On the other side, Xian Lin'er gently laid the already-cold body of Qian Duoduo flat in a relatively safe corner inside the city wall, her movements so tender it was as if she feared disturbing his sleep.
When she straightened and turned back to face the battlefield, her entire aura underwent a cataclysmic change.
The cyan flames no longer merely wreathed her; they fused completely into her skin, her hair, her eyes, as if alive.
Her long hair billowed without wind, all of it transforming into burning azure fire. In her pupils remained only a cold, consuming will to annihilate.
A terrifying aura, far beyond her usual level and bordering on self-destruction, surged madly from within her.
She had actually begun burning her own life force and soul essence.
This was the most tragic, most resolute forbidden method in the soul master world—trading irreversible demise for a short burst of power beyond one's limits.
Qian Duoduo's fall completely ignited the long-suppressed anger and grief in the hearts of all Shrek's powerhouses.
Yan Shaozhe's holy light flames swelled severalfold as if exploding. A golden phoenix phantom formed entirely of radiant fire let out a blood-crying lament behind him; every swoop, every scattering feather carried a resolve to fight to mutual destruction without rest or retreat.
He no longer cared about soul power consumption; even his most costly, bottom-of-the-box soul skills were unleashed without reservation at the Scarlet King.
Even when the Ten Thousand Demon King ambushed him and pierced his shoulder with vines, he only grunted, then lashed back with a strand of phoenix trueflame condensed to the extreme, burning those vile vines and a section of their source branch into nothingness in an instant.
Shi Xing's spacetime silver disk spun so fiercely it nearly tore space apart. Time delay, spatial folding, dimensional slicing… all kinds of high-consumption spacetime soul skills were fired as if they cost no soul power at all.
He even bit through the tip of his tongue, spraying essence blood onto the spacetime silver disk, sacrificing his own origin to forcibly amplify his soul skills.
Invisible space blades grew denser and sharper, like countless unseen webs of death, slicing the Ten Thousand Demon King's conjured, thick vines into pieces. Oily dark-green stench sprayed across the battlefield like a torrential rain.
Cai Meier fully released the dragon soul sealed within her Evil-Bane Dragonlance. A solid, radiant energy dragon wreathed in exorcising gold light raised its head and roared, meeting the Hell Demon Dragon King, Zi Ji, who commanded the power of darkness.
Dragon roars shook the heavens as gold light and black miasma collided and corroded. Two titans battled savagely in the sky, each clash erupting with deafening thunder.
As for Xian Lin'er—she had long become a cyan inferno of vengeance.
She did not release her Martial Soul True Body, for her very life and soul had already become the fiercest, most resolute fuel.
She turned into a streak of cyan lightning that tore through the battlefield; where she passed, all things decomposed, the blue fire scorched the sky, as she launched a suicidal charge straight at the true culprit—Bear Lord.
"Bear Lord, I'll have your life!"
Xian Lin'er's voice was hoarse like sandpaper scraping; every word was steeped in blood and madness.
Her whole being became a meteor burning with vengeful cyan flame. Ignoring all her defenses, at a speed beyond limits, she dove straight at the Darkgold Dreadclaw Bear as towering as a mountain.
The Azureflame Dragonlance in her hand trembled at high frequency. The surrounding gales were compressed to the extreme, concentrating that terrifying azure flame with disintegration properties into a single point of icelike cold gleam.
Each thrust made the tip keenly shriek as it tore space, carrying a resolve to perish together with the enemy.
At first, Bear Lord tried to tough it out with his indestructible darkgold pelt and claws.
But when that hyper-condensed azure spear light first grazed his claws—sharp enough to shred dragon scales—it left a clearly visible, sizzling, charred mark. A flicker of doubt and dread flashed in his violent golden eyes.
Xian Lin'er's attacks had abandoned all form and technique, leaving only the purest, maddest trade of life for injury—every move aimed at mutual destruction.
Under this death-defying style that ignored the self and sought only to kill, even though he far outclassed her, Bear Lord was momentarily cowed by that overwhelming hatred and ferocity, forced into a brief passive defense.
It wasn't just Xian Lin'er. Yan Shaozhe, Shi Xing, Elder Lin, and the others had all gone blood-mad as well, adopting the same brutal, life-for-life posture.
This disregard for life made Bi Ji, the Ten Thousand Demon King, the Scarlet King, and other fierce beasts hesitate, their offensives no longer as wantonly aggressive as before.
What they feared most was precisely the path these top human powerhouses might choose when driven to the end—self-detonation of the soul core.
Self-detonating the soul core was the strongest—and most tragic—ultimate method of a Titled Douluo.
Once one decided to detonate the soul core that embodied a lifetime of cultivation, the destructive energy produced would allow an ordinary Titled Douluo to erupt in an instant with destructive power comparable to an Ultimate Douluo.
If super Douluo like Yan Shaozhe, Shi Xing, or Elder Lin chose to self-detonate, the destructive force would level everything within several kilometers, turning it into an absolute dead zone.
Shrek Academy still had several super Douluo present. If even one resolutely self-detonated, the fierce beasts—even with their might—would be grievously wounded, perhaps even slain.
If two—or three—chose that final path together… the consequences might well drag even top beasts like Bi Ji and Bear Lord to the grave, while the tens of thousands of soul beasts below would almost certainly face annihilation.
The beasts yearned to raze Shrek City, but they would not pay with their lives and their kind's very foundation.
The blast radius of a soul core self-detonation was terrifying, no less than the Sun Moon Empire's dreaded Grade-9 fixed soul tool shells.
Once it detonated, not only they but the surrounding soul beast army would suffer devastating blows. Even if they won this war, the Star Dou Forest would be crippled, unable to recover for ten thousand years.
Thus, the beasts were forced to change tactics, no longer pressing an all-out assault. Instead, they shifted to defense, harassment, and attrition—seeking to stall for time and exhaust the already-dwindling soul power and near-collapsing stamina of Yan Shaozhe and the others.
The Ten Thousand Demon King controlled countless poisonous vines to harass and ambush from afar, while hiding its body deep underground, never revealing it lightly.
The Scarlet King's hellfire was used more for long-range suppression of the soul tool batteries, avoiding a direct clash with Yan Shaozhe, who burned with holy light flame.
Bear Lord cautiously dodged Xian Lin'er's go-for-broke attacks, while searching for an opportunity to seriously injure her without risking his own safety.
At times like this, vigilance mattered most—lest one be taken along by the enemy's final, crazed counterattack before the enemy perished.
On the battlefield, Yan Shaozhe and the others were entangled in a melee with the great beasts. The roar of soul tool shells, the explosions of soul skills colliding, the wails of soul beasts and the shouts of humans intertwined—the carnage was extreme.
Yet no one noticed that far off at the horizon, Di Tian—who had been frozen by Ganyu's arrow of ultimate ice—had shown no sign of breaking free from the beginning.
With the Beast God Di Tian's unfathomable strength, even if frozen by the ultimate ice for a time, given enough time to stir his oceanic soul power, he could always find a way to break the seal.
But now, that vast black dragon hung motionless within the enormous ice crystal like a puppet stripped of life. Even his iconic golden dragon pupils were dim and lifeless, betraying not the slightest struggle—a deathly stillness that unsettled the heart.
While everyone's attention was drawn to the brutal clash on the front lines, a faint, near-transparent cyan flame appeared soundlessly above Shrek City like a wraith.
This flame was bizarre; it seemed not to exist in this dimension. It bypassed Shrek City's layered soul tool defenses with ease, slipped past the wall where shouts and energy raged, and drifted through streams of panicked evacuees and alleyways.
Its target was clear—the very heart of Shrek Academy, Sea God Island.
The flame moved at a speed beyond imagination. Humans and soul beasts along its route were oblivious to it, as if it were a phantom projection.
Only when it reached the air above the rippling, life-rich Sea God Lake did the cyan flame slow and hover quietly before the golden ancient tree that blotted out the sky, towering into the clouds as if supporting heaven and earth.
The Golden Tree's trunk was so massive dozens of people would be needed to encircle it. Its canopy spread like a royal parasol; layers of emerald leaves formed a vast green ocean, each leaf emanating a gentle, pure halo of life.
Countless ancient vines coiled about the trunk like flood dragons. The air was thick with palpable life energy; even an ordinary soul master would feel their soul power grow livelier with a single deep breath here.
"So this is the Golden Tree… the most precious core of life on this planet."
The cyan flame flickered, and a seductive, icy, faintly greedy thought-voice sounded softly.
It was the voice of the Lord Ravager, Phantylia.
Through Di Tian's memories, she had long known of the Golden Tree's existence and understood that this sacred tree was not only Shrek Academy's foundation but also a crucial node in the Douluo Star's life-energy network.
And her true goal this time was never simply to destroy Shrek City, but to seize this golden ancient tree that contained near-infinite life energy, to transform and corrupt it—making it a perfect, powerful new vessel.
As for stirring a beast tide to make humans and soul beasts slaughter each other in rivers of blood—that was a casual side move for her, a smokescreen to tie down the enemy's top combatants and sow chaos.
If that side move could escalate into total war between humans and soul beasts, so much the better.