Book 7, Chapter 23: Sweep
Book 7, Chapter 23: Sweep
The shadow immediately froze when it heard Su Chen’s voice.
It glanced around in disbelief, but even more surprisingly, it couldn’t find any trace of Su Chen’s figure.
He was obviously not physically here, but his voice was incredibly clear and direct. This inconsistency drove the shadow mad.
The shadow, however, could not speak. All it could do was open its mouth as it pantomimed a scream. Even without a face or an expression, its actions clearly demonstrated one singular emotion: fear.
An instant later, the scene around the shadow distorted.
The black shadow discovered that its surroundings seemed to melt away like ice. Everything returned to its previous positions.
The S.S. Clearwater reappeared around it yet again.
It was still in the Dragon Boat. Youthful Labor’s corpse was to its side, and in the corner lay Night Rain, who seemed to have fallen asleep.
Sounds of battle could still be heard in the background, but the situation was not nearly as dire or chaotic as it had been earlier.
A man was standing right in front of them: Su Chen.
“This was all fake?” Night Rain awoke from his dream, crestfallen.
They had been tricked.
Everything that had just happened had been an illusion.
“Not entirely,” Su Chen said with a faint smile.
The battle had indeed begun, but it was still in its early stages — far from reaching the climax.
His illusion had merely accelerated how quickly the battle had progressed.
“At least I had the time to deal with you rats. If more time had gone by, then you might've honestly slipped by,” Su Chen said with a faint smile.
Now that he had discovered the Harpies’ true goal, Su Chen’s heart felt much more at ease.
He glanced at Youthful Labor, who was lying on the ground, and then at the black shadow. He assuredly asked, “The Harpies have actually managed to master the Soul Poison technique, an Astral technique...... Can you still return to your original body?”
The black shadow, which was actually Youthful Labor’s soul fragment, glanced at Su Chen warily before looking at Night Rain.
It seemed to understand what was about to happen and reached towards its head to tear itself into two. An instant later, however, a powerful will enveloped the shadow, making it hard for it to even move its pinky. After immobilizing the shadow, Su Chen then slowly forced it back into Youthful Labor’s body. “It’s better to live if you can. Even though you think that living a life like this is no better than death, it’s better than you actually dying on my watch.”
The soul fragment had sacrificed its own lifeforce to poison Su Chen, and it was no longer intact. If it was put back into its host body, then the individual would merely become a broken, worthless shell of a person. Youthful Labor knew this, but he had still agreed to the plan. No one could question his loyalty.
But in the end, his loyalty didn’t matter. The fact that he had failed his mission was an undeniable truth.
He would not become the hero of the Harpies today.
After Su Chen forcefully sent Youthful Labor’s soul fragment back into his body, he casually snapped his fingers. A crystalline coffin immediately appeared around Youthful Labor’s body.
While this casual movement might have seemed simple, it was actually incredibly profound. The Boundless Sect’s disciples immediately realized that their Sect Master’s strength had grown yet again.
It was true that Su Chen’s strength had increased by leaps and bounds lately.
His improvement was closely tied to the faint white energy that he had obtained after forming his Golden Pill and also from converting the divine script into divine energy. With the aid of this newfound energy, Su Chen could sense his advance accelerating. Many theories that had been previously obscured to him were now easily understood without much effort on his part.
And he was receiving new enlightenment from the path of this Golden Pill.
After neutralizing the Harpies’ scheme, Su Chen’s mood improved dramatically.
At that moment, the Demonic Beasts’ attacks were still mounting in intensity. Unlike what the earlier illusion realm portrayed, the Demonic Beasts’ attacks came hard and fast with little reprieve between each wave. After just a few rounds of attacks, Demonic Emperors had already joined the fray. It seemed that they were trying to end this battle quickly.
“So the Demonic Emperors have already made their move? Fine, fine, fine. It seems that I should start warming up,” Su Chen muttered to himself as he teleported to the battle formation in the front lines. Surprisingly, a Demonic Emperor was already charging in his direction.
This Demonic Emperor possessed the form of a wild boar, and had clearly invested all of its resources into its body and not its brain. It recklessly attacked any enemies before it without any thought. It had only managed to survive till now because large-scale battles were quite rare; otherwise, it would’ve never even made it to this level.
At this moment, the Demonic Emperor boar reverted to its original form. A massive and brawny wild pig charged forwards, its hooves thundering against the ground as it bared its sharp tusks at Su Chen.
The Metal-Tipped Shuttles unleashed a few golden spears in its direction, but the boar actually managed to deflect them with a wave of its head.
It seemed that being an idiot did come with its own benefits. While its intelligence might be lacking, it wasn’t weak in the slightest.
Unfortunately, its lack of intelligence also meant that it tried to pick a fight with the wrong opponent; it actually locked onto Su Chen.
When Su Chen saw this, he chuckled. “Not bad.”
He directly countered with an attack of his own.
Both sides were at the Ultimate Emperor Realm. In theory, they needed to trade nearly a thousand blows before victory would be determined. Only once one party exhausted all their strength and used up all of their trump cards could the other side prevail.
But Su Chen obviously thought differently. For him, it would be a loss if he needed even a single strike to slaughter this boar.
As such, all he used was a single finger.
This plain and unassuming finger jab left a single small bloody hole on the boar’s body.
Normally, even ten thousand wounds of this size wouldn’t be able to kill a Demonic Emperor, given their immense vitality. But after Su Chen’s finger strike struck it, the boar’s charge grinded to a halt as it swayed back and forth as if it were intoxicated. Suddenly, it fell to its knees and plummeted from the skies.
This single finger jab had completely annihilated its vitality, immediately killing it.
This Demonic Emperor had managed to survive the Extermination Emperor’s Extermination Finger, escaped after being surrounded by forty-two Demonic Kings, and been wounded nearly three thousand times, and even been torn to a thousand pieces by the Heaven-Splitting Sovereign himself. But in the end, it had died to a simple finger jab from Su Chen.
The few Demonic Emperors who were nearby were all badly startled.
In an instant, three more Demonic Emperors flew at Su Chen at the same time.
When Su Chen saw the three Demonic Emperors simultaneously charge at him, he smiled slightly. “That’s more like it.”
He unsheathed his sword and sent a Dimensional Slash flying at them, immediately cutting one of the Demonic Emperors in two. This Dimensional Slash, however, was not enough to kill it; even though that Demonic Emperor had been cut in two, it hadn’t died yet. Its body rapidly began to bind itself back together as it cried out, “That killing attack can’t be used multiple times in a row!”
Oh? Are you insinuating that I made a mistake by not killing you in one blow?
Su Chen’s eyebrow twitched violently.
It was true that the skill he had used to kill the Demonic Emperor boar wasn’t a common technique. It had actually been infused with the mysterious faint white energy.
But if these Demonic Emperors thought that Su Chen could only unleash that attack every so often, then they were dead wrong.
Just as he was thinking of using it again, an idea suddenly sprung to mind. He purposefully avoided using that energy and instead activated his Seven Bloodline Microcosm Aspect to unleash the Flaming Dragon Theurgy Art.
This ability was now Su Chen’s calling card. The moment the Seven Bloodline Microcosm Aspect and the Flaming Dragon Theurgy Art appeared, his opponents immediately knew who they were fighting against.
“Su Chen! It’s Su Chen!”
Following this reveal, the number of Demonic Beasts headed in Su Chen’s direction drastically increased.
There were at least ten or so Demonic Emperors headed his way, along with thirty Demonic Kings and hundreds of Demonic Lords.
The pressure that this group of Beasts exuded was incomparably intense.
But Su Chen calmly floated in the air, right outside of the Meteor Formation’s protective boundary. Even with all of these Demonic Beasts bearing down on him, his demeanor remained totally carefree. The Boundless Sect’s disciples, on the other hand, were badly startled by the scene and anxiously rushed towards Su Chen to support him.
Su Chen turned around and steadily said, “There’s no need for you all to come. I can handle them on my own.”
What?
The Boundless Sect’s disciples were shocked by his words.
Numbers were not meaningless on the Primordial Continent. When a group of enemies banded together in a large group, their strength would multiply drastically. This applied to the Harpies and the humans, so naturally, it also applied to the Demonic Beasts.
As such, Su Chen wasn’t automatically invincible when faced against these Beasts just because he was stronger than them. Even a peerless expert who had mastered Method Power or forbidden-tier techniques wouldn’t normally be able to fight against such a large group of Beasts.
The huge group of Demonic Emperors, Kings, and Lords simultaneously attacked as they charged at Su Chen. Their attacks seemed to superimpose on top of each other, raising their offensive charge to a frightening level.
The Flaming Dragon Theurgy Art was infused with Su Chen’s fire-type Method Power, but the combined might of all these Beasts created an enormous vacuum that the Flaming Dragon simply could not overcome. It was quickly snuffed out.
The remaining energy washed over Su Chen, crashing furiously into his Seven Bloodline Microcosm Aspect.
The seven Desolate Beast Aspects served as Su Chen’s shield, isolating him in a completely different world. This fully demonstrated the adaptability of the Seven Bloodline Microcosm Aspect.
But when faced against so many Demonic Beasts at once, even the Seven Bloodline Microcosm Aspect was unable to bear the load. Cracking sounds could be heard everywhere, as if the defenses surrounding Su Chen were about to buckle and break at any moment.
The Boundless Sect’s disciples were extremely agitated when they saw this. They wanted to rush over and support their Sect Leader, but they didn’t dare to do so. However, neither could they leave. All they could do was watch on from afar.
Is he going to unleash the army of Titans? Li Chongshan and the others couldn’t help but wonder at what Su Chen’s plan was.
The fifty or so Titan-Class puppets were definitely more than capable of suppressing this tide of Demonic Beasts, but wasn’t he planning on saving them to be used as trump cards against Sky City? Was he really going to reveal them here?
Everyone was still wondering what Su Chen’s next move would be when they suddenly saw him gently push his palm forward. The Seven Bloodline Microcosm Aspect, which seemed like it was about to collapse only moments ago, suddenly began to glow with a silver light, as if the microcosm had been covered in a silver veil. The Demonic Beasts’ combined attack actually ground to a halt against the renewed microcosm.
Just as everyone was trying to figure out what had just happened, Su Chen made another move.
It wasn’t clear what he had done, but those Demonic Emperors, Kings, and Lords were all suddenly frozen in place. They began to panic, but none of them were able to break free no matter how desperately they struggled.
Even more frighteningly, their combination attack had been split apart.
If their layered attack was split apart, then they were actually fighting as individuals. In fact, not only did their attacks not amplify each others’ strength, but they would actually start interfering with each other.
This sensation of having their layered attack split apart shocked all of the Demonic Beasts present.
One of the Demonic Emperors loudly yelled, “We can’t give him an opportunity to split our attacks apart. Everyone, attack!”
Even though they couldn’t move, they could still fight back.
The Demonic Beasts unleashed another combination attack. Since their formation had been completely disrupted, it was significantly weaker than their first one; even still, it was still quite hard to deal with.
Su Chen didn’t pay it any mind. He was currently in the process of sensing the changes in the environment after he had used that faint white energy. As soon as he had split his opponents’ attacks apart, Su Chen immediately realized that he might have paved a path for the powerful to overcome a numerical disadvantage.
The current him was capable of slaughtering all of the creatures present with a single sweep of his hand, but after a moment’s thought, he decided that it would be better more beneficial to keep a low profile for now.
So, he might as well ignore those lower-leveled creatures and just kill the Demonic Emperors first.
If anyone had heard his thoughts, then their jaw probably would have hit the floor. Even so, this choice was already being “low-key” for Su Chen.
An instant later, Su Chen unleashed another palm strike.
As this palm strike flew out, the sky dimmed noticeably.
Demonic Emperors plummeted from the sky!