Chapter 157: Midgame Strangling

With every massive step it took, the colossal figure shook the ground with a thunderous rumble. Shrouded in a hazy, pale mist, it possessed an inscrutable air that struck an even deeper chord of awe and shock in the heart of anyone who beheld it.

Fortunately, Qin Feng had long prepared himself mentally. Fixing his gaze through the mist, he saw a gigantic, ferocious, and domineering beast with the back of a tiger, the waist of a bear, a single eye, and the head of an ox slowly reveal its massive form. Yan Wen wore a ferocious, hideous grin. This bizarre ox-headed monster was no longer merely an illusory phantom; it had used the power of the formation to regenerate a physical body of flesh and blood.

Its colossal stature, interwoven and bulging muscles, and the crimson flames flickering incessantly within its single eye—combined with the raging fire blazing all over its body—made it look precisely like an ox-headed fire fiend striding straight out of hell, sending chills down anyone's spine!

"Kill!"

"Tiger-bodied, ox-headed beast, the savage ox unleashes its demonic fire!"

This must be a Qiuniu.

Such formidable demonic Qi! Judging from the aura emanating from this Qiuniu, it possessed at least the strength of the seventh stage of the demonic transformation realm. Moreover, one could tell at a glance that this strangely shaped Qiuniu was by no means an ordinary seventh-stage fierce beast; even among its peers, it was an entity with remarkably powerful divine abilities.

"Moo!~"

As soon as the tiger-bodied, ox-headed beast appeared, its huge ox mouth opened and closed as it roared up to the heavens. Its temperament was exceptionally volatile, and it seemed utterly impatient to lunge forward and tear Qin Feng to pieces.

Qin Feng furrowed his brow.

The opponent had certainly devised a clever scheme!

The game of chess was still ongoing. If this beast were to charge head-on, he would inevitably have to divide his attention to deal with it. Making a wrong move on the board would be a minor issue, but if he accidentally triggered other restrictions within the Nine Palaces and all nine fierce beasts appeared simultaneously to swarm him, he might not be able to fend them off.

However, this meant little to Qin Feng.

After all, he was not the one playing the game; he was merely acting under the instructions of the Heavenly Demon, placing the stones. Furthermore, he still had two supreme enforcers at his disposal, so a single Qiuniu was not enough to cause him any major trouble.

Therefore, with a wave of Qin Feng's hand, Zhan Bai and Xing Bing materialized instantly and moved forward to intercept it.

Xing Bing drew in a wild breath, and his body abruptly expanded like a balloon, towering to the height of several zhang in the blink of an eye. Since this was a battle of life and death, Xing Bing naturally unleashed all his divine abilities. The Corpse Scale Arms combined directly with the Azure Scale Flames, transforming him into a gloomy green monster. After bounding forward a few steps, he fiercely lunged at the Qiuniu.

He engaged in frontal combat without the slightest shred of fear!

As for Zhan Bai, he flickered and vanished into the darkness.

His specialty was dealing a fatal blow to the opponent at the most critical moment!

Xing Bing himself excelled in raw physical strength and was further bolstered by the corpse-body duplication divine ability. Having grown in size, he was ideally suited to go toe-to-toe with the Qiuniu. Meanwhile, Zhan Bai's metallic corpse form, aided by the Supreme Profound Eight Extremes Sword, possessed formidable offensive power. It was estimated that he would be able to slay this beast before long.

Qin Feng, on the other hand, smiled nonchalantly. Employing the Dragon-Catching Hand, he placed yet another stone directly onto the chessboard. With this single stone, he captured three of the opponent's white stones in one stroke.

However, to Qin Feng's astonishment—

The opponent's three white stones transformed into two wisps of white smoke, once again sketching out the pattern of a beast in the void. This time, the strange dragon-beast that emerged possessed the body of a turtle, the head of a dragon, limbs splayed flat against the ground, and a mysterious stone tablet slung across its back.

"Baxia!"

Qin Feng was startled. After the pattern dispersed, a pitch-black, turtle-shaped dragon-beast crawled out from the eastern mist. The divine ability of this beast was rather bizarre; its massive head retracted directly into its turtle shell, and the next instant, Qin Feng suddenly felt a chilling wind rise behind the back of his head.

This was a sensation of impending death!

It was a instinctive combat reaction.

Qin Feng whipped around hastily while simultaneously throwing a punch infused with the Three Thousand Dragon God Power, striking wildly behind him.

With a loud crash, the next moment, Qin Feng's fist collided head-on with a massive dragon head that had materialized out of thin air directly behind his head—this head belonged precisely to Baxia.

Feeling the pain, the dragon head instantly withdrew into the void. When it reappeared, it stretched out once more from inside the turtle shell.

Yet, the gaze it fixed upon Qin Feng was filled with astonishment.

Clearly, this Baxia possessed a certain degree of sentience and was not merely a mindless monster that only knew how to attack mechanically.

It understood tactics!

Just moments ago, the Heavenly Demon had captured three of the opponent's stones. Evidently, the monster formed by these three stones possessed far greater strength than the Qiuniu, and at the very least, it possessed more sentience than that creature.

Yet, those were clearly the opponent's chess pieces that had just been captured!

Qin Feng frowned.

It seemed that regardless of victory or defeat on this chessboard, his side was the one taking losses.

"Heavenly Demon, did you see that?"

"Mmm, understood!"

The Heavenly Demon blinked.

This truly was a speech-defying game of chess. Winning and losing amounted to the same thing; the only thing their side could do was try to capture as few stones as possible and avoid being captured by Yan Wen in return.

Fortunately, however, the two corpses were already yielding considerable results against the Qiuniu. The Qiuniu's divine abilities were only formidable in terms of raw power and flames. Qin Feng glanced over and saw that the savage ox's demonic fire was roughly on par with Xing Bing's Azure Scale Flames in terms of might, while its physical strength shared a similar marvelous synergy with Xing Bing's capabilities.

Therefore, the man and the demon exchanged fierce, sweeping blows, locked in an intense stalemate.

All around them were charred remnants of fire and swirling dust.

Meanwhile, Zhan Bai remained lurking in the shadows. Just as Xing Bing was grappling with the opponent using his corpse-scale claws, Zhan Bai seized the opportunity. A single sword flashed forth with impeccable power and precision; a flying rainbow slashed past, and the ox head dropped directly to the ground.

Slain with a single sword strike!

The performance of the two corpses left Qin Feng thoroughly satisfied.

With the ox head hitting the ground, the Qiuniu's remnant torso dissolved once more into a cluster of patterns. However, this time the pattern began to regress, growing progressively blurred until it gradually softened into an orb resembling a beast spirit, hovering at the very top of the battlefield.

"Oh?"

Seeing this, Qin Feng felt a flicker of surprise.

"Could it be that there is an even more powerful trump card?"

Since this treasure was an imitation of a Heaven-Defying Profound Treasure, it was clearly no simple matter. He decided to resolve the immediate crisis first.

Having disposed of the Qiuniu, the two corpses immediately lunged toward Baxia.

As for this Baxia, its spiritual intelligence was manifestly much higher than that of the Qiuniu. Seeing the two of them closing in for an assault, it immediately retracted its head and limbs, hiding deep inside its turtle shell. Furthermore, golden characters flickered upon the stone tablet on its back, flowing from the stele directly onto the shell—clearly executing an extremely ancient defensive technique.

Zhan Bai reached out and clenched his hand fiercely as a heaven-splitting giant sword descended from the heavens!

The tip of the sword flashed with endless starlight, slashing down with a booming crash!

"Boom!"

A tremendous roar reverberated through the air!

Golden tortoise runes flickered incessantly across the surface of the shell.

The flying sword rebounded into the air!

Zhan Bai's tyrannical sword strike had merely left a single crack upon Baxia's gold-runed turtle shell, seemingly failing to inflict any serious damage upon it.

Meanwhile, the golden light flashed on the stone tablet upon its back, and the crack on its shell began to heal slowly.

Baxia's defense could be described as peerless!

Even Qin Feng found this aspect utterly giving him a headache.

Xing Bing, on the other hand, swung his Corpse Scale Arms and unleashed a frenzied barrage of blows upon Baxia. That intense shockwave of kinetic force certainly made life quite difficult for the creature.

Under the suppression of the two corpses, Baxia did not even dare to raise its head.

To stretch out its head was to court death, so Baxia prudently chose to act as a turtle hiding in its shell...

While the battle above was fought with tremendous enthusiasm, the chess game below continued apace.

Under the guidance of the Heavenly Demon, Qin Feng tried his best to refrain from capturing stones and to avoid being captured as much as possible. However, the mid-game slaughter in this Nine Palaces Chess was intensely fierce, and Yan Wen was clearly intentionally forcing them into mutual attrition.

In the Nine Palaces Chess, the more stones placed on the board, the more unavoidable the mutual slaughter became. Within moments, three more divine beasts emerged from the mist.

Yazi, Chaofeng, and Suanni!

Yazi was bloodthirsty, shaped like a four-legged giant lizard with its back covered entirely in erect bone spikes. Its blood-red eyes stared wide, and its jaws, filled with sharp fangs, yawned open as it searched everywhere for bloodshed and combat.

Chaofeng resembled a dragon-headed hound, possessing a bizarre form. It crawled upon the ground, wagging a massive tail covered entirely in ferocious spikes.

Suanni loved fire, taking the form of a massive bird completely enveloped in a mysterious shroud of grey flames, spreading a pair of exaggerated wings.

As soon as these three beasts appeared, Baxia was finally able to catch its breath.

Especially after enduring Xing Bing's frantic barrage, Baxia was utterly incensed. After extending its limbs and head out from within its turtle shell, it lunged directly at Xing Bing.

This time, four beasts had appeared!

Stretching out its head to bite, had Qin Feng not controlled Xing Bing to dodge in the nick of time, half of his head would have been bitten off. Even so, one of Xing Bing's ears was torn clean off and chewed up by Baxia, mixed with corpse blood.

The four beasts would vanish in a flash, only to reappear targeting entirely different parts of the body—they were simply impossible to guard against!

Within moments, Xing Bing was covered in wounds.

The tide of battle instantly reversed. Had he not possessed a regeneration divine ability, he would have died ten or twenty times over by now. Xing Bing could only try his best to avoid being dismembered or having his head smashed to pieces by Baxia; otherwise, regeneration would truly become impossible.

Yet Xing Bing was now in a state of imminent peril!

As for Zhan Bai, he was surrounded by Yazi and Chaofeng. The Supreme Profound Eight Extremes Sword transformed into a silver swimming dragon that revolved around his body. Yazi curled itself up into the shape of a massive hedgehog, forming a huge disc with its spikes facing outward, rolling and crushing down toward Zhan Bai. Chaofeng, meanwhile, used its bizarre, massive tail to continuously unleash countless spikes at Zhan Bai.

Zhan Bai's Supreme Profound Eight Extremes Sword was no pushover.

Controlling his flying sword to circle his body, he shattered the incoming spikes while the Star-Shattering Eye in his left head suddenly gleamed with starlight, trapping the rolling Yazi within a spatial confinement. Yet this imprisonment was merely temporary; although the opponent possessed immense strength, it was ultimately unable to break free of the stellar shackles. After the starlight in Zhan Bai's single eye blazed brilliantly, countless points of starlight crawled all over Yazi's disc-like body. Following a few moments of agonizing thrashing within the confined space, its body suddenly exploded with a deafening "boom," shattering its flesh and blood all over the ground.

Having secured a hit, Zhan Bai instantly halted his flying sword, causing it to multiply into a thousand blades.

Controlled by Zhan Bai, the swords filling the sky swept across like ten thousand shooting stars along multiple trajectories, enclosing Chaofeng in the center. With a fierce clench of Zhan Bai's right hand, the myriad flying swords executed several rounds of crisscrossing slaughter, slicing Chaofeng into countless tiny fragments.

A rain of blood filled the sky, leaving flesh and bone indistinguishable!

Zhan Bai was truly Zhan Bai!

Although dead and reduced to a corpse, his former glory remained entirely undiminished as he slaughtered two beasts single-handedly!

It was a truly earth-shattering sight!

Meanwhile, the remaining Suanni flew toward Qin Feng's direction. Proficient in fire, Suanni opened its mouth to spew countless fireballs that hurtled toward Qin Feng.

Qin Feng sneered. This fellow certainly knew how to choose its opponent; anyone or anything that played with fire in front of him had only one destination—death!

Allowing the fireballs to strike his body, they were swallowed up in an instant by the Nine-Devouring Fire covering his skin.

Fire could not inflict the slightest harm upon him.

For the Nine-Devouring Fire was the bane of all flames!

Instead, with a flick of his finger, a white bone-fire erupted upon Suanni's body. Not only did the grey flames outside its body instantly extinguish, but it was also frozen into a massive block of ice, plunging straight out of the air.

The fire-mastering Suanni was utterly vulnerable in front of Qin Feng.

As for the remaining Baxia, Qin Feng let loose his full fury. Leaping into the air, he flashed several times to land upon Baxia's back, bringing his massive fist crashing down with the force of the Three Thousand Dragon God Power.

"Crack!"

Spiderweb-like fissures fractured across Baxia's turtle shell.

The next instant, Zhan Bai's flying sword descended from the sky once more. Qin Feng flickered and returned to his original spot, while Zhan Bai's sword pierced clean through the turtle shell right where Qin Feng's fist had cracked it!

Punching straight through Baxia's defense, it skewered the beast from front to back!

The coordination between the two was utterly seamless!

With a miserable cry, Baxia vanished instantly.

The bodies of the four fierce beasts transformed instantaneously into four patterns. Just as before, instead of disappearing, they were drawn into the floating white, soul-like orb suspended in the air.

This time, with the addition of the four patterns, the spirit orb grew even more substantial.

Inside the orb, it churned incessantly, as if brewing an even more massive and ferocious monster!

The aura faintly seeping out was exceptionally cruel and inscrutable!

Qin Feng furrowed his brow.

If his guess was correct, once all these fierce beasts were slain once, the nine beasts would give birth to an even more terrifying divine beast.

The union of the nine beasts? What would emerge from it?

Qin Feng harbored a bad premonition!

Looking over at Yan Wen, the latter showed no anger at the death of these fierce beasts; instead, he stared up at the giant spirit orb overhead with an expression of intense anticipation.

Qin Feng sneered. Even if this spirit orb truly united the nine into one, so what?

He would simply slaughter it just the same!

At this moment, Qin Feng's battle intent soared, filled with absolute confidence!

The blood throughout his body began to boil.

"Why not end this all at once!"

Having roughly figured out the combat patterns of this Eighty-One Palaces Heaven-Encompassing Chess Formation, Qin Feng no longer wished to waste time with Yan Wen.

This chess game was nearing its conclusion. To be fair, the Heavenly Demon's chess skills were quite respectable; at the very least, he had played to a dead even match against Yan Wen, who was well-versed in the art.

Yan Wen seemed to relish this process of slowly "torturing" Qin Feng.

The smile on his face grew increasingly inscrutable...