Gluttony and the other two retreated slowly, opening up a safe distance between them, their eyes burning with intense vigilance. Iron Raven and Saqiya both drew their weapons, the fire of spirituality spreading across their bodies.
In Iron Raven's hands were a pair of matte cruciform short swords, while Saqiya drew a war club that appeared naturally grown, its forward section branching into separate tines.
Gluttony alone drew nothing. Maintaining a peculiar smirk, he merely stepped back slowly.
From a distance earlier, Iron Raven had witnessed Chen Chuan's clash with Master Baishi. Though startled then by the combat prowess Chen Chuan had displayed, the impression had not been immediate. Only now, standing directly in front of the man, did the mutated tissues inside his body react violently, sending sharp signals of danger through him as if warning him to get as far away from this person as possible.
Yet he knew it was too late to back out now. The moment he turned around, Chen Chuan would set his sights on him first, and he would likely be the first to die.
So he did his utmost to soothe the agitation of the mutated tissues within his body, adjusting his breathing as he backed off to a suitable distance. Raising one cruciform short sword high and holding the other low, he settled into an interception stance.
He was a speed-oriented fighter who needed ample room to fight. Fortunately, this area was fairly open and well suited to his strengths. With the other two backing him up, they were not truly without a chance.
Chen Chuan ignored the loose encirclement the three of them had formed, strolling casually to the center of the clearing. "I've been waiting for you for a long time," he said. "Since you took so long to show up, I had to come to you myself."
He raised the Xuejun Saber in his hand and slowly drew the blade. With that motion, a platinum luminescence flickered faintly over his form.
From the moment Chen Chuan appeared, Saqiya had kept her gaze locked onto him. Though she had not witnessed the previous battle, among all the foes she had faced in the past, she had never encountered someone with such an overwhelming oppressive presence.
She could even feel the tremors rippling from the mutated tissues inside her body.
Yet she was stubborn by nature; the greater the resistance, the more fiercely she wanted to smash through it. Thus, among the three, she was the first to attack!
Taking a step forward, she drew a deep breath. A teal-crimson flame erupted from her body as her frame ballooned outward, hoisting the war club high overhead.
In an instant, she grew to over twenty meters tall, transforming into an iron-blue monstrosity with antlers on its head, the upper body of a woman, and the lower body of a crocodilian lizard.
Thanks to her altered size, a single step carried her across the great distance separating her from Chen Chuan. Bringing her war club down in a sweeping blow toward him, she instantly forced the surrounding air outward in a blast of pressure!
Chen Chuan glanced over. *A Visage of the Aberrant?*
At that moment, Iron Raven abruptly vanished from his spot on the other side. Chen Chuan felt a tremendous sharpness approaching spiritually. In the air above, a massive, translucent silhouette emerged faintly, cloaked in pale gray light as it plunged downward to strike!
From its appearance, this external visage was clearly a Visage of Man.
Chen Chuan glanced toward Gluttony again. That one made no move whatsoever, merely watching with a smile dripping with malice. *Hm, this one is either a Visage of the Aberrant or a Visage of the Divine, most likely the latter.*
Three people, three distinct paths. If coordinated well, the combat power they could generate would be formidable. But forging a unified force was never that simple.
Saqiya's war club had barely swung out when a colossal palm materialized directly before her, as if it had been waiting there all along, blazing with dazzling platinum light.
Her strike slammed directly into the palm, throwing out bursts of flame and scattering sparks. Yet to her horror, the blow failed to budge the palm in the slightest. Instead, the palm bore down against her club, pressing back toward her!
She let out a wild roar, refusing to back down an inch. Splitting her grip, she reached out with her other hand to grab the branched forks at the head of the club. Her muscles bulged across her frame, and the thick, lizard-like limbs beneath her clamped firmly to the ground as she threw her full weight forward!
With a heavy bang, the two forces collided between them. Although she was not knocked over by the palm, she was pinned in place, unable to move.
Shock and anger coursed through her. Her technique had been carefully calculated: expanding her body and lunging forward in the same motion brought her power to its absolute peak. In the past, adversaries had rarely been able to withstand this attack—they were either forced back or left with no choice but to dodge. Yet here, she had been effortlessly suppressed by a single palm.
In a one-on-one duel, losing the advantage on the very first move would have thrown her into extreme danger. Fortunately, she had teammates. Chen Chuan wasn't facing her alone.
Chen Chuan did not look in her direction. The Xuejun Saber slipped from its scabbard in an instant, rising with a backhand guard to meet the crushing descent of the spiritual visage.
As his spiritual visage launched its attack, Iron Raven had already leapt sideways, closing in on Chen Chuan's flank.
His cloaking method stemmed from the capability of his external implant. Combined with his spiritual power, it could instantly conceal his movements and erase every trace of his passage, often yielding miraculous results in surprise attacks.
To evade Chen Chuan's senses, he did not look directly at him, relying instead on his implant's sensory functions. Having seen Master Baishi's duel with Chen Chuan, he knew the man's strength was outrageously formidable. The strike from his own spiritual visage would most likely be blocked by a single slash and posed no real threat. But so long as it tied his opponent down for a split second, that was enough. In combat between high-level fighters, an opening was decided in an instant.
Now the tips of his twin cruciform short swords converged, aligning into a single focal point with the beak of his mask. The wings at his back shifted and adjusted subtly, continuously calibrating the optimal angle.
This move was called "Beak Strike." Powered by the implant and bolstered by his own explosive momentum, it doubled his speed in an instant. So long as it hit, it could pierce clean through an opponent's protective fire of spirituality in a single blow. He did not seek to severely wound his target with this strike alone; as long as he created a breach, he believed the other two would know what to do, making the rest of the fight far easier.
Yet at that moment, an unforeseen situation arose. As Chen Chuan executed the backhand parry, he was neither delayed nor forced to give ground to dissipate the impact as anticipated. After the upward sweep of his blade, he shifted into a two-handed cleave, his body moving in unison with the strike. Following a flash of blinding saber light, he sliced clean through the spiritual visage head-on, appearing behind it in a single instant!
Iron Raven had never imagined that such an immense spiritual visage could be torn apart with a single stroke. The flourishing fire of spirituality covering it was like mere decoration, offering no resistance whatsoever.
And at that moment, the trauma suffered by the spiritual visage fed back into him, causing his presence to ripple for a split second.
Chen Chuan sensed it immediately, his gaze shifting toward him.
Iron Raven knew things had gone wrong. Chen Chuan was no longer where he had been, leaving the strike he had prepared without a target. Adjusting his tactics at once, he dispensed with the disguise and emerged from invisibility.
He was well aware that this battle required the collective strength of all three. Since he had missed his opportunity to attack, his duty now was to serve as a shield drawing the enemy's attention, creating an opening for his allies' assault.
It wasn't that he possessed any noble spirit of sacrifice; he simply knew this was the most logical choice available.
Pushing off with the tips of his feet, he altered his direction in an instant, leaping toward Chen Chuan's flank and rear. His short swords parted, angling loosely toward the man's back.
This was a blind spot in Chen Chuan's field of vision. Although a martial artist could rely on spiritual perception to track every movement and shift, the mechanics of the human body meant that mounting a proper, effective attack required turning around. That turn would buy Iron Raven another chance to adjust, while winning a fraction of a second for the other two.
Yet right then, a strange force field suddenly descended upon him. He had been darting laterally like a swift bird through the sky or a fish through water, but snared by this bind, his entire body seized up.
He had not actually been brought to a complete halt, but that slight hitch was all Chen Chuan needed. Whirling around, Chen Chuan closed the distance in an instant, bringing his saber crashing down upon him!
Iron Raven was terrified. He hurriedly raised both short swords to block. The instant the weapons clashed, the fire of spirituality clinging to the short swords was torn to shreds, while an irresistible surge of jin rampaged into his body unchecked.
A flash of saber light—and the body suspended midair was cleaved in two down the middle!
Yet behind that falling body, a faint phantom flickered, and a man appeared farther back. This was Iron Raven's true self. In the nick of time, he had activated an emergency protocol, having his external implant take the blow in his place while he decoupled and escaped.
Even so, because that strike was simply too fast, a slash mark opened between his brows and across his face, partially cutting into his skull and chest.
During the fleeting moments of those two exchanges, Saqiya had only just managed to wrench herself free from the pressure of the giant palm. Trading speed for colossal size and strength meant she moved far more slowly, leaving her entirely shut out of the rhythm of combat. She could do nothing as Chen Chuan singled out Iron Raven, unable to lend any aid.
Iron Raven's current situation was perilous in the extreme. If Chen Chuan pressed his advantage against him, he could very well slay him within a strike or two, causing their battle line to instantly crumble.
Fortunately, Gluttony finally acted. As if held back by some reservation, he did not step up into direct combat, instead firing a spiritual impact toward Chen Chuan. His timing was impeccable, catching Chen Chuan the exact instant he moved to pursue Iron Raven.
The spiritual impact struck directly in front of Chen Chuan. With a tremendous blast, the underground chamber shuddered and trembled. Amid the blinding flare, a dense plume of smoke and dust rolled upward. Light flickered several times within the haze, and then, wearing his conical helmet and mantle, the figure strolled out unharmed.
Chapter 1086