Chen Chuan watched Xiang Boqing draw closer, clearly discerning his intent: he wanted to stop Chen Chuan and prevent him from finishing off the attacker from earlier.
Raising a hand, Chen Chuan aimed his palm forward. Radiance flared abruptly as he unleashed a spiritual impact toward him.
With his vast wealth of experience, Xiang Boqing dodged to the side a split second before the blast erupted, his forward momentum barely affected.
Yet right then, he noticed something amiss. He darted sideways again as a second spiritual impact shot past his flank with a sharp whoosh. It not only ripped through his outer field, but also scraped off a trailing wisp of blazing light from the spiritual fire condensed across his body.
*A two-stage spiritual impact?* Xiang Boqing appraised inwardly, his body still maintaining its forward charge. But just then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of another burst of light, and an alarm flared in his mind.
*There's more?*
Propelled by his spiritual fire, he shifted laterally through empty air. He was already remarkably close to Chen Chuan—one more step forward and he could breach Chen Chuan's inner circle in the true sense. Yet after casting a deep, piercing glance at Chen Chuan, he did not press any closer. Instead, breaking from routine, he retreated outward, moving every bit as fast as when he had charged forward.
For he quickly deduced that a three-stage spiritual impact was still not Chen Chuan's limit. He could sense that each burst came faster than the last. With every foot closed, the reaction time allotted to him would only shrink. Pushing ahead under such conditions carried immense risk; he was very likely to take a direct hit.
Although he was confident in his defenses—and bodily injury meant little to a Dongxuan View martial artist—he had no desire to recklessly place himself at a disadvantage.
On the other hand, his objective had already been met: he had pinned Chen Chuan down, leaving him no time to deal with Kanbo.
Moreover, while his physical body had pulled back, his mental pressure had not lifted in the slightest; instead, it bore down on Chen Chuan with redoubled force.
Meanwhile, Kanbo's bisected body, having flown apart over a short distance, showed signs of pulling itself back together.
Thanks to the tenacious vitality of a demigod body, an injury that would spell certain doom for an ordinary martial artist was not entirely beyond recovery for him.
However, because all his spiritual fire had initially been poured into a frontal breakthrough, this extreme allocation had left the rest of his form virtually unprotected. Once the Xuejun Saber cleaved through his body, Chen Chuan's spiritual fire surged inward without restraint. Kanbo's lower half was almost instantly enveloped in dense plumes of spiritual fire, curbing the autonomous revitalization of each segment.
With his bisected brain's consciousness scattered, the mutated tissue spontaneously took control of the body. Strands of potent spiritual fire radiated from the parts that were still intact, fighting off the deep internal erosion and encroachment of Chen Chuan's spiritual fire.
At the same time, the affected parts were swiftly rejected and sloughed off. With such a highly revitalized body, losing those portions was inconsequential; they could rapidly regrow later.
Even while countering Xiang Boqing, Chen Chuan kept part of his attention fixed on Kanbo; he had no intention of letting the fruits of his strike slip away.
The moment Xiang Boqing was driven back, Chen Chuan's own mind, along with Hongfu and the external implant's conscious entity, arrived at a similar judgment: in just a few breaths, this man might regenerate completely sound limbs. The two halves would not even need to reattach to each other; they could grow directly into two identical individuals.
Yet all of this relied on the mind drawing energy from beyond the heavens for support. Thus, mental power was the true crux.
However, Chen Chuan could clearly sense that Kanbo's mind and physical body possessed an artificial, stitched-together quality—they were far from seamless and whole. After being sliced apart, this flaw was laid bare all the more starkly. That made the problem simple: so long as he disrupted the seam connecting the mind to the flesh, it would effectively ruin any further physical regeneration.
The thought flashed through his mind in an instant. Throwing most of his mental power into forcefully resisting Xiang Boqing's mental suppression, Chen Chuan kept his raised hand level. Light flashed in his palm, and another spiritual impact shot after the retreating Xiang Boqing.
At the same time, with a flick of his intent, a conical object whooshed out from his side. Trailing a tail of platinum light, it drew a spiraling arc across the sky from where he stood, instantly engulfing both bisected halves along its trajectory.
By now, the parts of Kanbo's body tainted by Chen Chuan's spirituality had been discarded, and even more mutated tissue was burgeoning forth. Both halves were visibly progressing toward becoming complete selves.
If this continued, two identical bodies would undoubtedly emerge. Each would possess a portion of the original form's power, yet could merge back into a whole as circumstances dictated. Such was the high-level revitalization capability of the Dongxuan View: as long as all bodily tissue was not destroyed in a single stroke, total death would not occur.
Yet at this precise moment, with two sharp pops, that piercing beam of light zipped through both halves almost simultaneously, detonating into two bursts of blood.
The light penetrated different spots on the two halves: one ripped through a shoulder, while the other pierced clean through the abdomen.
On the surface, neither location seemed particularly vital—at least not for a Dongxuan View martial artist.
In reality, however, those were the exact spots where the mutated tissue was most concentrated, harboring the bulk of the remaining mental power. This single strike pulverized them completely, throwing his mind into disarray and instantly severing the inflow of energy.
Xiang Boqing noticed this unfold, but he had no room to intervene. A blast of spiritual impact was already hurtling toward him. He immediately sidestepped to avoid it. Just then, he caught sight of the conical object's trajectory ending right where he had dodged; flicking his bayonet, he batted it away.
Still, he knew his opponent had succeeded in stalling him; there was no way he could move to assist Kanbo now.
Sure enough, just as the thread of light pierced the mutated tissue on both of Kanbo's halves, the red cloth tied to the hilt of Chen Chuan's saber fluttered.
A red-clad woman with a translucent gauze veil and bright, spirited eyes spun out. Gliding as gracefully as a dancer, she swung the yanling saber in her hand through a lovely arc of light, sweeping it clean across both mutilated halves.
Then, with a light tap of her toe, the scarlet figure vanished back into the void. Behind her, the two mangled halves seemed no different than before at a glance.
More than that, having now fully purged all invading spiritual fire, their bones and internal organs were proliferating wildly outward. They rapidly completed their missing sections and lunged toward each other, crashing together in an instant and fusing where they met, appearing on the verge of recombining into a single person.
Seeing this spectacle, Xiang Boqing immediately abandoned any thought of pressing forward, for he knew Kanbo was already beyond saving.
That rapid recovery was nothing more than an illusion—a desperate attempt by the mutated tissue to save itself by releasing all its vitality at once.
Yet it was entirely in vain. Before that, the spiritual power contained in that breathtaking slash had already annihilated them from within, grinding them to powder.
Even to Xiang Boqing's eyes, that slash had been remarkably flawless. It had destroyed all the mutated tissue within the body with exquisite precision—not a fraction too much, not a fraction too little. Leaving aside the raw tier of power, he could find no fault with it whatsoever.
Just as he anticipated, the two writhing, crushing bodies began to deform and twist. No matter how the squirming muscles and bones fitted together, they simply could not blend. Countless minute flames of spiritual fire leaked from every part of the flesh.
After several futile attempts, the violent convulsions only intensified until, with a resounding boom, the mass blew apart into a sky-filling shower of debris.
Inside the castle manor, Gao Xinwen was watching a light screen. Although the field technology here was advanced enough to project the scene outside, the clash moved far too quickly for him to follow clearly.
Just then, a notification chime rang out from his boundary credential: "Warning: Vital signs for Test Subject Two, code name 'Kanbo,' have ceased. Repeat: Kanbo's vital signs have ceased."
He froze, disbelief flooding his eyes. How long had it been? How could this combat doll, in whom he had placed such high hopes, have died just like that?!
This was utterly unacceptable to him.
Hurriedly tapping his boundary credential, he demanded, "Aren't there still residual tissues from the test subject? Can't he be restored?"
He remembered vividly that with power at the Throne tier, even if merely a scrap of tissue remained, restoration was possible.
"Apologies. Due to the incomplete mental power of the test subject, even if the residual tissue can regenerate into a complete organism after being provided with sufficient nutrients, functional recovery will be limited. Estimated maximum combat strength will be merely one-tenth of the original test subject."
High in the sky, Chen Chuan watched the disintegrating shower of flesh and blood. He knew that even if some tissue fragments remained, this person would never return to the battlefield.
For without mental power, a Dongxuan View martial artist was nothing more than an empty shell—just like Yuwen Yuanqi had been in the past.
The attacker had been able to exert such power precisely because an active conscious entity had fused with and amplified his mental power. Stripped of that, he posed no further threat.
Chen Chuan raised his gaze, looking toward Xiang Boqing in the distance.
Xiang Boqing met his gaze. He had thought he already took Chen Chuan seriously enough, but now it appeared that was still not enough.
Reaching up, Xiang Boqing removed his protective visor, uncovering a pair of deep eyes. He steadied his breathing, raised the bayonet in his hands, gripped it with both palms, and let the spiritual fire around him flare violently before darting forward in a flash.
Chen Chuan observed that the bayonet in his hands was roughly equal in length to the Xuejun Saber, yet relative to the man's tall stature, it functioned almost like a short blade. However, a mass of spiritual fire had gathered at its tip, appearing to extend its reach by a section and making its proportions feel just right. Such a phenomenon was rare, likely owing to the unique properties of this mutated weapon.
After glancing at the bayonet, Chen Chuan leaned forward and surged ahead to meet him. As the distance closed rapidly, right before the collision, Xiang Boqing drew his bayonet back at an upward angle, twisting his torso halfway back, and then slashed forcefully forward!
Chen Chuan noted that Xiang Boqing's motions were wide and open, clearly displaying every movement. The intent conveyed by that body language was unmistakable: an invitation to clash head-on.
*Testing our strength against each other?*
Chen Chuan was of the exact same mind!
Accepting the challenge without hesitation, he propelled himself forward on blazing bursts of spiritual fire, raising his saber with both hands to meet the strike!
Chapter 1251