Word Count: 3,057
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The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear stared fixedly at Zhao Xuanzhen.
Sensing the explosive surge in his aura, a bloodthirsty gleam surfaced deep within its beast eyes.
It scraped its giant claws against each other, producing a piercing shriek as terrifying pressure flooded outward.
It was a show of force, as though declaring before a human that it alone was the sovereign of this forest!
And it truly possessed the bearing of a king.
The cultivation limit for spirit beasts within the Elementary Spirit Ascension Platform was 1,000 years, yet the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear was a super spirit beast standing at the pinnacle of the Douluo Continent.
Its attack, defense, strength, and speed were all nearly flawless, allowing it to crush ordinary spirit beasts in direct combat.
Among the Ten Great Beasts of the past, there had even been a Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear King bold enough to challenge Beast God Di Tian himself!
Zhao Xuanzhen paid that pressure no mind at all.
His third spirit ring shone brilliantly, twin pale flames burning in his pupils.
Spirit power surged through him, making every strand of hair stand on end.
White radiance streamed from the tips, dyeing the air around him, while his body became limpid and translucent.
His bones, muscles, and blood all seemed to shine with a jade-like, half-transparent luster.
In the Path of Wuji state, Zhao Xuanzhen seemed to have undergone a sublimation.
Heaven, earth, and self became one, and the power raging within him felt inexhaustible, as if it would never reach a limit.
“Dui Trigram, Glazed Glass.”
Both arms and hands were sheathed in black glazed sheen that reflected a cold, hard light beneath the sun.
At the same time, his first spirit ring flared, and currents of black and white attached themselves to his fists and palms.
Eight Trigrams Qimen layered over Qi Follows the Heart’s Will!
Both abilities were pushed to their absolute limit.
This was a side of Zhao Xuanzhen he had never shown before, because no previous opponent had been worthy of it.
But this extraordinarily special Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear was!
“Qian Trigram, Displacement!”
Space flickered, and Zhao Xuanzhen materialized in an instant directly before the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear.
Its amber beast eyes widened slightly.
It clearly had not expected a human to possess spatial ability.
His appearance was too sudden for the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear to dodge, but this spirit beast overlord had never intended to dodge in the first place.
Dodging was the cowardice of the weak.
Its dark-gold terror claw came crashing down with unstoppable sharpness!
Relying on the hardness of Dui Trigram, Glazed Glass and the protection of the Yin-Yang Qi, Zhao Xuanzhen drew out force as fine as silk.
His Tai Chi Yin Hand adhered to the dark-gold claw and smoothly diverted it aside.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear’s momentum faltered, and astonishment flashed across its bear face at the redirected force.
Zhao Xuanzhen had already closed the distance.
The force of his body-check penetrated straight into the beast’s chest, and in the same breath his clinging, yielding Yin Hand transformed into a fierce, overbearing Yang Hand.
A shock palm slammed toward its heart!
“ROAR—”
The mortal threat awakened the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear’s survival instincts on the spot.
Dark-gold radiance burst from its fur, and the shock palm landed squarely upon it.
Though it was flesh striking flesh, the forest rang with the explosive clash of metal on metal!
With a furious roar, the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear raised the pair of giant claws that were both its signature and its most ferocious weapons.
Dark-gold phantoms over five meters long descended from above, carving several cracks through the air!
Innate Spirit Skill, Dark Gold Terror Claw!
Trees, grass, earth, everything was ripped apart by those terrifying dark-gold projections.
This was the domineering skill that had made the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear clan famous for tearing dragons apart with their bare claws!
Zhao Xuanzhen used Eight Trigrams Qimen’s Gen Trigram to raise barriers of stone.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear seized that opening and retreated.
For a spirit beast overlord that reveled in close combat, choosing to open distance from a human was unprecedented.
Although it had blocked the shock palm, the violent pain wringing its heart still surged through its nerves and into its brain.
Cold sweat broke out across the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear as regret rose within it.
It had underestimated this human Spirit Master from the very start and had nearly paid the price of being killed in an instant!
This was not the first time the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear had encountered humans.
But which of them had not screamed and fled the moment they saw it?
Even the braver Spirit Masters would, at most, attack from a safe distance with ranged spirit skills.
A freak like Zhao Xuanzhen, one who teleported straight into its face and launched a lethal close-quarters assault on its vital points the very next second, was a first in the bear’s entire life!
Man and beast locked eyes.
The human was cold and severe.
The giant bear was savage and bloodthirsty.
After a single exchange, both had already grasped the other’s offensive and defensive strength.
What came next was the second round, fought with nothing held back, as two figures crashed together once more!
On the other side, Na Er and the Evileye Tyrant had also entered a life-and-death struggle.
The Evileye Tyrant and the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear were vastly different species.
The latter’s entire race was metal-attributed, while the former possessed the possibility of multiple attributes.
Yet the Evil Emperor, who had ranked above the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear King on the continent’s Great Beast list, had been born with only a single attribute: spiritual!
The Evileye Tyrant fighting Na Er at this moment had four tentacles, and both the tentacles and its giant main eye were silver-white.
That meant it possessed only the spiritual attribute.
A silver dragon roared.
The evil eye shrieked.
Storms of spirit power and spiritual power ravaged the forest of the Spirit Ascension Platform.
The air twisted hysterically, and everything seemed to blur into unreality.
Plants within range withered at an astonishing rate, their life structures mutating under that horrifying spiritual assault!
The Evileye Tyrant’s expression turned even more ferocious as its spiritual fluctuations intensified.
All four tentacles spread wide, each one flashing with intense silver light.
As a spiritual-attribute spirit beast, the Evileye Tyrant craved high-quality spiritual power.
Staring at Na Er with her Silver Dragon Spear in hand, its eye overflowed with greed it could not suppress.
A vague intuition told it that if it could swallow Na Er’s spiritual power in one gulp, it would surely break free of its bloodline’s shackles and escape this prison-like Spirit Ascension Platform!
Driven by that greed, the Evileye Tyrant brought out one hundred and twenty percent of its fighting strength.
A beam of silver light blasted from its giant eye, and space trembled wherever it passed!
Evileye Gaze.
This was the innate spirit skill of the Evileye clan, one of the most terrifying offensive abilities of the spiritual attribute.
Its power and effects varied depending on the individual Evileye.
The silver path of annihilation erased everything before it.
Na Er had no choice but to avoid its edge for the moment.
She activated the amplification of her second spirit skill, Silver Dragon’s Fury, and dodged to the side.
“Spatial power… is that something you should be able to comprehend at your age?!”
Na Er recognized the familiar space attribute at once and accused the Evileye Tyrant of cheating!
Even a purely spiritual Evileye Tyrant should not have been able to comprehend spatial power at the 1,000-year cultivation level.
That meant the source of this Evileye Tyrant’s bloodline had to be an extraordinary existence, one that allowed its descendants to stand on the shoulders of giants and touch the spatial attribute!
“If you’re not an Evil Emperor descendant, I’ll eat my spear!” Na Er ground out through gritted teeth.
After losing the protection of the Evileye Tyrant Emperor, the state of the Evildemon Forest had become far worse than that of the Star Dou Forest.
Following some ‘friendly exchanges’ between humans and the Evileye Tyrants, the entire race had relocated into the Spirit Pagoda, and the Evil Emperor’s sons, grandsons, and a great many other blood descendants had become the most popular Spirit Souls among spiritual-attribute Spirit Masters!
“Thorn Dragon!”
Zhao Xuanzhen was already a three-ringed Spirit Elder, but Na Er was only a two-ringed Spirit Grand Master.
She still needed the assistance of her Spirit Soul to face an Evil Emperor descendant that had comprehended the spatial attribute.
“Roar, roar, roar! (Your valiant dragon is here!)”
The Thorn Dragon charged out in a frenzy of excitement.
Every time Na Er called it to battle, it became abnormally enthusiastic, as though showing off before its ancestor while frantically accumulating favor and military merit!
Now that its cultivation had broken past 1,000 years, the silver along the Thorn Dragon’s spine had become even more dazzling.
For reasons unknown, its bloodline aura had also grown far stronger than others of its kind.
According to Heavenly Phoenix Douluo Leng Yaozhu’s judgment, Na Er’s Thorn Dragon appeared to be evolving from a lesser dragon toward a true dragon!
Who, after all, would become the next Spatial Dragon King?
So difficult to guess!
The physical advantages of dragonkind were something spiritual-type spirit beasts could only dream of.
On top of that, its cultivation exceeded this barely 1,000-year-old Evileye Tyrant by a considerable margin.
The Thorn Dragon released spatial element to shield its body and forcibly charged through the attacks toward the Evileye Tyrant!
To share its master’s burden, it would not hesitate!
The clash between monstrous human Spirit Masters and top-tier spirit beast bloodlines reached a white-hot peak on both battlefields.
On Zhao Xuanzhen and the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear’s battlefield, not a single intact patch remained in the once-lush forest.
It looked as though a tornado had swept through, destroying everything in a fit of wrath.
The earth was covered in scars.
Stone pythons broken into several sections and twisted claw marks torn through the land all bore witness to the savagery and brutality of the two perpetrators.
Unspeakable violence poured down like a waterfall.
Every scar seeped with killing intent that would not rest until one side perished, enough to show just how cruel the battle here had been.
A Qimen formation of Earth Plate Daoist Art blossomed beneath Zhao Xuanzhen’s feet.
The instant his figure vanished, the spot where he had stood was crushed to dust by five dark-gold claw marks.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear came crashing down with the force of an entire mountain, its speed completely at odds with the usual impression of bear-type spirit beasts.
Icy spikes materialized in the air without warning.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear did not slow at all.
Its terror claws swept across and shattered the spikes, and the flying shards were steamed into white mist by its blood qi before they could even touch its fur.
Then blazing fire erupted.
The giant bear roared in pain amid crimson flames as dark-gold light twisted and flowed across its body like something alive, struggling with all its might to extinguish the Li Trigram fire.
The flames had scorched its body black.
Savage wounds crisscrossed its hide, some so deep that bone was visible, yet the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear had long since stopped caring about its injuries.
It opened a path with its dark-gold terror claws and charged fearlessly forward, wanting only to tear the human before it into pieces!
Its pair of terror claws crossed into an ‘X’ shape.
The air peeled apart like fragile silk.
Reflected in Zhao Xuanzhen’s eyes was a maddened spirit beast.
Four earthen walls rose from the ground to trap the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear, and then the Eight Trigrams Qimen bloomed with a deep-blue glow.
“Qian Trigram, Upholding Brightness.”
Everything nearby was dyed the same hue.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear’s ferocious murderous aura vanished, replaced by sheer terror in its beast eyes.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear tried to struggle, only to discover that no matter what it did, it could not move.
Its mind remained clear, but its motions had become sluggish, its body frozen in place.
A gale carried Zhao Xuanzhen above the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear.
Two figures overlapped vertically.
Realizing its enemy was directly overhead, the bear raised its head bit by bit, as though trapped inside an old film played frame by frame.
Gathering every last ounce of spirit power in its body, the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear finally caught sight of Zhao Xuanzhen.
A blood-stained ice blade spun nimbly between his fingers.
Droplets of blood gathered at its edge, splashed downward, and traced an irregular half-arc through the air.
Zhao Xuanzhen’s white hair slowly turned black again.
His glazed body began to disintegrate from the fingertips inward.
In the end, even his Martial Spirit and spirit rings withdrew back into his body.
The world resumed its normal flow.
The Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear felt that it could move freely again and threw back its head with a triumphant roar that shook the forest and spread far into the distance.
In the very next instant, pain exploded.
Along the thick, solid nape above its spine, a fine line of blood slowly widened.
Blood seeped through the surface, then burst forth like a spring, dyeing the dark-gold fur crimson.
Its massive head hit the ground with a heavy, muffled thud.
Even in its last lingering gaze, the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear’s eyes were still filled with brutality.
Silence fell over everything.
When a spirit beast died in the Spirit Ascension Platform, it normally granted spiritual energy feedback equal to one-tenth of its cultivation.
Yet this 1,000-year Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear produced no such spiritual energy at all.
Its corpse shattered into specks of light and vanished, leaving behind two dark-gold bones.
They looked like human hands, one left and one right, perfectly corresponding to the left and right palms.
Each had five distinct fingers.
The palms were broad and heavy, the fingertips long and sharp, and dark-gold cloud patterns flowed across their surfaces.
Dark Gold Terror Claw, left and right palm bones!
In the conventional sense, spirit bones came in six major categories: torso, skull, and the four limbs.
Any spirit bone outside those categories was classified as an External Spirit Bone!
Compared to ordinary spirit bones, External Spirit Bones possessed two great advantages.
The first was that they continued to grow stronger alongside the host’s cultivation.
If the host advanced to Super Douluo or even Limit Douluo, an External Spirit Bone’s spirit skill could rival that of a Great Beast spirit bone.
The second was that after perfectly fusing with its host, an External Spirit Bone would remain with that host forever.
Once the host perished, it would automatically dissipate as well.
For a spirit beast to drop two spirit bones at once was incredibly rare.
In Zhao Xuanzhen’s memory, the only comparable examples were Rakshasa God Bibi Dong’s Death Spider Emperor left and right arm bones, and Tang Wulin’s future Evil Spirit Orca King left and right leg bones.
For this 1,000-year Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear to produce two External Spirit Bones was rarer still, the very best among the best.
There might not be a second case like it in the entire Spirit Pagoda.
Left and right palm bones from the same Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear would undoubtedly be far more compatible and harmonious than two separate palm bones from different sources!
By absorbing the Dark Gold Terror Claw left and right palm bones, Zhao Xuanzhen would gain far more than a single powerful spirit skill.
His physical constitution, the strength of his hands, and every strike of his Tai Chi from now on would all increase tremendously!
‘Zhao Xuanzhen’s done already.
Time to pick up the pace…’
Na Er had never been willing to fall behind anyone.
The moment she saw Zhao Xuanzhen finish off the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear, sharp light burst from her silver eyes.
Her first and second spirit rings lit up.
Her fingers brushed across the scale-patterned dragon motifs winding along the spear shaft, and those silver-white scales began to glow.
The Silver Dragon Spear spun in her palm, its blade carving fine cracks through the air like shattered mirrors, reflecting the Evileye Tyrant’s shock.
Her silver eyes narrowed into vertical slits.
Under the fierce stimulation of her bloodline, Na Er’s pupils transformed into the characteristic dragon pupils of the dragon race.
The Evileye Tyrant sensed danger and let out a high-frequency shriek from its giant eye, but the Thorn Dragon was no pushover.
The spatial powers of the two spirit beasts ground against each other head-on.
Its faith in fighting for its queen was unwavering.
The loyal dragon retainer locked the Evileye Tyrant down with everything it had!
Na Er leaped skyward.
Taking the spear tip as the point of origin, space within a five-meter radius caved inward into a bowl-like depression.
Silver Dragon Slash carved crystal-like fissures through space, and with a single movement of her spear, every fissure contracted at once.
“SCREEECH—”
The Silver Dragon Spear pierced straight into the core of the giant eye.
The Evileye Tyrant released an earthshaking scream.
A crisp sound like shattering glass seemed to ring through the forest as crack after crack burst across the pupil and silver streams of energy sprayed out unceasingly.
The spiritual pressure dispersed in an instant.
All four tentacles, flailing wildly just a moment ago, froze.
Like the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear before it, the Evileye Tyrant collapsed and disintegrated, leaving behind a silver-white eyeball about the size of a palm, glittering with strange light.
Evileye Tyrant’s External Spirit Bone, Evil Eye!
Leng Yaozhu’s gift: three External Spirit Bones!