Volume 2, Chapter 71: Phoenix God Descend
The air did not just turn cold. It stopped moving completely.
One moment the horizon was the same stretch of black mud and stone walls that the soldiers had stared at for years. The next, the sky itself bent inward, like someone had pressed a heavy thumb against a sheet of soft plastic. Chen Feng and the Crimson Mother did not simply appear. They tore through the air so fast that the world around them could not keep up. Space crumpled behind them in long, trailing folds.
The weight of their arrival hit a heartbeat later.
Along the entire length of the Iron Wall, older soldiers dropped to their knees without meaning to. Their lungs simply refused to take in air under the sudden pressure. Far away in the harbors of the Sun Moon Empire, ships rocked hard against their docks. In the Extreme North, quiet mountain peaks cracked and sent loose stone tumbling down their slopes. Across the continent the ground itself groaned, a deep sound that people felt more than heard.
For the older historians and the few elders who still remembered the old records, the pressure brought back a terrible memory. Ten thousand years ago the planet had been a battlefield for supreme powers. Lakan and his wives had stood against Tang San and the Asura God. The books still carried the weight of that time. But this was different. This time only two supreme beings stood on the mortal plane, and both of them belonged to the enemy.
Their combined presence pushed the planet hard. In the western seas, massive waves rose even though there was no wind. In the eastern ranges, old volcanoes woke up and spat thick grey ash into the clouds. High above the battlefield the sky began to split, long white cracks spreading like broken glass.
Up in the higher realm the sitting council acted at once. They poured their power downward in thick, invisible pillars, bracing the planet from the inside. Without that support the Douluo Planet would have broken into pieces under the weight of two God Kings.
Chen Feng floated a few hundred feet above the mud, looking down at the defensive lines. A wide, satisfied grin spread across his pale face. The grey, dead aura of the God King of Nihility curled around his boots and drained the color from the grass below him.
"Is this really the best this world has to offer?" His voice carried straight into every skull on the wall. "Look at you. Hiding behind stone, praying to gods who won't even show their faces. A few extra rings and you think you're special?"
He laughed. The sound was sharp enough that the nearest stone towers began to flake away into powder.
Chen Feng was a transmigrator, the same as Lakan. He had come from a world where all of this had once been nothing more than stories on a screen. Because of that, he carried a quiet, deep contempt for the ground he stood on. In his mind he still admired Tang San — the double standards, the ruthless choices, the way the old system had favored its chosen one. But like many people from his original world, he had always looked down on the power of the Douluo Continent. He had argued for years that other worlds operated on a higher level.
He honestly believed it was the weakest world in fiction. In his old online arguments, people always claimed that a world like Battle Through the Heavens and its main character, Xiao Yan, operated on an entirely different level. He thought those flame-wielding emperors could wipe the floor with a Douluo god.
What he did not know—what his cheap system had failed to teach him—was the absolute truth of reality. The conceptual density of a true God and a God King was vast. A single thought from a fully realized supreme deity in this verse could unravel the entire fabric of that flame world before their Dou God could even strike a spark. But Chen Feng was blind to that. He truly believed he had reached the top of everything in creation, and that nothing left in this place could touch him.
"I am the Void," he said, crossing his arms. "I am the end of everything you built. Your academy, your Phoenix Hall — all of it is dust waiting for me to sweep it away. Who is going to stop me? That lazy teacher of yours?"
A calm voice answered him before the words had fully settled into the mud.
"You talk too much for someone who doesn't know how to cook."
From the center of the defensive lines a woman stepped forward. It was Su Qinghe, Great Priest Adarna of the Phoenix Hall, mother of Xiao Xiao. She did not look afraid. She adjusted the heavy robes on her shoulders and looked up at the floating figure in the sky with complete calm. A clear message had reached her mind only moments earlier.
She raised one hand and traced a familiar pattern in the air. Her voice carried a strange double tone when she spoke.
"My master told me to tell you that your reasoning is full of holes. And he will not let you finish this."
She closed her eyes. Her ninth soul ring — a deep, shimmering red that looked like liquid ruby — expanded around her body.
"Ninth Soul Skill," she said quietly. "Phoenix God Descends."
To an ordinary soldier a ninth soul skill was simply a large burst of power. At the highest levels it worked differently. A soul ring at that height was not only a source of strength. It was a precise frequency that could open a temporary path between the mortal plane and the highest divine realm.
When Adarna activated the skill she used her own cultivation as a thin, steady needle. She matched her personal frequency to the unique vibration of the Phoenix God and held the path open. The work required absolute stillness of mind. One small mistake and the pressure would have crushed her soul sea. She stood there as a single wire carrying the full current of a storm.
The moment the red ring locked into place, the world went silent.
It was not a gradual quiet. Sound simply vanished. Miles away in the Great Star Dou Forest, massive apes and ancient wolves stopped mid-step. Di Tian, the black dragon standing at the army's flank, lowered his head until his snout touched the cold dirt. His golden eyes were wide with a recognition that went deeper than thought.
Small birds in the trees did not scatter. They sat perfectly still on the branches, heads tilted toward the sky, their tiny hearts beating in the same rhythm. Every person who carried a bird-type martial soul felt a sudden, deep warmth bloom in the center of their chest. It was not a burn. It felt like stepping into a warm house after a long walk through winter.
Three full seconds of silence passed.
Then two enormous, brilliant lights appeared high in the atmosphere. Soldiers squinted against the glare and realized they were not stars. They were eyes.
A vast face formed in the sky — the face of a young man with sharp features and an almost unfair handsomeness. The calm that radiated from it made the mountains look fragile. The figure was so large that its shoulders stretched past the horizon. It looked as though it could have reached down and lifted the entire Douluo Planet the way a man picks up a small glass marble.
Then the giant form began to shrink, folding its size into a single point as it descended toward the red clay.
When the figure finished taking shape, the soldiers finally saw him clearly.
Long dark hair drifted around his shoulders. He wore armor of sharp, prismatic plates that shifted through every color with each small movement. From his back stretched the ten-headed wings of the Provider — translucent glass edged with living gold leaf, the same wings that had once covered an entire valley. In his right hand he held Araw ng Kahapon, the golden Kampilan that carried the law of time. In his left hand he held Buan ng Bukas, the silver Kampilan that bent space. Behind his head the seven shards of the World's Pulse orbited in a steady, quiet rhythm.
As his boots touched the grass, a soft music rose from nowhere. Clear flute notes mixed with the deep harmony of strings. It was the old song of the Adarna-Phoenix, a melody that carried the law of restoration itself.
The effect spread at once.
The white cracks in the sky closed as if someone had smoothed them with a hand. Black mud under the soldiers' boots pushed up green shoots of clover. Men who had lost arms to the Forged Husks stared down as bone and skin grew back in clean, steady waves. The sick stood up straight. Those whose minds had been clouded by the grey silence felt the fog simply leave them.
This was the presence of Lakan Diwa, the only true Phoenix God.
Chen Feng's grin disappeared. He took an involuntary step backward. The grey void around his feet flickered hard when the music touched it. Beside him the Crimson Mother hissed and pulled her massive red form into a tighter crouch.
Chen Feng's thoughts spun. Everything he had believed about the limits of this world no longer matched what stood in front of him. The weight of the man in the prismatic armor felt wrong in a way his old knowledge could not explain.
Lakan did not look at them with anger. He scratched the back of his neck, long dark hair shifting over the rainbow plates of his armor. He looked exactly like a man who had been pulled out of a comfortable nap.
"Man, you two really went all-in on the dark and dramatic look," he said. His voice was light, almost lazy. "Black smoke and giant crimson bugs? A bit outdated, don't you think?"
He glanced down at his own mortal clone — the one still wearing cheap bamboo sunglasses and standing beside Huo Yuhao. The two versions of him exchanged a brief, identical nod.
"Alright," the celestial Lakan said, tapping the flat of the golden Kampilan against his palm. "Let's not ruin the grass. My wives worked hard on the landscaping this century."
He raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.
A clean white light swallowed the northern horizon. Before Chen Feng or the Crimson Mother could even lift a weapon, Lakan pulled them, along with Ma Xiaotao, Ju Zi, and the rest of the newly baptized young gods, completely out of the mortal plane. He created a separate, sealed space high above the world — a place where they could fight at full strength without cracking a single stone on the ground below.
The sky cleared. The black clouds vanished. An ordinary afternoon sun shone down on the quiet defense lines.
The army stood in stunned silence. The enemy leaders were gone. Their own young gods were gone. The only people left in the center of the clearing were Huo Yuhao and the lazy clone body of Professor Lakas.
Professor Lakas adjusted his dark bamboo sunglasses and shoved his hands back into his pockets.
"Well," he said, turning away from the empty sky. "That takes care of the noise. Come on, kid. We have a walk to take."
Yuhao looked at his teacher. Eight divine rings hovered behind his shoulders. He was already a First-Class God of Emotion, yet standing next to this man he still felt like a student.
"Teacher? Where are we going? Why didn't I go with them? I'm strong enough to fight now."
"You're strong," Lakas agreed as they began walking south. "But you're not finished. If you go up there right now you're just a large target for that void fellow. We're going to the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well."
They moved through the forest at a steady pace. Lakas shortened the distance with small folds of space. Within an hour they stood at the edge of the familiar steaming valley. The twin pools of extreme heat and extreme cold swirled below, their vapors mixing into thick purple mist.
Yuhao looked down at the glowing water. "Why here? I already absorbed the herbs years ago. My body doesn't need the tempering anymore."
Lakas stopped at the edge of the red pool and looked at his own reflection in the steam.
"The Divine Council met before I came down," he said. The usual playful tone was gone. "We looked at the situation. Chen Feng's power doesn't grow the normal way. Even if my main body beats him today, another crack will open somewhere else tomorrow."
He turned and met Yuhao's three eyes directly.
"We don't need another First-Class God," Lakas said quietly. "We need a new pillar. The council approved it. I'm going to give you my Chaos Qi. You're going to use this well, your three cores, and that new emotion of yours to break the old limits completely."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, swirling marble of grey, unformed energy.
"You're going to become the God King of Feelings. Right here. Right now."
End of Volume 2, Chapter 71