Chapter 475: Top-Tier

Barely a moment after Yaoguang left the battlefield with Void Flicker, several figures cut through the void with the aid of Dao Artifacts and arrived at the site.

They were the four Dao Lords who had come to help: Central Heaven, Sovereign Radiance, Azure Crow, and Pill Cauldron.

Yaoguang had only just advanced, and he had killed a veteran like the Extinction Dao Lord as easily as breaking rotten wood. Such overwhelming combat power showed a presence equal to that of the Penglai Dao Lord in the years she was called number one of the North Sea.

Strength and potential like that were enough to make even the Azure Crow and Pill Cauldron Dao Lords want to seize the chance to build ties.

So instead of standing aside as before, the two followed the Central Heaven Dao Lord and the Sovereign Radiance Dao Lord in chasing after Yaoguang and the Kunpeng Demon Paragon, hoping to lend a hand in the fight and earn some goodwill.

The problem was that, when they actually caught up, the battlefield was already empty.

Nothing remained but residual spatial turbulence and the spiritual qi of heaven and earth churning and shifting toward what would soon become a terrible storm. It was all that remained of the Dao Lord-level battle that had just taken place.

"We didn't catch them?"

"That's not right. I clearly sensed the Kunpeng Demon Paragon's aura here, erupting with its full strength..."

"It was right here. Feel this stretch of void carefully. Kunpeng and Yaoguang fought here."

The Dao Lords spoke in turn.

"Then where are they? Did the Kunpeng Demon Paragon run again, with Dao Lord Yaoguang in pursuit?" the Azure Crow Dao Lord said, frowning. "Void Dao Lords are too fast, here and gone without a trace. We can't keep up with them at all..."

He hadn't even finished speaking before the Pill Cauldron Dao Lord's psychic thought started shaking, as if it were about to get out of control, and he couldn't hold his emotions in check. "How is that possible?!"

"What happened?"

"What did you find?"

The Central Heaven and Sovereign Radiance Dao Lords both asked quickly.

"Dead..." The Pill Cauldron Dao Lord sounded dazed. "The Kunpeng Demon Paragon... is dead."

Hearing the word "dead," the Central Heaven and Sovereign Radiance Dao Lords first assumed some misfortune had befallen Yaoguang, that he had passed like a meteor across the sky, and only relaxed when the second half of the sentence arrived.

But almost immediately afterward, they realized something was off.

Dead? The Kunpeng Demon Paragon, one of the demon race's Dao Integration cultivators, had died?

Both Dao Lords turned their heads toward the Pill Cauldron Dao Lord and stared at him in shock. "Wh-what did you say, fellow Daoist?! The Kunpeng Demon Paragon is dead?!"

"You know that alongside my main practice of the Great Dao of life, I also study some soul Dao Techniques. If either of you had mastered a searching or sensing technique like that, you could detect it too. This stretch of void still holds the Kunpeng Demon Paragon's resentment, as well as its fear. It is unmistakably an imprint carved into the void by a soul in the moment before it dispersed, which lets me conclude..." The Pill Cauldron Dao Lord drew a deep breath, and a faint tremor crept into his psychic thought. "The Kunpeng Demon Paragon is dead!"

The two Dao Lords stood frozen, unable to recover for a long time.

The Central Heaven Dao Lord, who had also studied a sensing-type soul technique, immediately started circulating it and sensing the area.

Just then the Taiwei Dao Lord arrived, a step behind the rest.

"My apologies. I had to see the juniors to safety, so I'm a little late," he explained hastily.

He was, after all, a Dao Lord of the void. Standing by and watching Yaoguang achieve Dao Integration unhindered had already been generous of him, and helping the man and thereby offending other Dao Lords was naturally something he balked at.

As for why he had come now, he had clearly reached the same conclusion as the Azure Crow and Pill Cauldron Dao Lords: building goodwill was wise.

Yaoguang was already this strong fresh out of Dao Integration, having blasted apart a veteran like the Extinction Dao Lord in a frontal clash. Once he had some time to grow accustomed to the Dao Lord Realm, how strong would he become?

A terror like that, and a void Dao Lord as well, stood in natural competition with him. If he did not want to end up a stepping stone in Yaoguang's Dao Contest, making friends early was the only sensible move.

Worst case, he would simply sit this contest out.

Having spent time considering things, he arrived after the Sovereign Radiance, Central Heaven, and Pill Cauldron Dao Lords, but he had come.

Except that, just then, none of them moved to answer him. A nod was all he got.

Baffled, the Taiwei Dao Lord could not help asking, "Where is Dao Lord Yaoguang now? He just fought a battle against the Extinction Dao Lord, so he can't be in ideal condition, and against a foreign-race Dao Integration cultivator like the Kunpeng Demon Paragon, he may not have the advantage. We should reinforce him quickly. All of you—"

He broke off, sensing something. "Wait. This chaotic void power... There was a battle here? The Kunpeng Demon Paragon and the Yaoguang Dao Lord fought here?"

As he spoke, he began probing carefully again. He held no soul techniques like the Pill Cauldron and Central Heaven Dao Lords did, but his keen perception of the Great Dao of void soon made him understand.

"A void Dao Lord died?!"

"Yes." By then the Central Heaven Dao Lord had his answer as well. "The Kunpeng Demon Paragon really died."

Having concluded that a void Dao Lord had died, the Taiwei Dao Lord had grown uneasy, wondering whether the dead one might be Yaoguang, newly advanced and fresh from a life-or-death battle with a veteran Dao Lord. The Central Heaven Dao Lord's words left him stunned.

"Kunpeng?"

"Yes." The Central Heaven Dao Lord sounded shaken. "If Pill Cauldron hadn't pointed it out, I'd never have noticed what's left in this void: the intense hatred, fear, and unwillingness of the Kunpeng Demon Paragon."

He let out a long breath. "It really is dead, and it died right here!"

The Taiwei Dao Lord's pupils constricted.

Dead?! The Kunpeng Demon Paragon died too?! At whose hands?! The Penglai Dao Lord? No! She went after the Jade Scale Demon Paragon, and Jade Scale, and Kunpeng didn't even flee in the same direction.

The one who was chasing Kunpeng was Yaoguang! Yaoguang, a new Dao Lord, has killed two void Dao Lords in such a short time?!

I can accept Extinction's death. The man was old, and his strength was probably down to eighty percent of his prime. He still stood a cut above most newly advanced Dao Integration cultivators, but he was not at his peak.

But the Kunpeng Demon Paragon? It was barely forty thousand years old, in the strongest and most vigorous phase of its life. And it has died too! At Yaoguang's hands!

"Yaoguang?!" The Taiwei Dao Lord repeated the name, and in that moment his skull felt as though an iron hammer had struck it, his whole head ringing.

"He's too strong," the Pill Cauldron Dao Lord said.

"And too ferocious," the Azure Crow Dao Lord added.

He cut down two void Dao Integration cultivators in succession, and he had only just advanced. What kind of savagery was that?

Even among the Ten Great Immortal Dao Sects, among Dao Lords who had lived tens of thousands of years, only a handful had actually killed another Dao Lord.

The gap in strength between Dao Lords was narrow. Defeating one was easy. Killing one was very hard.

Especially during the Dao Contest, some Dao Lords would not push an opponent to the brink of death for fear of mutual destruction, and a Dao Lord who saw the situation turning against him would often simply withdraw from the contest altogether.

In a Dao Lord's long life, there were at least ten contests to enter. Under those conditions, the actual death rate among Dao Lords in any given contest ran under twenty percent.

And here was Yaoguang, a new Dao Lord, who had already taken the lives of two Dao Lords. If that was not ferocity, what was?

"Thinking it through, Yaoguang's performance isn't so surprising. Don't forget, he essentially achieved Dao Integration on the spot. That speed is unprecedented, and from it alone you can guess how deep his foundation in the Dao of void is. Now that he has succeeded...isn't it reasonable that he's showing strength far beyond a new Dao Lord's?" the Sovereign Radiance Dao Lord offered, a little weakly.

The Azure Crow, Pill Cauldron, and Central Heaven Dao Lords exchanged looks. Was it really reasonable?

Then again, other than that explanation, with the facts as they stood, what else was there to say?

"To be honest, I'm starting to wonder whether Yaoguang is an immortal reincarnated, coming down to the mortal world to pass through tribulation so he can walk the immortal path again," the Sovereign Radiance Dao Lord said then.

"An immortal reincarnated?"

The idea stirred something in all of them. Stories of reincarnated immortals circulated on the North Sea Star, though they were very few, because even an immortal found it extraordinarily hard to live a second life.

The immortals who reincarnated to cultivate again tended to be ghost immortals with no road left ahead of them, or psyche immortals on the verge of losing themselves, and only a minority of those ever managed to awaken the memories of their past lives.

Many reincarnated immortals died before the awakening ever came. Usually only after their cultivation reached a high enough level could they truly comprehend their former life and their present one.

Yaoguang had achieved far more than anyone could ever have imagined, and at this point a reincarnated immortal seemed the only description that fit.

"Reincarnated or not, after this battle, thanks to the record of killing both Extinction and Kunpeng, two void Dao Integration cultivators, Dao Lord Yaoguang is going to be the brightest rising star on the North Sea Star. His name will become deeply engraved in the history of the void Dao," the Taiwei Dao Lord said.

"Not just the void Dao. The North Sea Star will be singing his deeds for a long time to come!" Envy and wonder mixed in the Pill Cauldron Dao Lord's voice. "Becoming a Dao Lord in two hundred years, integrating on the spot in fifteen minutes, and cutting down Extinction and Kunpeng one after the other, right after his breakthrough. There's no precedent for anything like that."

"Strictly speaking, the Unchained Dao Lord died because of Yaoguang too, which means he's built his fearsome reputation on the corpses of three void Dao Lords." The Azure Crow Dao Lord's voice held something like longing. "From this day on, the North Sea Star has one more top-tier Dao Lord."