Under one person: I, Zhang Zhiwei, the arrogant Zhang.

The lightning incarnation was still locked in combat with Takeshita Yujiro. Even after such an intense battle, the energy within him had not diminished in the slightest; on the contrary, it had become even stronger.

Because somewhere beneath this earth, a thunder pool, brimming with and boiling with lightning, beats powerfully like a heart, continuously supplying him with the purest power.

Unable to defeat the old Japanese soldier wielding the divine weapon immediately, Zhang Zhiwei remained calm. He controlled his lightning avatar, his figure darting across the battlefield like a ghost. Taking advantage of the gaps in Takeshita Yujiro's attacks, he once again delivered the death sentence to the marines who attempted to bypass the defenses.

"Boom!"

This time, the thunder was different from before. The previous thunderclouds were too slow, and many Japanese pirates and other supernatural beings dodged them, only killing some ordinary people in a harmless way.

This time, the thunder was no longer the kind of thunderclouds that cast a net across the sky, but transformed into beams of light as straight as swords, sharp and incomparably piercing!

A powerful Aikido practitioner, his body enveloped in a thick aura of light, was using his formidable defense to cover a squad of soldiers as they charged forward. However, before he could even discern the source of the light, a sudden chill ran through his chest.

He looked down and saw a terrifying, gaping hole the size of a washbasin in his chest! His heart, lungs, bones, and flesh had all been vaporized in that instant by the intense heat, vanishing without a trace. The edges of the hole were just charred black, emitting a nauseating, burnt smell.

Even more terrifying, if you look back through that hole, you can see that the dozen or so soldiers in the entire column behind him all have the same bloody hole in the same spot on their bodies!
It's like being skewered into a candied hawthorn skewer in an instant by a red-hot, invisible iron rod!

In the distance, Army General Matsui Iwane stared blankly at the scene, his binoculars falling to the ground with a thud. He felt as if something was blocking his throat, and he couldn't utter a single word.

Just now, dozens of elite Marines, along with that extraordinary individual who was considered a master even among the army, were instantly pierced through like grasshoppers by that thin bolt of lightning!

Their skin was charred and cracked, and then their bodies scattered like broken porcelain, turning into a pool of blood and mud.

The military had described the terrifying nature of this young Taoist priest in top-secret files many times, but when he actually witnessed the scene with his own eyes, the shock and fear that penetrated to the bone still made him tremble all over.

This... is only one of the ghosts he summoned!

If that little celestial master were to descend in person... what a cataclysmic scene that would be!
"This...this is the real devil! This kind of being shouldn't be dealt with by the army. What's the difference between that and sending them to their deaths?!"

Matsumoto trembled all over, muttering to himself that he was not a man who loved his soldiers like his own children, but if he could achieve his goal, he would be willing to let many people die.

But dying now is meaningless. Although those naval idiots are all as stupid as pigs and donkeys, they are still valuable war resources trained by the Empire.

If this were on the main battlefield, the lives of these people could even be exchanged for the casualties of thousands or tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians.

But now, led by those two idiots, Takeshita Yujiro and Hase, they have just died in vain, which is a loss for the empire.

"The Emperor also kept mediating, saying that we had too deep a misunderstanding of the navy and should not regard them as fools, but as close colleagues."

"It's a sad thing to have such stupid colleagues. If the empire ever fails, it will surely be because of these naval idiots."

Matsumoto muttered to himself, pondering what to do now, and how his army should face the entire Tiantong Diocese.

As a general, he was certainly not an idiot. Although Takeshita Yujiro had not given him any information, he had roughly figured out some of the details by now.

He had always known about that terrifying lightning figure, and it had caused him some trouble recently.

But each time, before things escalated, they were driven away by the spirits and demons summoned by the Grand Master.

Strangely, the ghosts and gods who were able to stop the lightning figure in the past were no match for this time and were dealt with in just a few moves.

Ghosts and gods cannot suddenly become weak; the only answer is that the lightning figure has become stronger.

Why did he become stronger?

Looking at the dilapidated parish, Matsumoto suddenly realized that the lightning-like figure would become much stronger within that parish.

"No wonder the Grand Master only intercepted the lightning-like figure when it appeared, and never went in on his own initiative. So that's why. In that case, the army must avoid that area when it launches an attack. We must learn from the mistakes of the past and not repeat the mistakes of the navy."

Matsumoto muttered to himself, then summoned his chief of staff and began to change the battle plan, intending to avoid the parish.

Matsumoto could have his army avoid direct confrontation, but Takeshita Yujiro was now like an arrow released from a bow; he had no way out.

His troops had already entered the parish. If he ordered a retreat now, all his previous efforts would be in vain, and all those who died would have died for nothing. He had no choice but to gamble everything.

While fiercely battling the lightning incarnation, he issued orders to his troops, instructing them to abandon their current firepower advantage, advance recklessly regardless of casualties, and charge into the crowd in the parish to engage in close combat.

In this way, with enemies and allies mixed together, if the lightning demon were to unleash a wide-range lightning spell, it would attack its own people as well.

If it were him, he certainly wouldn't feel guilty doing this, but he didn't believe that the young Taoist priest would.

Because if that young Taoist priest really did that, he wouldn't have gathered those people here to protect them.

Takeshita Yujiro was thrilled. He felt he had found a way to break the deadlock, but the prerequisite was that his troops could break through.

Zhang Zhiwei was naturally aware of Takeshita Yujiro's thoughts. "So you want to break through and tie my hands? Well, that depends on whether you have the ability."

Lightning Incarnation wasn't in a hurry to take down Takeshita Yujiro; he wanted to pick on the weakest target first. He decided to deal with the Marine Corps soldiers first.

The lightning-incarnated being, surrounded by thunder, took Zhang Zhiwei's place and unleashed divine punishment.

"You idiot, come at me if you dare!"

"I am Yujiro Takeshita!" he shouted. He practiced Shinto Munen-ryu, also known as the Swordsmanship of Power, which aimed to defeat opponents with overwhelming momentum and strength. Therefore, his attacks were all wide and sweeping. Later, he also practiced Aikido, which focused on defense, to make up for his weakness in defense. After practicing Aikido, his skills had reached a state of perfection, with both offense and defense, and no weaknesses. In addition, he also had the divine weapon Dojigiri, bestowed upon him by His Majesty the Emperor. This was why he was confident in coming here to carry out the mission of forcing out the little celestial master.

However, he overlooked one point: he was good at both offense and defense, with powerful and heavy attacks and impenetrable defense, but his speed was not very fast, which was his weakness.

The lightning incarnation's speed was increasing, so he was now fighting very frustratingly. He felt that this hateful lightning demon in front of him had no samurai spirit at all. It didn't confront him head-on at all, but instead used its speed advantage to kill the ordinary soldiers he had brought, like a cat playing with a mouse.

He was angry, not because he felt sorry for the soldiers' lives, but because he was being ignored! Because of his powerlessness!

Desperate to break the deadlock, he began to unleash his full power, employing a secret technique to mobilize the power of his Child Cutter across a wide area.

The power that had been accumulating for a thousand years surged into his palm, flowing through his meridians and violently impacting his joints, causing the blood in his body to boil.

After activating the power of the Dojigiri, he felt as if he were holding not a sword, but a dragon, which was continuously providing him with power.

"Die!!!"

He pushed his strength to the limit and unleashed a fierce slash! A violent blade of light, tens of feet long, accompanied by a shrill whistling sound that tore through the void, rushed toward the lightning avatar, determined to cut it in half!

But the lightning avatar was too fast! While he was still gathering power, the lightning avatar had already vanished in a flash.

Yujiro Takeshita wanted to use his Qi to lock onto the lightning incarnation so that his strike wouldn't miss, but the lightning incarnation was connected to the Yanghao Well, which was the central hub of the entire Qi system. In other words, fighting the lightning incarnation was almost equivalent to fighting against this entire world.

How could one possibly lock down the entire universe with Qi?

Therefore, Takeshita Yujiro's strike was destined to miss, but its power was still great. Even though it missed, it still managed to cut a tower of the Tentsu Church diagonally in half.

The people in the Tendō Parish were all moved to the cathedral and the various halls behind it. There was no one in the tower, so Takeshita Yujirō's all-out attack was almost a waste of effort and ended up being a complete failure.

At this moment, the lightning incarnation ignored the Japanese pirate's roar. He summoned the power of the entire Qi system to flow into his body, and then a powerful divine punishment was unleashed.

Intense flashes of lightning streaked across the sky, some resembling sheet-like thunderclouds, others as sharp as arrows.

A violent surge of power and lightning erupted, its target not Takeshita Yujiro, but the waves of Japanese pirates charging towards it, which it aimed to cut in half.

Zhang Zhiwei's battle strategy was clear: the Japanese pirates wanted to kill everyone in the parish and force him to show himself, so he would kill all the Japanese marines first and see if those old Japanese pirates would come out in desperation.

"Boom!"

A deafening clap of thunder resounded, and a surge of electricity could turn a person into charred remains in an instant.

Some of the Japanese pirates cleverly avoided the thundercloud-like lightning, but were struck by the straight lightning bolts. The fierce lightning charred their bodies, and then they collapsed with a crash.

Zhang Zhiwei unleashed his lightning magic one after another, losing count of how many people he had killed. He felt like a defensive tower in a tower defense game, annihilating waves of monsters trying to break in.

Streaks of lightning flashed and streaked across the landscape, blasting the Japanese pirates into charred corpses and turning the ground black. Zhang Zhiwei felt a pang of regret for the parish lawns, which were regularly maintained. However, with so many dead, he thought that burying the pirates' bodies there would surely make the lawns lush and green in a few years.

In the midst of this fierce battle, his thoughts wandered, and he couldn't help but think of such trivial matters. This was precisely Zhang Zhiwei's true thought. In his eyes, these Japanese pirates were as insignificant as feathers and as worthless as grass. Killing them to make fertilizer was no different from scooping a ladle of manure from a latrine to make fertilizer.

Would you feel any compassion if someone scooped a ladle of excrement from a latrine?

No, you would feel disgusted, and you might even feel that using this excrement to nourish flowers and plants is somewhat of a waste of their beauty.

Zhang Zhiwei felt this way: to die at his hands was truly a blessing from heaven for these Japanese pirate soldiers.

Then he began to bestow even more blessings.

"All troops, charge in at all costs!" a Japanese pirate shouted. They were bloodthirsty, or rather, bloodthirsty.

Just now, even these brainwashed, fearless tools, under such cruel circumstances, were overcome by the instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm, and wanted to escape from this hellish place.

But as soon as they fled, before they could even wait for the oversight team to settle accounts, they were killed by the lightning wielded by the lightning demon.

They immediately realized that the terrifying lightning demon did not want them to leave; did it want to kill them all here?
There is no way out.

They launched an even more resolute charge; they were determined to rush in, even if it meant death, they wanted to kill the women and children inside before they died.

Of course, their charge also resulted in more frequent attacks from the lightning-transformed form.

The thunder was deafening, and the surrounding buildings seemed to collapse in the roar. Wave after wave they charged forward, only to fall one after another, with severed limbs everywhere. The next squad of soldiers would then charge forward, stepping over the corpses of their comrades.

Ordinary soldiers could only charge headlong into the lightning, while the Aikido practitioners, specializing in defense, navigated around it. Ordinary soldiers could only charge, risking their lives. The Aikido practitioners, however, attempted to use their agility to weave through the gaps in the lightning.

These Aikido masters, even on a battlefield filled with flying shells, would be safe as long as they weren't hit by the shells. But that didn't work on this battlefield. They couldn't avoid the lightning, and people were constantly being blasted to pieces by the terrifying lightning.

Yujiro Takeshita had already used all his strength. Even the demons and spirits that had been easily wiped out by the Lightning Incarnation to defend against its departure from the parish were summoned again and joined the battle, but they still couldn't defeat the Lightning Incarnation.

The lightning avatars are too fast, and even if they occasionally manage to hit a lightning avatar, the Well of Yanghao will quickly repair it.

In the distance, watching this scene, Matsumoto kept cursing: "Naval idiots, what incredibly stupid and incompetent fools! They know to bypass you and kill your soldiers, but you don't know to bypass that lightning demon and kill the civilians inside?" (End of Chapter)