Flames of cyan and crimson flared across the massive hammer. As it swung downward, it almost entirely filled Chen Chuan's vision overhead. Dropping his center of gravity, he kicked off with both legs and dodged to the side.
With a thunderous crash, the hammer slammed down like a falling meteor. The earth shuddered. Trees that had stood there moments before were shattered into fine splinters, and the violent shockwave leveled everything in the surroundings.
Chen Chuan had already retreated over a hundred meters away. Golden-white energy surged across his body, and his outermost biological field formed a protective layer, blocking out all the flying wood chips and gravel.
He glanced over. That single strike was no weaker than a spiritual impact. Such was the raw power granted by colossal size. Even though his physical constitution far surpassed that of martial artists at the same stage, he still could not compare to the monstrosity before him, so he absolutely had to avoid meeting it head-on.
The yaogui lifted the massive hammer as if it weighed nothing at all. Pivoting with sudden force beneath its feet, its immense frame surged into motion, hurtling toward him at shocking speed. Everything obstructing its path was sent flying, and the ground trembled in an unending rumble.
Chen Chuan watched the yaogui draw closer. In just a few strides, it was nearly upon him. Yet precisely because of its enormous size, its actual speed was not truly fast, and it was far less agile than he was.
In a martial contest, no matter what kind of strength one possessed, if a strike failed to land, it was meaningless.
Yet right at that moment, the yaogui suddenly shot a glance at him. The jumble of eyes across its face all burst with a strange, eerie glow.
Almost simultaneously, the fire of spirituality enveloping Chen Chuan was forcefully pressed back in an instant. At the same time, he felt an invisible force bind him tightly, rendering him completely unable to move for a split second. Then, a colossal hammer came crashing down toward him from an angle above!
Even before the massive hammerhead struck, the compressed rush of air blew his hair and clothes backward.
Chen Chuan's gaze sharpened. In that critical fraction of a second, he chose not to resist with brute force. Instead, he relaxed his body entirely, using the rushing air current to angle his torso slightly so that his side faced the incoming hammer.
The flaring flames upon the hammer's face immediately slammed against his body. Deprived of the protection of his fire of spirituality, he essentially met the impact with his flesh alone. His Second Self turned entirely ethereal in an instant, then vanished as if shattered.
Yet through that briefest of buffers, the binding force vanished from his body. The suppressed fire of spirituality surged out of him once more, converging entirely before his chest.
At the same time, he shifted his mutated tissue and applied a yielding jin to cushion the blow. An explosive shockwave erupted from their point of collision, and their clashing spiritual radiance flared blindingly upon contact, drowning everything around them in a piercing glare.
In the next instant, Chen Chuan shot backward like a released arrow, flying several hundred meters away and snapping an entire row of large trees along the path.
As the momentum dissipated, he flipped backward midair, landing firmly on both feet with a heavy thud, then skidded across the ground for some distance before finally coming to a halt.
Directly ahead, a clear trench stretched between him and the monster, carved out by his skidding trajectory. Billowing dust and churning scorched leaves swirled in the air, accompanied by a rumbling echo, while the snapped trees only now crashed to the ground one after another.
Half of his body felt intensely numb and sore. Even though he had used yielding jin and concentrated his defenses forward in time, the hammer strike had nearly scattered all of his fire of spirituality.
Had the hammer landed solidly, he would not have been able to endure it either. His Second Self had not yet returned to his current level of strength, making severe immediate injury inevitable.
Still, with a martial artist's vitality, recovery was easy as long as physical energy was not exhausted. What he needed to guard against most was sudden, overwhelming force. If the ability that had pinned him in place had lasted even a little longer, the outcome would have been hard to say.
He stared ahead. Before mutating, this yaogui had very likely been an ancient martial artist who reached the Longevity View realm—an existence completely beyond the martial artists he had encountered in the past.
No wonder Wei Guochan and Gai Shuhe had been forced to withdraw from here. There had been no hope of victory for them; escaping with their lives had been an achievement in itself.
Part of the reason they had managed to slip away was likely that the yaogui was not particularly fast.
Seeing that Chen Chuan had planted his feet firmly, the yaogui showed no hesitation or desire to observe; driven as if by pure instinct, it charged toward where he stood once more.
Chen Chuan extended his hand outward, and a dazzling, intense brilliance erupted from his palm.
Against a massive creature lacking speed, the most effective response was a spiritual impact.
Over the past several days, his body had absorbed vast amounts of energy, keeping him at his peak and giving him ample reserves to unleash such an attack. Instead of discharging it the moment it formed as he had in the past, he allowed it to gather for a brief moment until the radiance almost completely engulfed him.
As the foe closed the distance and was practically face-to-face, a thunderous boom erupted. The sphere of light struck the yaogui, followed by a tremendous explosion. Their respective spiritual radiances clashed, eroded, and scattered, illuminating the entire region.
Amidst the blast, the yaogui's colossal figure was halted dead in its tracks, then forced steadily backward under the immense concussive force, until finally it was swallowed whole by the golden-white light.
Only after a long while did the brilliance gradually fade. The cyan-crimson glow that originally drifted around the yaogui had dimmed considerably. A large portion of its front was missing, and the armor formed from its mutated tissue was severely scorched, with large chunks peeling away from time to time as wisps of golden-white mist drifted from its chest and abdomen.
Before long, however, cyan-crimson light flickered beneath its flesh, expelling the golden-white mist. A breath later, even more cyan-crimson radiance surged out, re-covering the surface of its body.
It raised its head, its scar-like eyes fixing their collective gaze upon Chen Chuan once more.
Seeing this, Chen Chuan's eyes narrowed slightly. Even such a powerful bombardment had failed to inflict severe damage. In terms of both defensive resilience and physical energy reserves, this being far surpassed any opponent he had ever faced.
After a moment's consideration, he chose not to remain and tangle further with the yaogui. Tapping the ground with his foot, he rapidly retreated while whistling a signal to Chaoming in the sky above.
This opponent could not be brought down easily. Nightfall would arrive before long. Continuing to fight would force him to contend with both this yaogui and the intrusions of the other world—a situation of severe disadvantage. Thus, he chose to withdraw for now.
Even if they were to fight again, he needed to find an opportune moment.
Seeing him depart, the yaogui immediately gave chase. Yet due to the disparity in speed, the distance between them widened steadily. Chen Chuan soon left it far behind, and before long, it was completely out of sight.
Roughly ten minutes later, night fell as expected.
All manner of bizarre disturbances instantly sounded in Chen Chuan's ears. In the pitch-black darkness, countless entities seemed eager to breach that membrane-thin barrier and push directly into his presence.
As he ran, his fire of spirituality and field firmly anchored him within this world.
Cultivating through the night was out of the question this time, as he could sense that the yaogui was still trailing him.
A yaogui with such a potent fire of spirituality naturally required immense amounts of energy to sustain itself. Yet according to his earlier observations, numerous creatures still inhabited the area, standing in complete torpor before his approach.
He suspected that such yaogui likely replenished their strength and sustained their survival by absorbing some kind of energy transmitted during the Confluence's nights. If so, its combat prowess might be even higher after dark.
Right now, he had no desire to test that hypothesis; the cost of error was far too steep. Once the spiritual world welled up, many things could no longer be understood through the logic of the material realm.
When he was strong enough to resist on his own, he could afford to disregard it, but facing an enemy under those conditions was a lethal hazard. Having weighed the risks, he did not hesitate in the slightest, instead accelerating his retreat.
When he had come this way, he had traveled on foot and paused along the journey to hunt. This time, he advanced through sweeping bounds. Even though he held back his full speed to accommodate Chaoming, he still cleared the dense forest after an entire night of running. By dawn, he had returned to the point where he had first set out. Up on the cliff, the sentry outpost came into clear view.
He patted Chaoming, sending it into the sky to scout. After a moment's thought, he walked toward the outpost. Since the structure had remained intact all this time, it clearly would not come under attack; beyond a certain perimeter, the yaogui would likely give up the pursuit.
Drawing in his radiant light, he pulled out a container, poured a handful of ghost-face seeds into his palm, and chewed and swallowed them, slightly recovering his mental focus and physical stamina.
At that moment, he sensed something and looked back. There, where he had just passed, that colossal frame stood in the distance, its crisscrossing, crack-like eyes fixed steadily upon him.
After a moment, the massive silhouette slowly turned around and walked back toward the direction it had come from. Accompanied by faint tremors in the ground, it soon vanished into the depths of the dense forest.
Chapter 882