Black smoke poured from Behemoth's body, which was charred and smoking. His fur had all been burned away, and there were still a few small flames on his body that had yet to be extinguished.
Fortunately, the Mengtai champion's racial ability allowed him to regenerate quickly, sealing his wounds and preventing further damage from the flames.
Zhang Lie rubbed at his jaw. Sun Mengmeng still wasn't at full strength because she didn't have time to acquire gene fragments yet. If Sun Mengmeng had maxed out her peak gene fragments already—no, even just her superior gene fragments—she would have been able to seriously burn Behemoth, if not kill him altogether.
"And she's been working on her [Nine Moons of the Underworld], too," Zhang Lie murmured, nodding.
"[Lunar Apostasy]!" Sun Mengmeng struck again. Her entire bow was blazing. Sacrificing all her remaining arrows, she created a glowing black moon in the sky.
.
A torrent of a black, lava-like substance poured down from the moon. Behemoth was forced to shield himself with both hands, causing Zhang Lie to nod more vigorously. Anger was the catalyst that Sun Mengmeng used to grow her flames, but she wasn't blinded by her emotions.
She wielded her anger like a tool against a strong foe. Her initial technique, [Nine Moons of the Underworld], had been to induce Behemoth to jump up, before she followed up with [Lunar Apostasy] to strike him in the air.
Even Zhang Lie would have trouble dealing with this combination attack.
Zhang Lie suddenly thought of a possibility. "Sun Mengmeng can't have planned out this combination attack while thinking about fighting me, could she...?"
Behemoth howled as the lava burned his palms and trickled down his arms. Even Zhang Lie, standing quite a distance away, could smell his charred flesh.
Behemoth howled again and fled from the attack, but by then, Sun Mengmeng's next technique was ready. The flames surrounding Sun Mengmeng erupted like a volcano, distorting space in a huge area around her.
The warlords on the battlefield all glanced up at Sun Mengmeng, standing atop the ruined wall.
Xing Ying sighed. "And here I thought Zhang Lie was bad enough—but there are more humans like him?"
Ren Kunjing commented, "Indeed, all the new human hunters are monstrous..."
The winged warlord slaughtered a Mengtai fighter trying to run away as she continued chasing down the invading aliens.
"None of them can hold a candle to Zhang Lie, but it truly is shocking how quickly they're advancing—and in such great numbers. Looks like the rest of us had better work harder to keep up."
The nightdemon warlord rolled his eyes. "You haven't been paying attention to galactic news, have you?"
The winged warlord replied, "I focus largely on the third realm, though I do pay attention to the larger pieces of news galaxywide—you know, Zhang Lie, Hong Tianqi, and the like. Do you mean that you know who the woman standing on the wall is?"
"We're all warlords strong enough to be high up the leaderboard. Who has the time to be worrying about trivial news?" The aquatic warlord snapped her fingers, causing crystal lotuses to bloom on the battlefield, each one trapping an invading alien.
Few of the warlords had begun paying attention to Sun Mengmeng and the other members of Team Zenith.
Among the hunters of the second realm, of course, the members of Team Zenith were hunters that everyone knew of, but that knowledge didn't extend to the third realm.
Ren Kunjing smiled in glee. "The woman on the wall is known as Sun Mengmeng, one of the key members of Zhang Lie's team. She's known as the red rose of the battlefield, and she's the most eye-catching of the female hunters in his team. She even has her own fan club in the Milky Way!"
Xing Ying peered at him. "You seem to know a lot about this woman..."
Ren Kunjing shrugged. "I'm a fan myself. After investigating Zhang Lie some more, I knew that I had to pay attention to the members of his team, Team Zenith. During the Void Cup, she was also ranked very highly, and judged to be one of the hunters in the Milky Way bearing the most potential."
Ren Kunjing's commentary caused all the warlords to look twice at Sun Mengmeng. A human, one of Zhang Lie's favored subordinates, whose potential was through the roof...
Sun Mengmeng's fire-attuned genetic energy formed a black hurricane, one with explosive strength. By then, the entire wall had turned glowing red, and the stone beneath her feet was starting to melt, so strong was the fiery energy she emitted.
The warlords all turned serious. Even if Sun Mengmeng had been an unknown figure before this fight, all the warlords remembered her face now.
Xing Ying's voice was serious. "She's got real skill. Those flames are truly something extraordinary."
It would be difficult even for them to approach her, and Sun Mengmeng had just recently ascended to the third realm! If they gave her time to develop, who knew how much stronger she would become?
Only a few warlords present could even be confident of being able to defeat her.
Xing Ying guessed, "Is she already nearing the level of a mid-rank warlord, then?"
None of the warlords present took that information well. How much effort had it taken them to get to where they were? How much blood, sweat, and tears? How much time, and how much danger had they gone through?
Zhang Lie alone was incredible enough, and now, there were even more talented humans popping up! Elites like Zhang Lie weren't unheard of, but they were so rare that it would be lucky to see one from a given race in ten thousand years—but not only did the humans have Zhang Lie, they now also had Sun Mengmeng!
Xing Ying shook his head. "It would be too much to call her a female Zhang Lie. Zhang Lie's inscrutable even to us all—at most, she's a less developed Zhang Lie."
The winged warlord sighed. "One was bad enough, but two is worse. If a third pops out—I might just lose my reason to live."
Another warlord who had been in the third realm for years laughed. "Hah! This sort of existence might appear once or twice in a few thousand years. If a third or fourth warlord-class human shows up, we might as well quit our jobs and go into retirement!"
"Ah, well..." Ren Kunjing began. "It looks like it's time for us all to retire, then." contemporary romance
"What?! Don't scare me like that, my heart's weak! Do you mean to say that—"
Ren Kunjing laughed. "The six members of Team Zenith might not all be as strong as each other, but they're certainly all on the same level. Furthermore, Zhang Lie's sister and disciples are about as talented as the members of Team Zenith, so there might not be just a few—perhaps a dozen, and as time grows, a few dozen, a few hundred, a few thousand..."
done.co