Daolon Wong's original goal was simply to unseal the magical monkey statues, giving the forces of Good Chi something to keep them busy and buying himself some time.
Testing their strength was just a side objective. Now that his main goal was achieved, there was no need to stick around.
Mainly, looking at Zenith in his Ultraman Legend form genuinely terrified Daolon Wong to his core. If he didn't run now, when would he?
In his normal state, as he slowly learned magic, Zenith had begun to understand how to conceal his power. It wasn't exactly to play weak to crush the strong... well, okay, it *was* to play weak to crush the strong. Otherwise, why would he bother suppressing his aura for no reason?
Seeing Daolon Wong preparing to flee, Zenith didn't stop him. This Dark Chi Master's main role was in the animal arc, where the Twelve Talismans were accidentally destroyed and their magic returned to noble-blooded animals.
Daolon Wong's entire plotline revolved around collecting the magic from those animals for his own use.
Now that Zenith had swiped the authentic Talismans, Daolon Wong's script had essentially been axed. Zenith couldn't muster any interest in a character with no remaining screen time.
"Uncle should be able to handle this kind of thing, right?"
Watching the purple light darting wildly across the sky, Zenith curiously reached out and touched it. He was instantly hit with a thirty-second Blindness debuff.
As everyone knows, Minecraft players only have two options when it comes to status effects: immunity or tanking it. Whatever effect you touch, you take the hit. But no matter the effect, a single bucket of milk solves everything.
Thirty seconds was easy enough to wait out. Zenith reverted to his human form. When his vision returned, he found that Daolon Wong was indeed gone, but the stone statues had vanished as well, teleported to who knows where.
"Uh... can you still handle this situation, Uncle?"
Uncle indicated that this was a bit beyond his current capabilities. He needed to find a way to locate the statues first before he could use a reversal spell.
Serie scoffed, telling the old goat that he was lacking; shouldn't this kind of thing be a piece of cake?
Admittedly, Uncle in his Master Fong avatar state could claim to be invincible, but right now, he hadn't yet gone through the biggest power-up of his life.
That would be the time he spent as Shendu's librarian in the world altered by the Book of Ages.
Serie was different. She never lacked knowledge; all she needed were the concepts and ideas of different magic systems to break through her inherent cognitive limits.
When it came to the sheer breadth of magical knowledge, Serie was even superior to Index, the walking library of forbidden grimoires. By drawing analogies, giving her a single concept allowed her to rapidly max out the magical classes of other worlds.
Serie kicked her left leg back, grabbing her toe with her left hand behind her back. Holding a dried pufferfish she had found who knows where in her right hand, she started hopping around on one leg.
"Yu Mo Gui Gwai Fai Di Zao! Yu Mo Gui Gwai Fai Di Zao!"
The sight was simply too beautiful. Zenith quickly pulled out a video camera to record the scene.
Green light shot out from the pufferfish, aiming toward an unknown destination. A few minutes later, the purple light and Dark Chi swirled like water circling a drain and were sucked right back.
"My review is that this was anticlimactic. Master Fong kept urging you on just for this?" Zenith commented.
Uncle threw his hands up. "Master Fong has logged off. Uncle cannot sense his chi anymore. But Uncle knows Master Fong's chi went after Daolon Wong."
Where else could Daolon Wong go? At most, he'd just retreat to his lair. It wasn't like he could mix it up with the demons, right?
The only demon left on Earth was Shendu, and he was still locked up in Stone Ocean.
Wait a minute!!
Zenith quickly opened his minimap. When he panned over to Stone Ocean, sure enough, he saw Daolon Wong and Shendu's icons right next to each other.
If you asked Daolon Wong to solo the trio of Jotaro, Levi, and Stark, he'd definitely get crushed. But breaking through the Good Chi magic surrounding Stone Ocean? That was no problem for him.
Once the barrier was opened, they could just teleport away on the spot.
"Shendu and Daolon Wong have teamed up. What kind of disaster are those two cooking up together?"
Zenith thought for a moment and decided to have Optimus Prime lead the Autobots to guard the Book of Ages first.
It was best to be careful with world-class items like that. Zenith's own status meant he definitely wouldn't be affected, but the same couldn't be said for Serie.
Even if everything was restored afterward, would the restored Serie still be the exact same person as the current Serie? After all, she didn't possess the trait of being a singular entity across the multiverse.
"You guys sure love to run. Let's see where you can escape to now."
Without another word, Zenith teleported straight back to Stone Ocean. The moment his feet touched the ground, he heard the booming sound of a massive incantation.
Daolon Wong and Shendu had teamed up, using Dark Chi magic to mind-control a large group of ordinary people into acting as a chanting choir.
Daolon Wong stood his ground, wielding his wand to construct a hemispherical barrier. Meanwhile, Shendu held the Book of Magic, loudly reciting a spell in an unknown language.
The spectacle was massive. Countless streams of Dark Chi coalesced into a giant, purplish-black portal to the Netherworld. One by one, the demons stepped out from within. Shendu himself left Valmont's body in a flash of light, reforming his own physical flesh.
"My prime form, it has been too long!"
"To think this magic could actually restore the power we lost over countless years in the Netherworld!"
Only Shendu seemed to have gotten weaker. The Talismans weren't magic he possessed from the very beginning; they were divine powers derived from the Chinese Zodiac that he had gathered after leaving the Netherworld the first time.
Zenith looked at the grand, final-battle-esque scene unfolding before him. He stood with his sword drawn, completely unfazed.
Shendu had once claimed that the Book of Magic he wrote back in the day contained a spell to release all the demons through a single door. To think it actually wasn't a lie.
"Zenith, your doom has arrived! You could defeat the demons when you had the element of surprise, but let's see how you beat us now!"
Xiao Fung hung back at the very rear, watching his seven siblings charge forward in silence. He broke into a cold sweat, especially when he saw Tchang Zu leading the charge at the very front.
As the old saying goes: the faster you charge, the faster you die. Zenith raised his sword and unleashed a Lightning Strike, the exact same move used by Stark.
Let's just say, Tchang Zu was instantly cleaved into the same state as Shendu's spirit form: a chibi-sized lightning figure.
The Thunder Demon had been a respectable figure in life, and now he used his own physical body to prove to everyone that some attacks simply couldn't be tanked head-on.
The eldest brother, Tso Lan, prepared to charge up his ultimate move. He believed that as long as he had enough time, no one could match him. He could manipulate and alter the moon's orbit, literally dropping the moon on them like a shot put.
But that required time, and Zenith wasn't about to give him that chance.
It had been a while since his last PvP session, but Zenith felt he hadn't lost his touch.
He threw an Ender Pearl to blink in for a slash, but the attack was blocked by a metal steel beam manipulated by Tso Lan. In that mere one-second gap, the other demons finished prepping their attacks.
Shendu's full-power flamethrower and Bai Tza's high-pressure water blast collided, instantly creating a massive cloud of steam on the spot.
Po Kong and Dai Gui teamed up for a brute-force assault, striking the shield Zenith had raised simultaneously. The shield shattered on impact, but not a single point of damage transferred to Zenith.
As for Hsi Wu, just as he was about to charge, he turned his head and saw Shendu and Bai Tza bickering. Fire and water were incompatible; putting them together only created high-temperature steam to give everyone a complimentary sauna.
In that brief moment of distraction, Zenith had already flown right up to him, looking down at him from above. "You actually have the free time to eat popcorn and watch the drama while fighting me?"