Chapter 192 - 191: Fighting Chu Kuang (2)
But as Chu Kuang wiped the blood from his mouth and stared at the towering, glowing figure of the illusionary Lin Yuan, his Half-Step Transcendent Dao Heart suddenly pulsed.
Chu Kuang paused. His eyes narrowed, his immense battle experience asserting itself over his panic. He looked closer at the edges of the black mist, noticing a faint, almost imperceptible lag in the ambient spiritual Qi fueling the illusion.
Slowly, a grin spread across Chu Kuang’s bloody face. He threw his head back and burst into maniacal laughter.
"Incredible!" Chu Kuang roared, wiping the blood from his chin. "A flawless illusion! It affects all five senses, inflicts kinetic feedback, and completely tricks the spiritual sea! If you were actually at the Soul Transformation realm, I would already be dead! But you are not!"
Chu Kuang pointed his halberd at the illusionary Lin Yuan.
"You are at the Early Stage! I can see the seams of your spiritual power! Powering such a profound illusion formation with such weak cultivation is utterly silly! It is like trying to sail a battleship in a mud puddle! If you had a formation spirit of a higher realm to power this, you might have trapped me forever! But with just your own Qi? It is too fragile!"
Chu Kuang inhaled deeply, his chest expanding massively.
"BREAK!"
He screamed, unleashing the absolute, totality of his Half-Step Transcendent aura. A shockwave of liquid-red Qi exploded outward in every direction.
The sheer, overwhelming density of the higher-realm Qi slammed into the weave of the Illusory Array Concealment. Because Lin Yuan was only at the Early Stage, the raw output required to sustain the illusion against a brute-force Transcendent eruption was simply too high.
The black mist shattered, raining down in shards of dissipating dark energy.
Reality violently reasserted itself. The ruined crater, the silver sky, and the actual, physical Lin Yuan returned to view.
Chu Kuang didn’t hesitate for a second. The moment the illusion dropped, he charged.
"Die!" Chu Kuang bellowed, crossing the distance in a single, earth-shattering leap, bringing his halberd down in a crushing, vertical arc aimed at splitting Lin Yuan from crown to groin.
Lin Yuan’s eyes remained completely cold. He raised the Primordial Sovereign Sword to meet the strike.
But he did not intend to block force with force. Against a Half-Step Transcendent cultivator, doing so would shatter his arms, even with his physique.
As the blade rose, Lin Yuan activated the sword’s innate ability: Absolute Severance of the Heavenly Mandate.
When drawn and activated, the sword ignored all physical and spiritual defenses unconditionally. A single swing did not just cut flesh or cultivation; it severed the very conceptual laws of the universe.
Lin Yuan swung his sword upward, meeting the descending halberd.
The clash did not produce a massive explosion of light or a deafening roar. Instead, the world turned briefly, violently monochromatic.
Snip.
It was a sound that existed only in the mind.
The heavy, crushing domain of liquid-red Qi surrounding Chu Kuang’s strike was instantly, and conceptually severed into nothingness. The halberd suddenly lost all its spiritual weight, rendering the attack utterly mundane.
However, the physical force remained. The sheer momentum of a massive man swinging a heavy iron weapon still existed.
The blades collided. The physical force transferred.
Lin Yuan was pushed backward, his boots carving deep, smoking trenches into the floor for twenty yards before he managed to bleed off the momentum. His arms ached, his muscles straining against the sheer physical disparity.
"It seems Chu Kuang is a body cultivator, just like me."
Lin Yuan’s eyes narrowed slightly as he carefully observed the imposing figure before him. The terrifying physical pressure radiating from Chu Kuang’s body was completely different from his spiritual energy. Every movement he made carried an explosive force, as though his physical body itself had been refined into a supreme weapon.
"He really is a genius..."
A trace of seriousness flashed through Lin Yuan’s eyes.
"His body cultivation must be higher than mine."
Chu Kuang landed heavily, his eyes wide as he looked at his halberd, feeling the temporary severance of his connection to the ambient energy of heaven and earth. For a brief, terrifying three seconds, the heir of the Chu Province was rendered completely powerless, unable to cast a single art.
But three seconds was simply not enough time for Lin Yuan to cross the distance and deliver a killing blow against an opponent whose physical body had been tempered to such an astonishing degree.
At that moment, Lin Yuan once again saw the importance of body cultivation. The very advantage he occasionally relied upon was now being used against him!
The connection snapped back. Chu Kuang’s aura roared to life again, even more violent than before.
"What a sword!" Chu Kuang praised loudly, his eyes burning with naked greed as he stared at the glowing blade in Lin Yuan’s hands. "That blade severs the ambient Qi! Such a supreme artifact is wasted on a Lower Division rat!"
Chu Kuang charged again, unleashing a flurry of devastating, high-speed strikes. "Hand it over, Lin Yuan! Surrender that sword to me, and I swear upon my Dao, I will spare your miserable life!"
"You cannot afford this sword," Lin Yuan replied coldly, his voice steady.
The physical duel escalated into a blur of crimson and blood-red light. Lin Yuan was dodging, parrying, and utilizing various arts to bridge the monumental strength gap. He used the Immortal Cloud Step to create afterimages, striking at Chu Kuang’s blind spots. He unleashed concentrated blasts of Thunder Rain Dao Intent.
But he fell short.
Everything he threw at Chu Kuang was countered by the sheer, overwhelming might of his Half-Step Transcendent realm. Chu Kuang didn’t need to be faster or smarter; he just needed to be immovable. He waded through Lin Yuan’s lightning strikes, his halberd constantly threatening to crush Lin Yuan into paste.
Lin Yuan was slowly being pushed back toward. The gap in sheer might was simply too wide to overcome purely with arts, at least without unleashing damage that would drain his spiritual sea entirely dry.
He needed to execute the checkmate.
As Chu Kuang lunged forward for a massive, sweeping horizontal strike, Lin Yuan deliberately stepped backward, feigning a stumble.
"I have you!" Chu Kuang roared in triumph.
Lin Yuan raised his left hand, his fingers moving in a rapid blur, and commanded the Heaven as Net, Earth as Web formation to instantly collapse inward, specifically targeting Chu Kuang.
The invisible grid of spiritual energy violently tightened around the massive heir, wrapping him in an inescapable cocoon of paralyzing purple lightning.
Chu Kuang’s forward momentum was arrested entirely. He froze mid-swing, the lightning arcing painfully across his skin.
But Chu Kuang did not panic. He simply laughed, a deep, guttural sound of pure amusement, as he flexed his massive muscles against the bindings. The net groaned, the spiritual threads beginning to snap under the immense pressure of his Transcendent aura.
"A net to catch a dragon?" Chu Kuang mocked, raising his halberd slowly, fighting against the suppression, preparing to smash the formation from the inside out. "You are truly desperate, Zhao rat! This pathetic web will not hold me for three breaths! And when I break free, I am taking your head and your sword!"
Lin Yuan knew the web wouldn’t hold. He had used it to buy him exactly three breaths.
Lin Yuan calmly lowered the Sword. The chaotic, frenzied energy of the duel instantly evaporated from his demeanor, replaced by the cold certainty of a sovereign who had just maneuvered his enemy onto the executioner’s block.
"Three breaths is all I need, Chu Kuang," Lin Yuan said smoothly.
He reached his left hand into his robes. When he withdrew it, he was holding two jade slips between his flawless fingers.
He held them up in the dim light of the crater, ensuring the heir of the Chu Province could see them clearly.
"Before you break that net," Lin Yuan said, his voice dropping into a register of chilling authority that carried a promise of total annihilation, "I suggest you consider very carefully how Emperor Tianxu will react when he sees the contents of these slips."