“Dead...he’s dead! The dark-type Late-stage Soul King is dead!”

“But how? I didn’t see it! How did that Late-stage Soul King die?! What in the world did him in?!”

“That red light...was definitely Bai Yunfei’s Fire-tipped Spear! How did it penetrate the elemental barrier so easily?!”

“It didn’t even look like it treated the barrier as if it existed! Do you guys remember something like this happening with lord-mayor Yan earlier?! Do you think...Bai Yunfei has some kind of secret that allows him to ignore elemental barriers?!”

“Even if that type of defense is no good, that dark-type Late-stage Soul King surely had to have a mid-heaven tier soul armament protecting his person. A weapon having that much penetrative force...that’s just too much of a shock, isn’t it?”

“The heart being completely obliterated is a definite death for sure. To tack on another attack like that and leaving the body in pieces is just too tragic...and wasn’t that a spatial tear just then? That was Bai Yunfei’s soulbeast partner that did it! His soulbeast partner is a space-type soulbeast?!”

“But I saw the soulbeast using wind, lightning, fire, and even wood! And now it can create tears in space...? What kind of soulbeast can you call that! Wasn’t it just a prisma oriole?! You’re kidding me! You could beat me to death before I’d believe that!!”

The instantaneous death of Li Yue was bringing about a lot of attention from the outside audience. People were discussing matters far more rapidly than the battle was even progressing. No one could believe their eyes, truth be told. Soul Kings were essentially walking legends in their eyes, and yet a Late-stage Soul King had been killed so easily like that. This was definitely a feat that created a rift between their expectations of how powerful a Soul King was supposed to be...

What those people didn’t know was that the real fun was only just starting to begin...

“Ah!!!”

Another scream erupted, only farther away this time. The audience snapped their heads over to look straight away towards the south. That was the direction where Bai Yunfei had shot out that beam of violet light!

............

A few seconds prior to Li Yue’s demise.

Hu Sha’s heart was in nestled deep in his throat. The incoming spear from Qin Huan was all but there in laying claim to his life, and the only thing he could do now was wait for the inevitable to happen with despair.

“It’s do or die!!”

As weak as he was, Hu Sha wasn’t someone that’d keel over if asked. Determined to die fighting, he snarled and raised his weapon up to try and defend the spear.

“Eh?!” But it wasn’t a spear that he saw in front of him. The surrounding area had disappeared around him in favor of a golden ball of light!

“Boom!!!”

The blue spear smashed into the golden ball, but aside from the shimmering light that ran over its surface, the ball was completely unharmed!

“This...”

Hu Sha was at a loss for words. He turned his head back to look at Tang Xinyun who had reached her hand out as if to press against the air. He turned back around to look at the golden ball protecting him a little more closely. Suspended in the air was a golden slip of some kind with gold light pouring out from its surface.

This was the defensive soul armament Tang Xinyun owned! And it was a barrier-type soul armament that could defend against the attack of even a Soul King!

Hu Sha was overjoyed at the realization that he was alive.

“Miss Tang, are you alright?”

Zhao Jie spoke out. Realizing that Zhao Jie was looking at Tang Xinyun, Hu Sha did the same. Tang Xinyun did look a little pale in the face, and her soulforce was weaker than it was before.

Tang Xinyun nodded. “I’m fine. I just used a little more soulforce than I expected. That Soul King won’t be able to break the barrier.”

Activating the soul armament’s ability took a lot of energy to use, but the light barrier that’d come out from the slip had about 7300 points of defensive strength in it. A Mid-stage Soul King using a mid-heaven tier soul armament wouldn’t be able to break it so easily. There was no way this Early-stage Soul King would be able to destroy it unless he self-destructed.

This was the soul armament Bai Yunfei gave Tang Xinyun to help her defend herself.

“He won’t be able to break it?” Hu Sha’s eyes were wide open as he repeated after her. It was a bit hard to believe such a statement. He turned back to Qin Huan just in time to see the Soul King strike at the barrier again.

“Boom!!”

Again, Hu Sha watched as Qin Huan’s attack rippled over the barrier. Once again, the golden light was holding strong.

Hu Sha let out a slow exhale, relieved that he could trust Tang Xinyun’s words.

......

“Damn!! How are the defenses so strong?!”

A frowning Qin Huan stood on the other side of the barrier. He was cursing to himself as he tried to prepare more power to himself. A blade of water formed beside him to slash down onto the barrier.

None of the three Soul Exalts had been worth a moment’s thought before. Qin Huan thought it’d be an easy task to simply capture them, but this golden barrier was completely impenetrable!

It was humiliating. Qin Huan had been forced to run away from Bai Yunfei before, and now he was being held up by a few insignificant Soul Exalts. His hands disappeared into a blur as he readied a few hand seals to unleash his most devastating attack onto the barrier.

But also at the same time, a feeling of danger was just starting to wash over him from behind.

“Block my way and die!!”

A voice from behind roared out. Looking towards the source, Qin Huan saw the earth-type Soul King come flying in his direction before being stopped momentarily by a blade of wind by Qin Pingzhi.

“Hmph! You can’t even protect yourself, what makes you think you can save anyone else?!”

Qin Huan sneered to himself as he continued his hand seals. Each seal he made led to the elemental water around him growing in intensity and strength.

“You will...all die here!!”

In the moments before Qin Huan could unleash his move, however, another voice even more furious than before echoed through the air from another direction!

The amount of intimidation in this voice was even greater than in Xiao Nan. Qin Huan couldn’t help himself from shuddering violently at the sensation, but he managed to hold his attack together. He wanted to turn around to look at the source, but his instincts were yelling at him to look up instead.

Up there in the skies was a single bolt of violet light that was coming down to crash down onto him!

“What is that?!”

He was shocked at the violet bolt. Qin Huan hadn’t expected for an attack to come at him so quickly from his south, but now it was too late to dodge it. All he could do was repurpose his attack and push it outwards to shield him from the incoming lightning bolt!

“Boom!!” For dozens of meters all around, the sky was dyed with either red or violet hues from when the two attacks collided.

“I blocked it...but how di—”

Qin Huan had barely started to thank his luck that he managed to survive that blow when his instincts started to warn him about yet another danger coming from behind!

“Pcht...”

He hadn’t the time to leap to the side or even whirl around before Qin Huan heard the sound of flesh being penetrated. Another half-second later, a bolt of violet identical to the first flew away and out from his chest!

“Ahhh!!!!”

The screams started several delayed seconds later. Blood poured out from Qin Huan’s mouth and wound as he shrieked to himself, but it didn’t take long before he toppled over and fell from the skies. He was dead by the time his body hit the ground!

This was the +10 additional effect of the Heaven’s Thunder: Mirror Image!

Qin Huan had only been an Early-stage Soul King; and a tired one at that. All it took was just a moment’s lapse of judgment for the Heaven’s Thunder to distract him and kill him with the real one!

......

“That one’s dead! And that violet light...is coming from a flying sword! The same flying sword from just now!”

“It flew such a long distance in a short amount of time and even killed an Early-stage Soul King! That’s...”

“That flying sword definitely has to be a mid-heaven tier at the very least! Bai Yunfei had something like that as backup?! Is this his real strength?!”

“Was he just not trying to kill anyone until now? Was it because he was afraid of making enemies with the Qin? Or that killing these people might cause some trouble later? Why did he decide to start killing now then?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it because of miss Tang Xinyun over there? It doesn’t matter what that Soul King had in mind. He’s made Bai Yunfei angry by doing that. What young man wouldn’t be furious at seeing his lady being attacked? This won’t be the first head to roll...”

Again, the audience was in furious discussion with one another over what they had just seen. Everyone was feeling a little chilly at the moment with the fear they were feeling. But when they looked over to where Bai Yunfei was standing, they all were right on time to see a giant pillar of fire leap up into the heavens!

A very wrathful Bai Yunfei was standing within that pillar of fire!

The flames of the Dual Dragon Burst was finally starting to abate by now. A green light could already be seen shining from within the flames before the figures of Qin He and Qin Long leaped out. They weren’t all too heavily injured, but the shock was definitely noticeable in their eyes. And when they saw the bisected corpse of Li Yue down below, they couldn’t even do anything else but just stare...

Bai Yunfei was already moving onto his true target while they were preoccupied with that. The Mid-stage Soul King!

“Ah!!!”

The incoming aura of Bai Yunfei terrified the red-robed elder. Shrieking out loud, he let out a flash of red light to cloak himself in a full-body piece of armor made of fire.

He was a fire-type Soul King.

The elder hadn’t even the idea of fighting back. He just wanted to prepare the defensively strongest move he had to defend himself and look to Qin He and Qin Long in hopes that they’d be able to help him.

This was the only way he’d survive. Fighting someone who had the power of a Late-stage Soul King like Bai Yunfei was an impossibility for him. He had no chance.

The elder didn’t even make it close enough to Qin He and Qin Long before Bai Yunfei was upon him. Raising his left hand, Bai Yunfei lashed out with a mighty punch!

Eyes widening as the punch drew closer, the elder brought both arms in front of him in pure panic. A shield of fire formed over them to hopefully protect him from Bai Yunfei’s attack. Hopefully, this would be enough to survive and buy enough time to have the two others save him.

It was not meant to be, however. The flash of red and gold light from Bai Yunfei’s fist was the only sign the Soul King needed to see for that. He watched in despair as the punch went seamlessly through his shield and then his flame armor—which could stop even a mid-heaven tier soul armament, and was then ultimately hit by the punch!

“Bang!! Crunch...”

It was a mighty thud like a heavy hammer slamming onto a person’s head. The Mid-stage Soul King felt everything grow cold as his bones were broken up into multiple pieces from the blow before he was launched away!

This time, it was the +13 additional effect of the Critical Glove that activated: the ability to ignore fire-type defenses!

The Soul King only had himself to blame for being a fire-type soul cultivator!

Bai Yunfei didn’t pull any punches with his attack. He had stacked the Eighty-one Fold Fist Force and activated the +10 and +12 additional effects of the Critical Glove to triple and quadruple the damages to make for an utterly devastating blow. Even with the flame armor on his person, the Mid-stage Soul King was left with a huge dent in his chest. Large amounts of blood and pieces of internal organs began to be vomited out from his mouth.

“Chirp!!”

An excited chirp broke the chain of silence in the Mid-stage Soul King’s thinking, causing him to look over to the source, but only to be greeted with the sight of something black.

He thought back to how Li Yue died. This black object coming at him had been how he died! The Soul King started to panic, but the thing was already upon him...

Like Li Yue, his death was by bisection. The spatial edge tore through his person from the upper half of his left shoulder to the bottom right of his waist.

“Ah!!!”

“Ah!!!!”

Another two screams erupted elsewhere from the battlefield. Almost mechanically now, the audience turned to watch as several spatial edges flew this way and that through the battlefield to tear apart the entire place.

The Early-stage Soul King that had been fighting Xiao Qi and the other soulbeasts and the injured water-type Early-stage Soul King Xiao Nan hit earlier in his anger were both unable to dodge the spatial edges and were hit by it. One was struck cleanly at the waist and the other had half his chest devoured by it!

A double kill!

And just like that, the tides of the battle had gone the other way for the Qin with most of their fighters dead!!