Chapter 53: On-Site Cheating (Patreon)

Feixiao gritted her teeth, the icy-blue yao power still flickering at her fingertips, but Tingyun seized her by the wrist.

"Sister Feixiao, the Benefactor is right," Tingyun said, her voice pitched very low. "You're the Head of Tushan now. We can't do without your strength in the great battle ahead."

Hearing that, Feixiao had no choice but to pull her power back, still bitter about it.

Afterward, to keep the Bitter Love Tree from causing any more harm, Gusttave simply tore it out by the roots and tucked it into his Qiankun Pouch to carry with him.

Then he headed Beyond the Heavens, where he saw the spatial passage he had sealed with his own hands slowly being torn apart.

Gusttave made no move to stop the seal from tearing. He knew running away solved nothing. Only by wiping the enemy out completely could the problem be settled.

As Gusttave arrived, Phantylia spoke from the far side of the passage: "I never thought a lowly pawn like you would drag me into this world. But it only worked in my favor. Every last bit of fortune you carry will fall into my hands!

"If you submit and let me control you, I might just be merciful enough to spare your life!"

Hearing Phantylia's words, Gusttave was a little surprised.

From her tone, she had probably recovered her memories of the outside world.

But Gusttave's expression returned to normal almost at once.

"This world has no Paths. Without the blessing of Path power, you're nothing more than a Sui Yang, not the dreaded Emanator of Destruction."

When he finished, Gusttave pushed her further: "I'll give you one chance. Kneel and be my dog. Otherwise, no one in heaven or earth can save you!"

"How dare you!"

Phantylia's face twisted instantly with venom and madness. Purple-black energy surged out from her palm.

The space around them was seared with dense cracks by that power, and the seal, already on the verge of collapse, let out a crisp sound like shattering glass under her aura.

Gusttave showed no weakness either. He answered at once with an even more overwhelming force.

Even without Traits or the power of Heaven and Earth, Gusttave could now truly shatter stars. His strength far surpassed Monkey Three at his peak.

The aliens from Beyond the Heavens were powerful, yet they were deeply wary of Monkey Three. That showed that however strong they were, they had their limits.

Even now, with them seemingly devoured by Phantylia and their power merged into one, she was no more than Gusttave's equal.

That was exactly why Gusttave wasn't afraid of Phantylia.

If Phantylia still held the power of an Emanator of Destruction, Gusttave would have been truly wary. Even if Phantylia was a weakling among the Annihilation Dominators, she was still an Emanator of Destruction.

The nature of the Path of Destruction meant that Emanators of Destruction were renowned for their destructive power.

Even a Calamity Vanguard could wipe out stars. Put that way, Phantylia's strength was stellar-class, and hypernova-class at the very least.

But without the blessing of the Path of Destruction, Phantylia's power amounted, at best, to the fused might of the aliens from Beyond the Heavens. At the same magnitude, Gusttave had nothing to fear from her.

After all, the "Aliens' Strictest Father" was no pushover.

Under the force of their clash, the spatial rift tore wide open.

A deathly still, purple-black light poured out of the crack like rotten fruit juice, flowing thick and sticky through the starry sky.

Wrapped inside that light was a human figure.

Phantylia.

Yet she no longer quite looked like Phantylia.

She still had that same bewitching figure, her dark-patterned gown drifting eerily in the vacuum. But layer upon layer of overlapping, uncanny halos clung to her body, like the faces of countless living beings flattened and smeared together.

With every step she took, a flower woven from screams bloomed beneath her feet.

After looking her up and down, Gusttave said: "I never expected they'd be so generous. To invade this world, they let you devour them of their own free will."

From what he had just observed, Gusttave noticed that the power inside Phantylia showed no sign of rejection. That meant they had been devoured willingly.

He didn't know what method Phantylia had used to beguile them, but that was the fact of the matter.

Phantylia chuckled as she explained: "They thought they could seize my body and control me. Little did they know that was just the bait I'd cast."

After going Beyond the Heavens, Phantylia, an out-of-Loop being transformed from an in-Loop one, was instantly locked onto by the powers there.

Because the spatial passage was sealed, and because the other world rejected them, they could not truly enter this world.

Phantylia's arrival now gave them a chance.

She had spatial abilities. With enough power, she could break the passage open. And as a native creature, she wouldn't easily be rejected by that world.

So they planned to use their own nature to take control of Phantylia and use her to sneak into this world.

After some wrangling, they chose to enter Phantylia's body together and sneak into this world as one.

That played right into Phantylia's scheme.

She used her Sui Yang nature to secretly take control of these powers from Beyond the Heavens and turn every one of them into her own strength.

They thought they had Phantylia in their grasp, never realizing she had been playing them all along.

"It wasn't for nothing that I spent so much time beguiling them. The power they offered truly is formidable." Phantylia's red lips curved into a playful arc. Her voice was lazy and silky, yet laced with a chill that made the spine go numb.

"So, what will it be? Submit or resist? The terms I offered earlier still stand."

"Finished?" He raised his eyes, his gaze sweeping over the chaotic mass of energy around her. "Have you forgotten who chased you all over the world like a stray dog, until all you could do was run Beyond the Heavens with your tail between your legs?"

Phantylia's face twisted with bitter hatred. She had never endured such mockery. She roared in fury, and the purple-black energy around her swept toward Gusttave like a tidal wave.

Wherever it passed, even the vacuum was seared with jet-black cracks, as if the whole starry sky were about to be torn to pieces by that force.

"Die for me!"

But Gusttave remained where he stood, merely raising one hand slowly.

There was no flashy technique, and no earth-shaking battle cry (the kind that earns money). A faint layer of golden light rose from his palm. It looked gentle, yet it was like an unbreakable dam. No matter how that world-ending tide of energy crashed against it, it could not advance a single inch.

[Screwllum: Analysis: The total destructive power of this energy mass is sufficient to destroy a medium-sized planet, yet the target blocked it entirely with one hand, with no energy leakage whatsoever. Conclusion: The target individual's strength is suspected to have reached Emanator-class.]

[Mobius: Emanator-class…]

Reading Screwllum's conclusion, Mobius quietly made a note of it.

Judging from what Gusttave had said earlier, people like Screwllum were probably from beyond the sun, with an extremely advanced level of technology.

They seemed to have formed a highly developed interstellar society.

And the "Emanator-class" they spoke of might be some kind of standard for rating combat power.

Judging from how Gusttave and Phantylia had performed, the baseline for Emanator-class seemed to be the ability to destroy a planet.