Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang…
A rapid series of sharp collisions rang out. Waves of overwhelming energy roared incessantly around Fa Hua’s body. At that moment, he was like a golden bulwark, intercepting every incoming strike.
He could not retreat. He could not even allow himself to be injured. The instant he was hurt, Lan Ge would be affected as well. And right now, what Lan Ge needed was not merely time, but absolute, undivided focus.
The color around Lan Ge shifted. Green gradually turned to red, red to purple, and finally to blue.
Four colors cycled endlessly. The Four Elemental Bodies flickered and interwove. Pain was written clearly across his face, yet his expression remained unyielding, without the slightest hint of letting up.
He and Fa Hua were of one mind. He knew exactly what Fa Hua was doing. And because he knew, he also understood the immense pressure his partner was enduring.
At a moment like this, there was only one thing he could do. He had to be faster. Faster still. He had to finish before Fa Hua reached his limit.
When Fa Hua ignited the ninth Light Cloud of the Divine Statue without the slightest hesitation, something inside Lan Ge shattered.
In that instant, he even thought that if this guy ever called him “water-snake waist” again, he would not argue with him anymore.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang…
The blade chimes continued. Yet less than ten minutes later, the golden radiance enveloping Fa Hua began to weaken.
The power granted by a single Light Cloud had its limits. It was borrowed strength, and it was being steadily consumed.
Fa Hua’s face grew pale. He could clearly feel his cultivation slipping. It was falling from the peak of the Eighth Rank, sinking toward ordinary Eighth Rank, and edging closer and closer to the threshold of dropping out of it altogether.
Even so, his gaze remained calm. There was not the slightest trace of panic in his eyes.
The God-Given Divine Statue appeared before him once more. He raised his hand again.
He had to ignite another Light Cloud before his cultivation fell to the Seventh Rank. Only then could he continue to endure. If he dropped to Seventh Rank first, igniting another Light Cloud might already be too late.
He knew all too well what it meant for the Divine Statue to fall from the ninth level to the seventh.
Perhaps he would never again be able to cultivate it back to its former height.
But he had no regrets.
He was not without responsibility himself. But Lan Ge’s hatred, forged in oceans of blood, cut far deeper. Fa Hua himself had no parents, but he had seen the warmth and happiness Lan Ge once shared with his own. At this moment, he was making a choice, and before that choice, he did not hesitate even for an instant.
“No!”
Just as Fa Hua’s finger was about to touch the second halo, a furious roar burst out from behind him.
Tears streamed down Lan Ge’s face in that same instant.
At the moment Fa Hua was about to ignite the second Light Cloud, the image that flooded Lan Ge’s mind was of his mother transforming into an azure phoenix, sacrificing herself without pause to carve out a single chance of survival for him.
His father was gone. His mother was gone.
And now, the partner beside him was about to pay a price that might forever bar him from advancing any further.
No. That could not be allowed.
It could not always be others sacrificing everything for him. No. Absolutely not.
In that instant, it felt as though something exploded inside Lan Ge’s mind. It was as if he had returned to the first time he entered the Elemental Sea, when the four elements accompanied him and he became a Blessed One.
Because of his parents’ deaths, he had never completed a second awakening within the Elemental Sea. But at this moment, he felt as though his entire body had ignited.
He did not know what the consequences would be.
He did not know whether he would even survive afterward.
He only knew one thing. At this moment, he could not allow Fa Hua to shoulder everything alone.
Green, red, purple, and blue flames erupted violently from Lan Ge’s body.
The instant the four colors burst forth, his physical form returned to normal, no longer dyed by elemental light.
The energy fluctuations throughout the entire space suddenly became frenzied.
A four-colored light barrier expanded outward, enveloping Fa Hua and Lan Ge within it and rebounding every crimson longblade.
Lan Ge’s eyes snapped open. The four colors flashed one after another deep within his pupils.
“Wind. Fire. Thunder. Water.”
“Heaven and earth, erupt!”
In an instant, the elemental forces between heaven and earth surged toward them, then detonated in a burst of four-colored radiance.
Invisibly, an incomparably ferocious presence seemed to be gazing down upon them.
At the same moment, every crimson blade vanished.
The Ruby Queen appeared in the distance. The dark red in her eyes gradually stilled, and in that instant, they seemed to turn black.
A storm descended.
It was a storm born of the entire world.
Countless elemental tempests scoured the space, washing over everything around them.
Only the faint red halo surrounding the Ruby Queen repelled it all.
Within the four-colored light, Fa Hua and Lan Ge, one standing and one seated, appeared hazy and indistinct. Under the convergence of those four colors, countless bands of light streamed toward them.
Everything was violent.
Yet everything was also gentle, seeping densely and continuously toward the core.
No one knew how much time passed before the four-colored radiance gradually subsided.
Before Fa Hua, the God-Given Divine Statue still hovered. At some unknown moment, the Light Clouds had returned to nine, as though nothing had ever happened.
Lan Ge, however, looked different.
His skin had become smoother and more refined. The violent elemental aura that once surrounded him was gone. His entire being seemed to have undergone a transformation.
The four colors in his eyes had settled and vanished. His gaze was deep and clear, as though it could see into distant worlds, much like the Child of Darkness, Bei Yue Shangchen, back then.
Yet the truly strange thing was not his eyes, but his posture.
At that very moment, Lan Ge had his arms spread wide and was hugging one of Fa Hua’s legs.
At the instant of his breakthrough, he had sensed Fa Hua’s weakening at close range. The nearest thing to him had been Fa Hua’s leg.
Fa Hua felt Holy Magic erupt within him like a geyser. He sensed the previously blank ninth page of the Divine Codex slowly turning open. Lowering his head, he looked at Lan Ge, who was still clutching his leg in a daze. He raised a hand and gently patted Lan Ge’s head, speaking without thinking.
“I’m okay. Thank you.”
Lan Ge reacted as if struck by lightning. He instantly released his grip and sprang backward.
“I wasn’t worried. Who’s worried?”
Fa Hua laughed.
It was a warm, genuinely happy laugh, and for once, he did not retort.
Lan Ge laughed as well.
They had succeeded.
They had not only broken the Ruby Queen’s blade formation. More importantly, from this moment on, they had stepped into the Ninth-Rank.
Years ago, at the Tri-Domain Grand Tournament, when they were still only Fifth-Rank, they had witnessed the Child of Darkness, Bei Yue Shangchen, speak and have the laws respond, plunging heaven and earth into darkness. That shock had been etched deep into their memories.
And today, years later, they had reached the same realm.
Though their breakthrough still needed to be stabilized, and Fa Hua had yet to fuse the power of two Holy Pages, there was no denying it.
They had entered the Ninth-Rank.
Among all of humanity, there were only five experts above this level.
They had reached the pinnacle of the human world. One step further lay the God Rank.
That step might be like a chasm between heaven and earth, but they were still young, and they had time. With the Peerless Pearl, their opportunities far exceeded those of ordinary people. It was almost certain that, in the not-too-distant future, they would reach that realm.
“What I owed you has been repaid.”
A cold voice rang out, pulling them back from their exhilaration.
They turned instinctively toward the Ruby Queen.
Her long hair drifted as she walked slowly into the distance. Her figure gradually grew illusory, and everything around her followed suit, dissolving into shimmering bubbles before vanishing without a trace.
When the surroundings became clear again, Fa Hua and Lan Ge found themselves once more before the Devouring Ant ancestor statue with its twelve back-spines. The Ruby Queen was gone, vanished without a trace.
“What she just said…” Lan Ge murmured, staring blankly at Fa Hua.
For some reason, a strange feeling arose in both of their hearts.
Lan Ge had heard her words clearly. He simply could not believe they were real.
Ever since they had devoured the Ruby Queen’s heart within the Devouring Ant Clan, they had been hunted relentlessly. Again and again, they had clawed their way back from the brink of death under crushing pressure. And now, with a single sentence from the Ruby Queen, it was all over.
All that pressure vanished in an instant, leaving behind a lightness so sudden it almost felt unreal.
“She knew,” Fa Hua said slowly. “She knew all along that we saved her. But does that really offset devouring her heart? And what about the shattering of her illusionary shell? We saved her, but compared to the harm we caused, it doesn’t seem like much. Why would she help us like this?”
The Ruby Queen’s words implied that, over the past several months, she had deliberately suppressed them to temper their combat experience. Even today’s final battle had been engineered to force them into a desperate corner, allowing them to break through in one fell swoop.
Yet neither Fa Hua nor Lan Ge could understand why she had done so. She seemed almost too benevolent toward them.
“There must be something we don’t know,” Lan Ge said with certainty.
Fa Hua nodded.
Lan Ge suddenly grinned, clasping his hands behind his head. “Oh well, who knows. The important thing is, we broke through. Objective complete. Let’s take some time to stabilize our cultivation, then head back.”
Fa Hua looked at him and nodded again.
They had been gone too long.
Thunder City still needed Lan Ge.
And if thoughts of Thunder City did not dampen his mood, Lan Ge would probably be even happier right now.