Chapter 347: Twin Overlord Spear King (4)
BOOM!
Fragments of qi and clouds of sand exploded outward.
Within that storm, a faint chuckle slipped from my lips.
It seemed he had been thinking the same thing as me—starting with a supreme technique without bothering to test the waters.
Right.
We both knew too well that neither of us was an opponent who could be fought half-heartedly.
Before the dust even had time to settle in the wind, the blurred outline of the Black Lotus Sect Lord suddenly grew clearer, quickly regaining its full form.
He burst through the dust, a deep grin hanging from his lips.
“Fast! In your battle against the Heavenly Demon, you showed a sword skilled in powerful strikes… but to think your fast sword would be this quick as well!”
At a glance, it looked like admiration for my achievement.
But the Black Lotus Sect Lord’s eyes never stopped scanning me.
As if searching for even the tiniest opening to wedge himself into.
Naturally.
The fast sword had very clear advantages and disadvantages.
Because it moved faster than the opponent, defense and evasion lost much of their meaning. And the faster the speed, the stronger the force behind the strike.
That was why people who hadn’t learned proper martial arts naturally converged toward either fast swords or heavy swords. They were simply that practical.
But there was one fatal flaw.
If the attack missed, it exposed an enormous opening.
The same applied to the Thunder-Sound Sword.
There was no such thing as a perfect sword in this world.
The essence of a technique was ultimately choice and focus.
To maximize one thing meant abandoning another.
But knowing the flaw didn’t mean I could ignore it.
My technique was only half complete.
The other half existed only as theory.
…But now that things had come to this, I had no choice but to succeed in one attempt.
“Hup!”
I inhaled deeply and forcefully poured willpower and internal energy into my limbs that had begun to halt from recoil.
The result—
A continuous roar of thunder.
CRACK!
With a deafening sound that could hardly be believed to come from human muscles, the sword that should have paused instead slashed again like a bolt of lightning.
“Huh?!”
A crack appeared in the Black Lotus Sect Lord’s predatory expression.
He hadn’t expected the Thunder-Sound Sword to come again.
The blade surged upward from below, aiming to split his jaw.
Once again, his spear curved to meet it.
CLANG!
The collision sounded almost simultaneous.
But I knew the truth.
That strike was an advanced technique meant to scatter the sword’s center of balance and rob it of direction.
Whether he had caught my faster-than-sound sword with his eyes—
Or whether he had simply read the simplified trajectory caused by my lack of perfect control—
One thing was certain.
No matter how fast the sword was, the Black Lotus Sect Lord could see its path.
And he had the ability to knock it aside perfectly.
Which meant—
One or two strikes wouldn’t be enough.
CRACK!
“You crazy bastard!”
After the third consecutive Thunder-Sound Sword, the Black Lotus Sect Lord shouted in shock and swung his spear wide.
His willpower embodied one concept:
Certain hit.
As long as he didn’t truly lose sight of my sword, the result wouldn’t change.
But that was fine.
I continued swinging the Thunder-Sound Sword without pause.
It was the same method I had used to instantly overwhelm and kill the absolute master known as the Golden Ghost Wolf King.
Although the Black Lotus Sect Lord had been the one to rush forward first—
With every exchange, he was the one being pushed back.
Earlier, he had still had enough composure to toss out a few remarks.
But now his mouth was tightly shut.
All his focus was on deflecting my sword.
BOOM! CLANG! BOOM!
One exchange.
Two.
Three.
Then ten.
Then twenty.
Each strike carried such immense force that the explosions alone made the ears ring, scattering fragments of qi everywhere.
Normally, even a Flowering Stage martial artist would make a mistake at least once in such a situation.
The Thunder-Sound Sword was a technique swung with my full power.
Continuously blocking it should have broken anyone’s stance.
In fact, most opponents had collapsed exactly that way when I unleashed it in consecutive strikes.
But the Black Lotus Sect Lord was different.
He had stepped back—
But nothing else had changed.
If a single mistake could drag someone into an inescapable swamp—
Then simply not making a mistake was enough.
That conviction was clearly conveyed through him.
Precision that seemed inhuman.
Trajectories so bizarre they felt forced.
All of it stemmed from the core of his willpower.
His stubborn belief that whatever he desired must be obtained.
That will manifested through his spear as the concept of certain hit.
Meanwhile—
My head felt like it was burning as my internal energy and willpower drained from the recoil of the Thunder-Sound Sword.
My eyes throbbed dry from excessive concentration and the use of the Heavenly Insight Eye.
Yet the Black Lotus Sect Lord looked fairly calm.
At most, he might have been slightly tired.
If he wished, he could probably continue this impossible acrobatics for half a day.
As for me—
At best I could swing my sword three or four more times before even my willpower could no longer suppress the recoil.
So this was the limit of the Thunder-Sound Sword.
I withdrew the internal energy concentrated in my limbs, even abandoning my protective qi to gather the remaining strength.
The Black Lotus Sect Lord, who had been silently deflecting my sword, suddenly showed interest in his eyes.
“Is this the end? You chose the wrong opponent. Against other Flowering Stage martial artists, it might have been quite effective. But against this Sect Lord, it was a meaningless sword.”
“It had meaning.”
I answered through ragged breaths.
At that moment, the Black Lotus Sect Lord shifted to the offensive.
Like a beast that had been crouching all this time finally rising—
The domain of his willpower expanded rapidly.
My own willpower that had dominated the surroundings was pushed back every time it clashed with his.
His movements grew larger.
Bolder.
The spears spun and slashed.
They thrust straight.
They bent diagonally.
Sometimes he even launched pure qi to strike from impossible distances.
At times it felt like I was facing two separate spears.
At other times they became one and targeted the same point.
But one thing was certain—
Every strike targeted places that the weakened me struggled to defend.
If I hadn’t wrapped my sword with the condensed White Sword—
If I hadn’t barely managed to endure every collision—
I would have been skewered long ago.
Even now, it wasn’t easy.
A streak of red qi brushed past.
A thin line opened across my shoulder.
No—
Not just my shoulder.
My arms.
My cheek.
My thigh.
My side.
My chest.
My martial robe was already in tatters.
Blood seeped through the fluttering cloth—not much, but steadily dripping.
Unlike my earlier reckless assault based purely on power—
His combat style was that of a born hunter, slowly carving down its prey.
He looked like a savage beast in both appearance and aura—
Yet fought with cunning intelligence.
I chuckled inwardly.
Then the Black Lotus Sect Lord looked at my wounded state with puzzlement.
“You. What exactly are you thinking?”
“What do you mean?”
“You rampage with a flashy technique that has no follow-up, then get countered and lose. At this rate, it almost looks like your goal is to lose publicly to this Sect Lord.”
“That’s a misunderstanding. I fully intend to win. That hasn’t changed.”
“Then it means this Sect Lord misjudged your ability… but that can’t be right. No matter how I think about it, this isn’t your style.”
“This is our first spar. How would you know?”
“We may not have clashed before, but I investigated everything about you. Didn’t you value skill more than raw power?”
“…That’s a bit creepy.”
How many people enjoyed the obsession of a middle-aged man?
At least I didn’t.
But he merely smirked.
“More importantly, if this is truly all you have, you couldn’t have defeated people like the successor of the King of Assassins, the Brahma Heavenly Lust Demon, or the Illusory Illusion Witch you brought. I haven’t fought them personally, but I met and recruited them myself.”
“That’s true.”
Unlike the One-Saber Asura or the Golden Ghost Wolf King—who fought honestly in a straightforward way—
The others weren’t opponents you could simply overpower with faster, stronger strikes.
“So I’ll ask again. After boasting so confidently to this Sect Lord, why are you showing such a pitiful spar?”
“Shouldn’t you stop swinging your spear for a moment before asking that?”
Even as we spoke, his long and short spears continued to slash and stab, adding small wounds across my body.
Grinning, I answered again.
“Well… as I said, I truly intended to win from the beginning. That hasn’t changed.”
My internal energy and willpower were mostly spent.
I could no longer use supreme techniques like the Thunder-Sound Sword.
But that didn’t matter.
From the start, the reason I unleashed consecutive Thunder-Sound Swords wasn’t to defeat the Black Lotus Sect Lord.
I already knew it would be blocked.
Everything had been done—
To understand his spear.
And now—
That was enough.
I had fully seen and felt how his willpower led to certain hit.
Which meant—
Now I could cut it.
My remaining willpower gathered and formed the shape most familiar to me.
Wooooong—
Another translucent sword overlapped the white-hot blade.
A formless sword forged to cut what could not be cut.
At last, I drew the Formless Sword from my Heartscape.
CLACK!
The spear that should have at least pushed my sword aside suddenly halted.
The Black Lotus Sect Lord blinked.
Only then did he realize something had changed.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“I see. So there really was something hidden. Let’s see what you’ve been concealing so carefully.”
His arms moved busily as his spears came alive once more.
His qi burned deeper red, drawing impossible trajectories.
Simple yet dazzling.
Fast yet slow.
Circling wide—then suddenly bending into the shortest straight line.
Two spears already difficult to deal with.
Different lengths.
Moving in completely unpredictable ways.
A martial art that forced decisions every moment, where a single mistake meant losing everything.
But this time—
None of it reached me.
CLACK! CLANG! CLASH!
Dense energies collided, grinding against each other.
Sometimes rebounding apart.
“How…?”
Nothing about me had changed.
My body was still exhausted.
My internal energy and willpower were nearly depleted.
My movements were slower than before.
Even my power was weaker.
Yet—
Every spear he swung was blocked by my sword.
Just like how he had deflected my Thunder-Sound Sword earlier.
Realization dawned in his eyes.
“HAHA! Don’t tell me you stole this Sect Lord’s martial art! No… that can’t be. This isn’t something you can achieve just by copying the form. You would need the same willpower as this Sect Lord.”
“That’s right. I’m not imitating your willpower technique.”
“Then what is it?”
“I broke it.”
What I was cutting wasn’t his spear.
It was the trajectory his spear created.
The decades of experience behind it.
Even if he used an unimaginable technique that always struck the target—
In the end, the direction he attacked still came from his own thoughts.
Which meant—
What I truly needed to cut was the possibilities created by his twin spears.
That had been the goal from the beginning.
Only that.
Only then did the Black Lotus Sect Lord realize it.
He gritted his teeth and began swinging his spears in a completely different style.
But now I was already used to it.
Through the Heavenly Insight Eye, I could see the faint signs created by his willpower.
CLACK!
His violently twisted trajectory was blocked before it could even fully unfold.
CRACK!
Now my sword moved before his spear.
BOOM!
And then—
With nowhere left to move—
The longer of his twin spears was cut apart.
The severed spearhead spun through the air before embedding itself far away.
The Twin Overlord Spear King stared blankly at his broken spear—
Then at the sword pressed against his throat.
As if possessed.
I grinned at him.
“I’ve learned a lot.”