Sensing that brute strength alone would no longer suffice, Pandu Dewanata changed his tactics. His body blurred into motion, weightless and precise, as he invoked the Art of Lightened Body and combined it with his devastating technique — Mad Bamboo Sweep.The sudden shift in rhythm caught Jalukarna’s four phantom bodies off guard. The Mad Bamboo Sweep was infamous for its fluidity, every swing unpredictable, as if the bamboo itself were alive and drunk on madness. Enhanced by Pandu’s perfected mastery of the Lightened Body Art, his movements became too fast, too erratic for ordinary eyes to follow. Within heartbeats, his bamboo staff lashed out like a storm — cleaving through three of the illusory Jalukarnas in bursts of thunderous impact.The explosions of energy rippled through the battlefield, shaking the ground like a quake. The three false bodies shattered — yet even as fragments of shadow dispersed into the wind, they began to re-form, their essence slithering back toward union.

Ki Mangkubumi’s gaze settled heavily upon Arya. His voice, calm yet edged with gravity, cut through the air like a silent decree.“I fear the situation has turned dire. We should pull the troops back before the demon army emerges.”Arya’s eyes hardened, defiance flickering like steel in his pupils. To him, retreat was no virtue—it was shame dressed as reason. Dying on the battlefield, sword in hand, was far nobler than fleeing from an unfinished fight.Ki Mangkubumi, sensing the unspoken protest, continued with quiet firmness.“I know what you’re thinking, Commander. But withdrawal does not mean surrender. It is wisdom. Our men are weary, and strategy must prevail where brute strength cannot. We are down to eight thousand soldiers—barely a shadow of what we began with. If we charge headlong now, we’ll be feeding them to death itself.”He wasn’t exaggerating. Based on the intelligence Ananta Shesa had gathered, every demon warrior possessed strength at least equal to a human elite cult

King Wirabhumi and the Black Dragon King — both masters of the fiercest fire elements — found themselves unnerved by the overwhelming power radiating from Prince Kalasekti. For the first time in their existence, their signature weapon — the black flame that could incinerate souls — failed to leave so much as a scorch mark. The prince’s skin shimmered beneath the fire, as if wrapped in an unseen armor forged by an ancient, divine force.It was no mystery why. The power coursing through Kalasekti’s veins was not his own — it was the inheritance of his father, the Demon King himself, whose essence he had gathered piece by piece after it was shattered in the ancient war between the Celestials and the Demon Race tens of thousands of years ago.“You fools,” the prince’s voice thundered, reverberating through the sky like rolling storms. “Do you think black fire can harm me? My body is beyond flame. No fire, no heat, no inferno in any realm can touch me!”At those words, realization dawned u

Rengga could only gape as Sarwana — the Monkey King himself — revealed an ability no one in the Valley of Life had ever shown during Rengga’s years of apprenticeship: he could fly. For all the time Rengga had spent in the valley, Sarwana had never once hinted at such a gift. Yet now, like a living legend descended from myth, he hovered above the battlefield with effortless grace, as if the air had become his throne.If one traced Sarwana’s bloodline back to the ancestors who once stormed the palaces of the heavens, such a gift was not wholly impossible. Stories of those forebears had been told in half-whispers around campfires for generations — furious, capricious demigods who had overturned celestial courts. To see a descendant of that lineage now manifest similar powers was to watch myth step back into the world.Pandu Dewanata, who had once fought Sarwana and later been forgiven by him, wore the same stunned expression. The wish he had harbored to meet his old teacher again had com

Countless times, Prince Kalasekti’s attacks rained upon a single point, carving a vast crater into the mountain. The gaping hole he created was wide enough to bury an entire mansion beneath its depth. A thick cloud of dust rolled upward, swirling before being swept away by the fierce mountain winds. Trees were torn from their roots and flung outward, forming a vast ring around the site of devastation. The crater looked as though a piece of the heavens themselves had fallen upon the earth. Arya swallowed hard. His mind struggled to imagine what would have happened if that monstrous strike had landed on a human body. Even with the spiritual energy surging within his core, even with all his battle experience, he knew better than to test such power directly. That single blow carried enough might to erase him from existence. Against an opponent like Prince Kalasekti—son of the Demon King—recklessness meant death. Arya knew this battle demanded precision, strategy, and the patience of a