Li Xi had intended to dispel the summoning spell and send Sun Er Dai back, but Sun Er Dai's inherent pride prevented him from abandoning Li Xi to face the Flame Demon alone. Now, seeing that this Flame Demon was identical to the previous one, foolishly tossing out its weapon, Li Xi decided to accept the offering. He had Sun Er Dai grab the great hammer and run, which would both weaken the Flame Demon and get Sun Er Dai to safety.
Sun Er Dai hadn't considered any of this. Seeing the flying great hammer, he obediently grabbed it and fled, running until he was out of Li Xi's sight. Even the heavy thudding footsteps that sounded like foundations being laid grew faint. Li Xi knew the time was right.
"Disperse."
Li Xi silently dissolved the summoning spell. Facing the Flame Demon, Sun Er Dai's strength was truly insufficient. Any injury sustained would not be easily recovered from. Li Xi didn't want his hard-earned resources depleted in an instant. Besides, if he himself couldn't win, neither could Sun Er Dai.
Finally, a figure even more robust than Sun Er Dai began to emerge from the portal, hunched over. This was Li Xi's first glimpse of the legendary Flame Demon.
City Destroyer, High Demon, Master of Flames, Herald of Death, Tormentor of Souls. Each title alone was enough to make life cease its weeping, leaving only the corner to cower in.
A fluid like black-red lava covered its entire body. Its joints were adorned with ferocious, barbed protrusions, and its chest was covered in hard, exoskeleton armor. There was not a single superfluous or useless part of its form. It was as if it were born for battle, a living weapon.
Li Xi, standing nearly four meters tall, barely reached the knee of the twenty-meter-tall Flame Demon.
But these were not reasons for Li Xi to fear or retreat. On the contrary, as the Flame Demon emerged halfway, Li Xi unleashed a barrage of insults, "Are all you Abyssal demons this uncivilized? You enter the host's home uninvited?"
"And empty-handed? Is this how you test your subordinates?"
Ninjutsu against such a powerful foe was like a pea shooter against a tank, merely tickling. Therefore, relying on his own formidable physical strength was his only hope for victory. Fortunately, the Flame Demon was weaponless, forced to fight bare-handed, its first weakness. The Flame Demon, currently struggling to extract itself like a pig rooting through a rabbit warren, presented another weakness: Li Xi knew it would be difficult for the Flame Demon to fully materialize.
The opportunity to strike a stationary target didn't come often. Since that was the case, Li Xi naturally wouldn't let it pass.
"Baika no Jutsu (Enlargement Technique)!"
His body doubled in size, then quadrupled. His height surpassed seven meters, reaching the Flame Demon's thigh.
The potent power surging within him caused Li Xi's short hair to stand on end. The once rice-grain-sized scales had also quadrupled, now as large as peanuts. His dragon wings unfurled, as vast as a dragon's, capable of generating localized gales with a gentle flap.
Beneath his dark red scales, the dual tomoe of his Sharingan, coupled with the vertical slit pupils of his dragon eyes, exuded a murderous intent that seemed more frenzied and bloodthirsty than any demon's.
His steel-hardened body filled Li Xi with the ambition to cleave the heavens. In his left hand, he wielded the Executioner's Blade, and in his right, the four-meter-long sword of the Horn Demon. He rained down attacks on the Flame Demon's emerging thigh. Each strike produced a thunderous roar, like a clear-sky thunderclap, echoing across the entirety of Kado City. The speed of his attacks was like the needle of a game show's prize wheel, too fast for Li Xi's dual-tomoe Sharingan and dragon eyes to fully track.
The kinetic energy generated by his dual blades was like a typhoon of Level 13 or higher. The red mist blanketing Kado City churned violently. Add thunder and lightning, and it would be a perfect apocalyptic scene.
The Flame Demon's head, still within the portal, could only witness a dense flurry of blade light that, in an instant, cleanly shaved off its thigh, exposing bone harder than millennium-old steel. The Flame Demon, wanting to retrieve its great hammer, scanned its surroundings with confusion, unable to locate its discarded weapon. Had it been armed, Li Xi's current barrage could have been parried with a single hammer blow.
However, the Flame Demon's momentary hesitation in searching for its weapon allowed Li Xi to violently sever the clean thigh.
"Argh! Vermin, accursed Dragonkin, Abyssal curs!"
The Flame Demon never expected that it, a being renowned across countless planes, would suffer such a fate mere moments after emerging from a portal.
"Boom!"
Flames erupted from the Flame Demon's body, a sign of its extreme fury. Its palm, larger than a human's, swept towards Li Xi like a fiery hurricane.
Li Xi ducked, his dragon wings beating wildly to provide thrust. Like a fired cannonball, he shot towards the Flame Demon's hand. Both moved with incredible speed, their relative speed even greater. In a flash of lightning, they passed each other. The Flame Demon's colossal hand, spewing forth black blood, was flung away.
With another strike, Li Xi severed the Flame Demon's hand. Hovering in mid-air, he changed direction and lunged at another part of the demon. The pain from its two severed limbs made the Flame Demon even more frenzied. It swung its severed limbs like weapons, attempting a head-on clash with Li Xi. The result was two crisscrossing blade lights, and another large section of the Flame Demon's arm fell away. Now, the Flame Demon was reduced to a mere stump of an arm, no longer needing to even bend.
In a clash between entities of comparable strength, the presence or absence of weapons could entirely dictate the outcome.
"Pride and prejudice are your greatest weaknesses."
Li Xi was only able to exploit the Flame Demon's immense size and the fact that it couldn't fully materialize all at once. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been this easy. With only half its body present, it was effectively a stationary target for Li Xi. Even if the entire Flame Demon had appeared, it might not have been Li Xi's current opponent, let alone only half its body. The best outcome now was for this half-body to be sliced into sashimi.
The Flame Demon struggled fiercely, trying to pull the rest of its body through the portal to tear Li Xi apart. But how could Li Xi miss such an opportunity to beat a fallen foe? As the Flame Demon tried to emerge, Li Xi pressed in, his frantic attacks preventing it from fully appearing. When the Flame Demon tried to retreat, Li Xi would ease off, pushing it back out, ensuring that the demon he was attacking couldn't exert its full strength. It was trapped, held at bay, to its utmost frustration.
The Flame Demon, as expected of a top-tier demon, possessed a tenacious will to live, even with half its body reduced to bare bone by Li Xi.
The Flame Demon, previously blinded by rage, finally realized its mistake. Its gaze, filled with an insatiable desire to grind Li Xi into dust, fixed upon him. "Vermin, next time, I will personally kill you."
Disregarding Li Xi's attacks and its own steaming, exposed entrails, the Flame Demon instantly pulled its mangled half-body back into the portal. This stunned Li Xi. Demons, upon seeing him, usually displayed an unyielding hatred, as if their father had been murdered and their wife stolen, refusing to retreat.
This Flame Demon, a high-level demon, was capable of controlling its abyssal instincts. It was the first demon Li Xi had encountered against whom his Abyssal Curse had no effect, choosing to flee.
The entire battle lasted less than thirty seconds, ending with the Flame Demon severely wounded. Li Xi dispelled his quadrupled enlargement, returning to his doubled state. Looking at the now quiet portal, Li Xi quickly gathered the scattered fragments of the Flame Demon from the ground. These were valuable items. The Horn Demon's fragments were inconsequential, but the Flame Demon's were not. He still had two of the previous Flame Demon's fingers in his spatial ring, unsure whether to absorb them with the Kionga Blossom Technique. Since his dragon bloodline could evolve, perhaps absorbing demon bloodlines could also lead to evolution.
Li Xi, however, didn't covet the Flame Demon's bloodline. While strong, it lacked a certain "something." But he was interested in the Balor Flame Demon, its evolved form. Those were beings who truly stood at the apex of the world, powerful enough to contend with lesser deities, legendary beings of history, nightmare-inducing demon lords of everlasting renown. Furthermore, the Balor Flame Demon's abilities perfectly suited Li Xi: immense vitality, an invincible physique, and innate mastery over fire.
In essence, this matter still depended on Archmage Demanga. Li Xi didn't know how to evolve abyssal bloodlines. If he couldn't evolve the abyssal Flame Demon bloodline correctly, absorbing the Flame Demon's bloodline would be a complete loss.
Speaking of Archmage Demanga, Li Xi remembered something. He retrieved a crystal ball from a corner of his spatial ring. It was the location beacon Demanga had given him when he captured the dragon. Demanga had not taken it back, and it would be wrong not to inform him about the situation in Kado City.
So, while the portal remained quiet, Li Xi infused energy into the crystal ball. However, after waiting for a long time, there was no reaction, as if the crystal ball had malfunctioned.
Just as Li Xi was pondering why the crystal ball wasn't responding, Ais, leading her ragtag team, returned after seeing the Flame Demon repelled. This time, they looked upon Li Xi, the Dragonkin, as if he were a legend from mythology. Such immense power, such a spectacular battle. Even in this chaotic era, heroes who could single-handedly defeat a Flame Demon were few and far between.
"Lord Mourinho, is something amiss?" Ais asked, seeing Li Xi frowning as he stared at the crystal ball in his hand.
"Nothing. When will the reinforcements arrive? I'm also nearing my limit in this state." Li Xi put away the crystal ball and indicated that he was pushing his body to its limits. Even though he could last for more than ten minutes, he claimed to be at his breaking point.
"If nothing unexpected happens, they should arrive in mere breaths."
"If nothing unexpected happens" were words Li Xi least wanted to hear, for they often presaged the very exceptions they sought to avoid.
As expected, Li Xi's premonition proved accurate. A spurt of blood suddenly shot out from the portal. This blood did not attack anyone but instead turned and plunged into the scattered corpses of Horn Demons, vanishing without a trace in an instant.
"What is this?" Li Xi's gaze flickered, observing the changes on the battlefield.
"This is Lilith's Blood Siphon Rebirth magic. She can use her own blood to revive through the flesh and blood of other Abyssal creatures. The puppet avatar created by this method, although its strength is less than one-tenth or two-tenths of the original body, is not easily dealt with. This is their commonly used method for infiltrating other spaces."
The speaker was not Ais or her companions, but a voice from within the red mist. Li Xi looked over and saw a large contingent of high-level professionals arriving. The weakest among them were Tier 3 High Warriors, followed by a large number of Priests and Mages.
As these Priests moved, they cast divine spells, dispelling the red mist. In a short while, the red mist around Nas Manor was mostly cleared. Li Xi even spotted several Bishop-level Priests among them.
"Thank you, Lord Mourinho. You have bought us time for our assembly. You have made a great contribution to Kado City. You are our savior, Kado City's savior."
The one who had spoken to Li Xi earlier was the Bishop of the Church of Light whom Li Xi had met underground last time – Budien, a High Priest nearing Tier 6. Archmage Demanga disdained him, but that did not detract from the fact that this Bishop was one of the top five experts in Kado City.
Of course, after learning that the Assassin's Alliance was behind these events, Li Xi held a somewhat skeptical view of this "top five" status.
"Bishop, you are too kind. Striking down evil and darkness is my bounden duty."
Budien conversed with Li Xi while the main force behind them began to deploy their formations. Heavily armored infantry advanced in layers, while Priests and Mages behind them, protected by the surrounding experts, unleashed their true power.