"Long live Lord Wuxian! He'll definitely keep leading Dragon Nation forward!"
"Lord Wuxian already secured nine massive underground water reserves for us. His contribution is enormous!"
A brief disturbance had nearly broken out online, but under the guidance of the studio panel, it quickly died down.
Within Dragon Nation's borders, public morale mattered greatly.
In that regard, the studio's role was undeniably important.
Meanwhile, on the vast wasteland, a flash of emerald light swept across the air.
Adrian Vale and Raven Shaw reappeared where they had stood.
"Haa…"
Raven drew in a deep breath, her face filled with pure satisfaction. She had just opened her mouth to speak when she noticed Adrian giving her an openly disdainful look from head to toe.
Raven instantly grew annoyed.
"What are you doing, kid? Since when did you become this rude?"
Adrian replied flatly,
"Why would I bother being polite to an old woman like you?"
"You—!"
Raven was instantly infuriated, but she could neither beat him in a fight nor win against him in an argument.
In the end, she could only sulk in silence.
The Dragon Nation livestream immediately burst into laughter.
"Adrian, you are the densest steel-reinforced straight man in history!"
"At this rate, I'll have to wait until my grandson's generation before these two finally get together!"
"A woman this gorgeous is practically throwing herself at him, and Adrian still doesn't react. If he weren't so young, I'd think he was already eighty or ninety."
"No need to guess. They already tested his mental age. It's eighty-eight."
Suddenly, Adrian lifted his head.
A strange smile spread across his face, and his left eye glowed crimson as he said,
"Why do I feel several very… delicious presences nearby?"
Raven frowned.
"So outsiders have already entered the area around us?"
"But that shouldn't be possible. Haven't most of the other nations' contestants already been wiped out?"
At those words, Adrian's brows twitched slightly.
Then he opened the overlay.
In the next instant, an endless stream of new messages flooded across the screen, rapidly explaining everything that had happened recently.
Dragon Nation's viewers were especially excited.
"Eat-Stream Adrian Vale, head south immediately! Fahai is in danger, and other contestants are converging on that area too!"
"Hurry and go support them! With you there, they'll be much safer!"
"Adrian, Blue Star Deathmatch already ended! Dragon Nation has ten new contestants now!"
As they read line after line of scrolling messages, Adrian and Raven quickly pieced together everything that had happened.
A bright smile appeared on Raven's face.
"That's great," she said. "So we won't have to keep fighting alone anymore."
But Adrian only laughed.
"So many new food sources?" he said, eyes gleaming. "There's even a man-made human… and one whose body seems to be made of tofu?"
The red glow in Adrian's left eye intensified, and he unconsciously licked his lips.
Scarlet patterns were already crawling across his body, and his kagune looked ready to burst free at any moment.
Seeing that, Raven immediately pressed a hand to her forehead.
"Can you stop thinking about eating for once?" she said helplessly.
"Our first priority is to support Dragon Nation's contestants."
"According to the overlay, Miracle Nation and contestants from other countries are all heading that way too. A huge melee could break out at any moment."
At those words, Adrian's eyes lit up.
"A melee?" he said, his voice turning interested. "If it's a melee, then plenty of people will die… and plenty of Divine Domain creatures too."
"Sounds like we should go join the fun. I'm sure they'll taste incredible."
The blood in Adrian's body began to boil. That greed-driven hunger, that near-feral craving to feed, was already impossible to suppress.
Even Raven, standing beside him, could feel the overwhelming danger radiating from his body.
Instinctively, she took two steps back.
Adrian immediately turned his head to glance at her.
The moment he did, the devouring impulse in his chest vanished as quickly as it had risen.
He rolled his eyes and said,
"What are you standing around for, old woman? Let's move."
After everything they had gone through together, Adrian now trusted Raven completely. At this point, he no longer felt even the slightest urge to feed on her.
Only after the danger in him receded did Raven finally relax.
"R-Right. I'm coming."
Whoosh!
The two of them immediately burst into motion, heading straight for the region where the black storm was raging.
At the same time, as soon as people across the world realized Adrian and Raven had reappeared in the Divine Domain and were moving toward the black storm, viewers from every nation began frantically warning their own contestants through the overlay to stay away from that area.
"Run! Change direction immediately! That damned foodie is going there—stay away from that entire region!"
"Tofu Nation contestant, don't go near that place! If you do, you're dead!"
"Stay away from that monster! He can fight even an Ancient Azure Dragon head-on!"
"That guy is a true dragon slayer—a real demon! Stay away from him!"
Miracle Nation's citizens were no exception. They too began desperately warning Venom, Eddie, and Magneto.
"Eddie, turn around! Don't go looking for death! That Adrian Vale is a genuinely invincible monster!"
"If you keep going, Dragon Nation's contestants will already have support. You won't stand a chance!"
"For the sake of avoiding unnecessary casualties, retreat now!"
"Magneto, don't follow Eddie and Venom into a deathtrap!"
Through the overlay, both Eddie Brock and Magneto saw those warnings clearly.
Eddie's face darkened.
"You saw that too, right? Adrian Vale is heading straight for the black storm."
"If he really gets there, then our whole operation becomes incredibly dangerous."
No matter how confident Eddie was in himself, he was under no illusion that he could defeat Adrian.
He had already seen Adrian's strength with his own eyes through previous broadcasts.
Magneto nodded heavily as well.
"I didn't expect them to get out of the Dreamlike Forest so quickly," he said. "I honestly thought the two of them would be trapped there much longer."
After all, the entire world had known Adrian and Raven were stuck inside the Dreamlike Forest.
And from the way their situation had looked, it had seemed anything but easy.
Yet in such a short time, they had broken free.
Venom peeled himself away from Eddie's body again and snarled,
"Eddie, are you scared?"
"How can we surrender before even fighting them?"
Eddie looked at him in exasperation.
"At this point, stop pretending."
"We can keep building strength over time, get stronger first, and challenge him later."
"There's no reason to go looking for death right now."
Venom scoffed.
"It won't be that easy. While we're getting stronger, they're getting stronger too."
"How do you know we'll ever be able to beat them later?"
At that moment, Magneto suddenly spoke up.
"We should still go take a look."
"If we don't even have the courage to face them head-on now, then we'll never have the courage to surpass them in the future."
"And even if the situation turns completely against us… I can still take the two of you out of there."
In the end, the three of them decided to continue forward together.
However, their pace had clearly slowed.
Even though Magneto had complete confidence in his own ability to escape, the shadow Adrian and Raven cast over them was simply too great.
Those two were just too strong.
Any contestant who encountered them either died by their hands—or died to the Divine Domain creatures around them.
It was precisely because of their existence that the number of contestants in the Divine Domain had plummeted so sharply.
And it was that exact situation that had led to the creation of Blue Star Deathmatch in the first place.
So in a sense, the entire chain of events had started because Adrian and Raven had been too overwhelming.
Meanwhile, at the very center of the black sandstorm, Fahai sat beneath his crimson kasaya.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
Layer after layer of red light pulsed across the surface of the robe.
Fahai's expression was grim, but his eyes remained bright.
"Damn it," he muttered. "What is this thing? How can that cursed lizard stir up such a terrifying black storm?"
He grumbled nonstop, all while stabilizing his body with all his strength.
Thanks to the protective radiance of his kasaya, Fahai was still barely resisting the black sandstorm's assault.
But the crimson light around the kasaya kept flickering violently.
It clearly would not hold much longer.
On the overlay, countless Dragon Nation viewers continued reporting the latest developments.
"Fahai, hang in there! Lord Wuxian and the old Celestial Master are already rushing toward you!"
"Fahai, Adrian Vale is heading there too! Once he arrives, this whole thing is over!"
"Dragon Nation only has twelve contestants total! Every single one matters. You have to hold on!"
"Abbot, please don't fall here! What will happen to the temple if you do?"
Seeing the endless stream of encouragement—and learning that reinforcements were rapidly approaching—Fahai finally let out a slight breath of relief.
"Everyone, rest assured," he said calmly. "This humble monk can still hold on for another twenty minutes without issue."
"By then, the others should have arrived."
Now that he knew help was coming, Fahai sat down cross-legged on the spot.
With his kasaya glowing red around him, he remained perfectly steady at the heart of the black storm, letting the storm's violent power batter harmlessly against the light.
"Amitabha…"
With his palms pressed together, Fahai actually began chanting sutras in midair.
The sight left Dragon Nation's viewers laughing and crying at the same time.
"Fahai really is something else."
"This man turned survival in a storm into a live scripture recital."
Even so, foreign viewers were completely baffled.
"What is this guy doing? Has he already given up on survival?"
"He's literally chanting his own funeral rites in the middle of the storm!"
"Hahaha! At last, we're finally about to watch a Dragon Nation contestant die!"
A flood of furious Dragon Nation comments instantly drowned that out.
"Shut up, you idiots! Fahai is going to survive this!"
Boom! Boom!
Not long after, Wuxian became the first reinforcement to reach the edge of the black storm.
He frowned slightly as he looked at it.
"The storm's area is too large," he said. "I have no way to stop it completely."
The black sandstorm before him had already expanded to a full twenty meters in radius.
And Fahai was trapped at its very center.
Wuxian's absolute control zone, however, only extended to a radius of about ten meters around himself.
Because of that, he had no confidence in stopping the entire storm by force.
The moment Dragon Nation's viewers heard that, their hearts dropped.
"What? Even Lord Wuxian can't save Fahai?"
"Then what do we do now? Is Fahai finished?"
"Wait a little longer! The old Celestial Master is almost there—maybe he has a way!"
Boom!
A bolt of blue lightning flashed down from above.
The next instant, Zhang Zhiwei appeared on the scene as well.
After taking one look at the giant black sandstorm before him, he let out a faint sigh of regret.
"This old Daoist could disperse the entire storm with lightning methods," he said slowly, "but if I do that… Fahai would most likely die with it."
"For the moment, even I am powerless."
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