Just as Lou Feng well knew, that bastard Ji Jue was an absolute utilitarian. If a trick worked, he would use it without the slightest hesitation; if there was a lie to tell, he would spin it on the spot without drafting a single word.
Whenever self-interest was involved, hearing even half a sentence of truth from his mouth counted as honest treatment.
Whether he had ever thought that way or whether he truly saw him as a rival was another matter entirely. None of it prevented an artisan's mouth and hands from operating on two completely separate sets of principles, never in sync... After all, wasn't yelling about friendship, bonds, and brotherhood the perfect time to slip two blades into someone's back?
Inside the armor, Ji Jue used the loudspeaker to repeat his words. Concentrating his energy for the briefest fraction of an instant, he used Chunjun's traversal to leap directly behind Lou Feng out of thin air.
Without a thought, he drew the sword, thrust, and impaled!
Fluid as drifting clouds and flowing water.
In that sudden flash of motion, the sword of spiritus burst out through Lou Feng's chest. Upon the blade, faint wisps of crimson surfaced—not Lou Feng's blood, but...
"Jingzhen?"
Outside the arena, Master Kong's pupils instantly shrank. With just a fleeting glimpse in that split second, she recognized the nature of the technique Ji Jue wielded.
Back in the day, when Ye Xian ran rampant with her Dissociation Art, slaughtering her peers, she had incurred countless enmities and amassed a mountain of blood debts. When the vengeful schemed and laid ambushes to surround and kill her, who knew how meticulously they had prepared? Yet all their preparations had shattered to dust before this very move. Instead, they had delivered themselves to Ye Xian's doorstep to expand her material reserves... letting her reel in an enormous catch!
Stacking several completely different qualitative transmutations upon one another, turning one's own spiritus into a blade—with a single strike, it brought Crushing Ruin, shattering everything in an instant.
Just as it was doing now.
In less than the snap of a finger, Pan Ying and Chunjun resonated and erupted, sweeping through everything from the inside out!
Master Kong did not move.
Ye Xian's eyes lifted slightly in apparent surprise. With Kong Qingyan's petty nature, she would remember a slight for ten years, let alone watch her student suffer a grievous wound... In other words, she believed Lou Feng could handle it?
The way he handled it was by doing nothing at all.
Lou Feng made no move, allowing Jingzhen to erupt and sweep across his entire body. Yet its power proved astonishingly meager. There was only a dull thud, followed immediately by wounds rupturing all across his body as clotted blood thrust outward like sharp blades!
Pan Ying inflicted severe damage!
Yet what about Chunjun? Chunjun's destructive force...
It had been neutralized!
Meeting spiritus with spiritus, like using the trough of a sound wave to cancel out its crest. In a fraction of a second, he had subjected his own spiritus to a corresponding qualitative transmutation. The instant they made contact, it neutralized the shockwaves within the blow like an acid-base reaction, leaving behind nothing more than physical flesh wounds!
"You dare use a sword of spiritus to cut me?"
His back still turned to Ji Jue, Lou Feng bared his teeth. His face, covered in bloody gashes, burst into a savage laugh. The Artificer was terrifying indeed, but how arrogant to attack him with a sword of spiritus! Did he think the Lou clan's heritage was a joke?!
The instant Jingzhen erupted, Lou Feng had already seized Ji Jue's wrist without even looking back, his smile gleaming brightly. "I was wondering when you'd serve yourself up on a silver platter."
*Crack!*
The sound of shattering echoed as the seal broke.
To be precise, Chunjun's impact had torn apart the disguise cloaking his soul. One spirit-limb after another, resembling the jointed legs of an insect, broke free from Lou Feng's body. The razor-sharp appendages surged with the light of blessings, revealing a shape and structure far removed from any human soul before everyone's eyes.
"Parasitic spirit-forms?"
Tong Ting raised an eyebrow and glanced at Lou Guan, then quickly shook his head, discarding the thought.
No, those spirit-limbs were seamlessly integrated with Lou Feng's soul, as though he had been born with them. Had he forcibly implanted an external spiritus structure into his own soul and then used the Lou family's heritage to fuse them, inducing an artificial soul aberration?!
Artisans really were utterly unhinged!
"A spiritus ecto-rig, is it?"
Ye Xian glanced at Lou Feng and commented mildly, "You managed to research something decent after all."
"If a student achieves something through his own research, does that necessarily have anything to do with his teacher?" Kong Qingyan remained aloof, showing no trace of smugness. Like Ye Xian, her gaze rested upon her student.
She watched in silence.
In the span of a breath, thirteen distinct spirit-limbs were already expertly wielding their spiritus shaping abilities, launching a ferocious assault on the close-quarters Ji Jue.
Frenzied piercing, slashing, mutually destructive detonations, pervasive corrosion...
There was no room to dodge at all.
The hand gripping Ji Jue's wrist continually erupted with spiritus shocks. In their close-quarters deadlock, the Deft Craft matrix unleashed thousands of spiritus strikes in an instant, forcibly draining Non-Offensive's responses.
At the same time, runes and intricate structures surfaced under the nails of his five fingers, temporarily transforming his hand into a manacle that locked Ji Jue down, refusing to let him evade.
Facing this, Ji Jue did not retreat a single step.
While one hand countered Lou Feng's spiritus shocks, a sword of spiritus flashed and shifted in his other hand—slashing, parrying, intercepting, precise as a machine, without the slightest error. Empowered by Masterwork Nature, he held every ferocious strike at bay.
Then, the moment the sword of spiritus dispersed, a raised finger pressed against the tip of an incoming spirit-limb. With a single touch, the spirit-limb crumbled and dissolved!
The circuits and structures within completely shattered.
Dissociation Art!
In just a few snaps of a finger, the structures of the thirteen spirit-limbs were unraveled and dissociated one by one. Yet amid this unstoppable momentum, Ji Jue's movements abruptly froze, and he jerked his hand back.
As if struck by lightning.
The moment the sixth limb dissolved, what was revealed inside was a wisp of bone-chilling light, stabbing silently toward Ji Jue!
It was so familiar...
How could he not recognize it?!
Back when he was playing traitor in Kanemoto's workshop, he had gone on a rampage carrying this very thing... That was Master Kong's ultimate trump card, designed specifically to deal with fellow artisans—the Streamer Dagger!
Under the blessing chain of Harmonize with Dust and Light, it blurred all boundaries, thoroughly dissolving consciousness and flesh, causing the soul to collapse. It was tailored specifically against Embers!
Yet what he saw now was a pure spiritus structure. Master Kong's art had been altered and transformed in Lou Feng's hands, concealed within his very soul.
How could such a lethal structure be safely preserved? If control slipped for even a moment, Lou Feng himself would be the first to suffer!
In other words, just to defeat him, Lou Feng had gone so far as to swallow a giant broadsword, fighting with a bomb ticking inside his belly this entire time?
You really are something else, Old Lou!
With no way to dodge, Ji Jue shook his head and let out a helpless sigh.
The Streamer Dagger thrust out!
It struck empty air.
A crack surfaced along the edge of the blade, followed by a second, then a third, collapsing soundlessly. Stripped of the spiritus environment required to sustain it, the single-use item quietly destroyed itself.
In that instant, Lou Feng also froze in place.
Ji Jue had already broken away, shooting backward like lightning to open the distance once more.
Then what was Lou Feng holding in his hand?
He looked down blankly and saw half an arm.
Severed clean at the elbow.
The moment he sensed danger, Ji Jue had severed his own arm without hesitation to retreat. He shook his head in wonder. "You really spared no expense just to win, Old Lou."
"Likewise."
Lou Feng glanced at the severed forearm in his hand and sneered, tossing it aside. Once freed from suppression, the arm instantly burst and mutated, sprouting boundless flesh and bizarre spikes before exploding!
Lou Feng lifted his head. "Looks like the hand of Non-Offensive isn't all that impressive after all."
"Heh." Ji Jue chuckled. "A moment ago, you were holding my hand so affectionately, refusing to let go, but the second you got better, you started talking tough again... Back in the Border Realm, when you held on to me and said you wanted me, you didn't act like this."
Lou Feng said coldly, "Does trash talk do you any good?"
"No, I just realized that I underestimated you after all." Ji Jue thought for a moment and said seriously, "You might actually be a bigger threat than I thought."
"Scared?"
"No. Even if you're a bigger threat..."
Ji Jue shrugged and answered frankly, "The threat is still pretty limited."
Lou Feng's expression did not change. He remained unmoved, but the chest beside his feet blasted open with a deafening roar. As marbles rolled across the ground, the sound of breaking seals echoed continuously.
The lock was released.
Towering, hideous spiritus colossi rose from the ground, roaring with fury!
There was no need for rage to express his resolve. He had staked all the savings and accumulations he had gathered since becoming an artisan. Even if he had to exhaust everything, even if the empty glory of victory meant nothing...
*I want to win!*
*I fucking want to win!*
*By any means necessary, I will win!*
"..."
Ji Jue let out a regretful sigh.
Contests between artisans had always been completely unscrupulous. Never mind mere stockpiled materials; even if Lou Feng summoned some bizarre abomination on the spot, it would be par for the course.
Compared to Lou Feng, Ji Jue—who had only brought Little Niuma—had drastically underestimated his opponent. It could even be called contemptuous.
Though limited by various factors, with far too many things that could not see the light of day, making it impossible to go all out here, at the very least... he had to show some respect.
"In that case, I'll let you lose fair and square, Old Lou."
The moment Ji Jue made his decision, he raised his severed arm and gave it a shake. Crimson light swirled, the color of flesh faded away, and from the wound, the color of steel expanded outward.
In a flash, a mechanical arm sprouted from the stump, its dexterity surpassing even its original form.
Then, he pressed it against the Dragon Mountain armor!
Before Lou Feng's astonished eyes, the ferocious, savage armor abruptly dissociated. Countless mechanical structures flowed like water, extending toward Ji Jue and sinking into the body that had fully transformed into machinery.
It was as though he had devoured it.
That was a specialized application developed from his own Regeneration form—Assimilation!
Heavy armor layered across the mechanized body like scales. Engines slotted into the gaps in his chest, and a pair of heavy steel wings unfolded layer by layer from his back.
Four arms extended, gripping crimson swords of spiritus. His legs bent like digitigrade limbs, his feet turned into sharp, three-toed mechanical talons, and a crimson tail swayed behind him, its edges humming like a chain blade.
From the nozzles on his iron wings, resembling vector engines, brilliant light erupted.
Preheating complete!
Step by step, he strode toward the towering spiritus colossi. Though he stood alone, his monstrous form made all his opponents look like dust.
"From now on, give it everything you've got, Lou Feng."
From his four eyes, scarlet light lanced out. A friend's final warning drifted on the wind:
"Try your best... not to lose too quickly!"
*Boom!*
In that instant, a hurricane rose from thin air, swirling and expanding.
Mach rings suddenly blasted outward!
The pale earth churned, and a crimson comet tore through the air!
Upon the flickering crimson blade, radiant as fierce light, the emblems of two of the Six Evils flared to life. Pan Ying unleashed its full power, transforming into a massive sword of scarlet light that swept forward, cutting the mountain-sized colossus in two. Blue light flashed in the colossus's eyes, and it detonated with a deafening roar.
The Rook was destroyed!
Yet right through the flare of spiritus flames, a streak of crimson broke free. With a subtle shift of its wings, it soared into the sky, then plummeted toward the earth like a falling star. The violent shockwave easily shattered the jellyfish extending from the void.
Beneath its feet, the towering, spire-like colossus crumbled to pieces!
The Bishop was destroyed, but the restraining bonds it had cast bought crucial time for the Knights. Sixteen towering Knights closed in at once, their lances thrusting forward. Sparks flew as metal clashed against spiritus lances, followed by Pan Ying's sweeping cleave.
The crisscrossed lances snapped like cheap earthenware, along with two of the Knights!
The Dragon Mountain-assimilated Ji Jue remained cold and unmoved. He seized another Knight by the head, hoisted it aloft, and crushed it to powder before letting out a roar.
With a booming crash, the blade of Chunjun blasted from his mouth, reducing the wreckage in his grip to ashes.
He was in no hurry to rush Lou Feng, who stood seemingly within reach. Instead, he took his time, systematically obliterating every creation in sight!
Mechanized as he was, Ji Jue should have felt no emotion at all. Yet now that he had merged with Dragon Mountain, the dragon blood originating from Little Niuma boiled within his veins, continually feeding him an unprecedented hunger and fury, driving him to unleash destruction and tear everything apart!
This feeling... was magnificent!
Ji Jue swung his arm, drawing the impact lance from his back. Enveloped in crackling lightning, he hurled it behind him. In an instant, it crossed the vast distance and brought down an ascending colossus.
The Queen was destroyed, but another Queen had already taken flight. Spreading her arms, her delicate, performer-like face opened in what seemed like a soaring song. Wherever the invisible sonic wave passed, it shook every soul and conjured endless illusions. Yet the moment the hallucinations arose, they were burned away by the boiling dragon blood, leaving the ferocity in his eyes burning even hotter!
The King raised his scepter like a warhammer and smashed it down. In a heartbeat, all spiritus transformations within the domain froze.
No, more than that—all spiritus converged toward the King, and every soul felt a horrifying sense of suffocation.
An upgraded Domain of Spirit Extinction.
Unfortunately... it was useless!
He had seen this trick long ago. How could he have come unprepared?
Within that environment of rapidly draining spiritus, Dragon Mountain roared. Beneath the armor, quicksilver flowed, completely sealing off the interior from the exterior.
Immediately after, he hefted the wreckage of another Bishop and hurled it forward, smashing it against an oncoming Guard and crushing them both to dust.
Trampling over the wreckage of one colossus after another, he advanced step by step. Lou Feng stood his ground, not retreating an inch as he commanded the colossi in an endless assault.
Behind Ji Jue, shattered debris converged, rising from the ground as though reborn.
A mountain-sized hand slammed down, only to be sliced into pieces by Ji Jue without a backward glance!
From the fragments, vast billows of mist surged forth, swirling unpredictably. A terrifying corrosive force emerged—the secret art of the Lou clan. The mist, composed of countless minute spiritus crystals, aggressively corroded the armor, adhering to its surface and swiftly mutating, dismantling the outer plating from the outside in.
Yet beneath the peeling coat, the dark steel tinged with crimson acted like a monster, devouring the external spiritus to reinforce itself.
Empowered by Earth's Bearing, Sea's Embracing, it took from what had too little to supply what had too much, plundering everything to strengthen itself, growing increasingly terrifying!
Ten paces!
Dragon Mountain lunged forward, smashing an elbow into the Queen barring its path. As the blades swept through the air, their edges vibrated without pause. Jingzhen erupted once more, crushing the bizarre shadows leaping out from within.
Seven paces!
The bloody light of Pan Ying surged and swept out, carving every oncoming foe into pieces.
Five paces!
All the colossi had crumbled. Ji Jue's shadow practically engulfed Lou Feng's face, yet Lou Feng still did not move. His gash-covered face showed no emotion as he silently pressed his hands together.
He triggered the final transformation.
In an instant, the seal and suppression of the Domain of Spirit Extinction vanished, replaced by... a completely unexpected, catastrophic spiritus riot!
Everyone's expressions changed drastically!
The fragments of all the colossi suddenly collapsed, reverting to their original forms. The spiritus density of the entire space spiked exponentially, drowning everything in liquefied spiritus in an instant, creating a veritable deep sea.
Yet the deep sea surged, collapsing and contracting inward, until layers of qualitative transmutation stacked upon one another, triggering the ultimate taboo shift!
He was turning all of his spiritus into an unprecedented... bomb!
Mutual destruction!
A brilliant light flared between the two, swallowing everything.
Even outside the arena, the entire building shook violently. For a moment, the combined suppression of the two masters was almost overwhelmed.
Yet their raised hands froze in unison.
Unmoved, Ji Jue strode forward. His steel body displayed yet another transformation as the boiling dragon blood surged with blistering heat, shifting abruptly.
Braving the destruction right in front of him, he pressed ahead.
In that final fraction of a second, illusory scales surfaced across Lou Feng's face. The Dragon Scale Cuirass enveloped his body, rapidly expanding as it drew power from the rioting spiritus.
In an instant, after sacrificing all his chess pieces, he gathered all that power into his own body to achieve this final promotion!
Within his hands, a glint of cold light emerged.
A vast quantity of spiritus converged, outlining absolute nothingness. Invisible to the eye, imperceptible to the senses, refined and transformed endlessly until it bordered on the void—and the more void it became, the clearer and more unsuppressible its bone-chilling sharpness grew.
There was no longer any need to suppress it.
Amid the interference of the spiritus riot, this sole trace had already been submerged in the turbulent currents, impossible to detect.
Now, the dagger was revealed...
The Sword of Hanguang!
Strike!
Amid the blinding light and terrifying heat that swallowed everything, only a crisp clash rang out. That sharp note rose above the roar of the explosion, echoing and lingering in everyone's ears.
When the brilliant light faded, within the domain that had become a smelting furnace, only two contrasting figures remained, locked in collision.
Dragon Mountain stood majestic and immovable. Under the blessing sequence of Immovable as a Mountain, its primary structure remained intact; at most, the outer armor plates had completely melted and some precision equipment had been damaged.
He had taken it full in the face!
The spiritus reserves within Little Niuma were more than enough for Earth's Bearing, Sea's Embracing to execute an explosive reinforcement in that instant.
Under the catalysis of Earth's Bearing, Sea's Embracing, the fully stimulated dragon blood had taken over, corroding the steel to tear open a massive fissure across the chest. Like a giant maw, it clamped down hard on the sword Lou Feng had thrust forward!
As if forewarned by clairvoyance...
Under Chunjun's warning, a premonition had long revealed the direction of the impending strike!
With a sharp crunch, beneath interlocking iron teeth, the Lou clan's soul-severing Sword of Hanguang snapped in two. Then came the sound of ravenous chewing, crunching without pause.
In front of Lou Feng, just ahead of his cracked Dragon Scale Cuirass, Pan Ying's bloody gleam hovered steadily, locked perfectly within the fissure.
Though a mere hair's breadth from Lou Feng's face, it did not advance a fraction further.
It stopped dead.
The moment the blade was withdrawn, the Dragon Scale Cuirass shattered into nothingness, leaving behind a battered, wounded body that could barely stand. Yet he braced himself stubbornly, refusing to lower his head.
He panted violently.
"If I hadn't been paying attention, you really would have pulled off something massive," Ji Jue remarked, looking down at his opponent with genuine admiration. "Had your fun, Lou Feng?"
"Tch!"
Lou Feng looked at him sideways. His bloody face once again showed undisguised disgust and irritation. *What are you posturing for, you bastard? Think I won't smack you across the jaw?!*
Yet by now, let alone clenching a fist, he barely had the strength left to swear.
Exhausted, completely spent.
Damn it, come to think of it, even this terrible habit of swearing had been picked up from this bastard...
No, maybe he just hadn't been cut out to be a good kid in the first place.
He had given it everything, only to make a fool of himself.
He had lost.
Lost completely and utterly.
Helplessly, he swallowed the bitter pill.
"I'll give you that."
"Huh? What?!"
Ji Jue feigned bewilderment, leaning in as if he hadn't heard clearly, shouting in confusion, "Oh my, Young Master Lou, what did you say? I can't hear you clearly! Could you speak up a bit so I can record it? Hold on, let me find a recorder... Come on, hurry, say it again!"
"You bastard, I'll—"
Lou Feng could no longer hold back and roared, completely forgetting his current condition.
In his fury, before he could even raise a hand, his vision went black...
He collapsed backward, face to the sky.
In his final moments of fading consciousness, he only heard an amazed voice shouting:
"Everyone heard that, right?! I got it all recorded! He said with his own mouth that Mr. Ji is truly formidable, that he concedes defeat, that he's drifted through half his life without finding a wise lord, and from now on, he's sworn to follow his godfather..."
Chilled to the core, Lou Feng completely "died," losing every ounce of will to live.
*Just let me die. Fuck it, I'm done!*
*My life is ruined...*
Chapter 557