Chapter 1743 The Road

• Divine weapons—out of control. Not just the Gravity Orb. All of them. In that instant, Damon King’s gut clenched with panic. The betrayal of the divine weapons stripped him of his nerve in a heartbeat. “Why?” As doubt gnawed at him, Damon understood. Everything he wielded—aside from the grand paths he’d grasped himself—came from the divine weapons. Slaying across ranks at seventh tier to crush the eighth? He’d been leaning on the weapons, hadn’t he? With divine weapons as his ultimate trump card, Damon felt untouchable. Whatever came at him, he didn’t flinch. The sheer power of those relics gave him the swagger to stare down anyone. “But…” Now, he started to think. What if, one day, all the weapons turned on him? Bottom line, he wasn’t the true master of the Seven Divine Weapons, even if they’d acknowledged him—for now. And if… the original master returned someday? What would the Seven choose? “I get it.” At last, it clicked. Once your ace becomes someone else’s ability, the danger never leaves. Take the Gravity Orb right now. If it went rogue mid-battle, the fallout… Damon refused to picture it. “Good.” Watching the Gravity Orb still shifting, Damon already had a plan. He bore seven brutal grand rules—life and death, yin and yang, dark water, thunder… Even without the weapons, he had enough bite. What he lacked was a kill shot. “I need a trump card.” One that isn’t a divine weapon. After a long silence, Damon decided. Change… He had to change himself. At least strip away the fake confidence born from those weapons. “Out.” His will stirred, and every divine weapon flew from his body. Six artifacts. Heaven Crown, banning flight. Golden Silkworm Shirt, defense. Dragon-etched Compass, turning calamity to luck, scrambling fate. Space Boots, leaping the void. Heavenly Cloud Blade, unrivaled in attack. Gravity Orb, the gravity domain. Six divine weapons hung there, quiet and cold. Any one of them, if word got out, would spark a bloodbath. Right now, only the Gravity Orb kept flickering. The rest were still as stone. After a long while, Damon shut his eyes. It was his first time sending every weapon out. Let them stand guard. This time, he would change. Inside… Boom. All seven top-tier rules shuddered at once. The whole demon realm’s breath was churned into a storm. Truth is, even demons… split into different kinds. Thunder demons, fire demons, earth demons… all sorts. Of course, because of the Demon Lord, the entire realm was built on his grand path, with every other power as a branch. Rumble. In that moment, the entire realm trembled. Seven supreme paths surged like seven dragons rolling through the demon lands. “The City Lord’s having another insight?” “What a huge domain…” Everyone knew the City Lord’s seven top-tier paths. If the realm shook this hard, there was no one else it could be. Soon, they all closed their eyes. Nothing to gawk at. … Damon began to seek within. The human body is the greatest treasure. In that moment, he dug into his own potential. Rumble! The seven paths raced through his flesh. He’d long since cut himself off from the outer world. Now, he was a world unto himself. “What if the body is a world?” the thought rose in him. Don’t forget—he was a born freak. Even without the weapons, Damon was enough to be called monstrous. The chaos birthed endless talent, but only a handful deserved the word freak. Damon owned it. He needed his own ace. Seven top-tier paths threaded his limbs and bones. His body, hammered and tempered again and again, had almost no impurities left to purge. A flawless vessel. Yeah—the favorite shell for body-snatchers. “What do I do?” He started to think. Just letting them run wasn’t enough. He needed an ace, and needed to keep leveling up. Seven grand paths felt like a dead end. Either grasp new roads, or—on the backbone of those seven—carve out a different way. A path is walked into being. Nothing stays fixed forever. One road can lead to a thousand trails. “Try combining.” Damon used his body as the lab. All seven paths fused in a snap. Boom. The moment they touched, his organs blew apart. “So hard. Cough.” Blood spilled from his lips. If even a world’s own paths can’t truly fuse, what hope did a mortal body have? What about two at a time? Dark water—merge. Bang. Another failure. “Fine. Go deeper.” What’s at the end of thunder? No clue… try pure explosion. What’s at the end of water… it flows through all, never contends. What if it settles into stillness? Non-contention—that’s a path too. He tested for months. The demon realm was almost a hollow shell. The world remained, but every path’s power had bled out to nothing. Boom. A thunderclap split sky and earth. A towering demon shade traded blows with an Immortal Emperor wielding a black-gold staff. Old Demon Chu. “Fist of Ten Thousand Demons.” Chu was savage beyond reason. Each punch birthed a tidal demon shadow, smashing heaven and earth. “Come on.” The Immortal Emperor cast aside his weapons. He blazed head to toe—hundreds of flesh-light nodes lit across his body, most of them already shining—as his unmatched physique went head-on against those demon fists. Rumble. Their clash sucked in all color in a heartbeat. “Wild.” Even the veteran eighth-tier emperors like Rift-Sky couldn’t help but breathe out praise. Old Demon Chu or the Immortal Emperor—both were juniors in their eyes. Two seventh-tier monsters, whose raw power was brushing the eighth. In any era, they’d be legends. They were so damn young. The fight burned hot. No kill shots thrown, but neither was pulling punches. Every strike hit meat. No quarter. “Ha!” Old Demon Chu roared with laughter. “Now, I’m top-tier too.” Damn right. After swallowing almost the entire realm’s path power, Chu had become peak among peaks. The rush was unreal. The Immortal Emperor was happy for him, which made him swing even harder. The more they fought, the more fired up they got. “Let’s go—fight outside the realm.” The hype kept climbing. Boom. No more words. They blasted out of the demon realm. Inside, everyone was speechless. These two maniacs. The world was shaking, about to get assimilated by the chaos. West-Qiu frowned. “Suppress the grand ways. The City Lord hasn’t woken.” The world couldn’t snap now. With no clue whether it’d mess with the City Lord, the demon realm could not break. “Yes.” One shadow after another shot into the sky. Paths crisscrossed, shoring up the world. Damon, meanwhile, had slipped into a mad trance. “No. Still off…” He’d tried a hundred different methods. None worked. He still hadn’t found the next road.