Seeing Chen Chuan hurtling out from the fissure with saber raised to strike, Drakholm felt the thick spiritual light-fire surge around his body. The spiritual visage behind him immediately brought its shield up into a defensive guard.
After their previous clash, Drakholm knew full well that in a brief collision, their strength was roughly on the same level—whoever struck first had the upper hand.
Yet now, they outnumbered him. Drakholm had no need to seek a personal triumph. As long as he held Chen Chuan off for a single instant, checking him in place and depriving him of the leeway to slip back into the fissure, the others' incoming attacks would provide the chance to kill him.
Chen Chuan approached with astonishing speed, arriving before him almost the instant he emerged from the fissure. But as the long saber struck the shield, Drakholm realized something was wrong. There was hardly any force behind the blow—it was almost as if a wisp of smoke had collided with him.
At that very moment, the attacks from the others landed in unison. Without exception, all of them had chosen spiritual impacts, for it was both the swiftest and the most destructive form of offense.
Several beams of light lanced in from various angles, passing straight through Chen Chuan's body.
Their timing could not have been better. Just as the blow struck home, amid the dazzling flashes of light, Chen Chuan's entire figure shattered with a roar into a massive cloud of mist.
Yet almost at the precise instant they struck, a shimmering burst of fissure light appeared behind Merton.
Chen Chuan's saber-bearing figure materialized there.
He lifted his head, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
Everyone who had traded blows with him before had been tainted by his purple qi, allowing him to sense each person's general position.
Merton had already sensed something amiss the moment he attacked.
He felt that Chen Chuan was not in front at all, but clearly behind him—the one seen ahead was almost certainly a decoy!
Yet this time, Chen Chuan had been ferried across by the Tianji fish. That speed far exceeded his own. Even Merton's mental perception lagged by a beat, let alone having the time to warn the others.
In truth, there was simply no time. When Chen Chuan appeared behind him, Merton had just unleashed that spiritual impact.
At this moment, he was utterly incapable of dodging or defending.
Even so, he was not particularly frightened. Even if his body was destroyed, he could still reconstruct himself through that entity.
A brilliant snow-white flash slashed across him, predictably cleaving him diagonally in two once more.
As Chen Chuan's saber passed through the body, his gaze remained calm and profound. This time, there was no interference, and the opponent had been caught without adequate defense, allowing Chen Chuan to clearly perceive certain internal changes.
The vast majority of this body was actually composed of certain energies surging from within the fissure—essentially the product of mental energy merging upon entering the material world, nearly identical in composition to that entity from the other side.
Meanwhile, his true Visage of the Divine was condensed into an exceedingly minuscule cluster, drifting and shifting unpredictably within the body. Had Merton not just unleashed a spiritual impact, Chen Chuan would likely have struggled to detect its presence, mistaking the outer body for his Divine Visage.
This meant that no matter how many times he slashed this body apart, as long as he did not strike that coiled Divine Visage, he could not truly kill him. Even if he unleashed Mystic Void Fire, it would be useless if it failed to make contact.
Chen Chuan considered pursuing that wisp of Divine Visage to eradicate it in one stroke, but the entity trailing behind had already lunged at him—perhaps sensing Merton's peril and attempting to relieve him.
Chen Chuan's thoughts raced. There was undeniably a profound link between this creature and Merton, perhaps serving as the very wellspring that supplied him with aid. He suspected that even if he struck Merton's Divine Visage, this thing could absorb the damage in his stead.
If that was the case, he had to eliminate this thing first.
Spinning around in a sweeping slash fueled by his explosive power and the Xuejun Saber's enhancement, the saber light swept straight across the entity.
The creature had originally been immune to cutting strikes; even if damaged, it could absorb more energy from the fissure to repair itself. Yet when the Xuejun Saber passed through its form, it seemed to contact something solid. A crisp shattering sound rang out, and a wisp of luminous filaments drifted over the blade, instantly swallowing it whole.
In that breath, the worm-like entity seemed to lose its guiding core. As the stroke swung through to its finish, its body, split open from head to tail, abruptly collapsed into nothingness.
At the same moment, within the fissure opened by the Primitive Sect, the roiling, foul mist pouring forth seemed to lose all constraint, dissipating feebly outward.
Glancing sideways, Chen Chuan saw the others looking his way, and his gaze met theirs.
After that single glance, he dissolved with complete composure into a fissure. Just as he withdrew, a barrage of spiritual impacts detonated across the empty air ahead.
After Chen Chuan withdrew once more, Merton's shattered form gathered together again.
Even without that entity, his own Divine Visage had suffered no blow. As long as the fissure remained, he could draw upon those energies to wrap around himself.
Yet that brief exchange had made him keenly aware of the danger. Had the others not been present, Chen Chuan's next move after dispatching that entity would have been to strike at him. Caught like that, he would have had few effective ways to retaliate, and the outcome could well have been catastrophic.
That sense of crisis compelled him to seek ways to bolster his defense and combat strength, drawing vast amounts of the mist emerging from the fissure into his body.
At the same time, he communicated mentally with the others, conveying what had just transpired.
Although their freshly formulated plan had been ruined by Chen Chuan in the blink of an eye—amounting to a setback—the four quickly devised a new approach.
After all, there were four of them, each possessing unique specialties. Both the methods at their disposal and the power they commanded far surpassed Chen Chuan's. Even if they failed once, they could simply try again.
Their focus remained on targeting the fissures. They understood perfectly well that it was solely by relying on these gaps in space that Chen Chuan could maneuver against them; that advantage had to be suppressed.
The mental exchange concluded in a fraction of a second. Irose tapped his scepter against the empty air. With that motion, a flood of dazzling radiance erupted from his body, and the fissure behind him seemed to resonate in sympathy.
The concentrated brilliance soon expanded across the entire sky, enveloping Durant, Emperor Capa, and the others in the distance, along with numerous airships.
Durant and his companions remained unmoved, their bodies surging with blazing spiritual fire that held the light at bay.
Those aboard the airships had no such defense, but fortunately, they had donned the protective goggles supplied by the Federation in advance; otherwise, they might have been converted into zealots on the spot by the light.
Because this light was nearly omnipresent, the moment Chen Chuan tore open a fissure, it would seep inside. The more frequently the fissures were used, the more light would penetrate.
Once a sufficient amount accumulated, it could obstruct or even seal the fissures, effectively neutralizing Chen Chuan's reliance on them.
The head Irose had lost to Chen Chuan's blade had already regenerated, leaving only the shattered half-mask still clinging to his face, though his golden eyes had turned exceptionally perilous.
He was blatantly presenting himself as bait. If Chen Chuan did not choose to deal with him first, traversing the fissures would grow increasingly difficult until it became impossible—like a wide net gradually tightening, driving him step by step into a corner.
If Chen Chuan attacked him, they had already prepared a countermeasure. It all depended on what choice Chen Chuan made next.
Meanwhile, within the Tianji Sect's fissure, Gao Xu and Long Xian had seen two more martial artists arrive on the field earlier, seemingly on Chen Chuan's side, and had considered dispatching someone to assist.
Yet no sooner had that thought crossed their minds than they saw Ming turning his attention toward them, forcing them to abandon the idea.
Ming's strength was second only to Chonghua's. Unless both went down together, victory was out of reach, leaving them no choice but to stay put.
Yet seeing Chen Chuan battle the enemy by leveraging the fissures, Long Xian's eyes suddenly lit up as if realizing something, and he urged hurriedly, "Senior Brother, that honored guest seems able to traverse the fissures, and the Tianji fish appears to be aiding him. Perhaps we can lend him a hand!"
Gao Xu considered this and realized he was right.
After all, this was the Tianji Sect's core sanctuary, their home ground. Even if they could not move freely for the moment, they could still provide support to others.
The two immediately activated the esoteric rituals beside them, channeling wisps of energy across through that golden rainbow to influence the airspace below, making spatial traversal far easier.
Their actions coincided precisely with the eruption of that dazzling radiance.
Chen Chuan had already launched a fresh round of attacks. Previously, the four could sense him, and he could sense their movements as well; their actions had been transparent to each other.
Yet when he surged into the fissure once more, he discovered that the four were no longer moving in advance to intercept him. It seemed that after slaying that entity, they had lost the ability to track his trajectory.
This was unquestionably good news, but he also noticed something amiss: the omnipresent, blinding radiance outside polluted his spiritual fire the moment it shone upon him.
More concerning still, the light was seeping into the fissure itself. He immediately deduced that it could interfere with spatial traversal.
Setting that aside for now, his gaze locked onto a figure ahead.
This time, he chose Igor as his target.
Just before attacking this man earlier, he had sensed something unusual—likely some sort of aberrant power. But he had also noticed that it probably required direct contact or physical strikes to take effect. If so, there was no need to close the distance.
Raising the Xuejun Saber with both hands, he slashed down from afar at Igor, who had already noticed him. In an instant, a razor-sharp spiritual impact shot forth alongside the blade light!
And after one slash came another! Relying on his superior speed and the element of surprise, he unleashed three consecutive slashes before the others' attacks could land!
Chapter 1311