Mr. Zhuan said in a low voice, "The two of us are enough!"
As soon as he spoke, his wrist flicked, and a short-handled sickle appeared in his grip. With a gentle wave of the weapon, a fine slipstream sliced through the empty air from the sickle's tip, while a wisp of vermilion light flickered erratically along its curved blade.
At the same time, an illusory figure welled up behind him. As if by deliberate design, its contours remained indistinct, veiled as though trapped within a thick mist, allowing only the faint silhouette of a red-tasseled spear held in its hands to be discerned.
Mr. Mask, however, flew off Mr. Zhuan's face. Multicolored light gathered from all around, coalescing into a tall, full-limbed human figure.
At first, the figure was wispy and scattered like thin smoke, but after a moment it steadily solidified, remarkably turning into a masked person in casual clothes. Everything from the clothing to the exposed skin looked no different from an actual living human.
Zhao Zhenye looked at him. "Mr. Tang, you've committed quite a bit of power this time, haven't you?"
Mr. Mask shoved his hands into his pockets. "No choice. Last time, thirty percent of my power combined with Old Zhuan couldn't bring you down. Now that I'm putting more than seventy percent into this and joining forces with Old Zhuan, we should at least be able to trade a few blows with you, right?"
Zhao Zhenye said, "You're too modest, Mr. Tang. If this were the old me, I might well have been held back here by you two today."
Mr. Mask sized him up with curiosity. "I knew you were practicing something, kid. So, that secret transmission of yours—you mastered it?"
Zhao Zhenye said, "No need to joke, Mr. Tang. Coming here today..." He glanced at the case beside Mr. Zhuan. "I imagine you've come prepared with something to deal with me."
Mr. Zhuan said, "If the need arises, I will use it." Having said that, he slowly raised the sickle in his hand.
At that exact moment, Mr. Mask abruptly dissolved into a plume of soaring smoke. Flashing across the space, he appeared at Zhao Zhenye's flank in a split second, hurling a midair punch toward him as a burst of multicolored smoke flared violently from his knuckles.
Zhao Zhenye seemed to carry no weapon. He merely raised an arm wrapped in hand wraps, stepping forward to catch the front of the punch with one hand. A silvery-white aura naturally repelled the streaming smoke, while with a subtle turn of his torso, he redirected the entire momentum off to the side.
Whoosh! A vast volume of air was displaced as a red-tasseled spear thrust at him from a distance. Zhao Zhenye sidestepped in the opposite direction. With a resounding boom, the airflow from the spearhead grazed past his flank, whipping his hair into a frenzy, while the blasting shockwave plowed a long, deep trench across the ground behind him.
Though immensely heavy and dense, the long spear snapped back as light as a feather, thrusting once more toward his chest. Zhao Zhenye raised an elbow slightly, but the spearhead twisted mid-strike to bypass his elbow, darting downward toward his armpit. Twisting his waist, he brought his elbow crashing down, knocking the spearhead aside. A burst of blinding light immediately erupted from the point of impact.
By now, Mr. Mask had maneuvered behind him with the flow of momentum, his body trailing an arc of smoke through the air as he threw a punch straight at Zhao's back. Mr. Zhuan, who had stood motionless while only his external visage thrust the spear, finally leaped forward at this juncture, his sickle tracing an arc as it pecked toward Zhao Zhenye's face.
The two were clearly well-practiced partners, executing their coordinated tactics flawlessly from the outset to pincer him from front and back.
Zhao Zhenye drew a breath. A puff of mist billowed from behind him, and an invisible hand materialized in front of Mr. Mask. The latter's fist slammed into it, instantly detonating a ripple of force and concentric rings of scattering silvery-white light.
Before Mr. Mask could press his attack, Zhao Zhenye spun around, bringing a hand blade chopping toward him. Possessing only seventy percent of his true body's power and being merely a condensed manifestation of a Visage of the Divine, Mr. Mask was certainly outmatched in a direct frontal clash. Unwilling to clash head-on, he sought to rely on his speed to pull back, but a sudden invisible forcefield seized him with immense suction.
Grand Firmament Forms!
Though trapped, Mr. Mask showed not the slightest panic. Mr. Zhuan's sickle had already arrived right before Zhao Zhenye, its hooked tip pecking down only to collide with an invisible barrier—the obstruction of Zhao Zhenye's external visage. Yet at that very instant, the external visage above Mr. Zhuan shook its red tassels, and with a flash of its spearhead, thrust forward like a piercing dragon with a thunderous roar!
The spear's momentum expanded abruptly, blanketing nearly every angle of evasion. If Zhao Zhenye insisted on attacking Mr. Mask, he would inevitably be impaled.
Forced to abandon his strike, Zhao Zhenye spun back. His palms wound like coiling serpents, wrapping around the incoming spearhead in a backhanded trap. Streams of silvery-white light flashed across the point of contact outside his body. With a deafening boom, an overwhelmingly powerful force surged along the spear shaft, shoving him far back. Across every inch of ground he traversed, a massive plume of dust and smoke rolled outward to both sides.
At that moment, Mr. Mask closed in once more, driving a palm strike toward his shoulder. Zhao Zhenye had intended to deflect the force and evade, but he found himself unable to do so; although Mr. Mask's strength fell short of his original body, the fire of spirituality burning upon it was genuine, and an attack of that caliber could not simply be ignored. Zhao Zhenye parried with his right hand, swatting it aside.
Yet Mr. Zhuan's side surged with power once more. The tip of the red-tasseled spear flicked upward, lifting his feet clean off the ground and sending him flying high into the air!
Mr. Zhuan's legs surged with explosive power. Like an arrow loosed from a bow, he ripped through the air in an instant; before the shattered rubble could even spray from the ground, he had already appeared right before Zhao Zhenye, the hook of his sickle whipping back to rip into Zhao's jaw.
Yet no sooner had he moved than an illusory palm materialized in midair, pressing down on the sickle as if to swat Mr. Zhuan out of the sky. But Mr. Mask arrived at the flank and kicked the illusory palm, knocking it off course.
With a twist and a flick, Mr. Zhuan's sickle hooked against one of Zhao Zhenye's arms. Their fires of spirituality scraped violently against each other, spraying sparks everywhere. Zhao Zhenye knew that against two opponents, his survival lay in rapid movement; being pinned in place would spell disaster. With a sharp shudder and wrench of his arm, he wrenched it free from beneath the curved blade.
Mr. Mask circled around, aiming a strike directly at his ear, while Mr. Zhuan stepped heavily on the air and whipped his arm out, sending the sickle slashing toward Zhao's lower abdomen from another angle.
Two crisp impacts rang out. The invisible form behind Zhao Zhenye blocked Mr. Zhuan's offensive, while Zhao raised a hand to catch Mr. Mask's fist. But at that very moment, a burst of multicolored radiance exploded from Mr. Mask's eyes.
It caused Zhao to momentarily lose focus.
At the same time, Mr. Zhuan abruptly leaned aside. Right behind him, an enormous red-tasseled spear had already closed in, striking with unfathomable speed—plainly a premeditated burst of force coordinated between the two.
With nowhere to dodge, Zhao Zhenye took the full brunt of the blow. With a thunderous crash, the massive spearhead plunged into his chest. The highly condensed fire of spirituality upon it instantly punctured the outer layer of silvery-white radiance, driving the entire spearhead straight through his chest and out his back.
The colossal spiritual figure's eyes flashed with fierce brilliance. It shook the shaft of the spear, unleashing a surge of formidable jin from within.
With a deafening boom, Zhao Zhenye's upper body instantly blew apart.
Seeing this, neither Mr. Zhuan nor Mr. Mask relaxed their expressions. They remained fixated on the spot, for the body that had exploded was not made of flesh and blood, but plumes of mist.
Immediately afterward, they saw the once-illusory figure behind it shift, solidifying into another Zhao Zhenye. Both men felt a chill in their hearts.
This was... the Convergence faction's secret transmission, the Formless Body!
Stripped bare, such a secret transmission was not particularly mysterious: it used the external visage to act in place of the real body while the true self remained hidden and formless, thereby swapping reality with illusion to deceive the senses. No wonder Zhao Zhenye's spiritual visage had remained the same size as his physical body all this time; this was the root of it.
Mr. Zhuan and Mr. Mask watched Zhao Zhenye coldly. Having just expended a major burst of energy, they were in no hurry to press forward.
Failing to kill their opponent just now did not trouble them much. If one attempt failed, another coordinated strike would do. Working in tandem meant that whenever one was attacked, the other could adjust with ease, and even if an opening appeared, the partner could step in at the critical moment.
They could afford countless mistakes and regroup for attack after attack, whereas a single mistake on their opponent's part would leave no room for recovery.
To say nothing of the fact that a secret transmission like that could typically only be used once in battle; even if it could be used again, it would no longer work now that they were on guard against it.
Zhao Zhenye was adjusting his state as well. He knew he had to manage his opponents one at a time as much as possible and could not allow both to attack him simultaneously; being double-teamed put him at too great a disadvantage.
The situation was not entirely hopeless. The Formless Body was merely a spiritual visage after all, incapable of wielding the full might of his true body, but using it to bait an explosive burst from the pair and drain a portion of their strength was by no means a loss.
All three hovered in midair, letting gravity pull them downward. Just as they were about to touch back down on the island, they moved simultaneously. The air beneath Mr. Zhuan's and Zhao Zhenye's feet detonated in unison as they charged toward each other, while Mr. Mask spiraled upward around them.
In the blink of an eye, the three clashed once more, and a barrage of dense impacts and thunderous roars echoed across the scene.
The fire of spirituality on their bodies was not maintained continuously; instead, it flared into existence only an instant before contact. Doing so conserved stamina while rendering their movements unpredictable—a feat reflecting extreme confidence rooted in master craftsmanship.
Even as the three fought, their spiritual visages clashed continuously around them, trading blows with one another or striking at the true bodies. Yet all of them were thoroughly adapted to this form of combat, parrying and shielding at blinding speeds without disrupting their offensive rhythm in the slightest.
And even the spiritual visages did not reveal themselves in full all at once. They remained generally vague and illusory, coalescing into physical form only at the precise instant of attack or defense, which made their strikes all the more concealed and sudden.
Violent, rapid-fire detonations rang out relentlessly above the island. Wave after wave of atmospheric ripples expanded outward, shattering the ocean tides before they could even hit the shore and sweeping them backward into colossal arched breakers.
Far in the distance, passing vessels took note of the anomalous phenomenon and immediately dispatched telegrams to relay the situation to the outside world.
Chapter 984