God-Tier Villain

Chapter 32: Chapter 32

He’d drawn up two theories.

One, the Great Demon Emperor had staged a trap behind the scenes, luring human cultivators to their deaths to thin the ranks of future Human Emperors.

Two, Soren had found himself a new backer, one powerful enough to kill Lysara and her army for him.

When he saw Soren and Victoria hunting him together, he’d grown certain it was the second.

The one possibility he had never entertained was that Soren himself had broken through to Demon Emperor.

In Grant’s eyes, Soren had spent hundreds of years as a good-for-nothing, despised even by his own kin.

And that good-for-nothing had just gifted him a punch that took off half his face.

"Why aren’t you poisoned!"

"Your little Emperor-Severing Incense isn’t enough to pick my teeth with." Soren wasn’t exaggerating, if anything, the poison hadn’t provided nearly enough material to finish reinforcing his meridians and body.

But the words landed like nails, in Grant’s ears they translated to one thing, you are trash, and the poison you brew is trash.

"I’ll kill you!" Grant’s ruined hands ground against the void, and a palm-sized energy construct took shape at speed, a translucent diamond, with a core the size of a pill spinning furiously at its center.

Victoria’s heart lurched. "That’s Grant’s Emperor-tier technique, the Annihilation Dragon Strike!"

"Even at full strength, I could only barely neutralize it."

"Soren, he..."

Soren might be stronger than the average Middle-Tier Demon Emperor, but a technique concentrated attack power, multiplying it several times over, how was he supposed to dodge that?

Just as Grant moved to hurl the construct, a streak of sword light beat him to it, slashing down with impossible speed.

The sword qi swept everything before it like dead leaves. For an instant, heaven and earth went utterly silent.

Then a howl of agony tore the silence apart, Grant’s face warped hideously, his mind wiped white.

Both his hands had been severed at the wrist.

Soren stood behind him, no one had seen him move, graceful as wind, he flicked the blood from his blade.

In the rising light, Soren sheathed the Heavenly Resentment Sword, monstrous resentment-aura scattered across the sky, vying with the sun itself, and his demonic might pressed down on the world like a mountain that could not be lifted.

It had all happened too fast, even Victoria, an Upper-Tier Demon Emperor, stood dazed.

When her mind caught up, Grant’s hands really were gone, Soren had taken them.

A thought sprouted unbidden, Soren is so fierce. no wonder this scoundrel dared do all those outrageous things to me without the slightest fear of being killed, he carried an Emperor-tier weapon, and the strength to cut down an Upper-Tier Emperor-realm expert.

The exchange had been so brief she could hardly believe Grant fully formed technique, had lost that badly.

Wait, the technique, where is it?

Her eyes hunted and locked on, the construct was falling toward the ground along with the severed hands, fully formed, it could not simply evaporate.

The diamond shell had dissolved into loose energy, but the pill-sized core remained, and if it struck the earth, its destructive power would still be immense.

Her worry was wasted, a hair before impact, Soren appeared and plucked the core out of the air.

He carried it back to Grant, whose forehead veins were bulging fit to burst, he wrenched the man’s jaw open.

And stuffed the core into Grant’s mouth.

Then one heavy punch sent him flying.

Grant tumbled seventy or eighty times through the air, hit the ground, and detonated along with the core, a mushroom cloud boiled up over the plain.

Soren charged into the cloud without hesitation, a dozen breaths later he walked back out, dragging a blood-soaked body by the collar.

Grant’s mouth had been blown crooked and his whole face was swollen.

A Great Emperor’s hide truly was tough, the diamond shell and the core were both indispensable halves of the technique, with the shell dispersed, the core’s power had dropped several times over.

The commotion had drawn crowds of demon cultivators too curious to fear death, strings of them hovered a few hundred meters off, whispering.

Seeing the audience swell, Soren wrapped the barely breathing Grant in demonic energy and dumped him into the independent space, the man still had uses, he could die after being used.

Soren descended and gave Victoria a long, weighted look.

"Grant has lost his fighting strength for now, the antidote is certainly inside his independent spatial storage, which means we can’t reach it yet."

"But the Emperor-Severing Incense works far more aggressively on Great Emperor-level experts."

"I need to detoxify you, immediately."

Victoria suspected nothing. "You have a way?"

Soren spoke. "You saw for yourself, I neutralized the Emperor-Severing Incense in my own body."

"If I claimed to have no way, I’d be lying to you."

Relief washed through her, and she nodded. "Then help me."

"Of course."

"But you mustn’t move."

"Alright."

Victoria regretted it the instant the word left her mouth, why was this man using his mouth again?

"I’ll draw the poison out for you, with my mouth."

The crowd of demons kept thickening, and Victoria’s sense of shame detonated, but detoxification came first, she let Soren do as he pleased.

"Isn’t that the ruler of our Violet Jade Immortal Domain? The Fairy Great Demon Emperor?"

"Damn it, who is that man? How dare he take liberties with our Great Demon Emperor in public!"

"The Great Demon Emperor is the goddess of my dreams! Watching a man handle her like that is worse than killing me!"

"The Fairy is in that man’s arms, but... why does she look like she’s enjoying it..."

"I hate everything about this!"

Every eye in the crowd went red, as if dipped in blood, jealousy makes strangers of everyone.

They had no quarrel with Soren whatsoever, every single one of them wanted to charge in and hack him apart, preferably with a dull, rusted blade that took several saws per slice.

But they had all watched him drag an Upper-Tier Human Emperor around like luggage, who among them dared land the first stab?

The voices drifted in from every direction, Victoria heard all of it, and her whole body burned like a furnace on the verge of open flame.