Everything Has Its Vanquisher

Hymn of the Eternal End! Yet Yu Xian's summoned beasts showed no intention of stopping. The instant the Mechanical Dragon Knight was stunned, tens of light-years away, Xielina gripped her sword with both hands and unleashed her ultimate skill directly toward him. This skill essentially froze spacetime and then strangled the target with endless light elements. However, the Tree Universe possessed neither time nor space to begin with, so the move became a pure barrage of radiant energy. In an instant, the Mechanical Dragon Knight was swallowed by the brilliant light. Reacting quickly, he raised his lance amidst the radiance, preparing to counterattack. Shielded by his profound rules of steel, Xielina's light cannon couldn't harm his core in the least—at most, it slightly raised the temperature of his armor. "Divine Thief!" Before the Mechanical Dragon Knight could even lock onto Xielina, a flash of black light darted past. The Mechanical Dragon Knight had barely raised his hand when he realized the knight's lance had vanished from his grip. Once again, he froze in bewilderment. Tracing his connection to the weapon, he looked toward a large rat scurrying into the distance. It darted through the void with incredible speed, clenching none other than his lance between its teeth. "Insolent vermin!!!!" The Mechanical Dragon Knight bellowed in fury. Just as he moved to pursue the giant rat, a dense flurry of light bullets struck again. Though they inflicted negligible damage, they plastered right across his face. By the time the blinding glare cleared, the giant rat had already vanished without a trace. Enraged, the Mechanical Dragon Knight recklessly picked the nearest target and charged in, ready to strike with his bare fists. But from within the Zhen Realm, Yu Xian swapped that summoned beast with a meteorite. The Mechanical Dragon Knight's fist slammed into the stone, instantly reducing it to ashes and dispersing it into energy. "He doesn't seem that strong. How did he manage to overpower Li Zhenlong?" Yu Xian remarked in mild bewilderment, watching the Mechanical Dragon Knight fume in impotent rage. When the Mechanical Dragon Knight fought Li Zhenlong, he had utterly dominated him, leaving Li Zhenlong helpless. Yet now, facing a gang attack from Yu Xian's countless summoned beasts, it was as if he had boundless strength with nowhere to apply it. In contrast, if Li Zhenlong had faced these summons of Yu Xian's, he could likely have wiped them out in just a few strikes. "Perhaps this is what they call 'everything has its vanquisher,'" the Death Emperor said with mixed emotions as he watched the besieged Mechanical Dragon Knight. In truth, things had changed the moment the Mechanical Dragon Knight was separated from his mechanical dragon. Many of his techniques required the coordination of the mechanical dragon. After all, he was a dragon knight; stripped of his draconic mount, what kind of dragon knight was he? Then his lance had been stolen, dealing another harsh blow to his combat strength. Earlier, Li Zhenlong had been swarmed by the robots of the Mechanical Empire. Now the tables had turned, and the Mechanical Dragon Knight was the one being gang-beaten by Yu Xian's summoned beasts. The Mechanical Dragon Knight certainly possessed the power to kill any single summoned beast. Yet there were far too many of them. Having lost his mechanical dragon, he couldn't unleash any area-of-effect skills. With Yu Xian constantly swapping the beasts' positions from the shadows, he truly had immense brute force with nowhere to wield it. Meanwhile, holding the Legacy Gourd, the humanoid summoned beast had finally finished absorbing Li Zhenlong's energy completely. A brilliant idea suddenly struck Yu Xian. Projecting his consciousness into the humanoid summoned beast, he unstoppered the Legacy Gourd, tipped out the Legacy Pill, and made the beast swallow it in one gulp. In an instant, a surging torrent of power filled the creature's body, every cell seemingly reorganizing. At the same time, Yu Xian naturally comprehended Li Zhenlong's cultivation insights and mastered them flawlessly. "Staff, come!" Yu Xian raised a hand, and the Sea-Calming Divine Needle was immediately projected into his grasp. It was a pity that Li Zhenlong's own staff was pinned fast by the Mechanical Empire; otherwise, Yu Xian truly would have preferred Li Zhenlong's weapon. The staff Li Zhenlong wielded was known as the 'Ever-Changing As-You-Will Divine Iron.' In an ordinary person's hands, it might not reveal its full potential, but with him, it resonated at one hundred percent—allowing him to unleash not just his normal strength, but two hundred percent of his might. Still, what wasn't there wasn't there, so Yu Xian made do with the Sea-Calming Divine Needle as a temporary substitute. The summon Yu Xian now controlled was actually a monster called a 'Sliuge'—a humanoid creature capable of unleashing sonic attacks. Its most distinct departure from humans was a pair of ears resembling fish fins that could fan open and close. In the Zhen Realm, a Sliuge possessed several core abilities. The first was Sonic Scan, emitting ultrasonic waves to sweep their surroundings and locate enemies with ease. Another was the Sonic Beam Cannon, which compressed sound into a concentrated beam to strike foes. Inside the Zhen Realm, this move only reached a dozen meters or so, but outside, it could easily cleave an ocean in half or slice through distant stars when aimed at the sky. The Sliuge Yu Xian controlled currently possessed the strength of a Mighty One, and the rule it mastered was the sonic rule. It was also among the rare few entities capable of producing sound directly within the Tree Universe. "Heh, take a blow from Old Yu's staff!" Yu Xian shouted just as the Mechanical Dragon Knight staggered slightly from an energy blast. In truth, the summoned beasts' attacks were merely an annoyance to the Mechanical Dragon Knight and posed little real threat; despite enduring countless strikes, his armor was barely scuffed. As a result, the Mechanical Dragon Knight had stopped feeling the need to block the beasts' strikes. When an enemy lost his vigilance, it usually meant death was knocking at the door. Upon hearing Yu Xian's shout, the Mechanical Dragon Knight turned his head a fraction of a beat too late—only to see the Sliuge bringing down the Sea-Calming Divine Needle in a ferocious blow. The power behind this strike was manifold. It carried Li Zhenlong's rule of strength, Yu Xian's power of Grand Dao Myriad Phenomena, and even the Sliuge's sonic rule. In the Sliuge's sonic rule, sound was one aspect, while waves were another. And waves could be used to harmonize the powers of Yu Xian and Li Zhenlong, perfectly weaving them together to achieve an effect far greater than the sum of its parts. Boom! The Sea-Calming Divine Needle slammed onto the Mechanical Dragon Knight's head, shattering his helmet on the spot and exposing a face packed with gears. The might of this single strike surpassed even Li Zhenlong's own, severely injuring the Mechanical Dragon Knight. Yu Xian was not the kind to wait for an enemy to recover and reset; he was strictly the type to strike a man while he was down. Having struck home with the first blow, he immediately capitalized on the Mechanical Dragon Knight's dazed state, hammering strike after strike onto his head. The power of Grand Dao Myriad Phenomena surged madly from his true body into the Sliuge, fully channeled into reinforcing the Sea-Calming Divine Needle. Nor was Yu Xian striking aimlessly. His swings followed a meticulous technique—the Nine Thousand and One Divine Demon-Subduing Staff Technique that Li Zhenlong excelled at. This staff technique was blisteringly fast; for every nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine strikes delivered, it culminated in a single Divine Strike. The power of that one strike was equivalent to the sum total of all nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine preceding blows.