A small silver metal ball traced an inconspicuous arc through the air.
It was tiny.
Not even as big as a baby’s fist.
Before the world-shattering, ten-zhang sword aura, the little iron ball was like an ant beneath an elephant’s foot.
In midair, a wild, arrogant smile spread across Lin Zhenxiong’s twisted face.
“Hahahahahaha! Is this your final counterattack, Su Zhen?”
“A mere hidden weapon, and you think it can hurt this general? An ant trying to shake a tree—you truly don’t know your own limits!”
As a peak Grandmaster, Lin Zhenxiong possessed astonishing eyesight.
With one glance, he saw through the silver ball. It contained not the slightest trace of internal energy.
Before martial qi, ordinary metal without the reinforcement of internal energy could not even touch his protective aura.
“Break for me!”
Lin Zhenxiong roared with laughter, his voice rolling like thunder.
He did not dodge. Instead, he deliberately opened his bloodshot eyes wide.
He wanted to watch with his own eyes as this laughable hidden weapon was shredded into scraps of iron by his sword aura.
He wanted to savor the pleasure of cutting the Su family’s demon girl—and her ridiculous contraptions—to pieces in one stroke!
A ten-zhang-long, dark-green sword aura,
howling as it tore through the air, slashed toward the metal ball.
Time seemed to slow.
On the city wall, the Imperial Guards shut their eyes in despair, afraid to witness the carnage that was about to unfold.
Su Zhen and Su Jin wore heavy welding goggles, their hearts pounding in their throats.
“Boom!”
A dull, strange sound exploded in midair.
The instant Lin Zhenxiong’s sword aura made contact with the silver ball,
the utterly inconspicuous flashbang was fully activated.
A mass of pure, indescribably astonishing light
erupted without restraint in midair before the Taiji Palace!
It was an absolute glare ten thousand times brighter than the midday sun!
The moment that light erupted,
all shadows within several miles of the night sky over the capital of Great Abyss were driven away.
The pitch-black imperial palace was illuminated so brightly in that instant that it became terrifying.
General Lin Zhenxiong, who had opened his eyes wide in preparation to show off in style,
was, without question, the one hit hardest.
The flashbang had detonated less than three feet from his face.
Because he wanted to see the hidden weapon shatter, he had not even blinked.
The intense radiation, bright enough to pierce the retina, slammed unimpeded into his eyes.
“Ah!”
Lin Zhenxiong’s vision was instantly filled with pure, searing white.
In that moment, the world lost every color and every outline.
Then an indescribable, excruciating pain erupted deep within his eyeballs!
It hurt beyond measure!
It was as if someone had driven two red-hot iron rods straight into his eye sockets,
then stirred them violently around inside his brain.
His supposedly invincible titanium-alloy dog eyes were blinded on the spot by the interstellar-grade flash!
No matter how powerful a Grandmaster’s protective aura was, it could block blades and swords. It could withstand fire and water.
But it could not block light!
“AAAAHHHH!”
A shriek as miserable as it was inhuman tore through the night sky above the imperial city.
The cry was so shrill and terrible that it even drowned out the war drums of the hundred-thousand-strong army.
Lin Zhenxiong clutched his eyes in midair.
Tears mixed with threads of blood, spurting wildly through the gaps between his fingers.
“My eyes! My eyes!”
He frantically rubbed at his eye sockets, trying to dispel the searing agony, as though his eyes had been set ablaze.
But the more he rubbed, the clearer the bone-deep pain became.
Nothing remained in his vision but a despairing, blinding white.
He was blind!
The Great Abyss Kingdom's foremost power minister—a peak Grandmaster who had concealed his strength for ten years—
had been blinded by a tiny iron ball with no inner force behind it before he had even touched a single hair on Su Yaoyao’s head!
The indescribable pain shattered every last shred of Lin Zhenxiong’s reason.
It also destroyed his control over his true qi.
For a Grandmaster to condense a hundred-foot sword aura required intense mental focus.
Now, with his eyes blinded, agony tearing through him, and his mind in chaos—
“Crack... Boom!”
The enormous dark-blue sword hovering in midair, radiating a world-destroying pressure,
lost the support of its master’s true qi.
A sharp crack rang out.
Then, the hundred-foot sword aura collapsed spectacularly in midair.
It transformed into countless violent currents of true qi that swept madly in every direction.
The powerful backlash of true qi struck Lin Zhenxiong in the chest like a massive hammer.
“Pfft!”
Lin Zhenxiong spat out a mouthful of blood as the meridians within his body snapped inch by inch.
Though a Grandmaster could briefly fly through the air, that depended on the steady circulation of true qi.
Now that his true qi had scattered and the backlash had severely wounded him, he could no longer maintain his position in the air.
“Help... Help me!”
Lin Zhenxiong let out a terrified scream in midair.
Like a roasted chicken with its wings broken,
he lost his balance in the sky.
He flailed wildly, clawing at empty air, but there was nothing for him to grasp.
The overbearing posture he had held moments earlier, lofty as a god descended upon the world, had vanished without a trace.
On the city wall, Su Zhen and Su Jin, both wearing welding goggles, were practically dropping their jaws.
A peak Grandmaster?
Before their daughter’s—sister’s—bizarre little iron ball, he had not even managed to unleash a single move!
Through the thick industrial welding goggles, Su Yaoyao watched the falling figure and sneered.
Still, a Grandmaster was a Grandmaster.
Though the general plummeting through the air had been blinded, his eyes wracked with unbearable pain and his internal organs badly injured by the backlash, he had not entirely given up resisting.
When he was still several yards above the ground,
relying on a Grandmaster’s terrifying instincts and will to survive,
Lin Zhenxiong forcibly squeezed out the final thread of true qi from his dantian.
That lingering true qi swiftly formed a thin layer of protective force around his body.
Blind, he judged the distance to the ground by the sound of the wind.
Struggling in midair, he adjusted his posture and pointed his feet downward.
He intended to land safely, then use a Grandmaster’s ability to pinpoint sounds and continue the fight!
As long as his feet touched the ground, he still had a chance to turn things around!
“Still trying to land?”
Seated in a grand chair atop the gate tower, Su Yaoyao keenly detected the old dog’s intentions.
Su Yaoyao gave a cold laugh and tapped her foot.
She pressed a hidden switch beneath the blue bricks of the gate tower.
Click.
A barely audible mechanical locking sound rang out.
Su Yaoyao watched the Great General plummeting rapidly through the air, her crisp, childish voice drifting slowly through the night sky.
“Want to land?”
“Did you ask my high-voltage electric grid first?”
