Chapter One Hundred and Three: The Battle for the Solar Disc

“Did you hear that sound?” Cheng Long asked Ethan in a low voice after waiting for more than ten minutes.

“Yes. It should be the intruders heading our way,” Ethan replied. After a moment’s thought, he took Cheng Long by the arm. “Come with me.”

As Ethan moved, the surrounding sand seemed to turn into air, offering the two of them no resistance at all. In short order, he had led Cheng Long to the tomb on the level below.

“Shh.” Ethan pulled Cheng Long down behind the throne.

Cheng Long looked around the entire tomb. It was extremely plain: aside from the throne, there were only rows upon rows of sand warriors. Hovering above the throne was a sun disk engraved with peculiar patterns.

Ethan lightly tapped Cheng Long and pointed at the sun disk. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s what those people are after.”

“Then I’ll go grab it first.” Cheng Long said, already preparing to vault out from behind the throne. As an archaeologist, his appetite for reckless suicide had long since reached appalling heights.

Ethan yanked him back at once, then swept a hand over the ground, kneading the sand into a tiny earthen pellet before flinging it away.

Zi—

Before the pellet even touched the sun disk, it was instantly vaporized into gas. At the same moment, all the sand warriors facing the throne stirred and turned in unison toward it.

Cheng Long’s heart hammered in his chest. He didn’t even need to look up to feel the murderous stillness in the air, as though one wrong move would bring down calamity upon them.

Then, with a deafening crash, the tomb’s gate was blasted open. Cassilius entered with a large host of high-ranking demons.

The instant he stepped through the door, his gaze was seized by the sun disk and could not look away, as though it were a magnet exuding irresistible force.

“Attack!” Cassilius commanded.

The six-armed lamia demon behind him immediately pounced upon the motionless sand warriors, while the balor demons heaved up the fire within their bodies. Bursts of flame melted the sand warriors into crystalline masses.

This ambush wiped out the majority of the sand warriors at a stroke. Even after the surviving warriors awoke, they could not stand against the high-ranking demons behind Cassilius, even with the Earth’s world consciousness suppressing them.

At that moment, Ethan pulled Cheng Long downward, and the two of them sank into the ground and vanished beneath it.

Cassilius, utterly blinded by the sun disk, had no mind to check whether other enemies were hiding nearby. He strode straight toward the throne, climbed the golden steps, and reached for the disk.

Boom!

Solar fire burst forth from the sun disk, burning the right arm that dared to profane it to ash.

Under the blaze, Cassilius retreated a step. Thick blood mist surged from his body, coiling around the severed stump before forming a new arm.

At that, the statue on his chest lit up, and the laws of hell poured out in full force, wrapping the sun disk entirely as they attempted to erode the divine relic.

The sun disk, violated once more, was plainly angered. Blade-like beams shot from its center, piercing straight through the outer layer of the law net formed from broken rules. In passing, they also killed the balor demon watching from afar. Under the influence of solar power, even these fire demons could not unleash their signature self-detonation.

After its brilliant flare, Cassilius noticed that the disk’s rate of rotation had clearly slowed. It seemed that centuries had already caused most of the power within it to dissipate. This was also an opportunity for him. In its prime, the sun disk could not have been broken even if every demon were thrown against it, much less contaminated afterward by laws. But now, that might no longer be true.

The surviving high-ranking demons behind Cassilius realized this as well and quietly began to withdraw. Yet before they had retreated very far, they all froze in place. Cassilius did not care about the demons’ betrayal, and the most important reason he could ignore it was that the true names of these demons, born through the tempering of hell’s laws, were all held in his grasp.

Having lost control of their bodies, the demons began launching suicidal charges at the sun disk one after another. The sun disk revealed its terror in full. No demon that dared come near survived more than two seconds. But energy was always the greatest problem. Once the number of demons dwindled to just over a dozen, the sun disk dimmed completely, its hovering height dropping by more than half, its spinning slowing to almost nothing.

By then, it was about right.

When Cassilius once more gathered the laws and attempted to corrupt it, the sun disk’s resistance was clearly strained and faltering, and the surrounding area was gradually being breached.

Beneath the throne, Ethan made several hand gestures toward Cheng Long, meaning: I’ll go steal it back. Cover me.

But before he had even finished, Ethan saw Cheng Long dart out from beside him in a flash, whip up his right leg, and unleash a Dragon Tail Sweep directly into Cassilius.

To guard against the sun disk’s final counterattack, Cassilius had remained on high alert the entire time. The instant Cheng Long burst out, he vanished in a blink to reappear behind a fiend with razor claws.

In that momentary opening, Cheng Long reached out without hesitation and seized the sun disk. The disk seemed to have judged Cheng Long as an ally; without any resistance at all, it nestled into his arms.

Surprised, yes, but Ethan reacted just as quickly. After Cheng Long succeeded, he raised a massive wall of sand, cutting Cheng Long and Cassilius off from one another.

Just as the two of them were about to flee, the space around them suddenly twisted. It was a favorite trick of the mages of Kamar-Taj: the Mirror Dimension, specially used to prevent enemies from escaping.

Cassilius, almost robbed in midstream, wore a face black with fury. Step by step, he walked up to Cheng Long. “Hand it over.”

Ethan shot Cheng Long a look, and holy fire speared straight out from his forehead. Cassilius raised a hand to block it, then pressed downward, slamming Ethan, along with the holy fire, deep into the surrounding wall.

Cheng Long felt nothing but bitter amusement. He had understood Ethan’s signal, but in this situation, how was he supposed to run? He had no miraculous stair-climbing skill to rely on.

Cassilius hesitated for a moment. When Cheng Long took the sun disk, he had not been attacked, and Cassilius had assumed he possessed some way to control it. But thinking it through, if that were really the case, Cheng Long could have struck him cold while the demons were still sacrificing their lives to pile up against the disk. That would have been far better than waiting until the end to snatch it.

Having figured it out, Cassilius seized Cheng Long with one hand. Cheng Long struggled, but in those hands he was no more than an ant in a giant’s grasp, utterly unable to resist.

After taking the dimmed sun disk from Cheng Long’s arms, Cassilius ignited hellfire around the arm that held him. He intended to burn this audacious interloper alive.