God-Tier Villain

Chapter 31: Chapter 31

"All that chatter, just to lower my guard and buy yourself the opening to throw beasts at me?"

"Heh, you should have brought stronger ones, had these been twelve late Emperor-stage spiritual beasts, your little trick might have worked."

The beast race had once ranked among the four dominant races, and it did not lack beings at the late Emperor stage, but such creatures were nearly impossible to tame, and blood contracts with a dozen at once? If Grant commanded foundations like that, he could walk sideways across the whole Azure Spirit World.

Faced with her mockery, Grant abruptly stopped dodging, he picked his spot and burst toward it, then turned, and on his face was the cold sneer of a man whose scheme had landed.

Suspicion flashed through Victoria, she opened her mouth to demand answers.

The space between her brows flared white-hot, as if pressed with a burning iron, a strange runic mark surfaced there.

The black rune brought pain beyond description, agony wracked Victoria from crown to heel, cold sweat drenching her.

Soren and Bruce were hit as well, identical black marks surfaced between their brows.

The mark strangled the circulation of demonic energy, splitting into black threads that burrowed through the body, hunting down the martial meridians to seal them shut.

Soren merely frowned, before the threads could touch his Dantian, he activated the Heavenly Dao Demonic Form’s Devour.

The demonic form’s power ran on its own independent system. It converted the threads into raw energy and swallowed them without effort, far from harming him, the poison was reinforcing his meridians and his flesh.

Of the three, only Soren was rapidly recovering.

Grant, oblivious to Soren’s condition, savored his moment.

"Victoria, and you call yourself a Great Demon Emperor, how careless can one woman be?"

"You underestimated your enemy."

"I am a dignified Upper-Tier Human Emperor, did you imagine I’d travel without a few life-preserving measures?"

"Leading you into my trap was easier than I ever expected."

"This is Emperor-Severing Incense, an ancient forbidden drug, which I succeeded in refining."

"In other words. You, and all of you, are poisoned!"

Grant leveled an arrogant finger at Victoria, then at Soren and his servant.

"They say that those poisoned by the Emperor-Severing Incense die within three days, without exception!"

"And it works quickly, a dozen breaths, and it will have spread through your entire body."

Victoria had heard of the long-lost Emperor-Severing Incense, but only as hearsay, she had never encountered it, and so she carried no antidote.

The Emperor-Severing Incense had been developed for one purpose, killing Great Emperor-level experts.

Its ingredients were staggeringly precious, and even with every one gathered, the refining demanded a secret method all its own, Grant had invested real effort.

"Rumor says the Emperor-Severing Incense carries an unmistakably strong scent, any experienced Great Emperor would hold their breath at the first whiff and never be poisoned."

"So how did you do it?" She had smelled no powder, no mist, nothing.

"Simple, I split the Emperor-Severing Incense into two halves, either half, on its own, poisons no one."

"Then I fed one half into the blood of my spiritual beasts, and the other into the body of the Human Venerable you killed."

"I know your habits well, you never leave survivors. So the moment the two kinds of blood mixed, the incense came alive."

"And the stench of blood hides the scent perfectly."

The corner of Victoria’s mouth twitched. "I see, you let me kill that Upper-Tier Human Venerable on purpose."

"That was the entire reason I kept him at my side!"

"You spend even your own people!"

Grant spread his hands, and what filled his face was not shame but pride, using the sky as a staircase, he walked toward Victoria.

"If he didn’t die, how was I to walk you into my trap?"

"So long as the plan succeeds, his death has meaning."

"One Upper-Tier Human Venerable and a dozen Venerable-stage beasts, traded for an Upper-Tier Demon Emperor... perhaps for the entire Violet Jade Immortal Domain, I’d hardly call that a loss."

"You truly are a rare, supreme beauty in this world, and also a very dangerous object, a pity..."

Grant wrenched the scythe out of Victoria’s weakened hands, without ceremony, he raised the great blade over her, ready to kill.

In that moment, Soren appeared in front of him, wrapped in a rush of black wind.

"So this is the Human Great Emperor who preaches eliminating demons, defending the Dao, and dispensing justice?"

"You... how are you..." Soren was moving, the poison mark between his brows was gone, Grant’s face flooded with disbelief.

In the next second, Soren’s fist landed square on Grant’s face.

The violence rivaled a sword shearing through the void, centered on his fist, spatial cracks spidered outward across the sky.

Had time slowed a thousandfold, one could have watched Grant’s entire face cave inward around the blow.

The impact detonated, and Grant launched like a cannonball, flattening thirty-odd mountain peaks in a row, every one collapsing to rubble.

He burst out of the ruins into open air and touched his cheek.

Half his face had been torn open, teeth and tongue laid bare, Grant could not process what had happened, questions bred in his skull like mushrooms after rain.

This is Soren, isn’t it? The most worthless son of the Endless Demonic Domain’s Great Demon Emperor?

Isn’t he a Lower-Tier Demon Venerable? When did he become a Middle-Tier Demon Emperor?

What is he to Victoria? Why didn’t the Emperor-Severing Incense touch him? What has happened in these few short days?

Grant knew plenty about Soren, precisely because he was the Great Demon Emperor’s son and the demon race’s legendary coward, the world never tired of discussing him, standard fare for dinner-table gossip, Grant might not know the other Venerables and offspring of the Demonic Domain, but Soren, he knew.

Days ago, upon hearing that Soren had been cast off by the Great Demon Emperor, Grant dispatched Lysara, his newly advanced Human Emperor, to lead the major factions in a crusade against the Ice Heaven Demonic Realm.

The news that came back the very same day claimed Lysara had defected to Soren and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of human cultivators, Grant was an old fox, he didn’t believe a word of it.