Chapter 1088: He Is Zhang Ruochen
The ground trembled, and the shaking grew increasingly violent.
A beast king charged toward the city gate, its powerful, wild aura surging out from within the gate as a gale of air.
Below the city wall, the severely wounded human cultivators suppressed their injuries and immediately fled into the distance.
In their current extremely weakened state, even a single breath exhaled by the beast king could kill them.
However, they noticed that the young man did not flee. Instead, he stood rigidly in front of the city gate. A semi-transparent light shield enveloped him, blocking the airflow rushing out from the gate.
"Run! A beast king is charging out! If you don't flee now, you'll die here!" a severely wounded old man shouted to Zhang Ruochen while escaping.
"It's over. He must have been locked onto by the beast king and can't move a step," someone speculated.
If not for that reason, why hadn't he fled immediately upon sensing the beast king's aura?
A blood-red light surged from the city gate, instantly turning the area within three hundred miles into a crimson world.
Once the blood light touched them, the fleeing human cultivators were all locked in place. Then, a powerful oppressive force descended upon them, pinning them down so they couldn't move.
"In the end, we still can't escape?"
Their hearts were bitter. Turning back, they saw two massive mountains charging out from the blood-red radiance.
No.
They weren't mountains—they were the bodies of two beast kings.
Two Lion Camel Beast Kings burst forth, their bodies over seventy zhang tall, no different from two swiftly moving mountains. The aura they emitted was even more vast than ancient barbaric peaks, making souls tremble.
"Where is that world-shaking fiend? Come out and die!"
"Presumptuous humans, you still dare to flee? When we capture you, you'll be severely punished. We'll break your legs first and see how you run!"
The two Lion Camel Beast Kings exuded a majestic aura that could swallow mountains and rivers. Their words, each like a booming bell, struck the newly freed human cultivators, causing them to spit blood and collapse.
Their target was locked onto the fleeing humans, and they charged straight at them.
Zhang Ruochen stood before the two Lion Camel Beast Kings, his body appearing minuscule. Compared to the beasts' massive forms, he looked like an ant.
The two Lion Camel Beast Kings didn't know he was the "world-shaking fiend" and simply trampled toward him, intending to crush him into pulp.
Just as they reached ten zhang from Zhang Ruochen, he raised both arms. Two beams of sacred light appeared, crackling with energy.
"Roar!"
"Bellow!"
Dragon roars and elephant trumpets resounded.
Zhang Ruochen's aura turned fierce. On his left and right sides, the phantom images of an azure dragon and an azure elephant materialized.
These two phantoms were even larger than the Lion Camel Beast Kings, and their emitted aura was even more formidable and domineering, like ancient divine dragons and prison-suppressing divine elephants emerging into the world.
The two Lion Camel Beast Kings were greatly startled, realizing something was wrong.
That insignificant human seemed to contain a primordial world within him, unleashing terrifying power.
"Boom!"
Zhang Ruochen's palms struck out. The azure dragon and azure elephant phantoms surged forward, crashing into the two Lion Camel Beast Kings and sending them flying.
The collision was like four iron mountains smashing together.
The deafening sound could rupture the eardrums of low-realm cultivators.
"Dragon Soaring the Nine Heavens!"
With a light tap of his feet, Zhang Ruochen soared into the air. He struck out two more hand seals, executing the tenth palm of the Dragon-Elephant Prajna Palm, unleashing a forty-two-fold attack power.
The palm prints transformed into dragon claws and elephant hooves, landing on the two Lion Camel Beast Kings.
Zhang Ruochen's body dove forward, pressing the two beast kings' bodies against the city wall of Yingsha City, collapsing the towering, majestic wall.
"Boom!"
The two beast kings crashed into the rubble. Massive stones weighing hundreds of thousands of jin buried their bodies.
Blood flowed like a stream from the pile of debris.
The human cultivators witnessing this were stunned nearly senseless.
Too brutal!
In just the first clash, the two beast kings were suppressed and buried in rubble, blood gushing. If they hadn't seen it with their own eyes, who would believe it?
"Who is he? Could he be Xue Wuye, the descendant of the Sword Emperor?"
"No, no. He has cultivated the Dragon-Elephant Prajna Palm to the tenth palm and can suppress beast kings with a single hand. He must be Master Lidi, who refined the Buddha Emperor's Golden Body."
"He doesn't look like a Buddhist cultivator at all."
Wan Huayu stood in the corpse-strewn desert, the wound on her abdomen already scabbed over and no longer bleeding.
Her eyes fixed on the proud, solitary figure already entering the city gate. Her gaze was complex. "He is the Heir of Time and Space, Zhang Ruochen."
Wan Huayu had already recalled.
She had indeed seen Zhang Ruochen before—but only a portrait on a wanted poster.
"He is Zhang Ruochen?"
"Sigh, I should have guessed. I've heard many legends about Zhang Ruochen in my clan. They say his sword dao talent rivals Xue Wuye's, his spiritual power talent rivals the new top scholar Suihan, and his Five Elements Chaos Body rivals Master Lidi's Indestructible Golden Body. Combining the strengths of the three realm sons, with the empowerment of time and space power, he is hailed as the number one human prodigy since the Middle Ages."
Among the crowd, a beautiful female cultivator had long admired Zhang Ruochen. She had gathered information about him through various channels.
Now seeing the real person, Zhang Ruochen did not disappoint her. He was as handsome as she had imagined, with astonishing combat power, suppressing beast kings with a single hand, making her feel incredibly excited and her heart surge.
"Zhang Ruochen risked his life to enter the Underworld to find the resurrection medicine to save his master, Xuanji Sword Saint. He is truly a man of loyalty and righteousness."
"Zhang Ruochen once used the stone talisman left by Qiangu Nüdi to seal the Underworld passage, blocking the undead and ghost fiends from slaughtering the Eastern Domain, saving billions of human lives. I really don't understand why the Empress ordered his capture."
The young female cultivator looked toward Yingsha City and sighed deeply, feeling injustice for Zhang Ruochen.
"Boom!"
The two Lion Camel Beast Kings rose again from the rubble. Their vitality was immense; even after taking Zhang Ruochen's full-force palm strike, they hadn't died.
However, each had a massive, palm-shaped bloody hole in their abdomen, still gushing blood.
"I was just careless earlier. Let's fight again!"
"Use the ancestral artifact to attack! We must kill him!"
The two Lion Camel Beast Kings knew the young man's strength was formidable, and they were now severely wounded. So, each spat out a circular stone millstone.
The millstones were only nine zhang in diameter but were exceptionally heavy, emitting eerie blood light.
The two millstones overlapped. On the stone surface, twisted inscriptions immediately appeared, and then a vast, ancient barbaric force surged forth.
That ancient barbaric force felt heavy, old, and domineering, comparable to the Thousand Ripple Annihilation Force.
Zhang Ruochen stopped in his tracks, his expression unchanged. He simply waved his arm, cutting the space ahead, creating a dozens-of-zhang-long space rift.
The ancient barbaric force from the millstones collided with the space rift and vanished instantly, failing to harm Zhang Ruochen.
Both Lion Camel Beast Kings realized the danger. They had indeed encountered a world-shaking fiend. Without even unleashing saint-level power, he could tear space and even manipulate the shattered space to some extent.
Even the ancestral artifact was useless against him.
"Swish!"
At some point, the world-shaking fiend had crossed space and appeared behind them.
The two Lion Camel Beast Kings were highly alert. They immediately controlled the millstones to suppress the fiend again. They didn't believe he could block the ancient barbaric force's attack wave every time.
However, Zhang Ruochen's attack arrived first.
"Sever!"
The Abyssal Ancient Sword flew out, trailing a pitch-black sword light. It struck one Lion Camel Beast King's abdomen, piercing the scales. The sword light extended upward to its back.
With a "pfft," that beast king's body was split open from the middle, collapsing heavily to the left and right.
The other Lion Camel Beast King realized it couldn't defeat the world-shaking fiend and that even escape wasn't easy. It roared, "You killed my mate... Damn it... Human, you're dead!"
Without hesitation, it used an ancient method, channeling all its sacred qi toward its qi sea, preparing to self-destruct and take the fiend down with it.
Zhang Ruochen sensed the extreme danger, his hair standing on end.
But he didn't panic. He decisively formed a hand seal, guiding the Abyssal Ancient Sword to stab toward the beast king's qi sea.
"Clang!"
The Abyssal Ancient Sword spun rapidly, emitting a long, piercing sword cry. It pierced the qi sea just before the beast king could self-destruct.
With a thunderous "boom," the chaotic sacred qi in the qi sea surged out wildly, crashing in all directions, forming pillars of light that caused the beast king's body to explode.
The mountain-like beast corpse finally fell.
After executing the sword technique, Zhang Ruochen immediately flew backward, avoiding the beast king's dying counterattack.
The situation had been extremely dangerous. If Zhang Ruochen had hesitated even a moment, he wouldn't have escaped so gracefully and calmly.
"Whoosh—"
The Abyssal Ancient Sword flew back, piercing the millstone mid-air.
The millstone was also powerful—an ancestral artifact left by an ancestor of the Lion Camel Beast clan, possessing an artifact spirit. Even the Abyssal Ancient Sword took some time to suppress and refine it.
After absorbing the millstone's ancient barbaric qi, the Abyssal Ancient Sword's light surged, its sword qi soaring to the sky, scaring all the nearby beasts into fleeing toward the center of Yingsha City.
Too terrifying. A world-shaking fiend had appeared, killing two beast kings in succession.
A large number of human cultivators retreated to the central area of Yingsha City, activating the last layer of the protective grand formation, struggling to survive.
The beast kings of various barbaric beast clans gathered there, leading countless beasts in a frenzied assault on the last layer of the formation.
Once it was breached, all the human cultivators would be killed.
This battle had a profound impact on the entire human race, determining the rise and fall of the next few hundred years. If they all died, there would be a clear gap in the top-tier human experts for centuries to come.