Chapter 130: Splits Heaven
The air exploded.
Marcus vanished.
Ethan only caught sight of two streaks of black and white light tearing across the plaza. "Laira!"
He’d barely spoken before Laira was already stepping in front of him. Both arms rose simultaneously, Solar Flame and Thunder Flame erupting together, forming a layer of crimson-violet energy before her body.
The Twin Dragon Spears came crashing down.
No complex technique. Just a single sweep.
Laira’s defense shattered. Her body, nearly two meters twenty tall, was launched off the ground, sent flying over a hundred meters before slamming hard into the energy barrier behind her. The entire shield shuddered violently.
"Laira!"
Ethan had barely turned his head before Marcus appeared in front of him. The man’s speed was so great that Ethan could hardly perceive the movement itself. A spear thrust forward, and Ethan immediately activated Thunder Wing. The single lightning wing behind him pulled him off the trajectory at the last possible moment, but the spearhead still grazed the Primordial Armor.
A piercing metallic screech rang out.
Ethan was knocked sideways by the force from less than a handspan away, both feet carving a long trail across the stone. Just that single graze had left his entire left arm numb.
’The gap is too wide.’
Ethan looked up. Marcus wasn’t giving him time to breathe.
"Necromancer!"
Ruo Yan cut in from the left. The Necromancer charged forward, a fist wreathed in necrotic energy aimed straight at Marcus’s flank, while dozens of Soul Threads shot up from the ground to coil around his ankles and wrists.
Marcus only glanced over. The Azure Dragon Spear in his left hand spun once, and the necrotic energy was instantly shredded apart. The spearhead struck the Necromancer’s fist, wrenching the entire golem arm to an unnatural angle. The massive frame had barely been pushed back before Marcus switched hands, the White Dragon Spear swinging horizontally toward Ruo Yan.
"Ruo Yan!"
She immediately retracted the Soul Threads and erected three layers of defense before her.
All of them broke at once.
Ruo Yan was sent flying. Ethan used Thunder Wing to shoot forward, his right hand catching her around the waist just before her back hit the barrier, but the residual force still sent both of them skidding across the ground.
Ruo Yan coughed dryly, a streak of blood appearing at the corner of her mouth.
"I’m fine."
Ethan set her down and looked at Marcus in the distance.
From the moment the fight began until now, less than ten seconds had passed.
Laira had been knocked away.
The Necromancer had lost an arm.
Ruo Yan was injured.
He himself hadn’t even had a chance to counterattack.
This was Elite. Not Cassian using an item to forcibly inflate his combat power, not a Silver relying on equipment to fight above his level. Marcus Vane had truly climbed through Gold, Diamond, and into Elite one step at a time. His body, energy, combat technique, and reaction speed had all undergone multiple qualitative transformations.
What’s more, he was close to touching Sovereign.
Ethan had beaten opponents above his level many times before, but the gap this time was no longer a matter of a few tiers.
It was a chasm.
Outside the barrier, Xue Ji slammed a fist against the shield. Energy lines immediately spread outward like a spider’s web, but the barrier didn’t break. The secretary and Silver Moon City’s people had also arrived by now, but all of them were trapped outside.
"Stop this!" Xue Ji shouted.
Marcus didn’t even glance at her. He said nothing more to Ethan, because from the very beginning Marcus had never treated this as a debate. Once he’d decided Ethan had to die, any further words only prolonged things.
Laira rose from the distance. A trail of blood ran from the corner of her mouth, but her red-orange eyes blazed to life instantly.
"Old man."
Thunder Flame erupted. The Thunder Wing portion on her dragon wings expanded, every metallic feather standing on end. Laira stomped against the ground and charged, her speed spiking so sharply that a trail of lightning appeared in her wake.
Marcus turned his head.
Dragon and man collided in the center of the plaza.
A shockwave burst outward, the stone surface within hundreds of meters shattering to pieces. This time Laira didn’t try to block the spears head-on. She angled her body to dodge the White Dragon Spear, her right fist wreathed in Thunder Flame punching straight at Marcus’s head.
He dropped his shoulder, the Azure Dragon Spear rising horizontal.
Laira’s fist struck the spear shaft, dragon song rang out, and a ring of crimson-violet electricity exploded around them both. Marcus slid back over ten meters.
For the first time since the fight began, he’d been pushed back.
But Laira had no chance to celebrate. Marcus flicked his wrists, the Twin Dragon Spears switching positions. White Dragon struck upward from below, Azure Dragon pressed down from above, two spear trails pinning Laira between them.
She immediately raised her dragon wings to shield herself.
Laira was driven into the ground.
The plaza surface caved into a crater. Marcus landed at its edge, one hand gripping a spear, his breathing still nearly unchanged.
"A Mythical Partner." He looked at Laira. "Strong indeed."
It was a sincere compliment. And precisely because of that, his gaze grew even colder.
Ethan had too much.
Given more time, everything would spiral beyond anyone’s ability to control.
Marcus would not allow that to happen.
Ruo Yan wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, Soul Threads spreading out once more. Ethan held her shoulder.
"Don’t charge in again."
"Do you have a plan?"
"Not yet."
Ruo Yan looked at him. Ethan rarely admitted that in the middle of a fight, but this time he truly hadn’t found a way.
The Eye of Truth could help him see the energy flowing through Marcus’s body, identify the relatively weaker points, even partially predict movement direction based on energy shifts. But seeing didn’t mean reaching. Like an ordinary person knowing exactly where a dragon’s heart was, then still having to get through the scales first.
Marcus turned, his gaze locking onto Ethan.
He had realized something.
Killing Laira was very difficult.
Ruo Yan wasn’t the primary target either.
As long as Ethan died, everything would be over.
Marcus lowered both spears. Ethan immediately felt his scalp go numb.
"Laira!"
She sensed it too and instantly launched herself from the crater. But Marcus had already moved. The ground where he’d stood vanished into a deep hole, his speed this time faster than every time before.
Marcus was no longer holding back.
Ethan opened Thunder Wing to its limit, electricity racing along the Primordial Armor, then he threw himself sideways. The Twin Dragon Spears followed relentlessly.
One thrust.
Two thrusts.
Three thrusts.
Each strike made the air detonate. Ethan dodged the first, the Primordial Armor blocked the second, but his entire left arm still shook violently. On the third, Laira appeared and slammed her dragon wing into the spear shaft, knocking the trajectory off course.
The spearhead drove into the ground.
A crack hundreds of meters long instantly tore across the plaza.
Marcus didn’t look at Laira. His other hand swung the White Dragon Spear, and Laira raised both arms to block but was still sent flying again. Even the Thunder Wing portion on her wings shuddered violently.
Before Ethan could even close the distance, Marcus was already standing before him.
The gap was down to ten meters.
He stopped.
Ethan stopped too, because he sensed something more terrifying than any attack that had come before.
Marcus slowly raised the Twin Dragon Spears high.
The two longspears crossed.
One black.
One white.
The sky above the plaza suddenly darkened. Not because the weather changed, but because the energy pouring from Marcus’s body was pulling all the surrounding air toward a single point. Clouds overhead began to spiral, wind howled, and twin dragon songs rang from the spears, faint at first, then growing clearer by the moment.
Two colossal dragon silhouettes materialized behind Marcus.
One black.
One white.
They coiled around each other, dragon heads raised toward the sky, their presence alone causing the barrier surrounding the plaza to shudder ceaselessly.
Ruo Yan braced herself up, her expression changing. Laira also turned back.
"Ethan!"
She charged toward him.
Marcus lowered his eyes. In his pupils there was only Ethan’s image. No joy, no hatred, only the cold resolve of a man who believed he was doing what was necessary.
"I’m sorry."
Ethan heard it.
Marcus gripped the Twin Dragon Spears. "I can’t let you grow up."
Both dragon silhouettes bowed their heads simultaneously, and a colossal pressure descended. Ethan felt the bones in his body emit faint cracking sounds, the ground beneath him sinking inward, the air thickening as though an invisible mountain was pressing down from the sky.
Thunder Wing spread open.
Couldn’t fly.
The space around him had been locked down by the sheer pressure.
The Primordial Armor lit up. The Cataclysmic Thunder Gate began to react, but there wasn’t enough time. Laira was still over a hundred meters away, Ruo Yan even further.
Marcus brought the Twin Dragon Spears down.
"Twin Dragon..."
Both dragons roared.
"...Heaven Seal."
The sky collapsed.
At least that was how it felt to Ethan.
An enormous torrent of black-and-white energy pressed down from the twin spears, covering nearly his entire field of vision. The ground ahead hadn’t even been touched yet and was already cracking apart in chunks, fissures stretching all the way to the barrier.
Xue Ji, outside, slammed both palms against the shield.
"ETHAN!"
Laira roared, Thunder Flame erupting. Ruo Yan pulled every Soul Thread toward him.
But all of it was too slow.
Ethan looked up at the twin dragon shadows swallowing downward. In that instant, he knew one thing with perfect clarity.
If that hit landed, even the Primordial Armor might not be enough to save his life.
Then a line of light appeared.
Nobody knew where it came from.
At first, it looked like nothing more than a thin white streak cutting across the horizon. But the instant it appeared, the dragon song abruptly went silent. Wind stopped, clouds ceased spinning, and both dragons in the sky turned their heads simultaneously.
Then the sword strike passed through.
The torrent of black-and-white energy bearing down on Ethan was cut in two.
No explosion.
No struggle.
Simply split apart.
A white line appeared through the bodies of both colossal dragons, and then they cracked and shattered. The sword strike still didn’t stop, continuing upward into the sky, parting the dense layers of cloud to either side, revealing a deep blue line stretching all the way to the horizon, as though someone had taken an invisible blade and sliced the entire sky in half.
The remaining sword light swept across the ground.
A straight line appeared on the plaza, then extended beyond the barrier, cutting through the structures in the distance, continuing until it passed beyond the reach of sight.
Heaven and earth seemed to have been split in two by a single sword.
The space fell completely silent.
Marcus still held the Twin Dragon Spears in their downward stance, but both hands had gone rigid. For the first time since he’d appeared, his expression changed.
Ethan also stood still.
Laira.
Ruo Yan.
Xue Ji.
Every single soldier around them looked in the same direction.
At the end of the sword line that had just cleaved heaven and earth, someone was approaching.