Real Man Ming's giant hand reached toward the Tianji fish swimming through the great hall. So long as he seized this creature and severed the cord connecting the two worlds, he could cut off the guidance leading to the outside world, leaving the Celestial Master with no way to find his path back.
Yet this alone could not guarantee there would be no slipups. Once this matter was settled, he would still need to find a way to seal the fissure overhead; only then would everything be truly foolproof.
At that moment, the Tianji fish seemed entirely oblivious. Yet just as the hand was on the verge of touching it, an illusory figure materialized within the great hall.
Real Man Chonghua had not dispatched the whole of his Divine Visage earlier; he had left a wisp of it right here.
This wisp of breath was exceedingly faint, however, and had concealed itself with the aid of the great hall's arrangements, so that Real Man Ming had failed to notice it beforehand.
As the colossal hand closed in, this streak of divine qi suddenly slammed forward, striking squarely against the wrist of the giant hand.
It was an exquisitely calculated strike, landing precisely upon a node where the Divine Visage had fractured internally. Thus, even though it was merely an exceptionally faint wisp of divine qi, it brought the giant hand to a momentary halt.
As for that wisp of divine qi, it dispersed completely in the collision.
Now alerted, the Tianji fish seized the moment of hesitation, swished its head and tail, and darted out between the giant fingers.
Real Man Ming's supposedly assured capture had failed, and he instantly realized the danger. As long as the Tianji fish remained, that fissure could not be sealed.
The Tianji fish was exceptionally nimble and could distinguish friend from foe. Having failed to seize it on the first attempt, the opportunity was gone. His only option now was to pivot and attack Chonghua and the other two. As long as he eliminated their interference, he could still accomplish his goal.
And so his giant hand, not yet fully dissipated, wheeled around and slammed directly onto the floor of the great hall. Under this strike, spiritual fire surged downward and pierced straight through the central node, causing the Tianji Plate below to shudder violently. In an instant, the four men's connection to the esoteric ritual was severed.
Real Man Chonghua and his two companions had already borne the brunt of the devastation from that savage bombardment earlier; their Divine Visages were on the verge of collapsing, sustained only by the support of the esoteric ritual.
Had the tremors settled and given them a brief reprieve, they might still have had a chance to recover. But with the Tianji Plate compromised, it could no longer supply them with sufficient power. Even if the divine heart and celestial heart could still resonate with one another, they could no longer transform from ethereal into corporeal.
As a result, the Empyrean Lord Divine Visages of the other three could no longer be maintained. Wisps of cloud-mist and lucid light billowed from them, and in an instant, they reverted to their original forms. This, too, meant that a fatal breach had opened in the hall's defenses.
On the periphery of Tianji Peak, the Throne martial artists received transmissions from the rear informing them that Ming was an insider planted by the Federation. Hesitating no longer, they transformed into streaks of light and hurtled toward the Tianji Great Hall.
Igor had been glaring at Real Man Long Xian all along. Being exceedingly vindictive, he vividly remembered how the man had swatted him down with a palm strike moments before. Now, seeing Long Xian's Divine Visage broken, he snapped a kick straight forward with a whoosh!
Having just weathered the collision, Real Man Long Xian's divine qi was in turmoil. Faced with the sudden blaze of spiritual fire erupting before his eyes, he chose not to take the blow head-on, instead dispersing his body into a sky of lucid light.
At this sight, Igor's eyes instantly turned crimson. One of his arms swelled and thickened violently, morphing into a monstrous claw that tore away a clump of the dispersed lucid qi in a ferocious rip.
After dispersing, Real Man Long Xian rapidly reconstituted at the other end. But right then, he realized something was wrong: half the palm on his right hand was actually missing! His heart gave an involuntary jolt.
A mouth-like fissure split open across Igor's giant claw, swallowing and sucking down that streak of lucid light.
This was his aberrant power, 'Rhyane's Seizure.' So long as an opponent's Divine Visage qi or bodily tissue was torn away by his claw and absorbed, as long as Igor remained alive, the opponent would permanently lose that portion, even if they tried to regenerate it.
This was an aberrant power he had deliberately reinforced with a bound oath, a lethal trump card designed specifically against peers of his own level. If he repeatedly tore away vital bodily tissues, even a Throne martial artist could truly be killed by him.
Looking at Real Man Long Xian ahead, a predatory, dangerous gleam glinted in his eyes.
Just then, a flash of light shimmered nearby as Drakholm of Deep Sea Spiral rushed forward, brandishing a serrated blade and hacking down toward Real Man Long Xian. A longsword materialized in the latter's hand, rapidly parrying, and the two traded more than a dozen blows in a flash.
Even though Real Man Long Xian walked the path of the Visage of the Divine, the Mystic Refining Celestial Body forged one's physical form into divine qi. Consequently, he did not fall into a disadvantage in the slightest during their direct clash.
After watching for a couple of breaths, Igor flashed behind him, forming a pincer attack with Drakholm from front and back. This immediately escalated the pressure on Real Man Long Xian.
Having weathered the impact of that relic earlier, his divine qi had depleted substantially and had not yet had time to recover. Facing two Throne martial artists who were hardly weaker than himself, he quickly found his strength failing him.
More crucially, the Tianji Great Hall lay directly behind him. He could not step aside, or the enemy would inevitably storm inside and disrupt the fissure. This forced him to stand his ground, rendering many of his tactics unusable.
After merely a few parries, another of his arms was ripped away, leaving his situation precarious in the extreme.
Real Man Gao Xu's situation was equally bleak. He was targeted by both Field of the Gigagods Flora Company and Merton of the Primordial Sect.
Furthermore, Merton had an entity from the other side at his flank, exerting immense pressure upon Gao Xu. He could only rely on the home advantage and his solid cultivation to barely keep the two at bay, but by all appearances, he could not hold out much longer.
Real Man Chonghua was the strongest among the four Zhenren, coming close to the threshold of the upper-tier power.
However, a portion of his Divine Visage had plugged the gap earlier in place of Ming, and virtually all the recoil had fallen squarely on him, causing that portion of the avatar to completely shatter.
Yet for Throne martial artists, so long as they were granted time, recovery was still possible.
Real Man Ming knew his strength intimately, and thus had no intention of granting him that opportunity.
Moreover, there were many arrangements within the hall that even Ming did not understand. Once Chonghua freed up his hands to activate them, things would become extremely troublesome. Therefore, before the others even attacked, Ming had already drawn a longsword and launched a fierce offensive against Real Man Chonghua.
With only a remnant of his Divine Visage left to sustain himself, Real Man Chonghua stood no chance in a direct clash, yet retreat was clearly out of the question. At this juncture, he invoked the Xuan Sect secret transmission 'Divine Firmament Rainbow Crossing,' his body transforming into a streak of swift flowing light that flew toward the fissure overhead.
Real Man Ming instantly deduced his intent. The Tianji Sect had also arranged esoteric rituals in the world on the other side. As long as Chonghua reached the other side of the fissure, he could rely on the rituals set up there to buy a brief moment, recover his strength, and emerge to do battle again.
And in that short span, Ming might not have enough time to capture the Tianji fish. Thus, he could never allow this to happen.
His eyes flashed immediately. Relying on the intact state of his own Divine Visage, he unleashed the Spirit-Seizing Art—a technique unique to the Tianji Sect and specifically tailored against practitioners of the Visage of the Divine.
Once the Divine Visage qi of both sides made contact, as long as one's divine qi was mightier than the other's, one could forcibly seize the opponent—a classic method of using the greater to overcome the lesser.
Seized by this art, Real Man Chonghua was unavoidably pulled toward him. Yet at that moment, Real Man Ming discovered that Chonghua's figure had abruptly become ethereal and illusory, and he instantly realized this was the sect's 'Butterfly Dream Mysteries' art.
One had no way of knowing whether what stood before them was real or false. If you deemed it real, it became false; if you deemed it false, it could become real. It depended entirely on the caster's ultimate perception, and that perception could always lag one step behind yours, effectively breaking his Spirit-Seizing Art.
Ming knew that Chonghua had exploited his impatience to finish him off, employing a tactic that dragged him into a contest of Divine Visage secret arts.
He knew full well that Chonghua's cultivation was far superior to his own. Had Chonghua not been crippled by the barrier's destruction earlier, he likely would have crushed him through sheer force without even offering him this opening.
Fortunately, he now held the initiative, and he was not the only one here. Thus, rather than attempting to judge true from false, he cast the sect's Tianji Truth-Discerning Art upon himself. This technique sacrificed a portion of divine qi to pinpoint that elusive 'one that escaped,' and he displayed the art openly and boldly.
And so long as Chonghua still acknowledged the Tianji Sect, acknowledged this art, and did not deny his own foundational self, this technique was guaranteed to capture his true spirit.
What followed indeed played out as he anticipated: Chonghua's Divine Visage was instantly seized. Yet at that exact moment, Chonghua cast a glance at him, and Ming's own reflection was mirrored in Chonghua's eyes. Ming's heart leaped violently.
For he realized that Chonghua had invoked the 'True Self Mirrored Shadow' technique—so long as the divine qi of both parties connected, their Divine Visages could momentarily lodge within one another.
This secret art could only be used against fellow disciples or an opponent one understood to an extraordinary degree, and Ming happened to meet those conditions perfectly.
With Chonghua's cultivation and his profound mastery over the Tianji Great Hall, even commandeering Ming's intact Divine Visage for a split second would be enough to reconnect with the Tianji Plate and reverse the current situation.
In this instant, he realized that everything Chonghua had done before had been groundwork laid for this single move, guiding him step by step into the trap. This sequence of actions was the absolute pinnacle of applying Divine Visage secret arts.
He knew he had no way of breaking this move. Fortunately, Chonghua's divine qi was severely depleted, and the technique lacked full power, leaving him room to struggle. In that split second, with a single thought, Ming directly dispersed his own Divine Visage, dissolving it into a flurry of airborne lucid qi.
Had he been alone, doing this would have surrendered all initiative to the enemy. But he was no longer alone on this battlefield.
A beam of light surged from behind. Pontiff Irose of the New Light Cult stepped into the position Ming had vacated, sweeping his staff down in a strike against Chonghua's divine qi.
Ming seized this opportunity to reassemble his Divine Visage. Instead of advancing again, he pressed his hand to the floor, using his divine qi to commune with the Tianji Plate below.
So long as he took control of this artifact, he would fully master the constellation esoteric ritual—and could even use it to once again receive the Divine Visage of the Empyrean Lord into his body!
Chapter 1302