Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal? Chapter 743: Outcome Decided
Previously on Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal?...
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Chen Huaian: "..."
He had figured this Corpse Emperor might offer a bit of worthwhile intel.
Yet ultimately, all he got were empty menaces hidden amid heaps of drivel.
Alright then!
Refusing to speak?
I'll force the words right out of you!
A pair of icy gleams sparked in Chen Huaian's gaze. The Black Scales Sword's edge angled just a touch, while a swirling stellar torrent started to roil at his back.
However, right when he was set to release the eleventh form from the Green Lotus Sword Manual—Sword Falls Like Galaxy—the immense stream of Sword Qi trailing him got slowly devoured by the encircling Blood Fiend Energy from the ancient battlefield, as though ink were seeping into it.
Chen Huaian squinted his eyes, staring at Corpse Emperor Jiang who advanced steadily, one step at a time, from a short distance away.
Noticing the bewilderment across Chen Huaian's features, Corpse Emperor Jiang tilted his head skyward and unleashed a wild, frenzied cackle.
"Do you think this is? This is the ancient battlefield, the Immortal Burial Ground! It is my Domain!
Within my Domain, all treasures, all divine abilities, all techniques are rendered useless!"
Emperor Jiang directed his sword toward Chen Huaian. The gap between them shrank to under ten feet. The Blood Fiend Energy across the whole battlefield gathered toward Emperor Jiang's form, merging at his rear into a savage, grasping blood dragon. Underneath the dragon loomed the horde of thousands, the forces loyal to Emperor Jiang.
At Chen Huaian's back, though, stretched nothing but barren quiet and gloom.
He held only the sword gripped in his palm.
Should a typical cultivator confront the crushing power of a full Domain, gaze upon Emperor Jiang and his vast legion ahead, and moreover, find themselves barred from employing divine abilities or treasures...
They'd probably tremble in terror.
Yet following a short spell of puzzlement, nothing but serene detachment showed on Chen Huaian's expression.
"If I'm not mistaken, the three rules—cannot use sword moves, cannot use divine abilities, and cannot use treasures—apply to you as well, correct?"
Chen Huaian fixed his stare on the sword clutched by Emperor Jiang.
The River Sinker possessed the trait of icing foes; under normal conditions, merely grasping it would let chilling vapor leak forth.
But right now, this River Sinker resembled a mundane blade, bearing just the look of the River Sinker yet stripped of its magical artifact qualities.
"You are a clever man." Emperor Jiang regarded Chen Huaian, a tangled blend of admiration and regret flashing in his eyes.
Regret that, regardless, no one could ever overcome the Celestial God Clan.
With this result already set in stone.
It was preferable to conclude this absurd charade immediately.
"Within my Domain, it is a pure contest of Stance and Intent!
I have endured endless rounds of reincarnation, endless demises. Each passing of my clones served as an epiphany for me.
You, however, have only been cultivating for scarcely a year. Even aided by the Dragon Soul inheritance, it simply elevated your cultivation base. Regarding Stance and Intent, how could you ever rival me?
Today, I shall let you truly grasp what it means to stand on utterly distinct planes of being!"
Emperor Jiang's declaration dropped like frigid steel, slamming into the hushed battlefield.
Silence answered.
Chen Huaian sprang into motion.
He lacked the world-shaking, sky-rending presence of Corpse Emperor Jiang.
Bound by the Domain, he was also deprived of his brilliant sword techniques.
His form dashed ahead.
Resembling a shadow blending into this realm of demise, or a faint haze swept across withered skeletons by the breeze.
The Black Scales Sword reached out ahead, striking without a sound.
The edge sliced the atmosphere, its path soft and unpredictable, appearing sluggish but in truth swift.
Momentarily, time appeared elongated by some unseen power, turning thick and sticky.
Along the sword's point, no faintest breeze stirred, but space undulated like a still pond stirred by a pebble, sending out unseen rings of waves.
So what if sword moves and divine abilities stood sealed?
Could they seal his Sword Intent?
Could they seal... his Path?!
*Scree—!*
A draconic sword wail echoed forth.
The spectral emerald fires in Emperor Jiang's eyes blazed fiercely.
He sensed it!
Coalescing along that blade's course was a keen, almost solid resolve.
His forged Blood Fiend Domain failed to wholly quash this "Intent," which burned with utmost purity.
"Don't even think about it!" he bellowed, a roar akin to some primal monster.
His enormous Corpse Emperor True Form burst with unexpected speed.
The River Sinker he wielded bore the ponderous, trampling force of a thousand cavalry surging, entwined with the hoarded Blood Fiend malice of millennia on this field. Like a toppling summit, it savagely hacked at that slippery sword silhouette.
The sword posture weighed heavy, ripping the air with a low, grieving wail.
Chen Huaian's sword stayed nimble, though.
In the split second when the sword point neared collision with the River Sinker.
Its course abruptly veered by the tiniest fraction.
Like a fish snapping its tail, it skimmed hazardously along the weighty, peak-like flat of the rival blade.
*Hum!*
The region brushed by the Black Scales Sword's keen edge quivered more noticeably.
A few shards of rotten bone, marked with dark gore and caught in Emperor Jiang's sword gust, underwent a strange halt upon touching that formless sword route.
They looked suspended in time's flow, holding their flung poses for a heartbeat.
Then they resumed floating along their prior paths.
Nevertheless, where the sword gleam had "traversed" them, the bone pieces displayed utterly even, mirror-smooth, tiny incisions.
A fragment of time had been cleaved right here!
A desperate warning shrieked in Emperor Jiang's thoughts.
Too late for his burdensome River Sinker to withdraw into guard.
His colossal frame revealed startling agility, arching backward at the torso with abrupt sharpness, barely dodging the deadly sword gleam that grazed his torso and midsection.
The frosty sword brink slipped by his tattered imperial garb, without noise.
The fierce dragon motif on the imperial robe got neatly parted, the severed rim without any raggedness.
Chen Huaian's silhouette had already gone beyond Emperor Jiang, touching down a few paces to his rear, facing away toward the corpse mound.
Emperor Jiang righted himself and glanced at the clean slash across his imperial robe's front. The eerie green irises in his hollowed sockets shrank sharply.
Had his reflexes been slower, that blade moments ago would have halved his Corpse Emperor frame at the waist.
The "Intent" along that sword's edge managed to bypass the protections of his Corpse Emperor build.
"A fine sword!" Emperor Jiang's tone carried a hint of rasp from the jolt, but beyond that, it brimmed with fully kindled grudge and brutal fury. "But not enough!"
He whirled around savagely. The River Sinker morphed into a dense scarlet dusk, bearing a pulverizing, frenzied determination, and lashed out anew.
*Boom—!*
The sword gale roared, stirring the sticky blood-soil from the earth, morphing it into surges of grimy blood that shrouded the heavens and blanketed the land.
Chen Huaian kept his back turned to him.
Precisely as that pulverizing blood surge neared to swallow him, his wrist flicked a fraction.
The Black Scales Sword jabbed out wordlessly from under his side at an inconceivable slant.
This thrust outpaced vision.
No path, no alert, as though it materialized from nowhere.
The sword point focused a speck of supreme frosty glow, boring through the raging blood surges, striking dead-on at Emperor Jiang's sword-grasping wrist.
Emperor Jiang sensed a marrow-freezing iciness at his wrist, like it faced impalement by age-old frost.
He howled, compelling a shift in his strike, hauling the weighty River Sinker rearward to parry.
*Clang!*
A sharp metal chime at last burst over the muted battlefield.
For the first time, the pair of swords met head-on, firmly.
Chen Huaian borrowed the clash's rebound. His form, akin to feather-light willow fluff, floated back a few paces. He at last pivoted, the Black Scales Sword aimed slanted toward the soil.
Emperor Jiang, on the other hand, found his arm stunned by the horrifying piercing power amassed at the sword point, almost dropping the hefty River Sinker.
*Thump, thump, thump.*
He staggered back three paces straight, every footfall carving a profound pit in the blood-soil.
Once again, the two confronted each other.
Emperor Jiang loomed with the brutal rent on his imperial robe, his sword arm quivering faintly. The spectral green fires in his caved eye sockets flickered wildly, his stare brimming with total incredulity.
Chen Huaian stood sword in hand, his presence unshaken.
At the Black Scales Sword's tip, a bead of deep crimson corpse blood gradually formed, then fell without sound, splashing onto the pale bone underfoot, unfurling into a sordid blood blossom.
The outcome was decided.
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