The large group of disciples tensed up when Liang Chen's gaze swept over them, all of them were more than familiar with the reputation of the Scourge King. Of all the people present, there were four people present within the group of disciples that were far more familiar with the terror of that name than anyone else. They had been there that day when he got his title within the Mystic's Hidden Realm, they were some of the people who were lucky enough to survive the assault that killed even the land itself.
So when his gaze swept over them, the four people couldn't help but be drenched in cold sweat and take several steps back. Not even the fact that they were surrounded by so many fellow disciples was enough to wash away that fear, it was already bone-deep and instinctive. But their senior disciples had the responsibility to take care of the sect while the others were gone, so no matter what their thoughts were on the present situation, they had to give the order.
"...Kill him."
The disciples steeled their hearts and charged forward, the two senior disciples leading the charge to serve as an example. Liang Chen let out a sigh and stepped forward, his body turning into a blur as he charged directly at the incoming group of disciples. He cast a sideways glance at Liang Chen as he charged, but she didn't follow him, her blind eyes somewhat narrowed as she looked in his general direction, seemingly trying to understand what he was planning.
Just as Liang Chen reached the halfway point between him and the incoming disciples, he stomped the ground with all his force and increased his speed as much as he could, vanishing from sight. The air in his previous position tore apart as he vanished, it was like the air in that specific area was trying to tear itself apart in every direction, resulting in several black cracks in space appearing.
Liang Chen appeared again directly in front of the incoming disciples, having used his fastest speed to dodge the attacks of the two senior disciples. But even his rapid reaction speed wasn't enough to fully protect him, a large gash covered his entire back while a fist-sized chunk of flesh was missing from his stomach. His mind rapidly moved as he ignored his wounds, which were already showing signs of healing thanks to his strong body cultivation. From the looks of it, the two senior disciples cultivated some rather offensive laws, one of them using the law of tearing while the other one used the law of slicing. And those were just one of their laws, it would be foolish to assume that they only specialized in one law.
Both of them had reached the late stage of the Primordial Immortal realm, they were by far the strongest people that Liang Chen had ever faced in combat. As such, Liang Chen didn't plan on actually facing them in combat, he would drag things out, bind their hands while waiting for an opportunity.
Liang Chen charged into the dense mass of disciples and lowered his body slightly, his narrowed eyes flickering around as he moved. He ducked under a sword slash that slowly moved closer, his left hand pushing out and sending the attacking disciple backward several meters, shattering two of his ribs. He stomped the ground to halt his steps and then quickly took half a step back, a hammer, a halberd, and four arrows crashing into the ground where he had just been.
His spear flashed out, beheading the two disciples wielding the hammer and the halberd, his gaze landing on the four archers that shot at him. Three of them detected a sweet scent while the fourth one detected the scent of rotting fish, poison immediately invading their bodies. The one who noticed the scent of rotting fish found his body growing stiff, the muscles around his joints grew stiff and forced him to remain standing in place.
But his end was far better than the end of the three archers, who started gasping for air, a pale pink sludge forcing its way up their throat and out of their seven orifices. They collapsed to the ground, their lungs, esophagus, and airpipe melting due to the poison, preventing them from even gasping as they died.
Liang Chen was forced to start moving again the moment he dealt with the attackers, dodging 11 attacks by moving to the side and forward. His spear flashed again, three of the attackers starting to rot while still alive and four others pierced by bolts of crimson lightning. The last four attackers were struck by a strong gust of wind and were sent flying out of the group of disciples, their ribs fracturing due to the force of the wind.
Liang Chen killed those who aimed to kill him but showed mercy to those that didn't try to kill him, willingly weakening their own attacks. He knew that many people would call him naive and dumb if they saw this scene, but he didn't care about that, this was who he wanted to be, this was how he wanted to act.
Liang Chen continued to move through the sea of disciples, each flash of his spear dyeing the earth red as it reaped away lives. Each corpse was quickly snatched up and shoved into his interspatial ring, saved away for later. All the hairs on Liang Chen's body suddenly stood on end, his body crouching down and immediately rolling to the side.
A thin line flashed through the air where he had just been, blood spurting out from Liang Chen's right shoulder as he was grazed by the line, which turned out to be a thread so thin that it was almost invisible. The wound on his right shoulder went all the way to the bone, even chipping the bone slightly.
That also wasn't the only attack that hit him, a pea-sized hole appearing in the left side of his waist, blood unceasingly leaking out. Even worse, the blood that leaked out from the wound turned into jagged crystals that pierced through his flesh and drew forth more blood. His gaze flickered over to the two senior disciples, who were still flying in the air above them, their eyes grim as they overlooked the battle beneath them.
With Liang Chen hiding amongst the other disciples, the two of them couldn't launch their attacks freely in fear that they might hit their own fellow disciples. They could only wait for an opening to reveal itself, just like it had a short second ago as Liang Chen was putting away five corpses around him.
Liang Chen's gaze quickly moved away from the two disciples and landed on Chen Dairong, but she had yet to make a move, her expression uncertain and even somewhat nervous. She felt a strange sense of unease as she looked at Liang Chen fighting within the sea of disciples. Each attack was strong enough to kill or wound those that he was fighting, but he never unleashed his full might, he seemed to be storing and gathering up power.
But she couldn't figure out what he was storing up power for, she couldn't think of any abilities that he might have up his sleeve that might help here. She was confident that she could even handle the Third Step of the Dragon Lord's Three Steps, she would end up badly wounded for sure, but the grand array could help her heal up right away. But even so, unease and nervousness wormed their way into her heart and mind as she looked at him.
Liang Chen's eyes remained cold and calm despite his wounds, he finished rolling to the side and pushed off of the ground with his left hand, launching himself half a meter into the air. The earth where he had just finished rolling rose up the moment he pushed off of it, turning into several sharp swords that vibrated and moved like a chainsaw, the attack just barely missing him since he dodged.
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Liang Chen created a layer of hardened wind beneath him and stomped on it, launching himself through a small gap in the sea of people around him and instantly arriving in front of the girl who launched the attack just now. His left hand shot forward and clamped down on her face, a crunching sound ringing out as her skull was shattered like an overripe melon.
Liang Chen immediately activated the Chaos King Technique, Liang Chen's poisonous soul energy flooding her mind and wiping out any trace of consciousness that might remain in her. The Chaos King Technique then devoured 50 % of the girl's Qi and poured it into Liang Chen's body, replenishing some of the energy he had lost.
Liang Chen let go of her drained corpse and dodged several more attacks that aimed at him, his gaze locking onto an attacker that seemed to have dabbled in body cultivation before. He dodged the man's attack and drove his left hand directly through the man's chest, repeating what he did to the girl but this time absorbing the bodily strength of the man. His body cultivation energy was somewhat replenished, his wounds healing a bit faster for a few moments as he poured more energy into them.
He was forced to duck down before he finished absorbing the energy of the man, a thin string passing through the air where Liang Chen had just been. The string once again managed to graze him, a chunk of flesh from his upper left arm flying away as it was cleanly cut away. Before Liang Chen had the chance to react to the first wound, the body of the man he was still holding exploded, all his blood turning into sharp crystals that pierced through Liang Chen's left hand and wrist.
Liang Chen grit his teeth and threw himself to the side, dodging several attacks that aimed to take advantage of the opening created by the attacks from the senior disciples. Liang Chen dodged most of them, but three other attacks landed on his body, a gash opening up on his lower back and on his right thigh while two of his ribs shattered.
Liang Chen couldn't stop himself from throwing up some blood, quickly kicking off the ground to dodge more attacks. His spear flashed out several times and reaped tens of lives, his weak left hand grabbing onto the closest corpses and quickly absorbing them using the Chaos King Technique.
And then, just as he finished absorbing the second corpse, a horrid sense of danger and death flooded his mind. His gaze quickly landed on Chen Dairong, who had pulled out a short crimson spear and was preparing to throw it, both her empty eyes fully focused on Liang Chen. Liang Chen's eyes erupted with a brilliant light when he saw this, his left hand moving faster than ever before and absorbing the Qi of the surrounding corpses.
But a strange scene took place, his Qi started to vanish just as quickly as it was replenished. And it wasn't just his Qi, his soul energy and body energy was also being rapidly drained, it would all have vanished within two seconds if he didn't have the Chaos King Technique to replenish them.
Chen Dairong finished pulling back her arm and unleashed the short spear, a screeching sound piercing the ears of everyone present as the spear tore open a thick gash in the surrounding space. Chen Dairong didn't care about the hundreds of disciples standing between her and Liang Chen, she simply felt that he had to die right away, before he could put his plan into action.
But in doing so, she had already set Liang Chen's plan into motion, giving him the opening he had been waiting for. Liang Chen completely ignored the spear and the attacks around him, his gaze fully focused on Chen Dairong. A strange scene appeared the moment the spear left Chen Dairong's grasp, Liang Chen vanished from his previous position and arrived directly in front of her. He hadn't taken a single step, nor was there a fluctuation in space, he simply appeared in front of her, as if he had always been there.
Liang Chen had spent an entire year cultivating and deepening his understanding of his laws while he waited for the competition to start. And of course, his law of the void was one of the laws he focused the most on during this time. And right now he showed his deepened understanding of void, which was best described as the total absence of anything and everything.
Thanks to all the corpses he had absorbed to replenish his energy at the end, the total energy he had right now was about double what he usually had. But even so, half of all that energy was spent in a single instant to fully activate his law of the void, turning the distance between him and Chen Dairong into nothingness, a form of teleportation relying on the law of the void. And the moment Liang Chen arrived in front of her, he stabbed out with his spear, angling it upwards.
"Third step shatters mortality."
Liang Chen instantly unleashed the final attack of the Dragon Lord's Three Steps, Chen Dairong's body tensing up immediately. She hadn't seen anything like this with her left eye, was it possible that this scene wasn't the most likely future? But there was one thing that she didn't know, something Liang Chen had guessed his way to when he launched the earlier attacks that left a cut on her neck.
The law of time that she used to see the future, how could it possibly see something that had no time, nor future? The law of the void was nothing, it was one of the grandest paradoxes of this Sphere of Existence, how could the law of time possibly see it?
The tip of Liang Chen's spear touched Chen Dairong's chest, but just as she was preparing herself to resist the Third Step, shock overcame her. Both her eyes activated wildly, her law of time rampantly activating on its own as she looked at Liang Chen. She didn't see any alternate timelines featuring the two of them, nor did she see any possible futures containing his actions.
Just like she said earlier, all she saw for Liang Chen was death, but this time the death she saw was a vast and endless emptiness. It was no longer the death of Liang Chen she saw, no what she witnessed was the end of a universe, its quiet descent into nothingness, an unstoppable and unchangeable end. But before the horror of the sight even had the time to set in, she heard a quiet and soft whisper from Liang Chen, like a summoning from the god of death himself.
"Third step shatters mortality."
The Dragon Lord's Three Steps were the supreme technique that the Heaven Devouring Dragon left behind for his descendants, each step would double the power of the previous attack, stacking it onto the next. The First Step doubled the power of your attack, the Second Step would quadruple the power of your attack, and the Third Step would increase the power eight-fold.
But there was nothing in the technique that stated that it couldn't be used to strengthen the other steps of the technique. So right now Liang Chen did just that, he used the Third Step to increase the strength of the Third Step he had just used. What was previously an attack containing his full might was first strengthened by eight times and was then once again strengthened by eight times. And once the energy of the attack was unleashed, the world fell silent.
The first thing that happened once the attack was unleashed was that Liang Chen's right arm disintegrated, even the molecules and atoms that made it up disappearing. The disintegration only stopped when it reached Liang Chen's shoulder, leaving behind a bloody stump that was almost completely smooth.
And then, a gargantuan bolt of gray lightning roared out from the spear and soared into the skies, blotting out even the sun itself and casting a dull gray light on the entire Nightshield sect. As the one who faced the full might of this bolt of lightning, merged with both the law of time and the law of the void, Chen Dairong simply vanished from existence, only leaving behind a peach-colored flag and a green interspatial ring.
The lightning then spread out into thousands of other bolts that resembled cracks in the sky, it was as if the heavens themselves had broken due to the attack. The lightning bolts bombarded the other four hovering islands, tearing them apart and bringing them crashing down to be swallowed by the sea beneath them.
The lightning didn't vanish, the law of time merged into it made it so that it lingered within the air as an eternal scar, the law of the void occasionally making the lightning flicker in and out of existence. From a distance, it almost looked like the sky was repeatedly breaking and then repairing itself.
The Nightshield sect had thousands of years of history, but all of them vanished under the might of the gray lightning, only a single hovering island remaining as a reminder of what once was.