He was selling gashapon toys in Marvel Studios, and at the beginning, Tony turned into Kuuga.

Lu Jin nodded solemnly, took the few Qi-Nourishing Pills, and carefully distributed them.

After receiving the pill, Zhang Lingyu swallowed it without hesitation.

A few minutes later, his aura began to surge.

Qi, who had barely reached the threshold of the Celestial Master realm, has now firmly stepped into the Celestial Master level.

"That's the power of gashapon..."

Zhang Lingyu clenched her fists, her eyes filled with complex emotions.

He recalled the scene where Zhang Chulan crushed him in front of the gate of Longhu Mountain.

At that time, he thought Zhang Chulan had just gotten incredibly lucky.

Now it seems they really have found a shortcut to quickly become stronger.

And I am just a fool who is stuck in his ways.

"Lingyu, don't overthink it."

Zhang Zhiwei walked over to him and patted him on the shoulder.

There are no shortcuts to spiritual practice, but if there is, then seize it.

"Remember, becoming stronger isn't about competing, it's about protecting."

Zhang Lingyu took a deep breath and bowed to his master.

"Disciple understands."

The night was darker.

The lights of Longhu Mountain were bright, and all the disciples who had taken the Peiyuan Pill were cultivating frantically.

The waves of Qi surged higher and higher, and the entire mountain was enveloped in a golden halo.

Even forces in the supernatural world, dozens of kilometers away, felt this terrifying aura.

"Has Longhu Mountain gone mad?"

"What kind of miraculous elixir did the Old Celestial Master take?"

"The fluctuations in this Qi... are simply outrageous!"

The leaders of the major powers could no longer sit still.

The Celestial Master's Mansion was already the pinnacle of the supernatural world, and now their collective strength has surged even further. How are we supposed to survive?

One phone call after another came in to the Wudang Sect and the Zhuge family.

"Wang Ye, does your Wudang Sect have any inside information?"

"Zhuge Qing, your family has a good relationship with the Celestial Master's Mansion. Do you know anything about it?"

Wang Ye and Zhuge Qing exchanged a glance, both seeing a bitter smile in each other's eyes.

"I know, of course I know." Wang Ye took out the black business card. "But if you want to know, you'll have to prepare the money first."

"How many?"

"Starting at 500 million."

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

Then came a roar.

"Wang Ye, are you crazy? Five hundred million? Why don't you just rob someone?!"

Wang Ye hung up the phone and shrugged.

"Buy it or not, it's up to you. Our Wudang Sect has already placed the order."

Zhuge Qing also put away his phone and looked towards the direction of Longhu Mountain in the distance.

Golden halos swirled in the night sky, a spectacle as if a divine miracle had occurred.

"The Luo Tian Grand Ceremony in two weeks..." Zhuge Qing muttered to himself, "The art style is probably going to completely collapse."

……

In the northern part of the magical world, the morning mist had not yet dissipated.

Frilian rode on the back of a mule carrying luggage, flipping through a grimoire with curled edges.

Philon walked ahead, her twin ponytails swaying gently with each step.

Shutark, carrying his greatsword, brought up the rear, warily scanning the woods on both sides.

The three had been traveling north for six days, their destination being the old stronghold of the demons in this area.

"Graf City should be just ahead," Philon glanced at the map. "It's a transit point for the demons, and they say it has a considerable number of troops stationed there."

Frillie looked up from her book and gave a faint reply.

She wasn't particularly interested in the demon stronghold; she just cleaned it up casually as she passed by.

For over a thousand years, she has been more skilled at this task than turning the pages of a book.

After crossing the last mountain ridge, the outline of Graf should have come into view.

But all three of them stopped in their tracks.

There are no cities there.

Strictly speaking, there used to be a city there.

Now all that remains is a large, haphazardly cleared area.

The city walls collapsed, the towers fell, and even the foundations buried underground were dug out of the soil.

Gravel and broken beams were scattered all over the ground, piled up haphazardly.

"What's going on..." Philon opened his mouth, but couldn't finish the sentence for a long time.

Shutark gripped the hilt of his sword and walked around the ruins once.

"There are no signs of battle." He crouched down and picked up a handful of soil. "No, there are no signs of any magical battle."

Frilian dismounted from the mule and slowly walked into the center of the ruins.

She closed her eyes, sensing the lingering magical fluctuations around her.

After a while, she opened her eyes again, a rare look of confusion on her face.

"There's not a trace of magic left."

Philon followed and squatted down next to a section of broken wall.

The demon city was destroyed, and the aftereffects of the spells and magical clashes should have been everywhere.

But it was abnormally clean, as if someone had used the most foolish method to dismantle the entire city brick by brick.

"A mage couldn't do that." Frilian ran her hand over the cut of a broken stone. "It was snapped in two by someone."

The fracture was uneven, and the edges still bore traces of repeated scraping by some kind of sharp weapon.

It wasn't magical cutting; it was pure brute force combined with tools.

Shutark swallowed hard; he couldn't think of anything that could dismantle the entire stone city like building blocks.

Just then, Philon suddenly noticed something.

She walked to the edge of the ruins and stood before a section of the wall that hadn't completely collapsed yet, her expression turning strange.

"Miss Frillie, come and see this."

Frilian and Shutark walked over.

On that crumbling wall, a huge symbol was sprayed with some kind of bright red paint.

dismantle!

Square lines with a circle drawn in the middle.

The symbol had an indescribable meaning; it was neither a magic circle nor the script of any known race.

"What is this?" Shutark stared at the red pattern. "Some kind of cursed mark?"

Frilian shook her head. She had lived for over a thousand years and had seen the writing systems of all the races in the Southern Continent, but she had never seen this before.

She tried to infuse a touch of magic into the symbol to investigate.

Nothing happened.

That was just pure paint, paint painted on the wall, paint without any magic.

"It's meaningless." Frilian withdrew her hand, her tone unusually solemn. "At least it's meaningless to magic."

But the more meaningless something is, the more uneasy she feels.

An entity capable of demolishing a city with its bare hands and leaving meaningless symbols on the walls is more unpredictable than any powerful demon.

"Is it a newly emerged race?" Philon asked in a low voice.

"Or it might be something from somewhere else." Frilian looked into the depths of the ruins where there were signs of rummaging.

The demons' cellar where they stored magic stones and valuables had been dug up, and it was completely empty, not even a single fragment remained.

The enemy not only demolished the city, but also looted all the valuables.

Shutark followed the footprints for a few steps, his expression growing increasingly grim.

"The footprints are human." He pointed to a clear string of shoe prints on the ground, "and the pattern on the soles... I've never seen this style before."