Villain: Manipulating the Heroines into hating the Protagonist Chapter 1056: Shearing the Manta’s Wings

Above the petrified red coral forests of the Blood-Coral Marsh, the pale violet sky of the Ancient Void-Sea Ruin groaned under the sudden collision of four overlapping Nascent Soul domains.

Within a five-hundred-yard radius of the central coral island, the boiling pools of crimson mud froze into solid slabs of jagged blue ice on the western half while erupting into roaring pillars of deep-blue phoenix fire on the eastern half. Caught at the center of that suffocating four-fold pressure, the twelve humanized Grade 7 Demon Beast Commanders staggered to their knees across the lower coral shelves, blood leaking from the gill-slits along their necks as their Late-Stage Core Formation auras were crushed flat against the stone.

Thirty feet above the tallest red coral spire, Black-Fin Demon King—the Early Grade 8 overlord of the Abyssal Manta Clan—had not even completed the first downward flap of his wide, black flesh-mantle when the air ten feet in front of his chest and ten feet behind his spine rippled simultaneously.

Wang Jian stepped out of the forward spatial fold, his gold-trimmed black robes whipping in the displaced wind as both hands gripped the long hilt of his four-foot, nine-thousand-catty black-gold saber, Blood’s Thirst. Set into the heavy dragon-head guard of the blade, the Early Grade 8 Demon Core of Iron-Pincer Demon King blazed like a miniature dark sun, wrapping the four-inch-wide edge in a three-foot halo of devouring black-gold starlight.

At the exact same breath behind Black-Fin Demon King’s back, Hong Lin—the Early Grade 8 Scarlet Flood-Serpent Matriarch—emerged from the rear spatial fold. Her waist-length magma-red hair billowed around her bare, scale-marked shoulders and the massive, heavy globes of her breasts straining against her crimson sea-silk battle wrap. Five percent of the ruby scales along her forearms now gleamed with pure golden flood-dragon light, and a fifty-foot ribbon of boiling golden-scarlet serpent fire coiled from her clawed hands to cut off the upper sky.

In the heat of life-or-death combat, none of the three Nascent-Soul-tier combatants wasted breath on inner thoughts or boasting.

Black-Fin Demon King’s cold yellow fish-eyes dilated with desperate survival instinct. Trapped between Wang Jian’s descending saber in front and Hong Lin’s golden-scarlet serpent fire behind, the Early Grade 8 Abyssal Manta King did not try to fly upward into Hong Lin’s net. Instead, his whip-thin torso flattened like a sheet of dark iron, and the wide, cape-like black manta wings attached to his arms and ribs snapped outward to a twenty-foot wingspan!

"Abyssal Manta Bloodline Art: Shadow-Slicing Gale!"

With a sharp, whistling lash that tore two hairline cracks in the surrounding air, Black-Fin Demon King spun horizontally like a giant black throwing star. The outer cartilage edges of his twenty-foot manta wings—hardened by seven centuries of deep-trench currents and sharper than High-Grade Magic Treasure blades—slashed simultaneously toward Wang Jian’s waist in front and Hong Lin’s neck in the rear, while from the base of his spine whipped a twelve-foot, barbed black tail that fired a volley of thirty poisonous bone-needles straight at Wang Jian’s eyes!

Wang Jian did not pull back his saber swing to defend his face.

Keeping both hands locked on the hilt of Blood’s Thirst as he drove the nine-thousand-catty blade downward at a forty-five-degree angle, Wang Jian willed the three-inch Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant inside his lower energy reservoir to exhale a dense shroud of violet-black thunder and gravitational starlight across his chest and brow.

DING-DING-DING-CRACK!

The thirty poisonous bone-needles fired from the Manta King’s tail struck the two-inch layer of spinning black-gold starlight three inches in front of Wang Jian’s face. Under the devouring gravitational pull and the residual Nine-Nine Violet-Black Heavenly Thunder coursing through Wang Jian’s aura, twenty-four of the bone-needles were crushed into gray powder in mid-air, while the remaining six skidded harmlessly off his golden-dragon-marrow-tempered cheekbone without leaving so much as a white scratch!

A fraction of a breath later, the razor-sharp right wing-edge of Black-Fin Demon King collided squarely with the descending black-gold edge of Blood’s Thirst!

KRA-CLANG—SHRRRIP!

The metallic screech of eighty-one-folded Star-Core Iron and Grade 8 pincer-gold grinding against Grade 8 manta cartilage echoed across ten leagues of the marsh.

Black-Fin Demon King had expected his razor wing to slide off the human’s blade and use the rotational momentum to slip sideways into the mist. He had no idea that Blood’s Thirst carried a raw physical weight of nine thousand catties backed by Wang Jian’s twenty-thousand-catty dragon-marrow arm strength!

Instead of deflecting the saber, Black-Fin Demon King’s right wing buckled downward as if struck by a falling mountain peak! The razor-sharp edge of Blood’s Thirst bit four inches deep into the tough black cartilage of the Manta King’s right shoulder joint, spraying hot, foul-smelling black demon blood across the violet sky and halting his spinning rotation dead in mid-air!

"GAAAAH!" Black-Fin Demon King shrieked in shock as his right arm went numb from the bone-cracking impact.

And halting for even half a heartbeat with a furious Scarlet Flood-Serpent Matriarch ten feet behind his back was fatal.

"Where do you think you are gliding with a broken wing, Black-Fin?!" Hong Lin’s resonant voice rang out behind him.

As Black-Fin Demon King’s left wing-blade swept toward her throat, Hong Lin did not dodge backward. Her tall, curvaceous frame twisted with the boneless flexibility of a flood-serpent; her left hand—covered in gleaming golden-red dragon scales—reached out and clamped straight onto the flat top of Black-Fin Demon King’s left wing like a red-hot iron vise, while her right hand drove a concentrated, five-foot lance of golden-scarlet serpent fire straight into the center of his spine!

BOOOOOOM!

The golden-scarlet serpent fire exploded against the back of Black-Fin Demon King’s ribcage, scorching away a two-foot patch of his slick black hide and blasting him forward straight back toward Wang Jian’s saber!

Meanwhile, down on the red coral shelves two hundred feet below the aerial clash of the Grade 8 sovereigns, the battle against the twelve humanized Grade 7 Demon Beast Commanders erupted into a ruthless, coordinated encirclement.

The twelve Grade 7 commanders—consisting of four scar-snouted Saw-Tooth Shark brutes, four heavy-shelled Iron-Back Sea Turtles, and four eight-armed Venom-Ink Octopi—tried to rally together in a tight defensive circle to break out toward the southern swamp.

"Don’t let them link their beast auras! Divide and execute!" Su Binglan commanded coldly from the western sky.

Floating in her translucent glacial-silk robes, the Early-Stage Nascent Soul former Palace Mistress of the Ice Heart Palace swept both alabaster hands downward.

"Ice Heart Supreme Art: Ten-Directional Glacial Prison!"

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

Thirty-six towering walls of three-foot-thick silver-white Grand Yin Ice Flame rose instantaneously from the frozen mud pools below, partitioning the red coral island into twelve separate ice corridors and isolating each Grade 7 Demon Beast Commander from his peers!

On the eastern half of the island, Mu Lianhua summoned her ten-foot bronze Myriad Beast Fire Cauldron. With a downward strike of her palm, the cauldron spat out four roaring fire-dragons formed of deep-blue Azure Sky Heart Phoenix Flame that dove straight into the eastern ice corridors—trapping the four Venom-Ink Octopi Commanders inside boiling cauldrons of blue fire and freezing steam that evaporated their black poison ink the instant it left their mouths!

Into the remaining eight corridors charged Wang Jian’s Peak and Late-Stage Core Formation beauties, moving in deadly pairs to test the full might of their newly forged weapons and Grade 8 marrow-tempered bodies.

In the central corridor, the largest of the four Grade 7 Saw-Tooth Shark Commanders—an eight-foot-tall muscular giant wielding a five-thousand-catty spiked club carved from whale bone—roared furiously as Shen Mengqi glided down the ice wall toward him in her black-and-white slit sword robe.

"A human Core Formation female dares walk into This Commander’s corridor alone?! Die!"

The Grade 7 Saw-Tooth Shark Commander stomped his webbed feet against the red coral rock, his gill-slits flaring crimson as he swung the five-thousand-catty whale-bone club horizontally with enough brute force to smash a stone watchtower into gravel!

Shen Mengqi’s porcelain face did not flicker. Her boots glided three inches above the ice floor as she gripped her reforged three-foot-eight-inch silver longsword, the Gale-Severing Frostblade, with her right hand and snapped open her ornate Piercing Zephyr Fan in her left.

With a flick of her left wrist, the Piercing Zephyr Fan sent a compressed cushion of freezing wind beneath her elbow, accelerating her forward dash to twice the speed of sound so that she stepped inside the wide outer arc of the whale-bone club before the heavy tip could come around!

CLANG!

The thick wooden shaft of the whale-bone club struck the flat spine of the Gale-Severing Frostblade held near Shen Mengqi’s shoulder. Because two hundred catties of Imperial Star Devouring Steel were fused into both her sword and her own Spirit Bones, Shen Mengqi’s slender arm did not bend a fraction of an inch under the impact!

At the same instant, the permanent wisp of Nascent Soul Grand Yin Ice Flame inside the fuller of the Gale-Severing Frostblade surged down the whale-bone shaft, freezing the Shark Commander’s rough hands solid to his own club handle!

"Silver Gale Execution Dance: Throat-Severing Frost!"

Spinning once on the ball of her foot against the Shark Commander’s broad chest, Shen Mengqi drew the razor edge of her silver longsword across the beast’s thick neck, slicing straight through three inches of tough shark-skin and severing his carotid artery in a fountain of freezing red ice crystals!

Two corridors to the left, Hua Yimei and her daughter Hua Ling’er stood back-to-back atop a ten-foot red coral arch, facing two Grade 7 Iron-Back Sea Turtle Commanders who had retracted their heads and limbs halfway into their six-foot, dome-shaped black iron shells while spinning like twin serrated millstones to smash the coral arch down!

"Ling’er, take the high three strings—aim the sonic convergence right into the breathing holes at the front of their shells!" Hua Yimei called out calmly, her mature figure poised as her massive breasts rose and fell beneath her crimson sect robes.

"Understood, Mother!" Hua Ling’er answered brightly, resting her slender left hand on the upper frame of the floating Crimson Phoenix Zither while her right fingers danced across the top three strings braided from Grade 7 Three-Horned Flood Wyrm Heart-Tendons.

Mother and daughter struck all seven strings simultaneously!

TWANG—HUMMMMM—BOOM!

Instead of wasting fire-qi against the exteriors of the Late-Stage Core Formation turtle shells, the concentrated sonic vibration powered by the zither’s inlaid Grade 7 Wyrm Core funneled directly through the four-inch head openings of the two spinning shells!

Trapped inside the curved dome of their own indestructible carapaces, the high-frequency sonic fire echoed back and forth twenty times in a tenth of a breath—turning the two Iron-Back Sea Turtle Commanders’ own shells into resonance ovens that liquified their brains and ruptured their internal organs without cracking a single inch of the outer shell! Both six-foot turtle shells dropped out of the air onto the coral floor with a heavy thud, blood pouring from the leg holes while their shells remained completely intact for harvesting!

Meanwhile, in the adjacent corridors, City Lord Lin Wanyue, Commercial Queen Shangguan Wan’er, High Elder Bing Yun, and Chen Ying worked with ruthless efficiency: Shangguan Wan’er used the Abyssal Star-Iron threads of her Celestial-Tide Abacus to bind the limbs of two Shark Commanders while Lin Wanyue and Bing Yun froze and incinerated their skulls, and Chen Ying flickered through dimensional folds to drive her twin Shadow-Piercing Void Daggers straight into the eye sockets of the remaining commanders!

Up in the violet sky three hundred feet above the marsh, Black-Fin Demon King heard the dying screams of six of his Grade 7 commanders below within the first twenty breaths of the battle.

Bleeding heavily from the four-inch saber wound in his right shoulder and the scorched patch on his spine, the Early Grade 8 Abyssal Manta King realized that if he fought a prolonged contest of attrition against both Wang Jian and Hong Lin, he would be carved up piece by piece just like Iron-Pincer Demon King!

His cold yellow fish-eyes turned blood-red with madness.

"You want This King’s life, Red-Scale?! Then swallow my eight-hundred-year abyssal poison with your human master!"

Black-Fin Demon King slapped both webbed hands violently against his own flat chest.

PUH!

He spat out a fist-sized, flattened sphere of pitch-black crystal surrounded by swirling rings of purple-black lightning and corrosive dark water—his Early Grade 8 Abyssal Manta Core!

Unlike Iron-Pincer Demon King’s metallic earth core, Black-Fin Demon King’s core possessed dual affinities of Dark-Water and Spatial-Wind. As the black crystal core spun furiously in front of his chest, Black-Fin Demon King beat his twenty-foot manta wings forward with every ounce of his Grade 8 blood-essence!

"Abyssal Manta Supreme Art: Thousand-Fathom Dark-Vortex Blade!"

The spinning Grade 8 Demon Core expanded into a hundred-yard funnel of pitch-black, light-devouring abyssal water that twisted the surrounding spatial wind-blades of the ruin into a roaring cyclone! Hundreds of crescent-shaped blades of compressed black water and spatial wind shot outward from the vortex in all directions, slicing the tops off ten red coral pillars below and pulling both Wang Jian and Hong Lin inward toward the crushing teeth of the dark vortex!

"Master, watch out for the purple-black mist at the center of his vortex!" Hong Lin warned sharply, wrapping her long arms in thick coils of golden-scarlet serpent scales as she deflected four spatial water-blades with a shower of red sparks. "That is Abyssal Gill-Rot Poison accumulated in his manta skin over eight centuries—if it touches an open wound, it corrodes spirit-channels!"

Wang Jian hovered twenty yards in front of the roaring black vortex, his black robes snapping tightly against his muscular frame as the suction pulled at his boots.

Instead of retreating from the hundred-yard dark-water cyclone, Wang Jian’s dark, starlit eyes locked directly onto the spinning, fist-sized Early Grade 8 Abyssal Manta Core sitting at the eye of the funnel three feet in front of Black-Fin Demon King’s chest.

"Hong Lin—transform your lower body and bind his wings from below in three breaths," Wang Jian transmitted calmly. "I will break his vortex from the front."

"Yes, Master!"

Without a second of hesitation, Hong Lin dove downward beneath the bottom rim of the spinning dark-water cyclone. As she passed through the cloud of red coral dust below, a blinding flash of scarlet-gold blood light enveloped her hips—and her two long, shapely human legs fused and lengthened into her true, thirty-foot Scarlet Flood-Serpent Tail, now armored in shimmering red-and-gold scales!

At the same time, thirty feet in front of the vortex, Wang Jian summoned the seven-foot-tall Nine-Heavens Iron Severing Bastion in his left hand to block the flying spatial water-blades, while raising the four-foot black-gold saber Blood’s Thirst high above his head with his right hand.

Inside Wang Jian’s lower energy reservoir, the three-inch Stellar Demonic Nascent Infant stood up upon its platform of dark stars. A torrent of violet-black thunder, devouring Stellar Demonic Qi, and roaring Golden Phoenix Flame surged down Wang Jian’s right arm and poured into the Early Grade 8 Crab King core set in the guard of Blood’s Thirst!

The four-foot black-gold blade erupted into a forty-foot-long giant saber phantom of golden fire and dark starlight that radiated the crushing, mountain-splitting weight of two combined Grade 8 foundations!

"Stellar Demonic Saber: Cleaving the Dark Sea!"

Wang Jian stepped forward on the empty air and brought the forty-foot black-gold saber phantom crashing straight down into the center of Black-Fin Demon King’s hundred-yard dark-water vortex!

KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The collision shook the entire southern sector of the Ancient Void-Sea Ruin!

Like a red-hot celestial cleaver dropping into a pot of boiling oil, the forty-foot saber phantom of Golden Phoenix Flame and Stellar Demonic Qi split the hundred-yard dark-water cyclone cleanly down the middle from top to bottom! The purifying heat of the Golden Phoenix Flame incinerated the purple-black Abyssal Gill-Rot Poison into harmless white steam on contact, while the nine-thousand-catty physical weight of Blood’s Thirst slammed squarely into the spinning Early Grade 8 Abyssal Manta Core at the center of the funnel!

CLANG—CRACK!

Sent flying backward like a struck cannonball, the fist-sized black Demon Core smashed back against Black-Fin Demon King’s own sternum, cracking three of his flat chest-cartilage ribs and knocking the wind out of his lungs in a spray of black blood!

"Ugh—!" Black-Fin Demon King reeled backward in mid-air, his twenty-foot black manta wings flaring wide as he tried to catch his balance in the turbulent wind.

That was the exact third breath Wang Jian had called for.

Directly beneath Black-Fin Demon King’s dangling boots, the boiling red steam parted!

Hong Lin erupted vertically upward out of the steam cloud! Her thirty-foot, barrel-thick scarlet-and-gold serpent tail shot up from behind like a coiling crimson dragon, wrapping in three bone-crushing loops around Black-Fin Demon King’s waist and pinning both of his twenty-foot black manta wings tightly against his sides—while her bare, voluptuous human upper body rose right behind his neck, her two scaled hands clamping onto the top of his shoulders to bend his head backward!

"Got you, bottom-feeder!" Hong Lin hissed triumphantly into Black-Fin Demon King’s bleeding ear, her massive bare breasts pressing against the back of his head as her thirty-foot serpent tail squeezed with ten thousand catties of constricting hydraulic force! "Master—his chest is wide open!"

CRACK-CRACK!

Pinned immobile inside the crushing coils of the Scarlet Flood-Serpent Matriarch’s tail with his wings trapped against his ribs, Black-Fin Demon King let out a strangled shriek of pure terror as he saw a tall black shadow blur across the twenty-yard gap in front of him!

Wang Jian appeared three feet in front of Black-Fin Demon King’s pinned chest via instantaneous spatial movement.

Wang Jian did not strike the tough central ribcage where the Manta Hide was needed intact. Instead, moving his wrists in a blinding, two-stroke figure-eight,