Desolate Devouring Art - Chapter 1339 - Fifth Level
Chapter 1339 – Fifth Level
Liu Wuxie finished speaking, his figure blurred, and he sprinted for the gate to the third level.
“It’s Liu Wuxie! Stop him!” a great demon shouted. They had to halt him at any cost, and the demon clan resolved to seize first place in the Divine Sun-Shooting Tower.
“Activate the array!” Vanya roared, unleashing the Moon Tribulation Incineration Array. A violent shockwave hammered the demon clan and stalled their charge, opening a path while Liu Wuxie closed on the third-level gate. Many onlookers had gathered in the distance, yet none moved.
“Follow up!” whispered Grand Unity Sect disciples lurking nearby, waiting for their moment.
Vanya aimed to pin the demon clan rather than meet them head-on. With more than five thousand great demons arrayed against them, a direct clash was impossible.
Thunderous rumbles rolled across the range as the array detonated, hurling countless demons away; they couldn’t withstand the array’s frontal assault. The impact even triggered an avalanche on the slopes.
As Liu Wuxie neared the third level, a powerful abyssal devil struck, conjuring a colossal palm that crashed down. The abyssal energy coalesced into the shape of a fearsome demon god.
“Out of my way!” Liu Wuxie roared. He unleashed the Dragon-Grasping Hand, and a massive dragon claw smashed the descending palm aside.
The situation tightened as the demon clan and abyssal race both moved to bar his entry. While the abyssal race attacked, other humans seized the chance and sprinted for the gate.
“Damn humans! Stay where you are!” several abyssal devils bellowed, their voices like a tidal wave as they hurled boulders across the ground.
Chaos erupted—the same pandemonium that marked every Divine Sun-Shooting Tower event.
Vanya held the demon clan in check and cleared a broad path for Liu Wuxie.
Blasting the abyssal devil aside, Liu Wuxie transformed into a divine dragon and flashed through the gate to the third level—so fast no one could react.
“Hurry! Don’t let Liu Wuxie get ahead!” the demon clan roared. They had dispatched legions of experts, yet he still pulled in front.
The instant he stepped onto the third level, immense pressure crashed down. Suppression grew with each ascent, and his pace slowed as his true essence and soul sea labored under the weight.
Vanya and the others followed quickly, keeping about 100 meters behind Liu Wuxie.
“Big Brother Liu, go on ahead!” Vanya stopped at the approach to the fourth-level gate to intercept pursuers and buy him time.
“Be careful. Don’t go beyond the fifth level,” Liu Wuxie said, then vanished from sight. By his estimate, the fifth would be Vanya’s limit; as pressure climbed, her body wouldn’t endure it.
“Damn it! Kill them all!” The demon clan and abyssal race joined forces and charged Vanya’s group. If not for her interception, Liu Wuxie wouldn’t have taken the lead, so they vented their fury on her and the Heavenly Dragon Sect disciples.
“Defend!” Vanya roared, compressing the formation into a defensive array. Its tight guard left the demon clan and abyssal race with no clear way through. And because the array could move, they fought while falling back toward the fourth-level gate.
“A movable array? That’s rare,” the humans watching from afar said.
The demon clan and abyssal race roared in frustration. If Vanya’s group stood still, they could devise a way to break the array; instead, the moving formation widened the gap in a blink.
“Keep up! This might be the human race’s chance this year!” the humans urged. With Liu Wuxie holding off the demon clan and abyssal race, they finally had a real shot at first.
In past years, the demon clan and abyssal race set blockades to slow the humans; this year, the situation reversed.
As Liu Wuxie formed seals, the fourth-level gate opened, and he slipped through at once. The moment he entered, his mobility dropped again, and even flight grew difficult. He judged that on the fifth level, movement would be tough for those in the lower Primal Origin Realm.
Vanya kept intercepting the demon clan and abyssal race to slow them. Only after Liu Wuxie vanished did she break off and lead her group to the fourth level. By then, many humans had slipped in ahead of them, and the demon clan and abyssal race trailed a step behind.
Liu Wuxie released his true essence and quickened his pace on the fourth level, an endless desert where yellow sand swallowed his sight, until a few figures flickered ahead.
“Someone’s ahead?” Liu Wuxie murmured, then accelerated.
The gap between him and the demon and abyssal forces widened. On the fourth level, weaker humans began to lose their edge, while the demon clan and abyssal race leaned on powerful physiques to shrug off spatial oppression.
A keen sword aura streaked from the desert’s depths, flying straight at Liu Wuxie. Someone had lain in wait and sprung the ambush as he passed.
“Stop!” Liu Wuxie kept Ghost Eye active the entire time, reading everything within range. With a finger tap, he launched a cold ray that froze the sword light and sent a terrifying chill across the sand.
A figure emerged before him with a long and slender build, not the build of a typical Grand Unity Sect disciple.
“Who are you, and why ambush me?” Liu Wuxie asked, voice cold.
The man was at the pinnacle of Primal Origin Realm and specialized in assassination. Shock flashed in his eyes when Liu Wuxie emerged unscathed; he had lurked here long, certain even first-level Void Realm cultivators wouldn’t escape intact.
Stunned that Liu Wuxie neutralized the strike so easily, he sprang back to retreat at once. He knew he couldn’t win in a frontal fight.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Liu Wuxie roared. He refused to let the man escape. Casting the Great Spatial Mythical Art, he turned a thousand-meter radius into his domain and pinned the assassin in place.
In a flicker, he stood before the man.
“Talk. Who sent you to kill me?” Liu Wuxie asked coldly.
He drove his divine sense into the man’s soul sea and forced a search through his memories.
“Argh! Don’t search my soul sea—I’ll talk! I’m an assassin sent by the Tranquil Meteor Star!”
“Die,” Liu Wuxie said, and after ransacking the man’s memories and confirming the truth, he struck.
“Mu Ye, Shen Tian—you both deserve to die!” He ended the assassin with a wave, then drew all energy and laws into the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron.
Without pausing, Liu Wuxie headed for the fifth-level gate. Tranquil Meteor Star and Sky Cloud Star would still have experts lurking; unable to fight him head-on, they could only rely on ambush.
Two hours later, the fifth-level gate came into view. Several high-cultivation humans stood nearby; when they spotted him, their eyes narrowed in surprise—they hadn’t expected him to arrive so quickly.
The ground suddenly trembled as the demon clan and abyssal race finally showed their speed advantage. They had broken free of Vanya’s interception, and their march churned the desert into a yellow haze.
“Let’s move to the fifth level!” the humans said, forming seals to tear open a slit and slipping through the gate.
Liu Wuxie hesitated, then summoned the Heretic Blade and slashed the gate. A crack split open, and a scream echoed from behind it. As he suspected, an expert lurked behind the gate, waiting to ambush him, and clearly hadn’t expected him to anticipate it.
Even if the blow didn’t kill the hidden expert, it left heavy wounds. Liu Wuxie used the opening to enter the fifth level. The other humans had already moved on; only a middle-aged man remained, missing his left arm.
“Liu Wuxie, I curse you to die a miserable death!” the middle-aged man roared.
“You’re a Grand Unity Sect disciple, aren’t you?” Liu Wuxie asked, walking toward him with an unreadable face. When they crossed paths on the fourth level, he had sensed faint murderous intent.
“So what if I am? You’re dead for entering the Divine Sun-Shooting Tower!” the middle-aged man spat.
“Tell me your Grand Unity Sect’s plans,” Liu Wuxie said, his divine sense burrowing into the man’s soul sea. The sect must have tailored an ambush against him, and Mu Qingshan had only led the first wave. As the saying goes: know yourself, know your enemy.
“You’ll never know,” the middle-aged man snarled, detonating his soul sea and blasting out Liu Wuxie’s divine sense. He chose to die rather than reveal the plan.
“Damn it.” Liu Wuxie swept his hand, devoured the corpse into the Sky Devouring Divine Cauldron, and pressed on.
He could only hope Vanya and the others would last until the fifth level, find a place to rest, and wait out the event. Without their interception of the demon clan and abyssal race, he would never have advanced so smoothly.
After he stepped into the fifth level, the oppression intensified again, making flight difficult. His strength compressed steadily, and even Ghost Eye shrank to a range of a thousand meters. If the fifth level pressed this hard, what would the sixth be like? He reckoned the Divine Sun-Shooting Tower would suppress even his cultivation.
Whooshing rose behind him as hordes of demons and abyssal devils flooded into the fifth level. The rakshasa clan and faceless clan poured in as well, no slower by comparison.
“Let’s go,” Liu Wuxie murmured. Relying on exquisite footwork, he moved no slower than the demon clan while he searched for the sixth-level gate.
Once they reached the sixth level, the gap would widen; no more than five thousand could set foot on the seventh. As for the ninth, only a few hundred could make it that far.
