of my identity now....” At the moment, his cultivation base was quivering a bit. He had just attacked with ninety percent of the power of the fist strike, and had held ten percent in reserve. The truth was that he wasn’t quite capable of unleashing the entire, fully-powered version at the moment.

In this brief interchange with Mistress Red-Dust, he could already tell how much more powerful he was than before. In their previous fight in the necropolis, it had only been because of Mistress Red-Dust being weakened by the curse that he made it out alive. He had sacrificed his clones and used every technique at his disposal before managing to flee. But now... things were different!

Having reached this point in his train of thought, he realized that Mistress Red-Dust wasn’t actually as terrifying as he had taken her to be. There he hovered in midair, looking at her, not saying a word.

Meanwhile, all of the surrounding soldiers of the Giant Ghost Legion were looking on in complete shock. As their eyes came to rest on Bai Xiaochun, their minds filled with unprecedented levels of astonishment.

“A Nascent Soul cultivator who can fight a deva!?!?”

“Heavens! Was I seeing things just now? This Bai Hao... is so strong! I heard the rumor that he kidnapped all of the other chosen in the Necromancer Kettle, but I thought that was only because he had the help of the Giant Ghost King. Now I can see how shocking he really is!”

“That fist strike is definitely his trump card....”

As everyone reeled in shock, something else happened in the imperial city high in the air above. Somewhere in the imperial palace, in Heavenmaster Hall, the Grand Heavenmaster suddenly opened his eyes and looked out in the direction of the Giant Ghost Legion. Soon, his vision pierced through all obstacles to come to rest on Bai Xiaochun.

“Was that... the Hell-Emperor Fist?” The Grand Heavenmaster was clearly moved. Based on what he could tell, the fist strike which had been unleashed was definitely very similar to the legendary Hell-Emperor Fist.

“The Hell-Emperor Fist is part of the legacy of the Hell-Emperor.... Only someone approved by the Hell-Emperor would be able to use it!” When it came to the legendary Hell-Emperor, even the Grand Heavenmaster, someone who was very near to the peak of the Demigod Realm, someone who controlled the Son of Heaven and issued commands to all creation, was still shaken and fearful.