The atmosphere screamed.

  The arrival of three of the guardian beasts had shattered the oppressive stillness of the Demon Lord’s domain. The spatial lock that had turned the air into solid iron fractured like cheap glass under the combined weight of a mountain, an ocean and a storm.

  Li Yu felt the invisible shackles snap.

  'Freedom.'

  He didn't hesitate. He didn't wait to watch the show or what was going to happen next. He channeled his Qi and instantly Void Stepped.

  He blurred, aiming to vanish halfway across the continent. Anywhere but here.

  "You think I forgot you?!"

  The voice of Demon Lord Balor boomed. It was louder than the thunder rolling off the eagle’s wings. Balor didn't turn his head. He made a grabbing gesture with his lower left hand.

  A cube of crimson light materialized around Li Yu. It wasn't just a barrier; it was an isolation chamber. Li Yu slammed into the red wall as he tried to escape and bounced off of it hard.

  "Sit," Balor laughed.

  "Eyes on us, demon." The Black Tortoise rumbled. "You better focus on us or you won’t know how you died!"

  "Everything here is beneath my notice," Balor sneered.

  He raised his two massive upper arms. Magma was dripping from his elbows, sizzling as it hit the air. "Come then, livestock. Let us see if your legends holds any weight."

  The fight began instantly. It wasn't a martial arts duel between cultivators. It was a natural disaster.

  The Thunderbird shrieked as it was diving from the clouds. It was a streak of blinding white gold. Its wings snapped forward and unleashed a storm of lightning bolts.

  Kra-koom.

  The lightning slammed into Balor’s chest. The Demon Lord roared as he crossed his arms to block. His red scales blackened and cracked from the attack. Smoke was pouring from the impact site.

  Before he could recover or do anything, the Abyssal Leviathan struck. The massive serpent uncoiled with terrifying speed. It opened its maw and exhaled.

  It was a breath attack that focused on freezing. The temperature in the entire surrounding area dropped. Soon snow began to fall and was then replaced by hail.

  A cone of white mist engulfed Balor’s legs. The magma hooves hissed and solidified into grey rock. Balor’s movements slowed instantly as the frost was creeping up his massive torso.

  "Heavy," the Black Tortoise intoned.

  The mountain-sized beast simply dropped. It manipulated its own gravity field, amplifying its already massive weight. It slammed its massive front legs into the ground.

  A shockwave of kinetic energy rippled through the bedrock. It hit Balor from below and shattered the stone encasing his frozen legs and throwing the colossal demon off balance. Balor stumbled but did not fall.

  "Pathetic!" Balor roared.

  He punched the air. The shockwave from it shattered the ice on his chest. He grabbed a bolt of lightning from the Thunderbird with his bare hand and crushed it into sparks.

  He was strong. Terrifyingly strong. But he was fighting three entities that could withstand him.

  The Leviathan whipped its tail, slamming into Balor’s side. The Tortoise bit down on Balor’s arm with the Black Serpent and injected a venom that rotted the flesh. The Thunderbird raked his eyes with talons made of solid plasma.

  Balor was slowly being pushed back. He was losing to their combined might. Perhaps one on one, he could defeat them. However, with all three, they were covering for one another and making him unable to truly unleash any of his devastating attacks. He was being pushed back toward the rift while bleeding rivers of silver fire.

  Li Yu watched from his red prison with his eyes wide. Even though he didn’t want to be there, he was getting to witness a battle well beyond his realm. He was catching glimpses of different laws and highly refined techniques.

  'This is incredible.’ Li Yu thought. 'This is what true power looks like.'

  The landscape around the fortress, or what was left of it, was being erased. Mountains were being flattened into plains. Plains were being gouged into canyons. If he wasn't inside this spatial prison, the shockwaves alone would have turned him into paste long ago.

  "Enough!" Balor bellowed.

  He slammed all four hands together. A pulse of red energy knocked the three beasts back just enough for him to breathe a bit.

  Balor stood panting. He was bleeding all over and his armor was torn in many places. But he was grinning.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "I expected resistance," Balor rasped. "I expected the you ignorant lot to show up. And because I respect power... I came prepared."

  He reached into the void with his lower right hand.

  "I paid a fortune in souls for this," Balor laughed. He pulled out two objects.

  In his lower left hand, a small intricate black cube. In his lower right hand, a staff made of bleached white bone, topped with a skull that wept tears of black oil.

  "The Spine of the First Hunter!" Balor announced with triumphant laughter. He slammed the staff into the ground.

  Hummmmmm.

  A frequency swept across the battlefield. It wasn't a sound. It was a suppression field specifically tuned to the biology of beasts. The effect was instantaneous.

  The Thunderbird fell out of the sky and crashed into the ruin of the fortress wall. The Leviathan’s ice shattered and its body went limp. The Black Tortoise groaned with its massive legs buckling. It was as if the weight of its shell had suddenly tripled.

  "My blood..." the Leviathan hissed. "It... stagnates."

  "It suppresses the bloodline," Balor gloated. "It turns apex predators into house cats."

  The black cube was already in the air. It expanded and was spinning rapidly. It created a dome of black light that encompassed the entire region. It was sealing the area off completely from the rest of the world.

  "And this," Balor pointed to the cube, "locks the door. Do not think of calling your seven brothers and sisters. No signal leaves this cage. You will die here, alone. And I will wear your skins as trophies."

  Balor laughed again in victory. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated triumph. He walked toward the fallen Thunderbird with his magma hooves melting the rock.

  "Which one first?" Balor mused. "The bird? I hate loud noises the most."

  "You talk too much," the Black Tortoise groaned.

  "And you die too slowly!" Balor countered. He raised a massive fist to crush the bird’s skull.

  "Fool!" The Tortoise shouted. It lifted its head with immense effort. "Do you think we have guarded this world by being unprepared?"

  The Tortoise opened its mouth. A single Pearl floated out. It was small, no larger than a melon, but it swirled with the colors of a primordial nebula.

  "The Pearl of Weight," the Tortoise whispered.

  Shatter.

  The Tortoise bit down on the pearl. The energy released wasn't an explosion. It was a focused beam of condensed gravity.

  Boom.

  The beam hit Balor square in the chest.

  The Demon Lord didn't even have time to scream. His chest armor disintegrated. His ribs shattered. He was blasted backward as if hit by a falling meteor and crashed in front of the rift.

  "Now!" The Leviathan roared as the beam was unleashed from the pearl. Fighting through the suppression of the staff, the great serpent lunged. But it didn't attack Balor.

  It spit out a single glittering scale.

  The scale spun like a saw blade. It was cutting through the air with a high-pitched whine. It aimed not at the demon but at the Spine of the First Hunter that was planted in the ground.

  Snap.

  The bone staff was sliced clean in half. The suppression field vanished instantly.

  "Free!" the Thunderbird shrieked.

  The eagle shot into the air, its strength returning in a rush of lightning. It didn't attack Balor who had just been sent backwards by the beam. It flew directly at the Rift.

  In its talons, it held a Talisman. It was an ancient, yellow strip of paper written in blood that predated the current era.

  "Sever the heavens!" The Thunderbird cried. It slapped the talisman onto the edge of the stable Rift.

  Crack-boom.

  The talisman detonated. It didn't create fire; it created a spatial shear. It attacked the rift itself. The smooth and stable edges of the rift began to crumble.

  The suction began.

  A howling vacuum formed at the mouth of the rift. It seemed desperate to pull back the Demon Lord that had come through it.

  Balor was pinned against the rift by the Tortoise’s gravity attack and bleeding from a caved in chest. He roared in panic.

  "No!" Balor screamed as he was digging his fingers into the bedrock. "I paid for this! I bled for this!"

  The suction dragged him backward. His magma hooves carved deep trenches in the stone. He was powerful but he was wounded. The pull seemed absolute. Perhaps he could have gotten away from it if he was at his full strength.

  "Go back to your hole!" The Leviathan hissed as it was blasting him with another wave of attack. It then smashed its long tail against him to further push him back.

  Balor slid backward from the attacks. His massive body was halfway into the tear now.

  "Damn you!" Balor howled as he began thrashing against the inevitable. "Damn you all!"

  Li Yu, still floating in his red spatial prison, watched with wide eyes.

  The battlefield that was once here was gone. The fortress was most definitely gone. There was nothing left but craters upon craters, smoke and ruin.

  'They won!' Li Yu realized. His heart was pounding crazily. Watching a battle of that magnitude was eye opening and extremely helpful to Li Yu. 'They actually beat him.'

  Balor was three-quarters through the rift now. The tear was shrinking rapidly and the purple light fading to black. The Demon Lord looked at the three Guardians. His eyes burned with a hate that would last for eons.

  "I will not leave empty handed!" Balor snarled.

  His gaze shifted. It locked onto the red cube floating near the edge of the crater. It locked onto Li Yu.

  "If I go," Balor whispered to himself and his voice echoing in Li Yu’s mind, "the human comes too. I won’t leave without killing at least one human!"

  Li Yu’s blood ran cold. Balor had already acted long before Li Yu heard his words.

  Balor had reached out with his lower left hand. He pulled.

  "Stop him!" The Thunderbird screamed while diving to intercept. It was noticed too late. No one there thought the Demon Lord would use the last of his time to attack this weak human.

  But it was too late. The red cube jerked violently and Li Yu was flung towards the rift. He saw the Thunderbird’s talons inches from the cube. He saw the stunned look in the Leviathan’s eyes.

  And then he saw the inside of the Rift. Darkness. Swirling red chaos.

  "Welcome home, vermin," Balor laughed.

  Pop.

  The Rift collapsed almost instantly after Li Yu was pulled through. The talisman did its work. The wound in the sky slammed shut and sealed the breach instantly.

  The sky over the Battered Coast turned a dull empty grey.

  The Thunderbird screeched in fury. It was circling the spot where the Rift had been. The Tortoise slumped down and was exhausted. The Leviathan stared at the empty air.

  The Demon Lord was gone. And Li Yu was gone with him.