The violent, howling gales of the southern ocean tore at the tattered robes of the retreating survivors as they flew high above the churning, ink-black waves. There were no wooden ships beneath them, no creaking hulls or billowing sails to carry the remnants of the Star Luo Empire's shattered vanguard. When the Heaven Dou Empire's encirclement had closed around the southern coast, taking the time to board slow naval vessels would have been nothing short of suicide.
Instead, wrapped in a shimmering, propulsive barrier of pure oceanic spirit power maintained by High Priestess Bo Saixi, and supported by the raw, physical levitation of the surviving Titled Douluos, the battered group shot across the sky like a cluster of falling stars.
Tang San flew at the absolute forefront of the formation, his long, midnight-black and ocean-blue hair whipping wildly behind him. The golden radiance of the Sea God Trident in his right hand cut through the dense storm clouds, parting the torrential rain and lighting the path toward their final sanctuary. Behind him, Tang Chen and Tang Hao supported the one-armed Tang Xiao, their faces ashen and their breathing ragged as the horrific internal backlash of detonating their hundred-thousand-year Spirit Rings ate away at their meridians. A handful of surviving Clear Sky Sect elders carried the few remaining core disciples on their backs, flying in grim, traumatized silence.
After three days of relentless, high-speed flight across the boundless sea, the dark storm clouds finally broke, revealing the familiar, crescent-shaped silhouette of Sea God Island rising from the turquoise waters ahead.
Yet, as the group descended toward the white stone plaza at the foot of the Sea God Mountain, there was no grand celebration to welcome the High Priestess and the Sea God's Inheritor home.
Only two figures stood waiting at the base of the sacred steps.
Sea Dragon Douluo and Sea Spear Douluo, the only two of the Seven Sacred Pillars who had remained behind to guard the island's sacred monuments during the mainland war, rushed forward the moment Bo Saixi's boots touched the stone. When their eyes swept over the group—taking in the missing arm of the Clear Sky Sect Leader, the pale, blood-stained faces of the two Limit Douluos, and the glaring absence of their five fellow Pillars—both men froze in their tracks.
"High Priestess!" Sea Dragon Douluo's booming voice trembled as he dropped to one knee, his gaze darting frantically toward the empty sky behind them. "Where are Sea Horse, Sea Fantasy, Sea Star, Sea Ghost, and Sea Woman?! What happened on the mainland?!"
Bo Saixi swayed slightly, her hand tightening around her silver staff to keep herself upright. Her deep blue eyes were filled with a sorrow that aged her appearance by decades.
"They are gone, Sea Dragon," Bo Saixi spoke softly, each word heavy with grief. "The war on the mainland is lost. The Star Luo Empire has fallen completely under the rule of the Heaven Dou Empire and the Spirit Hall. When our five brothers and sisters tried to destroy the enemy's new Spirit Tools at the border ridges, they were ambushed by the Enshrinement Elders of the Spirit Hall. Golden Crocodile and the others overwhelmed them... they have been captured and bound in chains."
Sea Spear Douluo staggered back half a step, his face draining of all color as his grip on his golden lance tightened until his knuckles turned white. "All five of them... captured? Out of the Seven Sacred Pillars of the Sea God, only the two of us remain?!"
"Do not let despair cloud your hearts," Tang San stepped forward, his cold, resonant voice cutting through the heavy grief hanging over the plaza. The golden light of the Sea God Trident flared slightly against the stone. "As long as they are alive, I will drag them back from the dungeons of the mainland and wash their humiliation away with the blood of the Spirit Hall."
He turned to Bo Saixi and his great-grandfather, his expression set like carved ice.
"Great-Grandfather, Father, Uncle, and the elders need immediate seclusion in the sacred healing waters around the Sea God Mountain to stabilize their fractured foundations," Tang San said decisively. "High Priestess, I need you and the two remaining Pillars to give me the exact coordinates of every forbidden trench and ancient beast lair in the surrounding seas—especially the uncharted outer islands where high-age Death and Poison attribute Spirit Beasts gather."
Bo Saixi looked into Tang San's burning eyes, sensing the unyielding determination radiating from his Level 94 spiritual sea. "You intend to finish the Eighth Trial immediately?"
"Every breath I waste in rest is another day Zhang Tian and Bibi Dong spend consolidating their grip on the continent," Tang San replied coldly. "My first two Spirit Rings on the Deathly Sea Emperor Vine have already been replaced during my weeks in the coastal trenches. Now, I must purge the remaining weak rings from my first martial spirit, replace my two lower-tier Spirit Bones with hundred-thousand-year bones, and fill the remaining slots on my Clear Sky Hammer. Tell me where the strongest beasts hide."
"Very well," Bo Saixi nodded solemnly. She raised her hand and projected a detailed mental map of the surrounding thousand miles of ocean and outer archipelagos directly into Tang San's forehead. "Twenty miles east of the outer reef lies the Abyssal Trench of Ten Thousand Venoms, and beyond that sit the Dead Bone Islands—a volcanic archipelago where ancient land and amphibious Spirit Beasts of darkness and death have bred undisturbed for tens of thousands of years. Before you depart, remember the three fundamental strikes of the Golden Thirteen Halberds that I and the Sea God's Divine Consciousness imparted to you. In the deep sea, the Sea God Trident is the supreme law."
"I will not return until my foundation is flawless," Tang San vowed.
Without lingering for a single hour to rest, he turned on his heel, leaped into the air, and dove straight into the deep, churning waters off the eastern coast of Sea God Island.
Thirty miles east of the island, the sunlit turquoise waters plunged abruptly into a bottomless chasm known as the Abyssal Trench of Ten Thousand Venoms.
Here, hydrothermal vents along the jagged ocean floor spewed thick, boiling clouds of black sulfuric mud and lethal subterranean toxins into the freezing currents. Ordinary fish and low-level Sea Spirit Beasts could not come within five miles of this chasm without their flesh rotting off their bones.
Tang San drifted down into the pitch-black toxic clouds like a descending ghost, the golden halo of the Sea God Trident illuminating the swirling purple and black currents around him.
'My first Spirit Ring is now fifty thousand years, and my second is sixty-five thousand years,' Tang San thought, his vast mental force spreading outward like an invisible radar through the poisonous murk. 'However, my third Spirit Ring is still that sixteen-hundred-year Purple Veined Viper, and my fourth is a nine-thousand-year Venomous Spider. Even my fifth and sixth rings are below the eighty-thousand-year mark. To stand against a First-Class God or Zhang Tian's strange primordial energy, anything less than top-tier black rings and hundred-thousand-year red rings is useless.'
He drifted deeper into the trench until his mental force brushed against a massive, coiled silhouette resting atop a boiling black hydrothermal vent.
It was a seventy-two-thousand-year Abyssal Demon Viper.
Unlike the ordinary Purple Veined Viper of the mainland forests, this ancient sea serpent was over eighty meters long, its body as thick as a palace pillar and covered in jagged, dark-purple scales that glistened with concentrated abyssal venom. A single drop of the poison seeping from its dorsal fins caused the surrounding volcanic rocks to hiss and dissolve into bubbling sludge.
Sensing the intrusion of the golden light, the Abyssal Demon Viper snapped its lantern-sized, slitted yellow eyes open. With a silent, explosive whip of its massive tail, it stirred up a roaring vortex of boiling, poisonous black mud and lunged straight at Tang San's chest, its four meter-long fangs dripping with purple-black miasma.
Tang San did not dodge. His expression remained completely indifferent as he raised the Sea God Trident with both hands.
'Let us test the first strike of the Golden Thirteen Halberds,' Tang San thought coldly.
"Golden Thirteen Halberds, First Strike: No Constant Wind and Clouds!"
Tang San stepped forward on the empty water and thrust the one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty trident forward in what looked like a slow, trajectory-less arc. Yet, the moment the golden halberd blade moved, the surrounding ocean currents went completely berserk. The laws of the sea bent to the divine artifact's command, creating an unpredictable, chaotic storm of golden light and slicing water currents that completely stripped the Abyssal Demon Viper of its directional sense and spatial balance!
The eighty-meter serpent hissed in shock as its lunging head was forcefully twisted sideways by the chaotic currents, leaving its vulnerable throat completely exposed.
Before the beast could recover its balance, Tang San summoned his Deathly Sea Emperor Vine with his left hand.
"First Spirit Ring Ability: Abyssal Maelstrom Bind! Second Spirit Ring Ability: Necrotic Parasitic Spores!"
Thick, metallic-blue vines erupted from the trench floor, generating a crushing gravitational whirlpool that pinned the massive serpent against the hydrothermal vent, while thousands of ethereal red spores sank directly into its spiritual fluctuations, rapidly draining its spirit power from within.
With a heavy, merciless downward swing of the Sea God Trident, Tang San smashed the golden blade directly through the Abyssal Demon Viper's skull, ending its seventy-two thousand years of cultivation in a single blow.
Sitting cross-legged beside the colossal serpentine corpse as a deep, shimmering black Spirit Ring rose into the water, Tang San closed his eyes and circulated the Divine Sea Ring-Shattering Rebirth Art taught to him by the Sea God's Divine Consciousness.
He guided a strand of divine sense from the Sea God Trident into his meridians, wrapping it protectively around the third Spirit Ring slot before forcefully shattering the sixteen-hundred-year purple ring of the Purple Veined Viper. Because of the divine art's precise protection—breaking the old foundation while simultaneously re-establishing the meridian walls with oceanic vitality—Tang San only felt a sharp, momentary muffled groan in his chest rather than crippling internal damage, losing not a single drop of his innate spirit power.
He pulled the seventy-two-thousand-year black ring over his head and refined it with the Mysterious Heaven Skill.
Four hours later, Tang San opened his eyes as the new third black ring settled around his Deathly Sea Emperor Vine.
'Abyssal Miasma Eruption,' Tang San analyzed the new ability imprinted in his mind. 'By driving my vines into the earth or the seabed, I can detonate a wide-area shockwave of pressurized, corrosive purple-black sea venom that melts both physical armor and spiritual barriers.'
Without pausing to catch his breath, Tang San swam deeper into the trench, hunting relentlessly over the next ten days.
On the fourth day, in a subterranean cavern filled with sunken shipwrecks, he tracked down an eighty-five-thousand-year Phantom Sea Serpent—a semi-transparent, ghostly aquatic predator capable of phasing through solid rock. Using his Purple Demon Eye to lock onto its shifting spiritual core, Tang San immobilized it with the No Constant Wind and Clouds strike of his trident and crushed it.
Using the Divine Sea Ring-Shattering Rebirth Art, he shattered his fourth nine-thousand-year purple ring and replaced it with the eighty-five-thousand-year black ring, gaining the fourth ability: Phantom Sea Restraints, which allowed him to fire semi-ethereal vine cables that phased straight through physical shields and defensive domains to bind an opponent's internal meridians directly, sealing their Spirit Ring activations!
Over the following six days, Tang San pushed his hunting frenzy to the extreme. He was not satisfied with his existing fifth and sixth Spirit Rings, which were around fifty thousand and seventy thousand years old. Since the Eighth Trial demanded perfection, he hunted down two ancient overlords at the very bottom of the trench—an eighty-eight-thousand-year Blood-Spined Sea Centipede and a ninety-two-thousand-year Netherworld Sea Demon Tree—and replaced his fifth and sixth rings as well!
His fifth Spirit Ring ability evolved into Netherworld Rot Cloud, a terrifying miasma that corroded even spirit power constructs into toxic sludge, while his sixth Spirit Ring ability became Ten-Thousand-Fathom Vine Prison, which summoned thousands of deep-sea iron vines carrying the crushing weight of the ocean floor to pulverize anything trapped inside.
Yet, that was only the prologue.
On the eleventh day, Tang San swam out of the Abyssal Trench of Ten Thousand Venoms and headed toward the deepest, most dreaded region of the outer sea: the Crimson Whirlpool Abyss, where true hundred-thousand-year Sea Spirit Beasts ruled as kings.
He still needed to replace his seventh and eighth Spirit Rings with hundred-thousand-year blood-red rings, and more importantly, he needed to replace his two weaker Spirit Bones—the sixty-thousand-year Torso Spirit Bone and the fifty-two-thousand-year Left Leg Spirit Bone—with true hundred-thousand-year Spirit Bones!
Two thousand meters beneath the Crimson Whirlpool, the water was stained a permanent, eerie dark red by volcanic minerals. Here, Tang San encountered his first true titan of the deep sea: a hundred-thousand-year Blood-Armored Demon Crab, paired with a hundred-thousand-year Abyssal Netherworld Octopus that lived symbiotically in the same massive crater.
The moment Tang San descended into the crater, both hundred-thousand-year overlords erupted in fury. The Blood-Armored Demon Crab, whose shell was harder than divine iron and spanned fifty meters across, snapped its colossal pincers, sending out crescent blades of crimson vacuum that sliced the rocky crater walls in half! Simultaneously, the Abyssal Netherworld Octopus whipped eight hundred-meter-long tentacles coated in soul-freezing death poison from behind, sealing off every avenue of retreat!
Facing two hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beasts at once in the deep sea would force even an ordinary Level 95 Super Douluo to flee in terror.
Tang San's eyes, however, only burned brighter.
"Imperial Sea Death Domain!" Tang San roared beneath the waves.
His ninth blood-red God-Bestowed Spirit Ring flared with blinding crimson light. A localized domain of pressurized oceanic water, rotting death energy, and boundless plant vitality expanded outward, clashing fiercely against the domains of the two hundred-thousand-year beasts.
Instead of retreating from the pincer attack, Tang San gripped the Sea God Trident and executed the second strike of the divine art!
"Golden Thirteen Halberds, Second Strike: Thousand Years of Space!"
Tang San swept the golden polearm in a grand, circular arc around his body. Instantly, the space within three hundred meters of him froze and solidified into a golden cage of timeless emptiness! The crescent blades of crimson vacuum fired by the Demon Crab and the eight massive tentacles of the Netherworld Octopus slammed into the boundary of Thousand Years of Space and stopped dead in their tracks, trapped in a spatial-temporal mire as if ten thousand years had passed in a single instant!
"Seventh Spirit Ring Ability: Deathly Sea Emperor Avatar!"
Transforming into a colossal, heavily armored mass of dark blue-gold vines, Tang San didn't stop at the second strike. Channeling eighty percent of his Level 94 spirit power into the trident, he transitioned seamlessly into the third, overwhelmingly destructive single-target attack!
"Golden Thirteen Halberds, Third Strike: One Strike Does Not Return!"
Tang San hurled the Sea God Trident forward like a golden meteor. This strike carried the absolute, unyielding will of the Sea God—an attack that never missed and never turned back until its target was obliterated!
BOOM!
The golden trident pierced straight through the spatial mire and struck the exact center of the hundred-thousand-year Blood-Armored Demon Crab's impenetrable carapace. With a deafening crack that shook the ocean floor for ten miles around, the invincible crimson shell shattered like fragile porcelain! The trident punched clean through the crab's body, pinning its dying form to the seabed!
Before the Abyssal Netherworld Octopus could break free from the lingering effects of Thousand Years of Space, Tang San retracted his primary spirit, switched instantaneously to his Clear Sky Hammer in his left hand, and flashed behind the octopus using Ghost Shadow Perplexing Track.
"Fourth Spirit Ring Ability: Titan Hammer! Fifth Spirit Ring Ability: Clear Sky Dragon Coil!"
Two hundred-thousand-year blood-red rings flared on his hammer. A phantom of an azure dragon locked the octopus's eight tentacles in place while a colossal, mountain-crushing hammer strike, augmented by his Left Arm Spirit Bone's Gravity Control, smashed the octopus's massive mantle into pulp!
Two dazzling, blindingly bright blood-red hundred-thousand-year Spirit Rings rose slowly from the corpses of the two abyssal overlords, illuminating the entire dark crater in a sea of crimson light. Even better, shining beneath the shattered carapace of the Blood-Armored Demon Crab was a gleaming, dark-red Torso Spirit Bone, and resting among the remains of the Abyssal Netherworld Octopus was a deep-purple Left Leg Spirit Bone!
Both hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beasts had dropped Spirit Bones!
Tang San's breathing was heavy, his face pale from the massive expenditure of executing the first three strikes of the Golden Thirteen Halberds back-to-back, but a fierce, triumphant smile curved his lips.
Sitting in the center of the crater with the Sea God Trident guarding his aura, Tang San spent three full days executing the Divine Sea Ring-Shattering Rebirth Art and a parallel bone-replacement secret method taught by the Sea God.
First, he shattered his existing seventh and eighth black Spirit Rings on the Deathly Sea Emperor Vine and absorbed the two new hundred-thousand-year blood-red Spirit Rings!
When the absorption finished, his Deathly Sea Emperor Vine now boasted an unprecedented configuration: Six Black, Three Red!
Because every hundred-thousand-year Spirit Ring granted two distinct abilities, his seventh and eighth rings underwent a heaven-defying transformation. His seventh Spirit Ring (from the Netherworld Octopus) not only upgraded his Deathly Sea Emperor Avatar to boost all poison, water, and death attributes by three hundred percent, it also granted a second ability: Abyssal Soul-Devouring Tentacles, which allowed his avatar to manifest eight indestructible phantom tentacles that absorbed incoming elemental attacks and converted thirty percent of their energy back into his own spirit power!
Meanwhile, his eighth Spirit Ring (from the Blood-Armored Demon Crab) granted him Blood-Armored Thorn Phalanx—an impenetrable fortress of crimson-armored spikes that reflected fifty percent of physical damage back at the attacker—and Crimson Vacuum Severing Slash, which fired a barrage of spatial-cutting vine blades capable of slicing through Titled Douluo avatars!
Next came the most agonizing step: replacing his Spirit Bones.
Using the edge of the Sea God Trident to channel divine water energy into his chest and left leg, Tang San forcefully pried the sixty-thousand-year Venomous Earthquake Bear Torso Bone and the fifty-two-thousand-year Ironback Poison Beetle Left Leg Bone out of his own skeleton! Blood poured from his pores, staining the water around him as his bones groaned under the extraction, before he immediately pressed the two new hundred-thousand-year Spirit Bones against his chest and leg.
As the two supreme bones fused with his skeleton, every single Spirit Bone in Tang San's body—Left Arm, Right Arm, Torso, Left Leg, plus his evolved External Dual Poison Fangs—reached the hundred-thousand-year threshold!
The new hundred-thousand-year Blood-Armored Demon Crab Torso Bone granted him two terrifying defensive and counter-attacking skills: Blood Demon Unbreakable Carapace, which formed a crimson crystal armor over his vital organs that negated the first lethal blow he suffered in battle and reduced all subsequent physical and spiritual damage by sixty percent; and Abyssal Blood Purge, which allowed him to forcefully expel any foreign energy, curse, or elemental suppression from his meridians once per day while detonating it outward as a blood-lightning shockwave.
The hundred-thousand-year Abyssal Netherworld Octopus Left Leg Bone granted him Netherworld Phantom Flash—an instantaneous, short-range spatial-water teleportation step that left behind a toxic illusion clone that exploded upon being struck—and Abyssal Trench Mire, which turned the ground or air within a hundred meters beneath his feet into a swamp of absolute darkness that dragged enemies downward with thirty times normal gravity!
When the last drop of energy from the two hundred-thousand-year rings and bones settled into his core, a resonant boom echoed inside Tang San's dantian.
His spirit power surged straight past the ninety-fourth rank, breaking through the ninety-fifth rank threshold and stabilizing firmly at Level 95 Super Douluo!
Yet, Tang San's work was only half finished.
He rose from the ocean floor, his aura now deep and unfathomable as an abyssal trench, and shot upward out of the sea, flying further southeast toward the jagged, volcanic chain known as the Dead Bone Islands.
He still had his second martial spirit: the Clear Sky Hammer.
Currently, his Clear Sky Hammer held five Spirit Rings—three black rings (around sixty-five to seventy-two thousand years) bestowed during his time in Slaughter City, and two hundred-thousand-year red rings from Da Ming and Er Ming. That left four empty slots: the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth Spirit Rings!
'I will save the ninth Spirit Ring slot on my Clear Sky Hammer for last,' Tang San decided as he landed upon the black, ash-covered cliffs of the largest Dead Bone Island. 'Only a peak spirit beast surpassing several hundred thousand years, or a divine trial beast, is worthy of serving as the final ninth ring of my hammer. However, I can fill the sixth, seventh, and eighth ring slots right now using the ancient fierce beasts inhabiting these islands!'
The Dead Bone Islands were not populated by ordinary ocean creatures. Because the islands sat atop a leaking subterranean vein of dark-attribute energy and volcanic sulfur, they were overrun by violent, prehistoric terrestrial and amphibious Spirit Beasts possessing immense physical strength, darkness, and death attributes, as well as rare, highly lethal poisonous plants that grew nowhere else in the world.
As Tang San walked through a steaming valley of black jagged rocks and bubbling sulfur pools, his Purple Demon Eye suddenly gleamed with a sharp purple-gold light.
Growing along the edge of a boiling blood-red sulfur spring were dozens of bizarre, sinister herbs that made his heartbeat quicken.
There was the Nine-Death Corpse-Rotting Orchid, whose black petals dripped with a fluid that could dissolve refined iron into mist; the Seven-Step Soul-Freezing Grass, which emitted a frost-poison aura that froze blood inside the veins; the Blood-Vein Dragon-Tendon Vine, a metallic plant tougher than ten-thousand-year spirit beast sinew; and clusters of Netherworld Blasting Fruit, which contained unstable, explosive fire-poison cores inside their shells!
Furthermore, scattered around the volcanic vents were chunks of heavy, pitch-black ore—Deep-Abyss Cold Iron and Blood-Stained Star Metal, washed up from the earth's mantle by the volcanic eruptions!
'Heaven is truly helping me,' Tang San thought, a cold, sinister smile curving his lips as he swept the rare poisonous herbs and deep-earth metals into his spatial storage tool using Controlling Crane Catching Dragon. 'Zhang Tian thinks his army's Offensive Spirit Tools make him invincible on the battlefield. He has forgotten that before I ever came to this world, I was the pinnacle genius of the outer and inner Tang Sect! When it comes to instruments of silent, inescapable slaughter and peerless poison, the top hidden weapons of the Tang Sect can kill even Gods if infused with my current cultivation and these ancient toxins!'
He did not explain to anyone—not even to his father or great-grandfather back on Sea God Island—where his blueprints for these weapons came from. To the people of this world, they were simply his own diabolical inventions.
Over the next three weeks on the Dead Bone Islands, Tang San split his time between brutal, earth-shattering hunts and secluded forging sessions inside a volcanic cave.
For his Clear Sky Hammer's sixth, seventh, and eighth Spirit Rings, he did not hold back. Wielding the Sea God Trident to suppress their domains and his newly perfected Deathly Sea Emperor Vine to bind and weaken them, he hunted down the three undisputed rulers of the Dead Bone Archipelago.
First, for his sixth Spirit Ring on the Clear Sky Hammer, he slew an eighty-nine-thousand-year Dark-Gold Bone Dragon—a wingless, terrestrial draconic beast whose skeletal armor and death-breath dominated the eastern island. Absorbing its pitch-black ring granted his Clear Sky Hammer the sixth ability: Bone-Shattering Death Impact, which infused every swing of his hammer with a penetrating vibration of death energy that ignored external defenses to pulverize the target's internal skeleton!
Second, for his seventh Spirit Ring—the all-important Martial Spirit Avatar ring of his Clear Sky Hammer—he tracked down a hundred-thousand-year Hellfire Behemoth slumbering in the central volcanic caldera!
The battle against the Hellfire Behemoth lasted an entire day and night, collapsing half the volcano into the sea. Only by unleashing his Deathly Sea Emperor Avatar, locking the beast in Thousand Years of Space, and piercing its heart with One Strike Does Not Return from the Sea God Trident did Tang San finally bring the hundred-thousand-year titan to its knees.
Absorbing that hundred-thousand-year blood-red ring as the seventh ring on his Clear Sky Hammer gave him two monumental abilities: True Clear Sky Avatar, which expanded his Clear Sky Hammer into a thousand-meter-tall colossal divine hammer wrapped in dark-crimson slaughter flames, multiplying his physical strength and the weight of the hammer tenfold; and Behemoth's World-Splitting Roar, which unleashed a cone of dark-red sonic and gravitational destruction with every swing of the avatar, shattering spatial locks and defensive domains within a mile!
Third, on the final outer island of the chain, Tang San hunted down another hundred-thousand-year overlord that had lived in the bone-choked swamps for over one hundred and ten thousand years: an Abyssal Nine-Headed Hydra!
Using his newly acquired True Clear Sky Avatar alongside the Sea God Trident, Tang San crushed the Hydra's nine heads one by one, claiming its hundred-thousand-year blood-red ring as the eighth Spirit Ring of his Clear Sky Hammer!
This eighth red ring bestowed upon his hammer two terrifying offensive abilities: Nine-Headed Annihilation Flurry, which split a single swing of the Clear Sky Hammer into nine overlapping, unavoidable phantom hammer strikes carrying nine different corrosive death poisons; and Undying Hydra Bloodlust, a berserker state that increased his attack power and swing speed by twenty percent for every wound on his body while converting the damage he dealt into temporary stamina!
Now, when Tang San summoned his Clear Sky Hammer in his left hand, eight terrifying Spirit Rings hovered around the colossal dark-metal head: Three Black, Five Red! Only the final, ninth Spirit Ring slot remained empty, waiting for the ultimate sacrifice that would propel him to the very peak of the mortal world!
Meanwhile, during the nights between his hunts inside the volcanic cave, Tang San used his purple-gold Mysterious Jade Hand and the volcanic magma to smelt the Deep-Abyss Cold Iron and Blood-Stained Star Metal, infusing them with the concentrated extracts of the Nine-Death Corpse-Rotting Orchid, Seven-Step Soul-Freezing Grass, and the blood of the hundred-thousand-year Abyssal Nine-Headed Hydra.
With rapid, practiced precision that bordered on demonic artistry, he assembled the most feared masterpieces from the secret records of the Tang Sect:
First, he forged three lotus-shaped cylinders of pitch-black cold iron, each packed with thirty-six layers of microscopically thin, rune-carved blades soaked in Hydra venom and powered by compressed Netherworld Blasting Fruit cores: the rank-one mechanical hidden weapon of the Tang Sect, the Buddha Fury Tang Lotus! Infused with these hundred-thousand-year materials and his own Death God Domain aura, a single detonation of these upgraded lotuses could threaten even a Super Douluo!
Second, he crafted a sleek, blood-red box mechanism worn inside his sleeve, loaded with sixteen bone-piercing needles forged from the spine of the Dark-Gold Bone Dragon: the Peacock Plume and the Godly Zhuge Crossbow variants, capable of firing armor-piercing, spirit-breaking needles infused with his Necrotic Parasitic Spores!
Third, and most sinister of all, he refined three drops of a colorless, odorless liquid toxin distilled from seven different ten-thousand-year poisonous herbs and the venom sacs of the Spectral Blood Anemone, sealing them inside hollow crystal needles: Yama's Invitation, the king of Tang Sect poisons where the King of Hell demands your life at the third watch and never lets you live till the fifth!
Standing at the mouth of the volcanic cave as the sun rose over the southern ocean on the thirtieth day of his expedition, Tang San tucked the newly forged Buddha Fury Tang Lotuses and Yama's Invitation needles into his Twenty-Four Moonlit Bridges belt.
His spirit power had surged again after absorbing the two hundred-thousand-year rings on his Clear Sky Hammer, pushing him straight to the peak of a Level 96 Super Douluo!
With his Deathly Sea Emperor Vine sporting Six Black and Three Red rings, his Clear Sky Hammer holding Three Black and Five Red rings (with only the ninth slot remaining), and four hundred-thousand-year Spirit Bones plus his evolved External Dual Poison Fangs fused into his skeleton, Tang San felt a surge of power so vast that a single flex of his fingers caused the volcanic cliff beneath his boots to crack.
"The Eighth Trial is nearly complete," Tang San murmured, his cold, ocean-blue eyes turning back toward Sea God Island in the distance. "Once I obtain the final ninth Spirit Ring for my Clear Sky Hammer and complete the Ninth Trial of the Sea God... Zhang Tian, Bibi Dong, Qian Daoliu—not a single one of you will survive the wrath of the sea and the Tang Sect."
Gripping the one-hundred-and-eight-thousand-catty Sea God Trident, Tang San kicked off the volcanic peak and shot across the sky like a bolt of blue-black lightning, returning to Sea God Island to prepare for the final step of his ascension.
~~
A/N: Check out my other novels [Heavenly Villain: Stealing Fate, Tempting Beauties].
Also, check out 20 Chapters Ahead for this fanfic on my P.atreon. [Check Out Art Of Characters On My Patreon. It's Free To View btw.]
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