Chapter 827: Radiant Lights

Li Xiaofei looked on, confused, as Black Emperor dashed forward and started nosing around the bottom right corner between the city gate and the wall.

There, embedded neatly into the base of the structure... was a dog hole. It was roughly thirty centimeters in diameter. Black Emperor immediately squeezed into the hole and slipped through the massive wall. Then, from the other side of the gate, it turned back and waved at Li Xiaofei, beckoning him forward.

Son of a...

Li Xiaofei cursed under his breath,

With my status and dignity, you want me to crawl through a damn dog hole?

Black Emperor tilted its head, confusion written all over its canine face. Li Xiaofei fell silent. Then, grumbling under his breath, he activated his Bone-Shrinking Technique and reluctantly crawled in after it. Black Emperor tilted its head even further, watching him squirm through. Li Xiaofei responded by giving the mutt a good kick.

He stepped out into the city, and what lay before him made him pause. The scene... It looked strangely familiar.

Li Xiaofei narrowed his eyes, searching his memory, until his expression changed to one of deeper astonishment.

This place... Wasn’t it the same map used during the college championship back on Earth, in the light core virtual world?

It was Chang’an in Flames. A once-majestic capital now ravaged by war, reduced to ruin. From collapsed buildings to burning homes, everything matched that battlefield map from the light core simulation.

However, this wasn’t Chang’an Street, this was the real Heaven. Back then, the light core must have used a mirrored replica of this place as a map, and perhaps, that wasn’t a coincidence.

The crackling sound of fire reached Li Xiaofei’s ears. In front of him stretched a wide district, filled mostly with wooden buildings and pavilions. The inferno had been raging for who knew how long, and it still hadn’t stopped. Flames licked hungrily at the structures, and thick smoke blanketed half the sky.

The air was saturated with the stench of blood, while corpses lay scattered across the ground. Li Xiaofei walked forward in silence and picked up a broken sword. Only two-thirds of its blade remained, the rest having snapped off. Blood was splattered across its surface. It was a kind of blood he recognized immediately. The blood of the Night Fiends. The enemy was the Night Fiends.

He soon came across a few dismembered bodies. The wounds were unmistakably inflicted by claws and bone blades, classic Night Fiend weapons. But there were very few human corpses left. Most had probably already been devoured.

Then, from ahead, the sound of something slicing through the air reached his ears. They were here. A dozen or so Night Fiends were rapidly approaching through the smoke.

Li Xiaofei immediately stepped forward to meet them. Sword light tore through the air. A shriek of agony hung in the air as a Night Fiend was cleaved cleanly in half at the waist. It seemed swords from Heaven could pierce the defenses of the Night Fiends. If not, the blade would not be stained with their blood.

“Woof!” Black Emperor charged forward as well.

It roared as its body expanded in size. A Night Fiend was slammed to the ground with just a single pounce. It clamped its jaws around the creature’s skull and gave a savage twist, tearing the head clean off in a single motion before swallowing it whole.

The sheer brutality of the scene startled the other Night Fiends. Li Xiaofei’s sword light flashed like lightning, striking again and again. One by one, the Night Fiends fell, blood staining the length of the ancient street.

These second-evolution Night Fiends were no match for Li Xiaofei, not with the divine sword in his hand. They were swiftly and mercilessly slaughtered. Black Emperor didn’t hold back either, devouring every last Night Fiend. Its belly seemed like a bottomless pit. Yet even after the carnage, Li Xiaofei remained unsatisfied.

“Come on, you beasts! Show yourselves and die!”

“Woof! Woof woof woof!”

Man and dog, exuding unstoppable momentum, charged deeper into the Heavenly Street. They looked like war gods descended to the mortal realm. They looked like they were murderous, relentless, and driven by vengeance.

They were hunting Night Fiends, determined to drown the street in blood and avenge the fallen of the human race.

Ten minutes later.

“Woof woof!”

“What the hell, why are there so many of them?!”

Man and dog were fleeing in panic. They were being hunted by an endless tide of Night Fiends, like a black flood breaking free of a dam. It was unstoppable and maddening. Worse still, these creatures were fast and their sense of smell was sharp. There was no shaking them off.

Li Xiaofei was panting, sweat dripping from his brow. Rage welled up in his chest, pushing caution aside. Just as he was about to summon the Ancient Saints of the Cemetary—

Pfft!

A single, unmistakable fart echoed through the air. Li Xiaofei turned just in time to see a puff of yellow gas erupting from Black Emperor’s rear.

That damn dog... had let one rip.

But then, the unbelievable happened. The dozen or so Night Fiends at the very front of the pursuit were engulfed in the yellow cloud. Within moments, they stumbled like drunkards, then collapsed to the ground.

The rest of the Night Fiends instantly slowed their charge, recoiling in alarm and dodging to the sides like the cloud was some kind of venomous mist.

Li Xiaofei stared at Black Emperor in disbelief.

Are you really a dog... or a mutated weasel?

Before he could even react further—

Pfft! Pfft! Pfffffft!

Black Emperor began sprinting and defecating at the same time. It was like watching a high-speed, mobile soft-serve machine in action. It was leaving behind dollops of what looked disturbingly like caramel swirl cones.

To make matters worse, the mutt was running in an S-curve. The Night Fiends, frenzied and unable to stop in time, trampled straight over the trail.

One by one, they slipped, fell, and convulsed. Then, as the ‘ice cream’ fumes began to spread, whole swaths of Night Fiends started foaming at the mouth and collapsing like dominoes.

Li Xiaofei was absolutely dumbfounded.

This... actually works?

Sure, he’d known that Black Emperor’s excrement had terrifying properties. But he had never imagined it had evolved into something so outrageously potent that even the savage Night Fiends couldn’t withstand it.

Thanks to Black Emperor’s absurd display of biological warfare, man and dog finally managed to shake off the pursuing horde of Night Fiends for the moment.

From that point on, Old Li became much more cautious. It was clear he would have to rely on guerrilla tactics to survive. But before long, Li Xiaofei began noticing something entirely unexpected.

Strangely enough, some parts of Heaven turned out to be exact replicas of the duel maps he had encountered back in the light core virtual world. Sky City’s ancient district, the Frostbitten Wastes, and even the Realm of the Sky People... they all existed here, in the flesh.

Li Xiaofei was stunned to realize just how familiar he already was with this terrain. Using the landscape to his advantage, he eliminated wave after wave of Night Fiends. Black Emperor, of course, was enjoying the feast of his life.

“Hmm? What’s this?” As Li Xiaofei passed by a burning wooden building, he suddenly sensed faint ripples of energy emanating from within.

A subtle golden glow shimmered faintly amid the dancing flames. Li Xiaofei leaped through a burning window to investigate. The first floor was in complete disarray with tables overturned, and chairs shattered. Nothing immediately stood out.

He moved up the staircase to the second floor. It, too, was a chaotic mess, as if a violent skirmish had broken out. But in the center of the room lay a toppled wardrobe, its heavy frame overturned and pressed flat against the floor. Wisps of golden light flickered intermittently from the gaps in the wood.

With a flick of his sword, Li Xiaofei pried the cabinet open. Beneath it was a corpse. It was the body of a warrior clad in tattered armor. He lay sprawled face-down on the floor, his blood long dried. His muscles had hardened into blackened cords, and it was rigid like iron. It was a telltale sign of poisoning.

Li Xiaofei instantly recognized it. That black toxin was identical to the one he had seen on the skeletal remains of the young daoist beneath the well. Even the lingering aura was exactly the same.

It seemed likely that this had once been a War General of Heaven, who had fallen in battle and been slain by some terrible enemy. Li Xiaofei let out a soft sigh. He bowed respectfully toward the fallen warrior’s corpse. He wasn’t sure why, but a strange urge stirred within him.

Drawing upon the power of the Dual Sacred Body of Blade and Sword, he activated the flame energy of the Flame Saber. Fire bloomed from his hand and gently fell upon the warrior’s remains.

In an instant, the strange black poison was burned away, cleansing the corpse. The hardened, darkened flesh turned clear and jade-like before his eyes, glowing with a translucent luster.

Moments later, the body dissolved into a sphere of gentle light, floating slowly into the air before vanishing into the void. For the briefest moment, Li Xiaofei thought he saw a faint silhouette, a translucent human figure, bowing toward him in gratitude... as if finally released from endless torment.

The body vanished. But in its place, two radiant lights, one gold and one crimson, appeared. They flared into brilliance, and shone with a blinding gleam.