Di Tian's dragon claw hadn't even reached Tang Wulin before it tore through space itself.
The surrounding air split apart like rice paper shredded by razor-sharp talons.
The black claw light came down wrapped in crushing force, and everything in its path dissolved and fell away like a retreating tide.
It was raw power overriding physical law through sheer dominance.
Having prepared in advance, Tang San's divine sense appeared in the same instant, unleashing a streak of blue-gold light.
Wherever that light passed, the torn edges of space sealed themselves shut.
It took the shape of a trident and held firm against the advancing dragon claw.
When the two collided, there was no thunderous crash. The light within several hundred meters simply vanished, swallowed by a pocket of perfect darkness.
When the light came back, Di Tian's dragon claw was covered in fractures. The violent energy pulled back into the void like a receding tide. His roar split the air: "Tang San! So it really is you!"
Whether it was Tang San ascending to godhood twenty thousand years ago, or the Sea God stepping down to interfere in the war among mortals ten thousand years ago, Di Tian had felt his presence both times.
"Haah." Tang San let out a quiet sigh. "Since you know who I am, back off. I'll pretend none of this happened."
He only had a single thread of divine sense left, and the number of times he could act was running out.
The Divine Realm was gone, and his true body was nowhere to be found.
This sliver of divine sense drifted like something cut loose from its roots. Every bit of strength he spent was gone for good.
He would rather save that strength to help Tang Wulin absorb the Golden Dragon King's power.
There was also the ten-thousand-year plan to think about.
Di Tian went quiet in the void.
Just as Tang San thought he was about to pull back...
Di Tian struck without warning.
Nine phantom dragon claws drove inward from different directions at once, each carrying enough force to shatter space.
Tang Wulin at that moment had his eyes shut tight, grinding through the agony of absorbing the seal.
The golden flames of the Scarlet Flame Fruit scorched through his blood vessels while the chill of the Ice Crystal Fruit spread along his meridians.
The Golden Dragon King's seal went off like a powder keg. Golden markings crawled across his skin, and the power of the first seal churned wildly through his body.
Completely lost in what he was going through, Tang Wulin had no idea what was happening around him.
"Unending Tempest!"
The trident released something deep and absolute. Di Tian's assault dissolved before it without leaving so much as a ripple.
Tang San existed only as a thread of divine sense, but he still held the rank of a God-King. Di Tian was nowhere close to his level.
Even so, Tang San held back rather than going all out. He didn't want to release too much power and risk drawing the attention of the Abyss plane.
And this last remaining thread of divine sense still had a long road ahead of it.
That said, he wasn't going to keep giving ground. A God-King had his limits.
"Push me three times and you'll regret the third." Tang San's warning cut off mid-sentence.
"Ha. Tang San, you've left yourself wide open on the other side."
A cool, calm female voice cut through the tension.
Silver light bloomed from the shadow directly behind Tang Wulin. Gu Yue had appeared there without anyone noticing.
Even after taking human form and starting her cultivation over from nothing, Gu Yue's true nature was still that of the Silver Dragon King. At the cost of some sacrifice, she could still tap into divine-level power.
Di Tian's attack had been at her direction. Di Tian pushed from the front while she watched from the shadows.
And just as she had expected, Tang Wulin did carry a contingency left behind by the Divine Realm.
She just hadn't figured it would turn out to be Tang San's divine sense.
After watching for a moment, Gu Yue quietly moved around to Tang Wulin's back.
She didn't go for a killing blow. Instead, she gathered a wisp of gray mist at her fingertip and pressed it lightly against the seal markings at the center of his back.
"Who are you?!" Tang San's composure finally cracked. He could feel that the power inside that wisp of gray mist wasn't strong, yet its divine rank was extraordinarily high.
That touch hit like a drop of water falling into boiling oil. The Golden Dragon King's seal went haywire in an instant.
"Stop!"
Tang San's voice came down with the full weight of a God-King. The blue-gold light erupted and shot upward into a pillar connecting sky and earth.
But Gu Yue's gray mist had already seeped into Tang Wulin's body along the seal markings. She drifted out past the pillar of light, her skirt completely still despite the storm of energy raging around her.
Drawing on the Silver Dragon King's power, Gu Yue's eyes were calm and cold.
Yet somewhere in those eyes, so full of divine nature, a trace of grief flickered for just a moment.
She had just felt the Golden Dragon King's seal, and heard its mournful cry.
In the instant the gray mist reached inward, the shared origin between them told her everything at once.
The Golden Dragon King was already dead.
All that was left was her essence and a stubborn refusal to accept it, locked away behind layer after layer of seals.
"You are... the Silver Dragon King?!" Tang San felt the resonance between Gu Yue and the Golden Dragon King.
His voice carried both shock and disbelief.
"Unbelievable. You've been hiding right here on the Douluo Continent this whole time, right under the Divine Realm's nose!"
Tang San had heard about that battle long ago. The Dragon God had been split in two by the Asura God. The Golden Dragon King was sealed where she fell, while the Silver Dragon King slipped away.
The Divine Realm had spent ages searching for the Silver Dragon King and guarding against her return. No one had imagined she had been hiding here on the Douluo Continent, directly beneath them.
His thoughts raced. A deep unease settled over Tang San. This situation had gotten complicated. He was only a thread of divine sense. How was he supposed to hold back the Silver Dragon King?
This was his first time facing her directly, but his true body had once fought the Golden Dragon King, and that power had been something else entirely.
The Silver Dragon King wouldn't be any weaker.
"Wait." Tang San caught something. "You've taken human form and you're rebuilding your cultivation from the ground up!"
"Ha! You actually chose to reincarnate and start over? I'll take it. How much of your original power can you even pull on right now?"
"Hmph." Gu Yue's brow tightened slightly, her voice flat. "A single thread of divine sense. That's more than enough for this."
"Don't be so sure." The unease in Tang San's voice gave way again to the steady confidence of someone who had already worked out every angle.
He seemed completely certain of himself.
The trident swept upward, and blue-gold light fired straight toward the sky.
Above East Sea City on that stormy night, a pillar of light connected the heavens and the ground. Strangely, no one in the city below seemed to notice it at all.
Tang San smiled with quiet confidence. "Father, I need your strength!"
Father?!
Gu Yue froze.
Di Tian, lurking in the void and ready to back his master at any moment, froze too.
There was another heavy hitter out there?
One breath passed, then two.
Silence. Several more breaths.
Nothing happened.
"What's going on?" Tang San's expression collapsed. "Father? Mother? I need you. Now's the time!"
His father, Tang Hao, should have long since become the Plane Lord of the Douluo Continent. Why wasn't anyone answering?
"Tch." Gu Yue closed her hand into a fist. She had to admit that she'd just been played.
"Di Tian, hit him!" The moment Gu Yue gave the order, the void erupted.
Di Tian, coiled and ready, moved instantly.
Jet-black scales caught the faint light with a cold gleam, and the fractured dragon claw gathered itself again.
This time, threads of silver-gray dragon energy coiled through the black claw light.
That was the divine nature Gu Yue had channeled into it.
"Boom!"
The dragon claw crashed into the blue-gold light with enough force to tear through everything in its path. This time there was no silent canceling of energies. It was a straight-up collision of raw power.
The luminous figure formed by Tang San's divine sense shuddered, and that already-fading presence dimmed several shades further.
"Tang San, where'd all that confidence go?"
Gu Yue drifted to the edge of the pillar of light, raised one hand, and the light began to come apart.
Tang San's expression hit rock bottom. His divine sense reached out frantically, straining to find any trace of Tang Hao, but all that came back was the deep silence of East Sea City in the dead of night.