The angle and timing of Hongfu's slash were unassailable, landing precisely at the moment Zhao Zhenye exerted force and striking squarely at the pivot point of his turning strength—hitting him where it proved most uncomfortable.
Her abrupt emergence left Zhao Zhenye no time to discern what she was, yet he could feel the power carried by the blade, and his thoroughly tempered body instinctively diverted a portion of its strength to ward it off.
The striking yanling saber merely grazed him before pulling away, lingering not a moment longer. The movement was swift and crisp, achieving its purpose of tying him down with minimal force and the simplest of maneuvers.
Even as an adversary, Zhao Zhenye could not help but marvel at the skill and beauty of its execution. Yet having suffered this interference, the power he had marshaled to withstand Chen Chuan was inevitably weakened by a few fractions, and his stance fell out of true. Not only was he unable to unleash his intended follow-up, but Chen Chuan's relentless pressure forced him to stagger back repeatedly.
Fortunately, having gained a breather this time, he possessed ample fire of spirituality for protection. A single setback would not cause his defenses to be breached outright. It was just that Hongfu had now entered the fray, putting him on higher alert.
Chen Chuan's primary goal was to prevent his opponent from mounting a counteroffensive, allowing him to maintain his continuous momentum until he broke through that ultimate pinnacle.
Over the next several exchanges, each time Chen Chuan struck, Hongfu launched attacks at the weak spots. Even though her strength could not breach Zhao Zhenye's fire of spirituality, sometimes a slight disturbance was enough to keep him from unleashing his full might.
Yet after several exchanges, Hongfu suddenly spun around, breaking away from the two of them and soaring high into the sky above. She delivered a slash straight toward the head of Zhao Zhenye's spiritual visage, once again targeting a weak point and causing its movements to falter.
Hongfu had abruptly joined the battle overhead because Zhao Zhenye, despite being suppressed once more, was not sitting idly by. Instead, he had sought out a new breakthrough point, boldly severing a portion of his body's spiritual power and channeling it to the spiritual visage above.
With a richer supply of spiritual fire, his spiritual visage could fight more aggressively. In fact, just moments ago, it had braced itself through two strikes to successfully hit Chen Chuan's spiritual visage once, sending sparks flying across the armor and causing its form to wobble slightly.
Though this had not yet compromised anything, as the battle progressed, if Chen Chuan's spiritual visage were forced back or if a lapse appeared in its cadence of strikes, Zhao Zhenye's spiritual visage would immediately reinforce his physical body, thereby preventing Chen Chuan from sustaining his ongoing offensive.
Although Zhao Zhenye did not know Chen Chuan's ultimate objective, his instincts and intuition as a fighter told him that he could not allow Chen Chuan to maintain this steady momentum; he had to disrupt it.
However, even as he took such action, he remained insufficiently resolute. The safest course was still to wait out the end of Chen Chuan's explosive surge—this aligned with his understanding and experience. One could also say that Chen Chuan's persistent performance made him hesitate to commit recklessly.
Yet he was also well aware that even while maintaining a defensive posture, completely abandoning the offense was unacceptable. Thus, he had prepared two contingencies. While his spiritual visage had failed to break the deadlock, it had drawn Hongfu away for a moment.
Seizing this opening, he snapped his arms outward, and a section of the hand wraps wound around his arms fluttered loose.
It was not that he never used weapons; rather, out of his own pride, he had refrained from employing them at the start. Later on, he had lacked the opportunity, for wielding this weapon demanded an immense supply of the fire of spirituality.
Now the situation was vastly different. He recognized Chen Chuan as an opponent capable of posing a severe threat to him, and he currently possessed enough fire of spirituality, so he unfurled them.
Sweeping and blocking with his arm, he parried the blade away. At the same time, the hand wraps imbued with streams of silver-white light drifted outward, attempting to coil around the Xuejun Saber.
This weapon could be rigid or supple, entirely directed by the intent of the mind. It could bind an opponent or lash out like a whip, and with the rotation of jin, it looped and whirled along unpredictable trajectories.
Chen Chuan paid it little mind. After disrupting the tempo of the spiritual visage above, Hongfu had already dropped back down to coordinate with him in pinning Zhao Zhenye. Even if the blade were caught, his opponent would lack the time and strength to subdue it.
More crucially, the power welling within him was already on the verge of bursting forth, as if only one or two slashes away from being unleashed.
And so he swung two consecutive slashes in rapid succession!
At that moment, a sudden chill crept down Zhao Zhenye's spine. He did not know where the danger stemmed from, yet his spirit blared warnings in frantic alarm.
In that instant, he shouted aloud, and the woman hidden in the shadows immediately grasped his intent. A hazy phantom figure materialized before him.
Meanwhile, the fire of spirituality surged wildly over his body, welling up ceaselessly from deep within and spilling outward, until he was encased in an instant by silver-white radiance so dense it was nearly tangible.
After two slashes, Chen Chuan felt a surge of jin accumulate to its peak, like a volcano about to erupt. Spurred by this, the sun-like brilliance and forcefield radiating from him expanded outward, instantly swallowing Zhao Zhenye as well.
At this very moment, he seemed to understand something. Twisting his wrist, he rotated the blade, dragging an enigmatic aura of flame out from the dazzling, flashing brilliance. This flame seemed to feed upon the Two Great Stances and his fire of spirituality, continuously devouring and growing along the way, while specks of fine black radiance scattered around it, indiscernible as to what they were.
At the same time, the Xuejun Saber began to tremble, seemingly unable to bear the power adhering to it.
Gripping the long saber firmly, Chen Chuan sprang forward on his momentum and cleaved outward! Across from him, the two hand wraps fluttered and coiled toward the blade, but the moment they contacted that flame, the fire of spirituality upon them was extinguished without a sound, and the wraps instantly crumbled into clouds of flying ash.
The slash then struck the massive feminine figure. A shrill scream echoed even within his spirit before the figure rapidly collapsed and retreated.
Cleaving a path forward with that stroke, he lunged ahead and thrust the blade forward, its tip pointing straight at Zhao Zhenye—a scene identical to the thrust he had leveled at him when their battle first began!
Zhao Zhenye's pupils constricted sharply. Looking at Chen Chuan's oncoming momentum, he knew evasion was impossible. With a thunderous bellow, he pushed forward every bit of the fire of spirituality he could muster.
Yet upon colliding with this power, it was like blazing sun shining upon snow. The stream of silver-white light was continuously torn apart by the enigmatic flame. Finally, the blade plunged directly into his chest. His entire body jolted, and before Chen Chuan could drive it any deeper, he thrust out both hands and clamped onto it.
The two combatants' fires of spirituality clashed and eroded each other. In the sky above, two dazzling spheres of resplendent light erupted once more, like a great sun colliding with a full moon. After a brief deadlock, one side seemed unable to hold out, sending both spheres plummeting rapidly through the open sky before crashing into the sea with a deafening boom.
The seawater rippled and surged outward in rings, forming a vast, sunken void at the center. The expanding ripples pushed farther and farther, turning into churning tiers of waves that thoroughly roiled the surrounding waters. Even the steamships in the distance were not spared, their hulls shoved outward by the colossal force.
Aboard the ships, the crew frantically steadied their vessels, faithfully transmitting intermittent reports of the scene unfolding before them.
Grasping the hilt with both hands, Chen Chuan bore down on the saber as they fell, thrusting hard against Zhao Zhenye. Zhao Zhenye gripped the blade with a death grip to halt its penetration, but the fire of spirituality on his hands was being rapidly eaten away by the enigmatic flame, and a scorched stench rose from the points of contact.
At such close quarters, their gazes locked. In Chen Chuan's eyes shone a sharp, brilliant light; in Zhao Zhenye's was sheer disbelief and shock.
As they plunged deeper beneath the waves, the flesh of Zhao Zhenye's hands charred and withered away in the flame, turning into two blackened skeletal hands that eventually crumbled into dust.
Feeling the resistance slacken on the blade, a sharp light gleamed in Chen Chuan's eyes. Driving power through both arms, he swept the saber downward in a fluid motion. With a tearing sound, he split Zhao Zhenye's body clean in two from the chest down!
Zhao Zhenye let out a muffled grunt. His eyes instantly lost focus, as if his very consciousness had been severed by this stroke. Only faint, flickering wisps of silver-white light drifted around his body, wavering like a candle in the wind.
In the air above, his spiritual visage also stiffened. It was struck across the skull by a heavy blow, followed by a reverse slash that severed its head. After freezing for a moment, it collapsed with a boom, erupting into a vast cloud of vapor.
Chen Chuan felt the Xuejun Saber trembling violently after cleaving Zhao Zhenye in two, the flame upon it flickering erratically. He knew it could no longer sustain such power, but having reached this stage, it was already enough.
Pulling the saber behind his back with one hand, he raised his other palm, aiming it at Zhao Zhenye's head from point-blank range.
Zhao Zhenye seemed to sense something. Straining to look over, his pupils reflected a fiercely flickering white-gold radiance.
At that exact moment, an intensely dazzling radiance suddenly erupted from across Zhao Zhenye's entire body. Yet before it could spread, the beam of light just inches away struck first. A brilliant white-gold beam blasted through, and Zhao Zhenye's head burst into countless fragments in an instant.
Yet in the next heartbeat, with a flicker of that brilliant glare, his entire body vanished without a trace.
Chen Chuan stood suspended in the space, his eyes narrowed at the empty void before him. Vanished along with that glare were the remaining parts of Zhao Zhenye's body.
Was that just now... a fissure?
Thinking of the faint phantom figure that had appeared earlier, he fell into thought.
He shifted his thoughts. His opponent was a martial artist of the realm of the Longevity View; without being thoroughly obliterated, it was hard to say what twists might arise. Yet the Xuejun Saber had exhausted its strength bearing that power earlier, or else he might have tried to see if he could slash open the fissure and pursue him.
But it did not matter.
He reversed the long saber and stowed it behind him. If he could defeat the man this time, he could do it next time as well—and by then, he would only be stronger.
At this moment, the seawater that had been parted by the two of them began to rush back together. Glancing upward, he pushed off with his feet, instantly turning into a streak of brilliant light that soared upward from the abyss!
Chapter 991