Apotheosis

'How about the flying knife? Will it work?' wondered Zen.

Then he took the knife out from his space ring and threw it forcefully towards the curtain of light.

Much to his astonishment, though the knife was old and shabby, it didn't cause damage to the curtain of light but instead, passed through smoothly.

It seemed that everything, even the life energy could penetrate and pass through the curtain of light freely except for Zen.

Zen remarked that his skills were no longer useful to him, and thus he had to rely on his own strength to get through this obstacle. Unfortunately, he had tried several times only to be disappointed.

He felt defeated as he heard Yolande's voice coming from the thick black mist above him.

"The Formless Enchantment! Break!"

As these powerful words were spoken, a roar of anger echoed in silence. It was the voice of the demon king Aldrich. At that same time, the black mist began to roll and release more intense energy.

Zen, who was near the curtain of light, distanced himself as waves of billowing black mists came rolling toward him.

With his feet on the curtain, Zen tried to escape from the surging black mist. He didn't know which way to go and soon a cloud of black mist enveloped him.

"Crackle..."

The destructive power of the black mist had intensified tenfold in a blink of an eye!

Zen's skin was scraped and it opened to an ugly wound. It bled profusely in horror.

When Zen finally struggled out from the cloud of black mist, to his dismay, there was another one moving on his way. The dark mists had started to cover every nook and cranny and he was now in a dead end with nowhere to hide.

In truth, Yolande was losing her power.

These black mists were from the demon's holy fire. It was the demon's cryptic secret which could only be used by the powerful and special demons.

How enigmatic it could be? This wasn't effective on Yolande as it could not hurt her at all. The problem was the demon king Aldrich himself. His intensified agility and strength allowed him to hide his presence in the fire. He could manipulate the demon's holy fire like a skilled warrior.

"Swoosh!"

There was a deafening sou

ldrich and Yolande were within the black mist and they were two of the strongest forces from each side.

The outcome of their battle would greatly affect the whole White Emperor City.

But the thick layers of black mist completely obscured what was inside, leaving them nothing to see about the on-going battle.

"Did Yolande lose? Her rival is the demon king Aldrich, after all," said one of the refiners in the Illuminating Soul Realm, with an anxious look.

"Don't worry about Yolande. She is different from the rest of us. She was born with the ability to become stronger when facing a stronger rival," stated another refiner who had great confidence in Yolande.

"The black mist of the demon's holy fire could disturb a soul, and we cannot see what's going on inside…"

"Look! Why is the bottom of the black mist dissipating?"

Then the curious crowd turned their eyes on the fire's bottom, where they saw a whirlwind vortex was sucking the black mist.

A man in the Illuminating Soul Realm descended, looked up from the bottom, and shouted, "It's Zen!"

"What?" Lennie was surprised with what he just heard. Then he moved to the bottom of the demon's holy fire on a silver sword and there he saw Zen lying at the bottom.

There were pieces of gold foils floating above Zen's body. They kept spinning into small whirlwind vortexes and then sucking the black mist.

"What…what happened to this boy... " Lennie murmured in disbelief.