Tier-3 Return-to-One aliens died like flies before Zhan Kong and Wu Y Ying.

The pair simply locked each one in place with spatial and world-force, then erased them.

After the last boom, every hidden life-form Meng Tianlei had released was gone.

The twenty cloak-wearing corpses flickered into sight, their invisibility stripped by death.

Watching the scene, Meng Tianlei’s brows twitched; not a single assassin had managed to strike.

Even the two three-eyed elites had died without firing a shot—impossible, yet true.

Worse, he hadn’t sensed who had done the killing.

A sovereign of soul-power, he’d felt no ripple of spirit at all.

Realisation struck: other guardians stood beside Ye Liuyun.

He dared not linger.

His strongest card was soul attack; he shot a spirit shard straight into Ye Liuyun’s sea of consciousness.

Ye Liuyun only smiled, disappointment flashing in his eyes.

The link between Meng Tianlei and that shard snapped—annihilated in an instant.

Some treasure, the alien snarled.

“Shameless human, hiding behind artifacts!”

“Still better than twenty hidden thugs,” Ye Liuyun sneered.

The Myriad-God Token already enshrouded the invading soul.

There Meng Tianlei saw Ye Liuyun’s own spirit form—colossal, flawless, equal to his apex.

Shock.

He was already beaten, yet before the news could reach his true body the token digested the shard.

Outside, the two still glared at each other.

Since treasures guarded the sea, only raw cultivation remained.

Three tiers higher, Meng Tianlei still failed to land a wound.

Ye Liuyun’s Buddhist radiance, Demon-Slayer Blade and other forces pinned the alien down.

Lightning?

He welcomed it; the Thunder Sprite inside drank every bolt.

In final desperation Meng Tianlei hurled his entire Thunder Source—mere fuel for the sprite.

Stunned, he played his last card: a human body, free of taint, a puppet he had possessed and raised to Return-to-One Fifth Tier.

The moment it stepped out Ye Li . . . Ye Liuyun gauged its soul, flicked a golden soul-blade, and the puppet’s mind burst like a bubble.

The blade did not return; it bored straight into Meng Tianlei’s own head. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

“Your soul is this strong too?”

The remnant deputy soul had time for one sigh before the blade split it; nether-fire and Buddha-light gnawed the pieces away.

“Over at last.”

Ignoring the dying words, Ye Liuyun swept the battlefield with golden pupils, released Golden-Crow sacred flame and reduced both original and puppet to ash.

Seeing their king fall, the surviving aliens howled and charged in a last suicidal wave.

Their own legion cut them down.

“Five-odd thousand left—what do we do with them?” Yu Xiaofeng asked.

The war was finished; the army was surplus.

Ye Liuyun gave Broken Horn the order: “Strong devour weak; leave the five hundred best.”

“Yes, lord.”

To Yu Xiaofeng he added, “I’ll take them away. Handle the rest.”

“Aliens—eradicated.”

Years of war were over; scattered remnants no longer warranted vast hosts.

Commanders watched the cannibalism in silence.

Yu Xiaofeng summoned the staff to plan demobilisation.

Ancient demons and common fiends were herded into the First Avatar’s inner world and sent back to their planets—too savage to roam free.

Half the human host stayed; veterans like Qin Peng and Yuan Hao refused to disband.

Each received a hundred thousand men to conquer distant star-sectors for resources.

The Speartip Regiment voted itself out; survivors scattered as free adventurers or joined the three expedition armies.

Ye Tiandao was recalled to the inner world, grouped with the other women.

When the alien stock had been culled to five hundred they too were sealed inside; every three-eye was destroyed, their ocular gems harvested lest they fall into outside hands.

The five hundred became sparring dummies for women and beasts, expend users of energy; any survivors would serve as cannon-fodder in the Desolate Sea.

Lower-realm women drilled on demons instead—tens of thousands of new fiends provided endless targets.