Inside Tusita Palace, the Court Herald knelt dumbly, terrified as he watched the Heavenly Dao Stone behind Lord Lao continue to collapse, and watched Lord Lao carefully writing on a bamboo slip.
During this, rumbling explosions kept echoing up from the lower realms, making the Court Herald even more uneasy.
A few dry coughs, a few drops of fresh blood splattered onto the bamboo slip.
The Court Herald's eyes twitched violently; he lay prostrate on the ground, head barely raised, not daring to move at all.
Lord Lao, the greatest in the Three Realms—his cultivation is truly ruined. That demon monkey wasn't lying...
To this Court Herald, the shock of this event was no less than the demon monkey triggering a Heavenly Tribulation at South Heaven Gate.
After a moment, Lord Lao stamped his seal on the bamboo slip, personally rolled it up, and pushed it toward the Court Herald.
"This is...?"
"Please deliver this to His Majesty. Tell him that my cultivation has been broken, and I fear I can no longer be of much help."
The Court Herald wanted to say something more, but saw Lord Lao cough again, a thread of blood seeping through his fingers and dripping down.
He could only blink dumbly a few times, nod, and bow out of the hall with the bamboo slip in hand.
Zhenyuan had simply sat motionless to the side the whole time.
......
Blossom Mountain battlefield.
A monk was cleaved in midair by the massive forearm of a mantis demon, only for that mantis demon to have its chest torn open by another monk moments later.
The Nine-Headed Wyrm, transformed into a giant beast, circled the sky spewing flames.
The Handsome Monkey King rolled and leapt among the monks with his iron staff, and even King Bullhorn had charged to the very front lines.
With more and more demon army elites entering the fray, the tide of battle gradually tilted toward the demons. Yet just as everyone thought victory was assured, the fighting suddenly became deadlocked in a strange stalemate.
From that gorge, more and more monks appeared—seemingly endless—yet they never all entered the battlefield at once.
The flagship was brought to the very front; blood splattered at its feet as Shortbeak stood motionless, gazing up at the chaos in the sky.
"Just how many of them have come? Have the scouts returned?"
"No. We've completely lost contact with them now."
"Is it a trick? Or is it that, like us, they can't commit all their forces at once?" Shortbeak's eyes twitched. "It seems... it's not that simple, is it?"
He turned his face and looked over at the flustered Skylar Loft.
Batch after batch of demon troops swiftly joined the battle, empowered by Skylar Loft's spells.
Yet from the gorge on the other side, batch after batch of monks kept joining the fight, maintaining the whole war at a delicate balance.
Suddenly, two monks in yellow robes appeared on the battlefield, their foreheads bulging and bodies radiating brilliant golden light. They attacked the Nine-Headed Wyrm from front and back, fighting barehanded, and for a moment, the Nine-Headed Wyrm was forced onto the defensive.
"Who are those two?" Shortbeak asked, pointing at the monks.
Skylar Loft wiped sweat from his forehead and answered without turning, "That's the Dragonbreaker Saint and the Tigerscourge Saint."
Hearing this, Shortbeak's heart instantly sank halfway.