Chapter 356: Eight Desolate Tyrant Fist
Chapter 356: Eight Desolate Tyrant Fist
Rhain was bleeding from his arms, his dark robes torn, his breathing heavy from the extreme essence drain.
Yet, he propelled himself directly into the path of the descending doom, placing himself between the hundred meteors and the people on the ground.
Lyra’s heart stopped beating. The strange red light in her eyes flickered and faded as she stared up at the youth.
"No..." Lyra whispered, "Rhain... you don’t..."
High in the sky, Rhain looked at more than a hundred meteros raging with purple flames rushing toward him.
He knew that if he didn’t stop this strike, everything behind him would be wiped from existence.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a microsecond.
"Abyssal Sovereign Technique."
Within his dantian, the pitch-black void and his three supermassive cores halted their rotation.
Then, they aggressively rotataed.
Rhain forcefully drained every single remaining drop of essence in his body—emptying his cores and his dantian completely.
He channeled the entirety of his dark essence and physical might into his right arm.
His muscles bulged, his bones creaked, on the verge of shattering under the impossible burden of channeling so much destructive power at once.
But Rhain ignored the terrible pain coursing through his body.
"Emperor-Grade Martial Art.....
Rhain pulled his right fist back, aiming directly at more than a hundred descending meteors.
"Eight Desolates Tyrant Fist."
He threw the punch.
BOOOOOOM—!!!
A sound that surpassed the limits of hearing ripped through the dimension.
An enormous, overwhelming wave of pure, pitch-black essence erupted from his fist.
It expanded outward like a rising black sun, completely swallowing the sky, the light, and the sound.
The hundred Level 6 Domain Master meteors collided with the rising wave of dark essence.
The collision did not create any sound.
The sheer magnitude of the impact temporarily deafened everyone on the ground, creating a vacuum of utter silence.
Then, the sky simply turned black.
The pitch-black essence simply swallowed the flaming meteors, extinguishing their purple flames into nothingness.
BOOOOOOM—!!!
A huge wave of dark essence rippled through the sky, it ripped the red clouds to shreds, entirely glassing the sky above them.
For a moment, the red sky above their heads had turned dark, as if the clouds had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
When the wave of darkness passed, the meteors were gone.
The sky was cleared.
Rhain looked at the sky, a smile appearing on his face. But his body had reached its limit.
Entirely drained of essence, his muscles torn and his consciousness slipping into darkness, he began to plummet from the sky like a broken doll.
"RHAIN!"
Ignoring her own severe injuries and fractured ribs, Lyra pushed herself off the scorched earth, launching herself into the air with everything she had left.
She intercepted his falling body mid-air, wrapping her arms tightly around his battered frame.
The momentum carried them down, and she forcefully twisted her body, taking the brunt of the impact as they crashed back onto the destroyed ground.
"Rhain! Rhain, wake up!"
Lyra scrambled to her knees, pulling his unconscious head into her lap.
Her trembling hands hovered over his pale, blood-stained face.
His breathing was dangerously shallow, and his dark robes were soaked in fresh blood. The overwhelming pressure that always surrounded him was all gone.
"Rhain! Rhain, wake up! You can’t die like this. Get up, you scoundrel!" Lyra called out frantically, her hands shaking his shoulder.
Without her even realizing it, large, warm tears spilled over her eyelashes.
Karsten and the surviving mercenaries dragged their broken bodies across the dirt, rushing over to surround them.
They looked at the unconscious youth with reverence. This young boy had saved all of their lives.
Suddenly, the barren, scorched wasteland around them began to ripple.
The oppressive heat and the shattered earth dissolved like a fading dream.
The space distorted, and the refreshing spiritual essence along with the warm breeze of a paradise brushed against their skin.
They were back in the serene and beautiful garden, surrounded by lush spiritual herbs and the clear azure sky.
Swoosh—!
The space rippled above the crystal-clear pond, and the translucent figure of the old man slowly reappeared.
The remnant soul hovered in the air, his ancient eyes immediately locking onto the unconscious youth resting in the weeping girl’s lap.
For a long moment, the old man was utterly speechless.
His face, which had carried the profound calmness of over a thousand years, was now etched with profound confusion and shock.
When the old man had initiated the trial, he had assumed that Rhain and the mercenaries were merely ordinary mortals unfortunate enough to be dragged along by the girl’s supreme bloodline.
He had fully expected the girl to be the one to carry them through the trial.
But the reality he had just witnessed had completely overturned his calculations.
"Such power..." the old man murmured, "To possess two distinct Domains at the Core Formation Realm... to execute multiple Emperor-Grade martial arts successively... and to unleash a strike capable of annihilating a late stage Domain Master..."
The old man looked at Rhain’s pale face, a hint of realisation dawning on him.
"I was mistaken. It is not just the girl. This young man... his future is equally as boundless as hers."
But as the old man’s gaze lingered on Rhain’s battered body, his eyes suddenly widened even further.
His spiritual perception pierced through Rhain’s torn robes, observing the physical state of the youth’s body.
Rhain was unconscious, and his essence had been drained to the very last drop.
The backlash from the Eight Desolates Tyrant Fist had shredded his muscles, damaged his internal organs, and cracked his bones.
It was a level of physical devastation that was undoubtedly fatal. Any other cultivator would have already perished.
Yet, deep within the boy’s body, without a single drop of conscious essence to guide it, his flesh was healing.
The shattered bones were knitting back together. The ruptured organs were rapidly regenerating. The torn muscle fibers were fusing, growing tougher and more resilient than before.
It was an automatic, passive recovery speed at the level that defied all common sense.
"This healing..." the old man exclaimed.
His ancient mind raced through the eons of knowledge he had accumulated during his peak.
"Impossible... Even the legendary Saints who have bathed in the purest rivers of life do not possess a passive recovery of this magnitude!"
The remnant soul slowly raised a trembling hand, pointing at Rhain.
"Could it be...? Does this boy... possess the legendary Sovereign Physique?"
But a moment later, the old man slowly shook his head, forcefully rejecting the absurd notion.
"No... impossible," the old man murmured to himself. "A place like this could not have a sovereign. There can only be ten Sovereigns in the entire world during any given era, and almost all of them had always been found at the central continent. For one to appear in this remote wasteland... it defies all logic."
"Senior!"
A desperate and tearful voice snapped the old man out of his deep thoughts.
He lowered his gaze to see Lyra. Her beautiful face was stained with dirt and tears as she looked up at the ethereal figure.
"Please!" Lyra begged, "Please, save Rhain!"
The old man looked at the weeping girl, and then down at the unconscious youth resting in her lap.
He let out a helpless sigh.
"Little girl," the old man spoke, his voice gentle. "This young man’s vitality is like a dragon. His body is already healing itself at a monstrous pace. He doesn’t actually need my help to survive this."
Lyra blinked, her tear-filled eyes widening in surprise.
"But," the old man added, a benevolent smile touching his lips, "since you asked, I will lend a hand and speed up his recovery."
The old man slowly raised his translucent hand.
A gentle and pure white light descended from the sky, enveloping Rhain’s battered body in a warm glow.
The moment the light touched his skin, the internal ruptures, the torn muscle fibers, and the fractured bones instantly knit themselves back together perfectly.
His drained essence reserves were replenished in the blink of an eye.
A few seconds later, the white light faded.
Rhain’s long eyelashes fluttered, and he slowly opened his dark grey eyes.