This time, Fantner chose to ram directly forward with his body. Immense strength, like a crashing meteorite, smashed into Chen Chuan's guarding arms. Chen Chuan felt a fierce, tremendous force transmit through him, jolting his originally solid fire of spirituality so that it drifted and billowed outward.
He understood his opponent's intention: Fantner was attempting to forcefully break his balance.
The man was truly worthy of being a Throne martial artist. This was not the Visage of Man or the Visage of the Aberrant, but the Visage of the Divine, which was not known for frontal direct assaults—and he was not even fully present here in his true body—yet his strength remained astonishingly formidable.
Even so, Chen Chuan weathered the impact. Without waiting for the follow-up power to swell again, the purple qi within his body surged into motion. In an instant, his entire body adjusted. His recoiling frame snapped to a sudden halt in midair, absorbing the subsequent shockwave.
The resulting clash of spirit and fire of spirituality inevitably brought both of them to a momentary standstill. Chen Chuan, however, reacted visibly faster; the arms he had used to guard suddenly parted outward, driving a knee upward.
Fantner's forward momentum was forced aside. Unable to adjust in time, he took the knee square in the chest. A huge burst of spiritual flame erupted, and his torso jolted backward.
Seizing the opening, Chen Chuan hammered out a flurry of punches. Each blow caused the spirituality across Fantner's form to flare violently, sending his body tumbling and shuddering through the air. Where Fantner had initially been driving Chen Chuan back, in the blink of an eye he was beaten back to where he started, and continued to reel backward.
After several punches, the spiritual radiance around Fantner shattered. The divine qi cloaking his form began bearing the heavy blows directly; after enduring just two hits, it teetered on the brink of collapse. Yet at that moment, an eye-searing radiance burst from his eyes. His speed abruptly skyrocketed, and with a lean backward, he tore himself free from the onslaught of punches.
He then spun outward in a spiral. Not only did this evasive maneuver allow him to dodge, it also positioned him to circle around to Chen Chuan's rear.
Right at that moment, a shadow seemed to plunge from above. A colossal hand pressed down as if it had been waiting there all along, slamming him downward with a deafening boom!
The entire cloud islet beneath them was forged from some unknown substance and was practically indestructible; no matter how fiercely the two fought, they had failed to damage it in the slightest. Yet this single palm strike caused the massive cloud islet to shudder.
This strike was originally enough to decide the match, yet at the final moment of impact, Fantner's figure seemed to phase into intangibility once more.
Although the spiritual visage's fire of spirituality adjusted in time, its own response was not as fast as Chen Chuan's true body. It was still half a beat too slow, preventing the full force from landing on Fantner.
Upon noticing this, Chen Chuan immediately realized a flaw existed here. This was precisely the purpose of clashing with an opponent of a higher level: oversights and imperfections that went unnoticed in normal times were magnified infinitely, preventing one from exerting sufficient force at critical junctures.
Now that it was clear, he could find a way to correct it.
Nevertheless, under the suppression of the Two Great Stances, Fantner had not truly entered an ethereal state just now; he was suspended between substance and void. To be precise, it was the state an entity from the other side entered upon just crossing into this world, where spirit and matter were only beginning to coalesce.
This state could mitigate physical impacts to a certain degree, but the damage from the fire of spirituality could not be fully negated. Thus, he still suffered severe trauma and could not possibly break free from the spiritual visage's pressing palm.
At this juncture, a new change came over Fantner's body. Amidst shimmering, crystalline light, his form actually dispersed outward, reconverging in the distance an instant later.
However, the aura and field strength around him had weakened considerably; pulling off such a move had clearly extracted a steep price.
Chen Chuan glanced at him. He knew that the divine qi of the Visage of the Divine could disperse and reconvene, but forcibly doing so against the suppression of the Two Great Stances incurred an extraordinary toll. Still, this indicated that the pressure exerted by the Two Great Stances was not yet sufficient.
Once mastered and linked together, radiating the Two Great Stances consumed remarkably little energy, flowing almost as naturally as breathing. Yet if he was willing to expend energy without reservation, their potency could naturally be elevated. It was just that he had never done so before.
Now, it appeared he would need to exert a bit more effort.
With that thought, his body floated upward, gradually rising to eye level with his opponent. Simultaneously, pushed to greater depths, the radiance and force field around him grew increasingly blinding and dense, even casting ripple-like waves along their outer edges.
Beside him, the spiritual visage slowly raised its hands and drew itself upright. Extending its hands to grip, a blade materialized within its palms.
Though the opponent had slipped away earlier, the spiritual visage had grown far stronger after the Unbinding of the Visage. Furthermore, purple qi had taken root within it. Now that Chen Chuan spurred it into action without hesitation, driven by this power, the spiritual visage's strength and speed could barely keep pace with the rhythm of his offensive.
Even if it lagged by half a beat, his opponent could not afford to disregard it entirely and would be forced to divert focus to guard against it.
Fantner's gaze turned exceedingly grave, tainted with a sliver of wariness. Before their actual clash, he had truly never imagined that Chen Chuan could pressure him to such an extent.
It was not as though he had come unprepared; he had gathered information on Chen Chuan's duel with Crossal, where the youth's performance had already been exaggeratedly impressive. Fantner had raised his vigilance accordingly, but now it appeared he had still underestimated his foe. None of the strategies he had prepared beforehand could be applied.
In this battle, he could only rely on the limited power at his disposal and his own combat experience. He had to admit that if he mishandled the situation, defeat was a real possibility.
The two regarded each other in midair for a brief moment, gradually refining their condition and mindset. This time, it was Chen Chuan who struck first. With a flicker, his silhouette vanished from where he stood.
Flares of light from rapid spiritual clashes immediately erupted across the airspace. Soon after, sounds resembling collapsing mountains and surging torrents spread through the domain.
Fantner committed nearly all his strength to counter Chen Chuan's offensive, shifting between substance and void from time to time to evade direct kinetic collisions.
He demonstrated astonishing finesse, his form expanding one moment and contracting the next. Yet under the suppression of the Grand Radiant Light Forms and the Grand Firmament Forms, all his movements were restricted, making the shifts between substance and void far harder to maneuver at will. Compounding this, the spiritual visage lurked nearby like a tiger watching its prey, ready to enter the fray at any moment, creating an agonizing ordeal for him.
Conversely, Chen Chuan fought with increasing ease. In its later stages, cultivation of the Visage of the Divine drew extremely close to the entities from the other side—a state ancient religious factions had desperately craved.
Consequently, upon entering the new era, the Purist Faction had synthesized ancient techniques to develop secret arts tailored specifically against such entities. For this very reason, once Chen Chuan brought his techniques fully to bear, they proved overwhelmingly restrictive against his opponent.
Once his momentum built up, he would only grow stronger. Last time, Crossal had not pushed him to his limits; he wondered whether Fantner could draw them out today.
After thirty seconds of relentless clashing, Fantner evaded a blow, but the massive spiritual visage suddenly loomed beside him, posing such an acute threat that his movement inevitably hitched for a split second.
At this moment, Fantner was forced to erupt with a burst of power at the cost of damaging his power ceiling. Under normal circumstances, his past experience would have allowed him to dodge the attack, but Chen Chuan's speed was faster than before. He failed to evade completely, taking a punch directly from Chen Chuan!
The power behind the fist was fiercer than before. Fantner couldn't help but stall again, and this momentary pause caused him to absorb several more consecutive concussive blows. The divine qi holding his body together flickered violently, teetering on the verge of collapsing.
Recognizing the impending peril, his divine qi dispersed once more, seemingly intending to use the same dispersal-and-reconvergence escape technique.
Yet this time, a sharp glint flashed in Chen Chuan's eyes. Before Fantner could fully scatter, a clear light welled along the edges of Chen Chuan's palms. Reaching out, he snatched Fantner with a sharp snap, locking him in place so he could not escape.
Chen Chuan had discerned that Fantner was still covered in a considerable amount of bodily tissue. This was not for show; it served as an anchor, facilitating easier transitions between substance and void.
Among that flesh and blood was a great deal of mutated tissue. As long as such things existed, they could be tainted and gripped by his Serene Spiritual Light. The Purist Faction's secret arts truly possessed no useless techniques; this was without doubt another measure tailored against his current predicament.
Caught in Chen Chuan's grip and unable to break free, Fantner instantly realized the danger. He knew where the issue lay, but he was not yet truly at his wit's end. His body dilated instantaneously, swelling once more to forty or fifty meters in height, and the crystalline radiance wreathing him suddenly released light that illuminated nearly the entire airspace.
Seeing this, Chen Chuan recognized that Fantner intended to vent all his power in a single burst through a spiritual impact.
This shockwave was extraordinarily ferocious. If Chen Chuan did not let go, there was a real possibility of mutually assured destruction; if he let go, the opponent would seize the opportunity.
His eyes calmly met his opponent's; he did not choose to let go. At that very moment, a massive hand brandishing a long staff struck from behind, smashing into Fantner's back with a thunderous bang! Under this strike, the glittering light across his form dimmed, and the volcanic eruption of power on the verge of bursting forth was forcibly driven back.
Fantner's aura stagnated as well.
Chen Chuan had applied a secret art he had derived from the Diagram of Mystic Spirits Battling Demons.
This had been a method created specifically to strike down demons from beyond heaven. Though what he wielded now lacked its original potency, through his own comprehension, he managed to directly suppress the other's impending detonation.
Following that strike, the spiritual visage released the long saber in its other hand and grabbed Fantner's colossal frame. With a sweeping roll, it slammed him down with a roar, pinning him flat against the ground. Pressing its knee down to hold him fast, it raised the long staff high once more, paused for a fraction of a second, and brought it whistling down!
Chapter 1233