Chapter 241: Captain's Fury

Kill him!

The Shadow Guard Captain's shriek sounded like a night owl strangled at the throat, piercing and echoing throughout the crystal cavern, colliding and reverberating until it made people's eardrums ache.

His finger, cracked and fissured, pointed straight at Wang Zhize at the center of the great formation, his eyes bloodshot, a madness mixed with fear, anger, and utter incomprehension.

However, the remaining three Shadow Guards stood as if nailed to the spot, not moving at all.

It wasn't that they didn't want to move; they simply dared not.

Their gazes locked onto the mountain‑like beast looming before the youth. The four terrifying voids erased by 'concept' did not fell it; instead, from the edges of those voids grew ever more twisted, ominous black crystals. Just looking at it made one feel their very soul being polluted.

"Trash! A bunch of trash!" the Shadow Guard Captain shouted, seeing his subordinates' hesitation, his whole body trembling. "What are you afraid of? It's already at its limit! That brat is the source! Kill him, and this beast will collapse on its own!"

Everyone understands the reasoning.

But understanding is one thing; acting is another.

That monster merely shifted its weight a moment ago, and it set our own people fighting each other in chaos; now everyone is wounded and our magic artifacts are damaged. How can we fight like this? Go up and get ourselves killed?

"Captain… that thing… it's looking at us." a Shadow Guard whispered, his voice trembling. His magic treasure was a mirror; its surface now reflected the beast's chaotic pupils, and the mirror itself emitted a strained wail.

"Look? Today I'll gouge out its eyes!"

The Shadow Guard Captain had gone completely mad.

He knew there was no hope in expecting these already‑terrified subordinates.

Today, either he dies, or the three generations of the Wang family perish!

"Holy Lord… my subordinates are incapable…" he hoarsely growled, as if confessing to some unknown entity, or swearing a final deadly oath.

The next second, his entire aura shifted abruptly!

Boom!

A column of golden flame shot up from his crown, flooding the cavern's ceiling crystals with brilliant gold—yet beneath that brilliance lay a resolve to perish together.

"What is he doing? Opening… going all out?" Li Hu's eyelids twitched from afar as he grabbed Wang Zhitao's arm. "Kid, look quick—is he self‑destructing?"

Wang Zhitao didn't hear Li Hu at all; his eyes were blood‑red, locked on the Shadow Guard Captain, his teeth grinding. "Brother! He's going all‑out!"

Without him saying it, Wang Zhize felt it too.

In his field of vision woven from threads of law, the light spot representing the Shadow Guard Captain burned and swelled frenziedly, far outshining the three dim spots.

He was burning his own golden core!

This is a golden‑core cultivator who squeezes out his lifetime of cultivation and all his dao fruits in an instant, trading them for a single strike that transcends his limits.

"With my dao fruits I sacrifice my true spirit!" the Shadow Guard Captain's voice swelled to immense grandeur yet grew hoarse, as if countless versions of himself across spacetime shouted together, "Sever all laws, return to nothing!"

He stretched out his hands, the hands turned dry as firewood by the secret technique, and slowly brought them together before him.

The space around him began to collapse.

It was not a physical collapse but a more fundamental 'vanishing'. Light was swallowed, sound erased, and even those violent energy flows, when they came within three feet of his body, encountered a natural enemy and silently annihilated.

A black blade of light, indescribable in words, gradually coalesced between his palms.

It reflected no light, emitted none—it was pure 'nothing'.

The instant he saw it, Li Hu felt his brain reformatted; for a second he even forgot who he was and where he stood.

"Don't look!"

Zhang Mei shouted sharply, pressing the two children's heads hard against her chest, she herself shut her eyes, only her violently rising and falling bosom revealing the pressure she bore.

"Brother!" Wang Zhitao bellowed a heart‑rending roar, "Quick! Let grandfather dodge! Don't touch that thing!"

Wang Zhize's face turned completely blood‑less for the first time.

His palms were slick with cold sweat.

In his eyes, that black blade of light was not an attack at all.

It was a 'rift'.

A rift torn open in the fabric of this space, its other side absolute, pure 'nothingness'. Any law, any being, once touched by it, meets only one fate—total 'deletion'.

Grandfather cannot block it.

The four earlier concept attacks, though domineering, still lay within this space's 'rules'. Thus grandfather's 'garbage‑code' machine could interfere and digest them.

But this now is something beyond the rules!

This is overturning the table!

"Roar——!"

The Giant Beast Wang Shan also sensed an unprecedented deadly threat.

Its chest‑front four ferocious voids, the newly born black crystals, began to show signs of disintegration under the aura of that nothingness.

Its massive body, for the first time, assumed a pure defensive stance, every muscle tensed.

"Die!"

The Shadow Guard Captain's eyes bulged; golden flame spewed from his eye sockets, and with his last breath he hewed forth the black blade of light!

The target was not Wang Zhize.

It was the insurmountable black mountain before him—the Giant Beast Wang Shan!

As long as we slay this beast, that brat will be fish on the chopping board!

Hum……

Where the black blade passed, all sounds ceased.

Space split like butter under a hot knife, silently parting to either side, leaving a black trail that ceaselessly devoured everything around it.

It was not fast, yet impossible to dodge.

Because it locked onto not a physical position, but existence itself.

"Grandfather!" Wang Zhitao's eyes nearly burst.

Wang Zhize gripped the jade slip tightly; it grew scorching hot, nearly branding his palm.

He knew that the great formation he had set up was as fragile as a paper lantern before this attack.

What should we do?

What should we do!

Just when everyone thought the giant beast Wang Shan would take the blow head-on and then be split in two.

The giant beast moved.

It neither blocked nor dodged.

Instead, it stepped forward to meet that black death light blade.

At the same time, its huge, chaotic head suddenly turned toward its two grandsons.

「Roar!!! 」

This roar was no longer a threat, no longer anger.

but a purest, most primal command that directly echoed in Wang Zhize's mind.

That command had no words, only an exceptionally clear thought——

「Swallow! 」

Wang Zhize instantly understood.

Grandfather wasn't asking him to devour that attack; he couldn't do it.

Grandfather wanted him to prepare, to devour……himself!

Using that "Void Blade" as a knife, with his own body as the offering, the "conceptual error" energy that burst forth the instant he was "cut open"—the most chaotic and primal—would be devoured entirely by his grandsons!

What a crazy thought!

What a brutal inheritance!

「No! Grandfather! Don't! 」 Wang Zhize's tears instantly fell.

He understood, he had understood from the very beginning.

What trap zone, what desperate land.

Here, from start to finish, was a……feast that Grandfather had prepared for the two brothers.

And Grandfather himself was the final, most abundant main course.

「Brother! 」 Wang Zhitao also seemed to sense something; he stopped struggling and just stared blankly at the approaching black light, at Grandfather's resolute back.

「Get ready! 」 Wang Zhize wiped his tears and roared at his brother, "Circulate your cultivation technique! As fast as you can! As much as you can! No wasting! Not a drop!"

He himself sank all his mind into the jade slip in his hand.

The great formation, under his will, began to operate at an unprecedented high speed. It was no longer defense, no longer control.

It turned into a net.

A net prepared to catch the upcoming, most brilliant……death fireworks.

Finally.

The black light blade touched the giant beast Wang Shan.

There was no earth-shattering explosion.

No tremendous sound of mountains collapsing and earth splitting.

Everything proceeded in silence.

The giant beast Wang Shan's colossal body, comparable to mountain ranges, began from the center of its chest, a black line rapidly spreading upward and downward.

Wherever the line passed, flesh, bone, scales, those twisted black crystals……everything vanished into nothing.

It was like a stroke of thick ink on a painting, erased cleanly and completely by an invisible giant hand using a cosmic eraser, right from the middle.

The Shadow Guard Captain exhausted everything; his body quickly withered, his Golden Core completely shattered, turning into a dying ordinary old man. Looking at his own masterpiece, his face showed a satisfied, cruel smile.

He died.

Finally died.

However, his smile lasted less than half a second before it completely froze on his face.

Because, on the cross-section of the wound where the giant beast was "erased," within that pure "Void".

Two clusters of light, one black and one gold, like two stubborn stars that shouldn't exist here, suddenly blazed forth!