Chapter 1424: Understand or Die |
The lightning tiger and wind dragon corkscrewed into an incredible blow that struck indiscriminately around him as he swung his spear back and forth.
"Your struggles are futile. This is a judgment of the cosmos itself. Gone is your sight, your senses, and your flesh," Xing Yu intoned.
Even now, Fang Yi couldn't sense where he was, as though he were a god who dwelled in the metaphysical, looking down on the mortal world.
"[Shadow and Light]!"
Fang Yi's appearance blurred into a hundred clones, and a third wheel of time appeared by his back. Spear thrusts and strikes shot toward every direction.
"I said, all your struggles are futile," Xing Yu repeated.
A tremendous pressure bore down on Fang Yi from above, dispelling his attack entirely.
Fang Yi attempted to resist the mounting pressure with the power of time, but it didn't have the desired effect.
Even that power was easily suppressed by Xing Yu.
A cultivator of a higher dimension boasted absolute suppression over a lesser one; the difference was akin to a firefly's glow compared to the brilliant full moon.
Humans could paint and cut paper all they wanted—and even tear it apart if they so desired.
At this moment, Xing Yu seemed to be toying with Fang Yi like a cat playing with a mouse. No matter how he resisted, Fang Yi was unable to attack Xing Yu.
"[Judgment of Stars—Seize the Soul]!" Xing Yu commanded. This time, he pushed his technique to its extreme.
Fang Yi's head buzzed in intense pain. His body hurt all over. A formless chain passed through his physical body and tightened around his soul. Fang Yi felt as though his soul was about to be extracted from his body, a particularly dangerous prospect. He would surely be in danger if the separation were to take hold.
Even Zhang Lie blanched. "This is—!"
They weren't mental constructs; rather, their avatars in this virtual realm were projections of their physical and spiritual bodies. The soul was the root of the self; if it were truly to be separated from his body, there could be extremely severe consequences.
No one knew how this virtual realm worked, but the importance of the soul was paramount and quintessential. If Fang Yi's soul were seized, he could very well turn unconscious even in reality, turning into an empty shell of a body.
What sort of ridiculous technique was this?
Zhang Lie murmured, "If matters devolve, we'll rush into the arena and save Fang Yi ourselves."
"How, Captain?" Sun Xiaowu asked.
Li Feng replied, "We're all in spectator mode, and we have no combat strength whatsoever. If we rush into the arena, we'll just die!"
Sun Xiaowu stood firm. "There's no need to worry, Captain. You ascended to the fourth realm early, so you didn't see how hard Fang Yi worked after losing to you in the third realm. He's grown far stronger than before."
"What's more," Yang Ze added, "Xing Yu's technique only appears to be frightening. It's not actually that strong."
Zhang Lie nodded. "I was too anxious. Fang Yi will surely be able to figure it out himself."
Fang Yi arduously got up and began to counteract the effects of Xing Yu's technique with his willpower, forcibly wresting his soul back and defending it from the assault that came in every direction.
His opponent seemed to be formless; the attacks came from all over, and were particularly difficult to block. Even if he wanted to attack the opponent, he didn't know where to start. He was relegated to passivity.
Fang Yi coughed up a mouthful of blood. After his sight was taken, then his hearing, and now his body and flesh, he was exhausted from dealing with the litany of attacks.
As he continued to resist, a fourth wheel of time appeared to his back.
Fang Yi's physical body was trapped by the grindstone and ground away. His soul was chained and pulled away. A formless blade glinted in the air, readying itself for a final decisive blow.
Though blood seeped out of his body and wounds ate at his will, though he saw and heard nothing in his eternal darkness, it was precisely these conditions that honed his sixth sense to its greatest sensitivity. He felt a sense of tremendous danger and immediately unleashed the strength he had stored up.
Just then, a fifth wheel of time formed on his back.
"[Wheel of Time: Break]!"
As the next wheel of time broke, even more light flared from Fang Yi's back. A second shadow appeared, merged with Fang Yi, and boosted his strength, followed by a third, a fourth, a fifth...
As more and more wheels of time behind Fang Yi broke, more ephemeral shadows appeared and boosted his strength to an extreme. Wind and storm circled him five times over.
A dragon's roar resounded through the air like peals of thunder. A wind dragon and a storm tiger appeared. Wind and storm combined and crackled at the tip of Fang Yi's spear.
Fang Yi leveled his spear. Wind and lightning surged forth. Chaotic energy infused both elements, and the attack disrupted time and space itself. The power of time exploded from him in waves.
In the blink of an eye, everything turned unfocused.
Time and space were both disrupted. The formless blade was obliterated by the distortion, and a screen of light was forced into existence, then shattered by the energy that arose from Fang Yi.
Light flashed before his eyes as he understood the nature of the attack that had stymied him. All this about judgment was just misdirection—the opponent's true technique was spatial in nature!
Fang Yi realized that he had been trapped within a cage of void. All the attacks from before had just been a feint; the true attack was just an exercise of spatial power.
Fang Yi scowled. He felt as though he had just eaten a pile of excrement.
This was a remarkable attack indeed, and one which would have killed him if he hadn't managed to disrupt it in time. It was far too deceitful!
"Playing dirty, just like someone else I know..."
Fang Yi felt as though he had just exchanged blows with Yang Ze, that loach. If he had understood the technique from the very beginning, it would have been trivial to deal with it; but if he hadn't figured it out, he would have been killed, just like that!
Without the burst of power from his accumulated wheels of time, giving him the strength to force his way out of the technique with brute force, he would never have suspected that it was an application of spatial force.
The reason that his [Shadow and Light] had been ineffective was because it was a technique that accelerated time in his vicinity, and it had no impact on his spatial suppression.
In the stands, Sun Mengmeng sighed in relief. "Fang Yi's finally discovered what's going on!"
Yang Ze smirked. "As I said, his opponent's techniques aren't anything impressive."
Sun Xiaowu scoffed. "More like you've finally encountered someone else like you and dislike him as a result. You're just like that Xing Yu fellow!"
