Dominance

Just as the relic was about to fall into the fissure, a flash of light flickered like a bolt of lightning, and the object vanished instantly. It was Sigvard, one of the Thunder Twins, who had scooped it up, intending to make a swift getaway. Yet he had only taken a few steps when a whip lashed over, wrapping firmly around his ankle and hurling him sideways with a crash onto the ground. Qi Qianyang had leapt backward using the momentum of his clash with Chen Chuan and snapped out the whip midair. Having lost a great deal of jin from that clash, he had not had time to muster his force again; otherwise, a single strike would have blown the boy apart in midair without needing this extra effort. At this moment, another beam of light flashed past. Svea, the elder sister of the Thunder Twins, rushed over, snatched the relic from her brother's hand, and hurled it into the distance. After flying through the air for some distance, it landed before Heros with a sharp clatter. Heros was already back on his feet, seemingly having recovered from the damage of that earlier collision. Not only that, but his frame appeared even more towering than before, his aura all the more imposing. On his body now, from his cheeks to various fractured parts across his torso, chunks of tissue were sloughing off, exposing the skeleton beneath—a skeleton that was pitch-black. This was the Bone of Heroes. According to the heritage of the Hapumoyas Hero Murals, practitioners progressed through three stages: the Blood of Heroes, the Bone of Heroes, and the Soul of Heroes. Achieving each stage elevated their strength by a tier, while the ultimate final step reached at the limit was called "Hero's Destiny." It was both an end and a new beginning, signifying that the course of one's destiny would be decided here. This step could be initiated by choice, unlocking all the latent potential within the body. If the practitioner overcame the ordeal, they would cross that final threshold, opening the path to higher realms; if they failed to achieve their objective, they would meet their fated end. At this moment, he had chosen to embark on this ultimate path. He looked down at the sphere. Instead of bending over to pick it up, he raised a foot and stomped it deep into the soil beneath with a thud. Then, lifting his head, he fixed his gaze on Chen Chuan. From the combat earlier, he could see that Qi Qianyang was likely no match for this man either. Holding onto the relic served no purpose—it would merely mean safeguarding it for someone else. Only by eliminating Chen Chuan would there be room to maneuver. Seeing his actions, the Thunder Twins understood his intent immediately. Voicing no objection, they too turned toward Chen Chuan and assumed an attacking stance. On the Linakes Federation's side, Major General Therbil signaled with a wave of his hand. The few people remaining behind him spread out as well, encircling the outer perimeter once more. At this moment, it seemed an unspoken consensus had formed: they would join forces to deal with Chen Chuan first. This was precisely because Chen Chuan's near-unstoppable display earlier had filled them with dread and unease; without taking him down, none of them could rest easy. Qi Qianyang glanced around, then back at Chen Chuan, flashing an amused smirk. "I don't care to team up with them, but who they choose to attack isn't something I can control, is it?" Chen Chuan looked across at everyone present. Reaching for the fastenings of his protective overcoat, he unbuttoned them one by one, gave a light flick, and let the coat drift away with the wind, revealing his military greatcoat uniform beneath. At the same time, he released the restraints on his own mutated tissue. By now, as the cultivation of his physique approached near-perfection, the toughness of his mutated tissue had grown commensurately. With this release, as the mutated tissue rejoiced in exultation, boundless power instantly surged out from every corner of his body. Because the mutated tissue within the Xuejun Saber was inherently one with him, it too grew extraordinarily active, vibrating gently and emitting a faint hum. At this moment, the entire clearing everyone stood upon continued to heave upward. Indeed, a colossal entity underground was gradually awakening. Yet none of them paid any heed to the swarm of insects outside or the thing beneath their feet; everyone's attention was fully focused on Chen Chuan, not daring to shift their gaze away for even a single second. A gust of wind blew past, causing the red scarf around Chen Chuan's neck to flutter. The onlookers experienced a momentary daze—only to realize with sudden horror that Chen Chuan had appeared right beside Mortimer the "Skinner." Resting a hand upon Mortimer's head, he gave it a gentle twist. Mortimer's eyes flew wide in abject terror. The next instant, his neck, spine, and the bones across his limbs twisted in opposite directions like a wrung-out towel. Amidst a series of sickening cracks, blood and tissue seeped out, and everything below his skull was instantly twisted into a contorted braid. With a heavy thud, Mortimer collapsed to the ground. Whether intentional or not, even at this point he was not yet dead, his wide, staring eyes frozen in horror. With a sharp whistle, a whip snapped through the air, but it struck only the afterimage Chen Chuan had left behind, carving a furrow into the earth with a loud crack. When Chen Chuan moved just now, only Qi Qianyang on the entire field had reacted in time, but he could barely track Chen Chuan's silhouette, and his whip strike still hit empty air. Suddenly, a jolt of extreme danger struck him. His heart leapt, and with a swift yank, the whip whirled back to trace a defensive coil. Fortunately for him, he retrieved his weapon in time: a lightning-fast blade light arrived in a split second, crashing into the whip with a bang. A burst of jin surged along the whip into his body, making him shudder involuntarily. Yet the opposing blade light showed no sign of stopping, slashing in again. Steadying his breath, he looped his whip to parry once more. The force coming through this time was the same jin as before, and since Fuming Jin adapted rapidly, he barely managed to absorb the collision. But when the next strike landed, his body shuddered again—because the incoming jin had abruptly changed into a different kind! Over the next few strikes, the jin shifted back and forth incessantly. These rapid alterations made his mutated tissue suffer terribly. The formidable strength of Fuming Jin lay in the self-adaptation of mutated tissue; without needing deliberate conscious adjustment, it adapted on its own to whatever jin surged in. However, with the jin changing so intricately and the intervals between impacts being so brief, his mutated tissue was forced into constant stretching and contracting without ever fully withstanding any single kind. In that brief span, this induced disarray and fatigue within the mutated tissue, which even fed back a visceral urge to stop and rest. Yet in battle, that was utterly out of the question. Enduring the agony, he forcibly mobilized the mutated tissue, wringing enough strength from it to meet the oncoming assault. Noticing that Qi Qianyang's parrying force was waning and that the whirling whip was no longer as swift and powerful as before, Chen Chuan's eyes flashed. Gripping the hilt with both hands, he brought the saber down in a ferocious cleave. A thrill of terror seized Qi Qianyang. Without thinking, he whipped back with all his might. As a thunderous airburst erupted between them, a surge of power immediately traveled up the whip. He was actually very familiar with the power rushing into his body now—it was the exact jin he had weathered that day in Center City. By rights, having endured it once, the mutated tissue in his body should have been fully capable of withstanding it after recovery thanks to his Fuming Jin. Yet compared to that day, this jin was more than a cut above in sheer ferocity. No matter how resilient Fuming Jin was, it ultimately depended on his mutated tissue, which still had a threshold of endurance—and this strike completely exceeded that limit. His body shook violently once more, and the movement of the whip hitched. In that fleeting fraction of a second, a hand reached out from across, seizing the whip with a sharp smack. The faint gleam on Chen Chuan's palm and the glow on the whip unraveled and neutralized each other. Then, with an outward heave, Qi Qianyang was bodily dragged up and slammed into the earth with a resounding crash! The ground shuddered violently under the impact, kicking up billows of dust and debris. Having brought him down in one slam, Chen Chuan instinctively glanced sideways to see Heros holding a spear, poised to throw—because Heros could not afford to let Qi Qianyang be killed outright, or this battle would be entirely lost. At that instant, Chen Chuan pivoted and bounded sideways. Instead of pressing the fallen Qi Qianyang, he appeared right before Heros in a flash. Heros took fright and whipped his spear around to thrust it forward. Chen Chuan simply flicked his blade upward, sending the spear hurtling into the sky. Heros utilized the momentum of throwing the spear to surge forward, instantly slipping into the inside guard where the saber could not easily strike, and threw a punch with his forward momentum, a faint glow shimmering across his knuckles. Neither dodging nor retreating, Chen Chuan met it with a punch from his free hand. As their fists converged, the glows between them neutralized first, followed by a direct clash of jin. With a heavy boom, both bodies jerked to a halt from the impact. Facing Chen Chuan's punch jin, Heros did not yield half a step. A second punch roared in immediately, followed by a third, a fourth... launching a relentless barrage of attacks. Chen Chuan simply released the Xuejun Saber and engaged in a full blow-for-blow brawl, meeting every punch head-on fist-to-fist. With power so immense and speed so furious, a swirling vortex of dust exploded between them, obscuring their figures. Having unlocked all his latent potential, Heros had gained a massive boost in physical capability, which was why he dared to do this. For the first two punches, he could still unleash sufficient power of spiritual perception, and his Bone of Heroes could withstand the recoil of the jin surging from the other side. But by just the third punch, he seemed to have squeezed out the very last drops of strength within his body. By the fourth punch, a tyrannical surge of jin tore in from the opposite side, scattering the meager remnant of his power of spiritual perception and flooding unobstructed into his body. His mind reeled, seemingly losing consciousness for that single instant. His towering frame swayed, and with a dull thump, he dropped helplessly to his knees, head hanging low. Visible cracks proliferated across his body, this time even spreading into the pitch-black bones, giving a faint sense that they were on the verge of shattering. Chen Chuan reached out, caught the spear falling from midair, and raised it high. At that exact moment, flashes of light streaked in from his rear and his left flank. The Thunder Twins appeared abruptly, the arm fins on both gleaming with faint light as they sought to slash at his body. But the next instant, with two explosive cracks, both were batted away by the spear in succession. Chen Chuan raised the spear once more, pointed the tip downward, and plunged it savagely into the kneeling Heros. The shaft impaled through the back of Heros's skull, burst out through his mouth, and struck into the ground with a squelch. Heros's body and limbs snapped rigid, and after a moment, abruptly went limp. He hung there, utterly motionless.