Chapter 429: The Eight True Demon Races, The Dominant Xia Zuo (I)

Dark clouds spread across the sky, plunging the world into a murky twilight.

Chen Chu stood tall on the hillside, holding his halberd. The golden-red glow of his armor shimmered, while visions of a hellish sea of blood swirled around him. His expression remained cold as he gazed into the distance.

𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

There, the ground had crumbled, and dust surged into the air. A colossal beast, with wings nearly a hundred meters wide, roared in the sky. Surrounded by a murderous black-purple aura, its presence shook the heavens and the earth.

A shout suddenly rang out. "Chen Chu! I’ve discovered an intact relic!"

At those words, Chen Chu, who had initially intended to simply observe, shifted his gaze slightly.

"How dare you harm a prodigy of my human race? You’re courting death."

With a long roar, Chen Chu’s feet crushed the hillside beneath him, and he shot into the sky like a golden beam of light piercing the heavens.

Roar!

The colossal beast let out a violent roar when it saw Chen Chu soaring thousands of meters into the air in the blink of an eye. A black glow gathered in its mouth, radiating a powerful energy fluctuation.

Just like those high-level void monsters, whose battle instincts remained intact even after corruption, this high-level contaminated monster still possessed its innate combat abilities.

It knew its advantage lay in flight, so it consistently attacked from the air, using its breath and energy attacks to suppress enemies from a distance.

Boom!

The beast’s mouth unleashed a three-meter-thick black breath of destruction that spiraled outward, accompanied by scorching waves of white-hot energy.

As Chen Chu approached, the sky behind him turned blood-red. An enormous vision of a god of hell unfurled, bursting with endless crimson light.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Nine halberds, each over thirty meters long and brimming with the power of a hellish blood sea, spiraled forth from the god’s image like golden missiles, overwhelming the contaminated monster.

Boom!

A massive golden explosion, resembling a ghostly face, detonated in the sky. White energy waves rippled out for hundreds of meters, mixed with the agonized screams of the colossal beast.

Just as the nine halberds engulfed the monster, its destructive breath shot toward Chen Chu’s afterimage, shattering it to pieces.

In the distance, Chen Chu’s flaming wings spread out, and with a powerful surge of transcendent energy, he propelled himself into the firestorm with a deafening blast.

Roar!

A more pitiful wail echoed through the sky.

The colossal beast’s broken carcass, smoking with black fumes, fell from the heavens like a massive airplane, crashing into the ground with a thunderous boom and sending clouds of dust billowing into the air.

Standing atop the immense body, Chen Chu held his halberd aloft, exuding a terrifying pressure as the vision of a blood-red hell swirled around him.

The Eight Desolations Purgatory, equivalent to the fusion of nine moves of the Infinite Purgatory, had exploded with devastating power. In an instant, the level 8 colossal beast, which specialized in long-range attacks, had been severely injured.

Before the beast could escape the blast radius, Chen Chu had appeared above it, smashing half of its head with a single strike from his halberd.

"So strong."

Sparks flew from several spots inside Gabriella’s black-and-white mech, as she looked in awe at the colossal beast’s corpse in the distance.

The level 8 beast that had forced her to flee in embarrassment had been killed by Chen Chu in a single blow. It gave the impression that his cultivation had already reached the peak of the Eighth Heavenly Realm.

Under normal circumstances, even if there was a gap between a beginning-stage Eighth Realm human and a colossal beast, a battle would still last half a day before a victor could be determined. Both sides possessed extraordinary endurance, vitality, and recovery abilities.

Only those at the peak of the same level, who had touched the power of the next realm, could crush and instantly kill a beginning-stage opponent. It was like when the quasi-mythical beast had fought the Nine-Headed Serpent Ghidorah.

Of course, that comparison only applied when both sides were in their standard state, not when facing off against geniuses with heaven-defying combat strength.

Yet no matter how exaggerated his combat prowess was, Chen Chu’s cultivation was only at the beginning stage of the Seventh Heavenly Realm. His greatest feat so far had been slaying a beginning-stage Eighth Heavenly Realm nine-headed blood python.

This was the most incomprehensible thing about Chen Chu. As long as his opponent's combat power was weaker than his, he could take them out with a single move. Only those with comparable strength could engage in a prolonged battle.

This was because Chen Chu’s attacks were always at their peak. There were no flashy moves—each strike was full force, and if his opponent couldn’t withstand it, they would die.

Not only did every blow from Chen Chu erupt with peak power, but his speed, defense, and reflexes were also pushed to the extreme.

With all his attributes maxed out, his true combat power was actually stronger than the explosive peak force he displayed. Opponents who were weaker than him didn’t even have a chance to react.

Swoosh!

The cockpit beneath the back of the mech’s neck opened with a hiss of hot air, and a blonde girl, dressed in a red form-fitting pilot suit, jumped out, standing on the shoulder of her mech.

Standing nearly 1.8 meters tall in her combat boots, she showcased a perfect figure with pronounced curves under her tight battle suit, and her stunning face was no less beautiful than Lin Xue's.

However, unlike Lin Xue's soft and delicate oriental features, Gabriella’s face was more western, with deep, defined features and smooth, fair skin.

Even Chen Chu paused briefly and couldn’t help but silently admire such a rare beauty.

Standing atop her towering mech, Gabriella called out. "Chen Chu! Let me fix up my mech, reload the ammo, and refill the energy cells, then I’ll take you over."

Chen Chu’s helmet split open and retracted to form a row of feathery horns on the back of his neck, and he nodded slightly. "No rush. Take your time, Gabriella."

"Okay."

This time, Gabriella hadn’t faced the contaminated colossal beast head-on, so her mech wasn’t too badly damaged—just some external exoskeletal plates had been broken.

However, the mech’s internal energy emitters, powered by rune force fields, had overloaded and shattered under the contaminated beast’s barrage of energy beams.

Still, Gabriella was quick to repair her mech. She rolled up the sleeve of her right arm, revealing a wrist adorned with multiple subspace bracelets. From one of them, she released a flexible, eight-armed robot over ten meters long.

Then, from another bracelet, she pulled out various parts. Under the control of the mech’s repair system, the eight-armed robot swiftly began disassembling and replacing the damaged components.

While the repair robot worked, Gabriella rolled up the sleeve of her left arm, revealing another pale wrist also covered with bracelets.

The blonde girl then moved around the forty-meter-tall mech like a busy little bee, reloading ammunition and replacing the energy cells for all eight engines.

For cultivators who practiced mech martial arts, their mechs were like external super armor, equipped with supercomputers and loaded with combat and auxiliary systems.

In addition, thanks to the energy engines, they could sustain explosive attacks much longer than true martial artists of the same level, with more intense firepower coverage.

Of course, the weakness was that once their energy and ammo were depleted, they would lose most of their combat ability. After all, enemies wouldn’t give them a chance to reload energy and ammo mid-battle.

The pilots acted as the mech’s core reactor, relying on neural connections to runic and technological devices to control their mechs as easily as moving their own bodies.

Thus, there were two paths for mech users. One was Gabriella’s, which focused on superior mech performance, firepower coverage, and energy explosions.

The other path was similar to gene martial arts, where the mech was completely refined into a battle body, merging it with the user to maximize the advantages of technology and the mech.

While Gabriella busily worked, she suddenly felt her entire mech shake, as the forty-meter-tall machine tilted and began to sway.