Shang already knew what he would focus on next.

After entering the Isolation Barrier, Shang summoned several extremely powerful Peak Abomination Lords.

Abomination Lords were incredibly powerful, and they could even win against Clouds in a duel, but Shang was on a completely different level, which was why he needed several.

Shang had already realized that he could even summon Abomination Kings, but he hadn't summoned one yet.

Summoning an Abomination King could theoretically put the entire world in danger in a way that Shang didn't want.

What if summoning an Abomination King opened the world to being invaded by more Abomination Kings?

The Lightning Emperor had told Shang that Abomination Kings had been the most powerful Abominations that humans had ever seen and that they had been quite rare, even back when Lucius had been a Mage Emperor.

One Abomination King required someone at the Ninth Realm to become active to deal with them before they exploded.

This meant that the Mage Emperors would actually need to become active, and at that point, the entire concept of the war would become irrelevant.

The appearance of an Abomination King would put everyone in such a panic that the Mage Emperors would personally attack other Mage Emperors just so that they could search for the Child of Calamity without interference.

All trust would break down, and even the Mage Kings would become unimportant and irrelevant.

The Mage Emperors would run rampant, and no one but other Mage Emperors would stand in their way.

Even more, the Mage Emperors might become so desperate that they would force the Lightning Emperor to release the Archivist. Maybe the Archivist could help.

And that would be bad for Shang.

After all, the Archivist had already realized that Lucius had been the Child of Calamity back then, and Lucius had been better at hiding his status than Shang.

It was likely that the Archivist would quickly find out that Shang was the Child of Calamity.

Sure, the Lightning Emperor was extremely powerful, but someone like Lucius could only jump a single level against the Archivist.

The Archivist was a Peak Mage Emperor, and Lucius could only win against him in the Late Mage Emperor Realm.

One had to remember that Lucius had a sixfold Spirit Sense.

The Archivist was so powerful that he might even be able to win against all other Mage Emperors at the same time.

So, everything considered, the Lightning Emperor and Shang decided against summoning Abomination Kings.

In fact, they would only consider summoning Abomination Kings when Shang reached the Sword King Realm, and even then, they had to be very careful that no Abomination Kings would appear anywhere else in the world.

Because of that, Shang was stuck fighting several Abomination Lords instead of an Abomination King.

After Shang summoned five Abomination Lords, he immediately restrained them with his mind.

By now, Shang's willpower had become so powerful that he could even suppress an army of Abomination Lords just by looking at them.

In his presence, they didn't even dare to absorb any Mana.

Shang willed the Abomination Lords to attack him with all their power, except for absorbing Mana and exploding.

In the past, it had been difficult to convince Abominations to attack him, but now, Shang had no issues.

The five Abomination Lords immediately attacked Shang, but surprisingly, he didn't use Sword Blood.

In his fight against the powerful Mage, Shang used Sword Blood, Blood Compression, and Sword Heart, which now represented his three main techniques in a battle.

By now, Shang's fighting style had completely transitioned from his Element-focused style to how actual warriors fought in the past.

Naturally, due to World Connection and Void Break, Shang was still many times more powerful than even the most powerful ancient warriors.

Shang took out his sword and slashed at one of the attacking Abomination Lords. He didn't use any techniques.

BOOOM!

The Abomination Lord's body was extremely strong, and both of their attacks clashed without any side winning.

Even more, the scales of the Abomination Lord were ridiculously durable, and Shang barely created a scratch in them.

The defensive powers of these scales were beyond ridiculous, even when compared to the already ridiculous strength of its body.

If Shang's goal were to actually injure and kill the Abomination Lord, he would need to summon his Death Edge and use Void Break to increase the power of his body even more.

After blocking the attack, Shang immediately used Void Break to gain enough speed momentarily to block the next four attacks from the other Abomination Lords. Since Void Break had strengthened his body, the other four Abomination Lords were thrown back.

However, Shang didn't get any break as the first Abomination Lord attacked again.

This was how Shang had trained for the last century before the Lightning Emperor had sent him to the frontlines to deal with that one Mage.

The five Abomination Lords were attacking him relentlessly, and Shang had to use Void Break perfectly to deal with sudden bursts of attacks. After all, Shang couldn't keep Void Break active all the time. His body needed a small break after every use.

If Shang used Death Edge and Void Break, he would be able to severely injure an Abomination Lord with a single clash, but killing the Abominations was not the goal.

For years, Shang passively defended against the Abomination Lords' attacks.

Surprisingly, while under this much pressure, Shang's mind and body felt better than normal.

Whenever Shang was in danger, his mind, soul, and body seemed to stabilize and show great efficiency.

Ironically, Shang felt closer to death when he wasn't in immediate danger.

The more he fought and the more danger he was in, the less danger he was in.

Shang preferred fighting for his life over not fighting for his life.

Not battling felt dangerous.

The less he was doing, the more it felt like death was coming for him.

He couldn't stop.

He needed to continue.

He wanted to continue.

200 years later, Shang was fighting seven Abomination Lords instead of five.

The way Shang was fighting had changed, and he had become better at dealing with them.

The biggest issue was to keep track of seven rapidly moving objects. Sure, Shang had a Spirit Sense, but the Abomination Lords were nearly as fast as him, and he had to keep track of seven of them.

200 years ago, the bottleneck had been Shang's physical power, but now, it was his concentration.

He could move fast enough to deal with all the Abomination Lords, but it was difficult to keep track of all of them.

Shang was constantly on the verge of collapse.

If he misjudged one of the Abominations' movements, it would hit him, and it was possible that Shang's mind would be too slow to order the stop of the subsequent attacks.

Death was not certain, but it was a real possibility if one of the Abominations hit him.

And yet, Shang kept perfectly blocking all the attacks.

Everything became more and more warped in Shang's perception, and he almost couldn't see the Abominations anymore.

However, he still reacted perfectly.

It was almost like he was seeing them without seeing them.

WHOOOOM!

Suddenly, Shang's Spirit Sense released a wave, and everything in his perception changed.