The black-robed person was Gu Nan.
After seeing the giant sword of shadows, discerning their black-robed teammate's laws was no longer difficult. The characteristics of a Star Ruler who possessed both the law of shadows and a powerful physical body were just too distinctive!
"To think it's actually him… I can't believe he's helping Academic Heaven…" Yu Yefei muttered to herself incredulously.
Her mind instantly filled in a bunch of drama, such as Gu Nan actually being Academic Heaven's pawn or Academic Heaven originally sending someone else as their third teammate, only for Gu Nan to intercept and kill that person…
Yang Yan's eyes flickered, clearly also quite unsettled after recognizing Gu Nan.
Regardless of what Yu Yefei and Yang Yan were speculating, they didn't forget the purpose of their trip and descended to the small plane at the first opportunity, completely surrounding the sky full of snow.
The fact that Gu Nan's attack didn't attract a greater god's descent meant their enemies weren't paying attention to this place, at least for the time being.
They had to finish this as quickly as possible. Plus, their mission would be complete after killing Claudia!
Unlike Gu Nan, who was genuinely interested in hunting gods, these two were invited by Academic Heaven solely because of their past relations and might not have been willing to get involved in this matter otherwise.
Who knows when the enemy greater gods would descend and whether Song Fei would be able to save them?
It wouldn't be strange at all for something to go wrong during battles of that level.
As soon as the two landed in the small plane, they unleashed their own laws at full power, and purple and cyan light radiated from their bodies respectively, quickly destroying all the snowflakes in their surroundings.
Transforming into snowflakes was one of the Snow God's abilities. As long as a single snowflake could escape, she would revive herself.
Snowflakes were much harder to deal with than blood or energy. The essence of snow was water, and even if heat made it melt, it would at worst turn into water vapor and float into the air.
Water molecules were extremely stable structures, so one could well imagine the difficulty of destroying all the water in a certain area.
That's why it required three powerhouses of the same level to ensure Claudia wouldn't escape.
Gu Nan stabbed his shadow longsword into the ground, and the shadows rapidly expanded like a black hole, sucking in anything they engulfed and completely pulverizing the land without leaving an inch of grass behind.
The sky was completely swallowed up by Yang Yan's law domain, and cyan-colored lightning wantonly swept through it, even churning up space itself.
Yu Yefei landed on the ground and pressed one hand to the land. The power from the abyss began to wreak havoc and churn underground.
Under the three's joint efforts, a perfectly fine plane became riddled with holes. Since even the plane itself couldn't be spared, Claudia was naturally affected as well.
At the other end of the small plane, the Snow God's human form materialized as she quickly opened a crack in space with lingering fear, trying to hide in one of the other planes. She didn't even dare spare any time to sneak a quick glance behind her.
However, Gu Nan's party was already prepared for this, so how could they let her escape?
The ground under Claudia's feet suddenly cracked, as if a terrifying force from the nine abyss had struck, instantly swallowing up her entire being.
A loud cry cut through the cyan sky, and a monster that resembled both a roc and a fish descended from above. The monster's tremendous weight bore down on Claudia, as if trying to crush her completely.
Yang Yan and Yu Yefei's seamless cooperation instantly sealed off all of Claudia's escape routes, cornering her in the truest sense of the word.
And just as this Snow God was doing her best to escape from the two's overlapping attacks, a shadow appeared behind her.
Claudia never imagined that an enemy would actually dare sneak up on her amidst bombardment from two sides… Even if the other party managed to hit her, wouldn't he still have to worry about escaping unscathed himself?
Reality wasn't a game; there was no such thing as immunity to friendly fire. The onslaught from the sky and the ground was something that everyone had to endure.
So only when a shadow sword suddenly stabbed Claudia in the back and shot out of her chest did the Snow God turn her head in surprise.
"You—"
But Gu Nan's fist had already landed before Claudia could utter a single word, blasting her entire head apart.
Gold blood splashed out in all directions but was instantly vaporized again by the raging powers between heaven and earth.
After losing the support of her own laws, even Claudia's corpse was completely engulfed in the blink of an eye, leaving no trace behind.
On the contrary, the two outside—Yang Yan and Yu Yefei—were slightly stunned upon seeing this and hastily stopped their bombardment.
Even they never expected Gu Nan to be this resolute, determined to kill Claudia on the spot even if it meant tanking both of their attacks.
A moment later, they saw Gu Nan's figure slowly emerge from the ruins of a wrecked plane, calmly walking up to them.
The simultaneous attacks of two Tier 9 cultivators—especially imbued with laws charged up in advance—caused Gu Nan considerable damage.
His body was enveloped by the power of the nine abyss, and his entire body looked as if it had been scrubbed with sandpaper. Not a single piece of skin on his body remained intact.
His head was suppressed by the crushing weight of the Kunpeng[1] Dharma. The massive force created by the law snapped his neck completely, twisting it over 360 degrees and causing him to look at the two from a tilted angle.
"Let's go," Gu Nan didn't care about such a small injury and casually called out to the two.
There was no doubt that Claudia was dead, as Gu Nan's Evil Value had already arrived.
This ancient Tier 9 god provided Gu Nan with nearly 10,000 Evil Value, allowing his current Evil Value to exceed 25,000, which wasn't far from the Tier 9 threshold.
However, Gu Nan's goal this time wasn't to reach Tier 9, but to farm enough Evil Value to directly reach Tier 10, which was still a bit far away.
In terms of enemies, he would need the Evil Value from killing three Tier 10 gods to reach the Tier 10 requirement. Translated to Tier 9 gods, he would probably need to kill nine to ten of them.
Gu Nan's tone was calm, but it gave Yang Yan and Yu Yefei a very strange feeling. They knew better than anyone else what kind of injuries Gu Nan had suffered, which was why they felt even more horrified.
Even after receiving injuries like these, he could still act as if nothing had happened?
They even noticed that the parts of Gu Nan's body scraped raw by the power of the nine abyss were recovering at a speed visible to the naked eye, with brand-new flesh and skin rapidly regenerating, as if he'd never been injured in the first place.
Even his head, which was twisted at a strange angle, was wrenched right back by Gu Nan's hands as he spoke.
However, the broken vertebrae had obviously yet to regrow, so his head could only hang limply from his neck, unnaturally crooked.
It was Yang Yan who finally replied with a light cough, "Since we've already killed the target, let's leave quickly before any greater gods target us."
Yu Yefei also nodded. Such a large commotion would undoubtedly attract attention soon.
Gu Nan, on the other hand, waved his hand dismissively. "Claudia's death doesn't really matter. No greater god will come over… But it's true that we should leave soon."
He still wanted to rush back to find another target to hunt.
[1] Kunpeng: An enormous mythological beast that can transform into both a roc (Peng) and a fish (Kun)