Chapter 1154: Not Regarded as Human, the Arrival of a King (I)

"These creatures’ bodies can shift between energy and matter. Some are even capable of phasing into intangibility."

"These should be their meridians. They act as channels for energy circulation, unlike the rune networks engraved deep within the muscle cells of beings from the mythical world."

"But what is that flickering wave of spiritual fluctuations that appeared and vanished? It seems like summoning is involved."

Chen Chu held a several-hundred-meter-long horn, his gaze contemplative as he looked across the red planet. The remaining flesh and blood at the torn base of the horn glimmered with white light as energy diffused away.

He was standing atop the corpse of a ten-thousand-meter-long colossal beast. Its wings were spread wide across its back; its armor-like hide was shattered; and half its skull was caved in. Much of its flesh had been blown apart, exposing its internal organs.

It was not alone. More than a dozen colossal beast corpses, each thousands of meters long, lay scattered across the fractured land.

The reason he had crushed them was simple; they were looking for it.

When Chen Chu had leapt from another planet and crashed onto the surface, blasting out a crater thousands of kilometers wide, he had startled the strongest beast on this world.

The ten-thousand-meter giant, akin to a peak ancient-titan-level beast, had rallied its kin to attack. In response, Chen Chu shattered it with a single punch. The gale from his fist had torn through the planet’s atmosphere and hurled the other mythical-level beasts away.

Yet just as he ripped apart a beast’s body to study its structure, he sensed faint spiritual fluctuations. Thousands of kilometers away, a blue array of thirty-two star rays appeared out of thin air beneath one of the beasts he had swatted aside.

The beast, which was more than five hundred meters long, had not resisted. Instead, it had roared with excitement, its body glowing before shrinking rapidly to a mere twenty meters.

This change surprised Chen Chu. He quickly realized that its strength and level had fallen in accordance to its length. It was as if it had regressed to its juvenile stage. Wrapped in the glow of the array, it flew into a golden-blue world.

Chen Chu’s eyes had lit up.

Boom!

He moved at several thousand times the speed of sound as he crossed thousands of kilometers in an instant. The friction carved a ten-thousand-meter-long plasma tail and left a sonic shockwave in his wake.

In the ruins of shattered mountains, colossal beasts ranging from hundreds to a thousand meters long howled in terror at the sudden appearance of the black-haired youth.

"Shut up."

Boom!

The ground quaked, dust rising like waves as Chen Chu pressed down on the air. Every beast sank into the earth as a palm print a thousand kilometers wide and hundreds of meters deep was imprinted into the ground.

Though transcendent strength, innate abilities, and divine abilities tied to principles and laws could not be used here, Chen Chu’s grasp of pure physical strength alone was no different from a god or demon.

After suppressing the beasts with one palm, he stood quietly, watching as another star array flared beneath the wings of an avian beast over eight hundred meters long.

This time, faint threads of spiritual force spread out, as though communicating with it.

Shreek!

The beast cried out in excitement, impatient for what was to come. Chen Chu saw a glowing star mark appear on the bird’s brow, mirroring the array beneath it.

"That should be a summoning contract." His eyes narrowed as he watched the avian beast shrink, then vanish into the array’s light. "Perhaps I can use that summoning array to enter."

But he had no intention of becoming a summoned beast. He intended to decipher the star array and reverse it so that he could summon himself onto that world. Yet as he drew near the golden-blue world, the repulsion surrounding him grew stronger.

This was not a rejection because he was an infiltrator, but because his essence was too powerful. He was being instinctively rejected by that world. Even the beasts of this red planet were forced to dwell in the outer heavens for the same reason.

He could reveal his True Demon God Form and force his way in by tearing through the world’s barrier. But doing so would leave him two choices: plunder and retreat, or be suppressed like Boroedo and the others.

Chen Chu, who preferred steady gains, naturally would not take such risks. He watched as the array appeared three more times, each one pulling another beast into the golden-blue world.

Then he realized that he could not understand the array. In fact, it was too simple. There were nine circles on the inside and outside, and a handful of lines. There were no runes, no runic sequences, nor even any energy constructs. Were it not for its ability to reverse time-space and seize beasts, he might have dismissed it as a mere drawing.

"Annoying. This star array is not truly an array. More precisely, it is a key triggered by some hidden power. It is impossible to reverse engineer."

Chen Chu frowned, hesitation flickering in his eyes. He considered opening the Void Death Pupils to gaze upon the essence of the world itself. Only then could he be sure of discerning its true nature. However, doing so risked being discovered.

Hum!

At that moment, a radiant blue array appeared beneath a black Explosive Bear[1] over a thousand meters long,

Its glow was brighter than the rest, and a surge of spiritual fluctuations that was even stronger than before spread outward, brushing against the bear before stretching toward Chen Chu.

Yet, when it neared within a hundred kilometers of him, it halted, unable to advance. To that probing sense, the youth before it was like a bottomless black hole. He radiated a dreadful pressure that made even the surrounding colossal beasts quake in fear.

The spiritual fluctuations rippled faintly, transmitting the blurred voice of a girl tinged with subtle pride.

"Do y-you wish to follow Isabelle, defeat the evil god, and save the world?"

"Get lost." Chen Chu arched a single brow as he replied coldly, his voice carrying an invisible tremor that instantly shattered the spiritual fluctuations.

With Chen Chu’s strength and standing, even a primordial sovereign had no right to demand his allegiance. Besides, he was the so-called evil god. Was he supposed to join them to defeat himself?

Still, if he wanted to enter that world, it seemed he had no choice but to make use of this summoning ability. As he watched the black Explosive Bear shrink down to forty meters in length and vanish into the star array, Chen Chu fell into quiet thought.

Soon, the seventh star array appeared before him. This time, it manifested beneath a white beast over two thousand meters long. It resembled a colossal dragon but only had two legs. The star array was accompanied by a surge of pure and boundless spiritual force, ten times stronger than the previous one. In terms of intensity, it rivaled a Ninth-Heavenly-Realm expert.

Such unrefined yet resilient spiritual force surprised even Chen Chu. Spiritual force was not the same as the divine soul power of mythical experts, nor the willpower wielded by those of the Eighth and Ninth Heavenly Realms.

It was indeed astonishing to find one that reached such strength without being tempered by laws or condensed by the power of heaven and earth.

The white beast’s eyes burned with excitement as it roared. At last, it could escape this terrifying place. It respectfully glanced at Chen Chu, who was standing atop a several-thousand-meter-tall hill a thousand kilometers away.

To these simple-minded beasts, the youth who had obliterated the king of their world with a punch and annihilated emperor-level illusory beasts with ease was terrifying beyond measure.

He was a peerless demon god.

Yet just as the white beast was about to form a contract willingly, the star array beneath it stirred. The powerful spiritual force seized the array and shifted it. The dumbfounded gazes of the other illusory beasts followed the three-kilometer-wide array until it stopped a mere hundred kilometers from Chen Chu.

1. This is a colossal beast, similar to Rampage Ape. ☜