The blade of light swept across, yet the youth's colossal head showed no sign of tumbling from his shoulders. The cut that appeared was rapidly knit together under the influence of wisps of black qi.
Xu Yuan felt no surprise at all.
In essence, this boundless, stark white space was the manifestation of both their cultivations. And since it was cultivation, there naturally was no such thing as a fatal wound to a head or a heart.
The one and only way to kill his opponent was to completely shatter the manifested body.
With that slash Xu Yuan had just delivered, as the black qi dispersed into the surrounding space, Mu Nuo's towering, imposing form had shrunk slightly, but the change was almost imperceptible.
This was actually rather unfair.
Gauging their cultivation by their difference in size, Xu Yuan had no idea how many flashy slashes he would have to land to devour Mu Nuo, whereas Mu Nuo would likely need only a single charged haymaker to obliterate him.
If a blow connected cleanly, he would be dead on the spot.
In other words, if Xu Yuan wanted to survive, he had to take zero damage.
And on that point, Xu Yuan had no confidence.
In Cangyuan, he could do damageless speedruns because he could memorize boss patterns, but reality held far too many variables.
Not that he lacked any counterplay.
In a space where cultivation took form, cultivation could manifest almost anything.
If Xu Yuan wished, he could even use the Saint power in the markings to manifest a mecha from his previous life, encasing and protecting his true body, and engage Mu Nuo in a brawl of titanic proportions, like two colossal avatars clashing.
Yet after carefully weighing the pros and cons, Xu Yuan abandoned the idea.
While that would increase his margin for error, entering a war of attrition against Mu Nuo was purely a slow suicide.
The hacker opposite him hadn't just devoured his own mother; he had even devoured his ancient-beast power bank of a father. To exaggerate only slightly, his Saint power was as vast as an ocean.
What was stored within the ancient willow markings likely didn't amount to a hundredth of that.
If he wanted to kill this brat and survive, he had no choice but to dance on the edge of a blade.
Amidst these thoughts, tiny, crystalline mirrors materialized without warning all around Xu Yuan. Mu Nuo raised a hand to touch the mended cut on his neck and spoke:
"Xu Changtian, the gulf between us is too vast. All your struggles are in vain."
As the words fell, countless crystalline threads shot abruptly from the mirrors, darting toward Xu Yuan like bolts of lightning!
His pupils flickered rapidly as Xu Yuan instantly tracked the trajectory of every thread.
One hundred and thirty-two of them, sealing off almost every avenue of escape. To break through, he needed to draw on the markings, sever the three threads above his right arm, and burst out.
His ingrained combat instincts allowed Xu Yuan to make that judgment in an instant, yet just as he was about to move, strange, inexplicable information suddenly surfaced in his mind:
As the threads sweep past the body, they will split further like thorny stems, shooting out hundreds more threads.
He had no time to wonder where this information came from, nor could he alter his plan in this split second, let alone place his trust in such bizarre information.
A three-foot blade radiating brilliance coalesced in Xu Yuan's hand in an instant. The sword light traced glowing trails through the air, carving out a dazzling arc of radiance; wherever it swept, threads snapped and mirrors shattered.
Yet just as Xu Yuan was about to break through the cage of threads, exactly as the information in his mind had warned, the threads scraping past his body suddenly blossomed anew.
Clang—!
A crisp clash of metal rang out.
And at the heart of that sound, a sea of crystalline brambles had already engulfed Xu Yuan.
Looking closely, however, the brocade-robed youth at the center had suffered no real harm. Every crystalline thread about to strike his body had been precisely repelled by a tiny shield of light.
Densely clustered, there were hundreds of them.
Having narrowly escaped disaster, Xu Yuan showed not the slightest relief. Looking around at the sea of thorny threads trapping him and the pitch-black sphere of light already leveled at him from the youth's fingertip, a flicker of strangeness appeared in the depths of his eyes.
That peculiar information had arrived again.
This black sphere is not a direct attack. In mid-flight, it will split into a thousand streams of light that will streak past the sea of thorny threads around him, weaving a spherical cage to trap him completely.
What was this information?
Doubt flitted through his mind. Though he still didn't place blind faith in this bizarre information, with what had just happened as a lesson, Xu Yuan wasn't about to sit waiting for doom.
In the next instant, a sword light that seemed to sweep the heavens burst forth from within.
A gigantic blade pierced outward through the sea of thorny threads, plunging squarely into the raised wrist of the colossal youth!
Still trapped and unable to move within the thorny sea, Xu Yuan immediately clenched his hand across the distance.
Obeying his will, the giant blade twisted. The wrist impaled on the blade of light was nearly severed. And right at that moment, the black sphere at Mu Nuo's fingertip completed its charge and fired instantly.
Only, because Xu Yuan had manifested the blade, the direction of the black sphere's shot was slightly deflected.
Yet that did not stop the information in his mind from proving true once again.
A breath later, the black sphere scattered into countless streams of light, poised to weave a cage in an instant.
At this sight, Xu Yuan hesitated no longer.
The tiny light shields holding back the force of the threads shattered one after another, creating a split-second opening to break free. Seizing this chance, Xu Yuan darted like a weaver's shuttle and escaped the area covered by the cage of light in the blink of an eye.
Standing hundreds of zhang away, Xu Yuan watched the colossal blade of light still embedded in Mu Nuo's wrist. Just as he was debating whether to cut the wrist clean off to see the result, he suddenly felt a tremendous dragging resistance from the blade.
The slashed, twisted wrist was forcefully dragging the blade of light back, turning it bit by bit.
Mu Nuo was forcefully using saint origin to repair his form.
And at the same time, that strange information surfaced in Xu Yuan's mind for the third time:
It cannot block this blade. If he insists on severing the wrist, then better to let the entire severed hand transform into a cage the instant it detaches, trapping him within.
"..."
Seeing this, Xu Yuan had no intention of wrestling with him and crisply dispersed the giant sword.
Mu Nuo's wrist healed once more.
The two stood facing each other across the void again.
In this initial probe, Xu Yuan knew he had lost.
In essence, this battle was a war of saint origin.
Judging strictly by resource consumption, Xu Yuan, on the defensive, was expending far less than Mu Nuo. But he couldn't compete with the filial son opposite him, who had an inheritance left by both parents.
Trading pieces on this scale was not worth it for Xu Yuan at all.
As their gazes met, the youth, as tiny as an ant, suddenly smiled at the boy who loomed like a primeval giant.
The arts both of them had displayed were the most primal methods of manipulating energy. Yet Mu Nuo shouldn't have possessed such combat ingenuity, nor should he have had such a clear, deliberate tactical focus in the heat of battle.
This idiot brat had actually found the fighting style best suited to him right from the start:
Trapping Xu Yuan within a confined area, constantly reinforcing the cage with his overwhelming saint origin to compress his room to maneuver, giving him zero room to outplay him.
And this way of thinking...
was virtually identical to his own!
Xu Yuan's peripheral vision drifted past Mu Nuo to look at the space beneath his feet.
Boundless and desolate, a stark, colorless white.
Previously, Xu Yuan had assumed this space was the psychic link between him and Mu Nuo, but now all signs pointed to that deduction being flawed.
If this were a psychic link, Mu Nuo couldn't have been riddled with leaks by the Heavenly Gate sword intent, nor could he have attempted possession against him here.
And when that bizarre warning surfaced in his mind for the third time, Xu Yuan was practically certain that this place was no psychic junction, but rather some unknown realm within his own body.
At this thought, Xu Yuan turned back to Mu Nuo, his gaze tinged with something peculiar.
Mu Nuo could revive others through soul imprints, so naturally he could also use soul imprints to simulate the thought processes of the corresponding person. And to simulate Xu Yuan's thought process, this space...
"Is my soul imprint?"
Chapter 685