Chapter Ninety: The Ghost Tamer of the Sunfall Kingdom

The three men whipped around at the sound and saw, to their shock, that the statue from which he had just taken the dragon egg had also come to life.

Only then did they see clearly what it was: a dragon-man.

They had never seen such a thing before. It had the head of a dragon and the body of a man. That draconic head was covered in countless scars, as though it had endured some terrible past.

But none of the three cared about that. What they felt instead was the overwhelming aura radiating from it—the aura of an A-rank aberration.

Who would have thought that one of these statues was actually an A-rank aberrant creature? And there were so many statues here.

Just how many A-rank aberrations were there?

They were doomed.

At the sight, Iron Pillar reacted with astonishing speed. He instantly shoved the dragon egg in his hand toward Steel Bullet.

“He took the egg!”

Steel Bullet caught it on instinct, and after hearing Iron Pillar’s words, instinctively let go.

Crack.

The dragon egg fell to the ground with a crisp sound, and a fracture spread upward from its base.

For a moment, the atmosphere turned painfully awkward.

“Perhaps if I tape it back together, a baby dragon can still hatch.”

The dragon-man calmly bent down, picked up the egg from the floor, and then extended one hand.

“What do you mean?”

Seeing that the dragon-man did not seem openly hostile, the three gradually lowered their guard and asked.

“The map. The map you used to find this place. With that, we can determine whether you are illegal intruders or people chosen by the gods.”

“The map?”

Cold sweat broke out on all three of their foreheads at once. Weren’t they supposed to tear up the map to enter this place?

Had something gone wrong?

Noticing the change in their expressions, the dragon-man curved his lips into a “gentle” smile, and his icy voice sounded again.

“Did you leave the map up above? That’s no matter. I can go fetch it. As long as it hasn’t been torn to pieces, everything else can be overlooked.”

The moment they heard that, all three began to tremble.

“Then... if... I mean, just if, purely hypothetically... what happens if the map was torn up?”

“The map was torn?” The dragon-man’s tone grew heavier, and his face darkened. “You didn’t actually tear up the map, did you?”

Then he shook his head.

“Surely not. With strength like yours—merely A-rank—you only needed to place the map on the prepared teleportation array to get here. Tearing it up would be courting death.”

The three of them were drenched in sweat.

“But if... someone really did tear it up?”

“That map is the token of our Desert Lord. To destroy the token is equivalent to declaring war. What do you think that means?”

It was over. They had declared war on this so-called Desert Lord.

Before the three could react, the dragon-man added another sentence.

“When that happens, all four of you will die.”

“All four?”

They did not understand what he meant by four, but one thing was certain—they had truly stumbled into disaster this time.

The three exchanged a glance. Iron Pillar struck first. Without the slightest hesitation, he gathered all the power in his body into one hand and hurled out a punch.

The blow was terrifyingly fast, wrapped in countless black gales, with even the roar of wild beasts hidden within it.

In less than an instant, his fist smashed heavily into the dragon-man’s body.

With that single punch, the dragon-man’s entire torso caved inward, and he was sent flying several meters away.

Without wasting a heartbeat, the three immediately turned and fled into the distance.

“Scatter!”

Sensing the surging energy behind them, all three shouted at once and dodged aside.

The very moment they moved, a massive ghostly blue fireball shot straight past them into the distance.

A short while later, a blinding blue radiance burst forth ahead, along with a suffocating wave of heat.

“Steel Bullet!” Iron Pillar shouted in his direction.

Steel Bullet understood at once. He actually pulled an extremely short dagger from inside his clothes and charged toward the dragon-man, with Iron Pillar close behind.

Very soon, the two men and the dragon were locked in furious combat.

Meanwhile, Dehua unhurriedly drew out a pile of strange items from his clothes and began sketching on the ground.

By the time the fighting on the other side had reached a stalemate, his drawing was finally complete.

The next second, a gigantic phantom five meters tall suddenly appeared, and a flicker of confidence flashed through Dehua’s eyes.

“Go. Crush that half-dragon, half-man freak underfoot!”

At Dehua’s command, the giant charged straight at the dragon-man.

The instant it reached him, it kicked down without hesitation.

Though immense in size, the giant was astonishingly swift.

The dragon-man, however, showed no intention of resisting. He simply let the giant’s foot come down on him.

When the giant lifted its foot again, the dragon-man lay motionless on the ground. The aura around him had already begun to dissipate.

“Hahaha! I didn’t expect him to be this weak!”

But before the three could celebrate for long, the smiles froze on their faces. As one, they turned to look behind them.

They saw row upon row of statues beginning to tremble. Multicolored lights bloomed in their eyes, and the auras around them steadily stabilized, as though they too were about to awaken just as the dragon-man had.

At this, the three agents merely smiled faintly.

Together, they tore off their outer garments, revealing beneath them the uniforms of the Imperial Royal Guard of the Sunset Empire.

At their chests, the emblem of Sunset also glimmered with a faint light.

“This battle is for the honor of Sunset!”

The words had barely fallen when each of them erupted with an unprecedentedly powerful aura.

Those auras seemed almost to take the form of wind, whipping their clothes into violent motion, while blood began seeping continuously from their skin.

This was the fighting method of Sunset’s spirit-wielders: forcibly flooding their bodies with the power of the aberrant creatures within them, until even blood was squeezed from their capillaries, all for the sake of driving their strength to its utmost limit.

And they, as agents meticulously cultivated by the royal house of Sunset, were the elite among elites—far beyond ordinary A-ranks. Now, using this body-ruining method, it was not impossible for them to clash head-on with the several A-rank aberrations before them and still seize victory.

The standoff did not last long.

As a thorned vine lashed toward the three, the battle truly began.

Iron Pillar, the strongest of the three, charged to the front at once.

“Cover me while I deploy my forbidden domain!”

That was right—he was a spirit-wielder who possessed a forbidden domain. It was this that gave him the confidence to face so many aberrant creatures at once.

But he was not as monstrous as Xiao Zi. His forbidden domain could not be unfolded at will; it required preparation.

He smeared a hand across his body, staining his palm with his own blood, then began moving swiftly through the desert temple, leaving strange marks wherever he passed.

Only after all four corners had been covered with his marks did he drop to one knee and close his eyes.

“Forbidden domain—unfold!”

And in the shadows, Xiao Zi concealed her presence and watched everything in silence, the corners of her lips lifting slightly.

“So these are Sunset’s spirit-wielders? Interesting.”