Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist Chapter 1046: Crushing the Golden Carapace
Four thousand feet beneath the dark waves of the western sea, the forty-eight Profound Iron Array Anchors buried around the three-league rim of the Dead-Kelp Basin hummed with a low, bone-shaking vibration. Six overlapping curtains of silver-black spatial light locked together eight hundred feet overhead, severing the sunken valley from the surrounding ocean currents and trapping fifty thousand armored sea crabs inside a soundless iron cage.
At the center of the petrified black Iron-Kelp forest, Iron-Pincer Demon King planted his two tree-trunk-thick legs into the basalt seabed. The ten-foot-tall Early Grade 8 overlord of the Golden-Back Armored Crab Clan glared through the murky water at the tall human hovering thirty feet ahead of him.
"Three human Nascent Soul Grandmasters hiding in a barren western basin!" Iron-Pincer Demon King roared, his voice booming like grinding millstones through the sealed water. He hefted his twin eight-thousand-catty Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds off his armored shoulders, the curved crescent blades gleaming with thick yellow earth-qi. "Neither the Myriad Ocean Palace nor the Holy Nether Sea Organization possesses three unrecorded Nascent Soul cultivators! Who are you?!"
Wang Jian did not waste a single breath answering a dead beast.
Hovering thirty feet above the black silt in his gold-trimmed black robes, Wang Jian gripped the hilt of his Life-Bound Magic Treasure saber, Blood’s Thirst, and swept his left hand downward in a sharp command.
"Seal the flanks. Do not let a single Grade 6 or Grade 7 Demon Beast disturb my ring."
"As Master commands!" Su Binglan and Mu Lianhua answered in unison from the northern and southern ridges.
Before the twelve Demon Beast commanders flanking Iron-Pincer Demon King could charge forward to shield their sovereign, the water on both sides of the central aisle erupted into blinding elemental fury.
On the northern flank, Su Binglan drifted downward in her translucent glacial-silk robes. Behind her snow-white shoulders, the ???-inch Infant Soul inside her lower energy reservoir opened its tiny hands, projecting a three-hundred-yard domain of silver-white Grand Yin Ice Flame.
Two eighty-foot Grade 6 Three-Horned Flood Wyrms and a fifty-foot Grade 7 Iron-Claw Sea Scorpion lunged upward toward Su Binglan, their jaws and serrated pincers snapping shut to tear her delicate body in half.
Su Binglan did not dodge. She pointed her jade-white index finger toward the charging Grade 7 Iron-Claw Sea Scorpion and spoke a single cold word:
"Freeze."
Six ribbons of silver-white Grand Yin Ice Flame shot from her fingertip, striking the heavy black shell of the Grade 7 Iron-Claw Sea Scorpion mid-charge. There was no loud explosion. Instead, an absolute, bone-cracking chill penetrated straight through the scorpion’s Late-Stage Core Formation carapace. Within two heartbeats, a six-foot-thick layer of translucent blue abyssal ice encased the fifty-foot predator from its snapping mandibles down to its barbed tail, halting its momentum in mid-water and sending the frozen colossus crashing down onto the petrified kelp like a statue of blue glass!
Right behind Su Binglan, a streak of midnight-black silk flashed down from the upper basalt ledge.
Shen Mengqi—her cultivation now standing at the Peak Great Circle of the Late-Stage Core Formation Realm after digesting the Peak-Grade Rank 4 Yin-Marrow Tempering Pill—landed lightly atop the frozen head of the immobilized Grade 7 Iron-Claw Sea Scorpion. Holding her Life-Bound Magic Treasure, the Gale-Severing Frostblade, in both hands, Shen Mengqi channeled the freezing essence of her Nine-Turn Profound Yin Scripture into the narrow sword spine and drove the point straight down through the beast’s frozen eye socket!
CRACK—SHATTER!
The frost-imbued blade pierced three feet deep into the scorpion’s brain pan, shattering its frozen internal organs into icy gravel before the beast could even thaw.
At the same time, down on the southern flank of the basin, Mu Lianhua hovered above her expanded Myriad Beast Fire Cauldron. As the twelve volcanic floor vents beneath the crab army blasted pillars of blue Azure Sky Heart Phoenix Flame upward, four Grade 6 Saw-Fin Demon Rays and two Grade 7 Iron-Claw Sea Scorpions tried to flee toward the western canyon wall.
Perched on the basalt ledges above the western wall, however, stood Lin Wanyue, Shangguan Wan’er, Hua Yimei, Hua Ling’er, and Bing Yun.
"Nine-Heavens Sound-Severing Array: Phoenix Cry!"
Hua Yimei and Hua Ling’er sat side by side on a flat shelf of volcanic rock, plucking the dragon-bone bridges of the Crimson Phoenix Zither with synchronized four-handed fingerwork. Twelve invisible crescents of compressed sonic fire-qi tore downward through the high-pressure water, slicing directly into the soft gill-slits of the four Grade 6 Saw-Fin Demon Rays and sending them spinning blindly into the rising pillars of Mu Lianhua’s blue phoenix fire!
Beside the mother-and-daughter duo, City Lord Lin Wanyue unleashed a thirty-yard wave of her Crimson Sun-Marrow Flame, boiling the seawater into a scalding vortex that trapped the second Grade 7 Iron-Claw Sea Scorpion, while Elder Bing Yun and Shangguan Wan’er combined six flying ice-swords with the crushing spatial-iron threads of the Celestial-Tide Abacus to pin the beast’s eight legs to the seabed for Mu Lianhua’s cauldron to smash its skull from above.
At the center of the Dead-Kelp Basin, Iron-Pincer Demon King watched three of his prized Grade 6 and Grade 7 commanders perish in less than ten breaths.
His molten-brass eyes bulged with ferocious bloodlust. Realizing that the tall man in front of him was the central hub holding the forty-eight Profound Iron Array Anchors together, the Early Grade 8 Demon King decided to crush Wang Jian in a single overwhelming collision and tear open the spatial dome.
"Human arrogant enough to block This King’s path alone—become meat paste beneath my halberds!"
Iron-Pincer Demon King bent his ten-foot armored frame low. When his two golden crab-boots stomped against the basalt seabed, a ten-yard crater exploded beneath his heels, sending a thick shockwave of pulverized rock shooting outward.
Using the monstrous physical propulsion of a Grade 8 Demon Beast raised in ten thousand feet of abyssal pressure, Iron-Pincer Demon King crossed the thirty-foot gap in a single heartbeat! The displaced seawater in front of his broad golden chest compressed into a solid hydraulic wall that screamed like tearing iron.
With both thick, gold-plated arms bulging, the Demon King swung his twin eight-thousand-catty Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds inward from the left and right like a pair of colossal golden shears aimed squarely at Wang Jian’s waist!
In the heat of life-or-death combat, Wang Jian suppressed all stray thoughts. His entire awareness locked onto the closing angle of the two crescent blades, the swirling hydraulic current at his boots, and the explosive power coiled within his own flesh.
Having refined fifteen catties of Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Dragon Marrow into his muscles and Spirit Bones before ascending to the Initial Stage of the Nascent Soul Realm, Wang Jian did not use spatial teleportation to evade the first clash. He wanted to measure the raw physical limit of his newly forged Nascent Soul vessel against a Grade 8 armored overlord.
Wang Jian planted his left boot two inches into the black basalt floor, pivoting his hips forty-five degrees to bring his right shoulder forward.
Inside his lower energy reservoir, the three-inch black-gold Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant opened its mouth, exhaling a torrent of violet-black thunder and dark starlight straight into Wang Jian’s right arm. Gripping the long hilt of Blood’s Thirst with both hands, Wang Jian swung the heavy crimson saber outward in a full-powered horizontal cleave to meet the two incoming eight-thousand-catty halberds head-on!
KRA-CLANG-BOOOOOOM!
The physical collision of the dark crimson saber against the twin Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds detonated at the center of the basin like an underwater thunderclap!
A blinding ring of dark-gold and crimson sparks flashed through the dark water. So violent was the physical impact that all seawater within a twenty-foot sphere around the two combatants was blasted outward in an instant, creating a temporary, roaring vacuum pocket on the ocean floor before the crushing four-thousand-foot water pressure slammed back inward with a secondary concussive boom!
Beneath Wang Jian’s boots, jagged fissures three feet wide tore across the basalt bedrock for fifty yards in both directions.
Wang Jian’s arms vibrated from wrist to shoulder as sixteen thousand catties of dead weight—amplified tenfold by the Demon King’s Grade 8 brute strength—pressed against the spine of Blood’s Thirst. Along the blade of his Late-Grade Magic Treasure saber, three hairline nicks appeared in the crimson steel where the Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds bit into the edge, showing that a Core Formation-tier weapon could barely endure the full force of a Nascent Soul clash.
Yet across from him, Iron-Pincer Demon King’s molten-brass eyes widened in utter shock.
Not only had this lean-framed human cultivator failed to split in half under a sixteen-thousand-catty double swing that would have pulverized an ordinary Early-Stage Nascent Soul elder, Wang Jian’s boots had not slid back a single inch across the cracked stone! Worse still, a searing jolt of violet-black thunder and devouring demonic essence had jumped from the crimson saber straight across the golden halberd shafts, numbing the inner joints of the Demon King’s thumbs!
"A human body refiner whose flesh matches a Grade 8 flood-dragon?!" Iron-Pincer Demon King snarled, feeling a flicker of instinctual dread beneath his golden shell.
Without waiting for the turbulent water between them to settle, the Demon King wrenched his left pincer-halberd upward to hook Wang Jian’s saber blade out of alignment, while driving his right pincer-halberd forward like a battering ram aimed straight at Wang Jian’s throat!
Wang Jian did not fight the upward hook. Loosening his left hand from the hilt of Blood’s Thirst, he let the saber pivot smoothly around the Demon King’s left halberd blade, sliding the crimson steel down the golden shaft to slice toward the beast’s armored knuckles.
At the same instant, Wang Jian summoned the seven-foot-tall Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion into his left hand and slammed the forty-nine-folded Star-Core Iron shield sideways into the thrusting point of the right pincer-halberd!
CLANG!
The eight-thousand-catty halberd point skidded across the slanted face of the Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion in a shower of orange sparks, deflected two feet wide of Wang Jian’s right ear.
Stepping straight inside the wide reach of the twin halberds, Wang Jian dropped his right shoulder and drove his right elbow—sheathed in spinning black-gold Stellar Demonic Qi—squarely into the center of Iron-Pincer Demon King’s three-inch-thick golden chest plate!
"Stellar Demonic Fist: Crushing Star!"
THUD-CRACK!
The dull, bone-jarring impact echoed like a siege ram striking a city gate.
The natural earth-and-water defensive runes across Iron-Pincer Demon King’s golden breastplate flared blindingly yellow to disperse the blow. Even so, the sheer physical momentum of Wang Jian’s dragon-marrow-tempered frame lifted the ten-foot, ten-ton Demon King completely off his feet, sending him hurtling forty yards backward through the petrified Iron-Kelp forest!
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
Thirty calcified stalks of black Iron-Kelp as thick as temple pillars snapped like dry reeds as Iron-Pincer Demon King’s armored back plowed through the forest before he dug both golden heels into the silt to halt his slide.
A thin trickle of viscous, golden-blue crab blood leaked from the corner of the Demon King’s mandibles. Looking down at the center of his three-inch-thick golden breastplate, he saw a shallow, fist-sized depression dented into the immortal-gold chitin, right over the vertical sternal seam where his shell plates joined together.
"You cracked my outer molt?!" Iron-Pincer Demon King’s roar shook the silt off the surrounding cliffs.
Realizing that close-quarters grappling against this monstrous human was a losing gamble, the Early Grade 8 Demon King slammed the butts of both Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds into the seabed and opened his armored jaws wide.
"Golden-Back Ancestral Art: Crushing Tide of the Deep Earth!"
From deep within the Demon King’s chest cavity, a fist-sized sphere of blinding, metallic dark-gold light—his Grade 8 Demon Core, tempered by eight centuries of devouring deep-sea metal veins—flew out of his mouth and hovered two feet above his brow!
As the Grade 8 Demon Core spun rapidly in the water, a terrifying gravitational pull radiated across the center of the basin. Millions of tons of black basalt boulders, snapped Iron-Kelp trunks, and heavy iron-sand rose off the seabed, condensing around the two Deep-Gold Pincer Halberds as the Demon King swung them in a crosswise slash.
Two hundred-foot-long crescent waves of hyper-compressed golden earth-qi and whirling iron boulders tore through the water at blinding speed, crossing like an inescapable ’X’ that tore a ten-foot-deep trench across the basalt floor as it hurtled toward Wang Jian!
Seeing the full might of a Grade 8 Demon Core unleashed in a confined space, Wang Jian knew that blocking the cross-wave passively would waste thirty percent of his spiritual reserves.
Instead of raising his shield, Wang Jian took half a step forward—and the three-inch Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant inside his lower energy reservoir folded its tiny hands into a spatial seal.
SWISH.
Wang Jian’s physical body blurred into a faint afterimage of dark starlight just half a breath before the hundred-foot golden cross-wave struck his spot!
BOOOOOOM!
The cross-wave tore through the empty water where Wang Jian had stood, slamming into the eastern basalt cliff wall three hundred yards behind him and carving a fifty-foot-deep scar into the mountain rock—only to be halted and absorbed by the shimmering silver-black curtain of the forty-eight Profound Iron Array Anchors.
At that exact split-second, forty yards away, the water directly above and behind Iron-Pincer Demon King’s left shoulder rippled silently.
Through Nascent Soul instantaneous spatial shifting, Wang Jian stepped straight out of the spatial fold only six feet behind the Demon King’s back—right while the beast’s arms were still extended wide from unleashing the cross-wave and his Grade 8 Demon Core was still hovering outside his mouth above his brow!
Iron-Pincer Demon King’s bronze antennae twitched violently as his instincts screamed of death behind him. He tried to retract his floating Grade 8 Demon Core back down his throat and swing his right Deep-Gold Pincer Halberd backward in a blind backhand sweep.
Wang Jian was faster.
Before the Grade 8 Demon Core could drop six inches toward the beast’s open mouth, Wang Jian’s left hand—holding the heavy Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion—slammed down from above like a falling iron sky, wedging the bottom edge of the seven-foot Star-Core Iron shield directly between the hovering Demon Core and the top of the Demon King’s skull!
CLANG!
Cut off from recalling his core, Iron-Pincer Demon King swung his eight-thousand-catty right pincer-halberd upward at Wang Jian’s ribs with desperate savagery.
Wang Jian gripped Blood’s Thirst in his right hand, pouring a compressed, boiling river of violet-black thunder and Stellar Demonic Qi into the crimson saber until the entire blade turned pitch-black with a razor-thin edge of blinding purple lightning.
"Stellar Demonic Saber: Severing the Abyss!"
Wang Jian brought Blood’s Thirst crashing down at a steep diagonal angle, striking not the thickest curve of the pincer blade, but the exact wrist-socket joint where the crescent pincer met the iron shaft of the halberd!
KRA-SHING—SNAP!
Under the combined weight of Wang Jian’s dragon-marrow strength, the devouring corrosion of his Stellar Demonic Qi, and the residual Nine-Nine Heavenly Thunder infused into his strike, the wrist-socket of the eight-thousand-catty Deep-Gold Pincer Halberd sheared cleanly in half!
At the same time, the overstrained blade of Blood’s Thirst finally reached its Core Formation structural limit—the upper six inches of the crimson saber snapped off in a shower of red fragments, leaving a jagged, three-foot broken blade in Wang Jian’s hand.
Yet the battle was already decided.
As his life-bound right pincer-halberd broke in two, Iron-Pincer Demon King suffered a violent spiritual backlash, spitting a mouthful of golden blood as his stance staggered open for a single breath.
Wang Jian did not hesitate. Dropping the broken hilt of Blood’s Thirst back into his scabbard, he used his left arm to hold the Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion pinned down atop the beast’s horned head, planted his right boot squarely against the Demon King’s left knee joint to lock him in place, and thrust his bare, right hand—wreathed in a roaring gauntlet of black-gold starlight and violet lightning—straight into the dented sternal seam at the center of Iron-Pincer Demon King’s golden chest plate!
"RIIIIP!"
CRACK-CRUNCH!
Like five talons forged from divine star-iron, Wang Jian’s bare fingers punched straight through the cracked three-inch-thick golden chitin at the chest seam!
Hot, pressurized golden-blue Grade 8 crab blood sprayed across Wang Jian’s bare forearm and black robes. Ignoring the razor-sharp edges of the fractured shell scraping against his wrist bones, Wang Jian hooked his fingers around the left edge of the broken sternal plate and wrenched outward with ten thousand catties of raw physical torque—tearing a foot-wide hole open in the center of the Demon King’s chest cavity!
"GAAAAAH! NO—!" Iron-Pincer Demon King shrieked in mortal terror, dropping his left halberd and clapping both massive golden claws toward Wang Jian’s head to crush his skull.
Before the claws could close within a foot of Wang Jian’s temples, Wang Jian’s left hand released the shield and shot upward, catching the hovering, fist-sized Grade 8 Demon Core above the beast’s brow in an inescapable five-layered prison of Stellar Demonic Qi, while his right hand buried inside the beast’s torn chest cavity clamped shut around the pulsing, basketball-sized ancestral heart and yanked it straight out through the shattered golden shell!
SPLAT!
With his ancestral heart torn from his chest and his Grade 8 Demon Core locked inside Wang Jian’s left palm, Iron-Pincer Demon King’s massive golden claws froze two inches away from Wang Jian’s shoulders.
The molten-brass fire in the ten-foot Demon King’s eyes flickered twice and went out. Slowly, like a toppled golden statue, the massive Early Grade 8 carcass tipped backward and crashed into the black silt of the Dead-Kelp Basin with a dull, heavy thud.
Across the northern and southern flanks of the three-league basin, the last of the twelve Grade 6