Chapter 417: Fear
Two Dao Techniques, the Torrent of Time and the Great Annihilation Sword Qi, were unleashed at once.
Under the Torrent of Time's amplification, four strands of Great Annihilation Sword Qi tore through the void, weaving into what seemed a single net that swept down to envelop Perfected Lord Jinghong.
The sudden onslaught made Perfected Lord Jinghong's expression change, and when he felt the ripples of the Great Dao of destruction stirring within that sword qi, he cried out despite himself. "A perfected Dao Technique?!"
After the Void Sword and Void Flicker, two perfection-stage Dao Techniques, the man had produced a third!
And this one seemed amplified by yet another technique, releasing four strands in an instant.
The Great Dao of destruction behind the Great Annihilation Sword Qi was peerless in pure offense; in a direct attack, it might fall short of the Void Sword, but there were four of them, and the net they formed sealed the space around him completely.
Anything less than his full strength would not stop it! The realization surfaced in Perfected Lord Jinghong's mind.
"Remarkable." The perfected lord's praise was heartfelt even as the high-grade Dao Artifact tome in his hands riffled through its pages. "Survival and destruction, existence and nothingness, are but the surface of the world's turning wheel. Only through birth and extinction can one endure forever..."
And almost the instant he turned the power of the Great Dao of truth to controlling and eroding the Great Annihilation Sword Qi, Yaoguang felt the grip on the Great Dao of void weaken. The next moment the Limitless Sword hummed, and the mighty Dao of void wrenched itself free of truth's interference.
Unshackled, it moved with agility and keenness beyond anything before. Before Perfected Lord Jinghong could fully break the sword qi, a Void Sword came slashing down, splitting the blockade of the Dao of truth like rotten wood and striking him. That fluency, that swiftness...
"It's the truth." Yaoguang understood at once.
The Great Dao of truth had just affirmed the void as the foundation of all Dao, so now, as the void slashed toward truth itself, truth yielded to it of its own accord, and the Void Sword's edge cut through as though nothing stood in its way.
As the blow landed, a transparent sphere bloomed above Perfected Lord Jinghong's head, holding back the great void blade's edge for the barest instant, and then his body dissolved into a streak of light, teleporting over a thousand kilometers away.
Watching from a distance, Gu Li and Perfected Lord Bu Zhou both changed color.
"How can this be..."
𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
"Senior Brother lost that exchange?!" Disbelief crossed Perfected Lord Bu Zhou's face. "Impossible! This must be Senior Brother's feint, retreating to advance!"
Gu Li said nothing, but there was terror in his eyes as he turned to look at Yaoguang. He had known Yaoguang was strong; the man had endured a combined assault from him and Zhen Xuanyuan inside the Heavenly Dao Sect and still killed Jing Yuntian.
But how strong, exactly, he had never truly understood. Only now, watching Yaoguang fight Perfected Lord Jinghong and overwhelm him, despite the latter being in the top ten of the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings, he finally understood the depth of Yaoguang's strength.
This young Void-Shattering cultivator, barely a century old, already stood at the absolute peak of the Void-Shattering Realm!
***
On the battlefield, Yaoguang studied Perfected Lord Jinghong, who stood far in the distance, and quickly appraised the artifact on him.
"A light-stream Dao Technique? And a second high-grade Dao Artifact!"
A high-grade Dao Artifact! Of all the Void-Shattering realm cultivators Yaoguang had fought, only Chief Supreme Elder Zhen Xuanyuan owned such a thing.
Yet Jinghong possessed more than one high-grade Dao Artifact! Such extravagance! It was no wonder he was the Heavenly Dao Sect's strongest expert. But...
"I have Dao Artifacts too."
One Void Flicker and Yaoguang arrived beside the fleeing perfected lord, pressing down with an empty palm as the Heaven-Sealing Stele, now transformed into a high-grade Dao Artifact, was deployed.
Formless ripples drifted out from the treasure, and Perfected Lord Jinghong, whose light-form could cross over a hundred thousand kilometers in an instant, froze in place.
Then the Wandering Dragon Sword, guided by psychic thought, surged through the tides of space like a nimble fish, forming an unstoppable edge as it slashed once more at the perfected lord's body.
Under the pressure of that terrible edge, the Dao Artifact book in Jinghong's hands flipped rapidly backward, and true words that seemed to hold the world's deepest principles rang out around them once more. "The void is supreme! The void is mighty! The void is boundless! The void is traceless..."
"Heh..." Yaoguang sneered.
Feeling the Void Sword falter under interference again, Yaoguang triggered the Torrent of Time, and a fresh volley of Great Annihilation Sword Qi came scything down.
But with the Dao of truth leaning on the Dao of void, the Heaven-Sealing Stele's sealing grip on Jinghong had also slackened considerably, and seizing that opening, the perfected lord became a stream of light once more, disappearing far into the distance in the blink of an eye and slipping past the volley of sword qi.
Since this was the southern domain, and he'd rather not let these perfection-stage Dao Techniques poison the land for thousands of kilometers and turn mountains into plains, Yaoguang had no choice but to sweep a hand and let the four strands collide and dissolve against each other. Then he forced out another Void Flicker and chased after the retreating Perfected Lord Jinghong.
"Truth grows clearer with every debate! Yet you won't debate me, Perfected Lord Jinghong. You ride the Great Dao of light to escape. That contradicts your Dao of truth." Yaoguang pointed through the air, and the Great Annihilation Sword Qi took shape again.
"'It's clear that between us lies a divide too deep to reconcile, too wide to bridge. If we were to keep arguing it out, we might eventually settle who's right and who's wrong, but that process would be anything but quick. And in the course of that debate, the Dao Techniques we unleash would reduce the whole southern domain to a scorched waste. So let us first set down our weapons; there's no rush, so we can sit and talk this through," Perfected Lord Jinghong said.
Perfected Lord Jinghong opened the distance again using the Great Dao of light, all the while using the Great Dao of truth to interfere with the void and keeping Yaoguang from closing in on him with Void Flicker.
Yaoguang considered things for a moment, and stopped.
"A member of the Heavenly Dao Sect, holding the southern domain hostage against its own master? Perfected Lord Jinghong, you have truly broadened my horizons," he said with a cold laugh.
With the Dao of truth interfering with the Dao of void, every void technique and void artifact he used gave half the return for twice the effort. And if he set the void aside, the Great Dao of destruction alone could never catch a man who also commanded the evasion method of the Dao of light.
Perhaps, with the Sovereign Human Emperor, he could grind Perfected Lord Jinghong down, exhausting him before moving in for the kill. But there were still Gu Li and Bu Zhou, who were also at the Void-Shattering Realm, watching from the sides like wolves.
Neither was of Perfected Lord Jinghong's caliber, and neither even matched Zhen Xuanyuan, but a Void-Shattering cultivator was never to be taken lightly. If he were to continue fighting, who would be brought down was anyone's guess.
"I am merely stating what must inevitably occur. Once an all-out conflict erupts, neither of us will be able to pull back. Yet this is a conflict that talk can avert. If you insist on fighting, then the fault for the southern domain's ruin will rest on you," Perfected Lord Jinghong said gravely.
"You seem to have one thing backward. It was you who came to the southern domain looking for trouble, and now the blame is to be shoved onto me? What magnificent sophistry!" As Yaoguang spoke, the Sovereign Human Emperor began to cycle, and a terrifying energy stirred awake within his body.
A moment's perception was all Perfected Lord Jinghong needed, and his face shifted. "The Great Dao of origin?! The Sovereign Human Emperor?! You've mastered that Dao Technique as well?!"
"The debate may take more than a day and a night, but I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, and in the end, the truth will stand with me!" Yaoguang declared.
"Must it come to this?" An object appeared in Perfected Lord Jinghong's hand as well, thick Dao resonance boiling off it.
It was Great Dao essence, something akin to the demon paragon's blood the Heaven-Swallowing Demon Emperor had once used, but stronger, closer in potency to a demon paragon's essence blood.
"Push this any further, and the battle really will escalate beyond anyone's control," Perfected Lord Jinghong said.
"Then let's push it and see." A bracelet surfaced in Yaoguang's hand. "Today I want to debate this truth with you to the very end."
As some power within the bracelet kindled, an aura vast beyond measure spilled out of it.
"The origin of a Grand Void True Dragon!" Perfected Lord Jinghong's scalp prickled.
W-Who exactly is Yaoguang? How does he hold more trump cards than a Dao Lord's own direct disciple?
"First the Great Dao of origin, now a bestowed Grand Void True Dragon origin... Senior Brother, this Yaoguang is beyond doubt a chess piece the Penglai Dao Lord has spared nothing to nurture!" Perfected Lord Bu Zhou shouted with utter conviction. "He's been propped up by the Penglai Dao Lord to burrow into our sect and seize the foundation countless generations of our people built with their sweat and blood!"
"Leave, both of you." Perfected Lord Jinghong waved him off, his expression grave.
"Senior Brother, you must not let him go! He doesn't really belong to our sect, and his heart is surely elsewhere! If he grows any stronger within the Heavenly Dao Sect, if he becomes the sect master, then the Heavenly Dao Sect will no longer be the Heavenly Dao Sect, only a branch of the Penglai Immortal Sect!" Perfected Lord Bu Zhou roared. "If we lose the sect's foundation, the whole Heavenly Dao Sect will consider us criminals, and we'll be unable to face our ancestors even in death! We must not allow it, even if we must fight to the last! Senior Brother, you—"
"Silence!" Perfected Lord Jinghong's bark cut him off mid-word.
"Senior Brother?!" Perfected Lord Bu Zhou wanted to say more, but Gu Li stepped up and pulled at him, voice low. "Just go!"
A thread of fear ran through his words. "Can you still not see it? Perfected Lord Jinghong doesn't want to fight. If this comes to mutual destruction, every one of us may die here..."
"So we simply stand and watch Yaoguang, who is obviously a pawn the Penglai Dao Lord has shoved forward, swagger through our sect? Watch him seize the foundation our sect fought countless years to build? If that comes to pass, I won't rest even in death!" Perfected Lord Bu Zhou refused to yield.
But Gu Li saw exactly why he said it. They were both cunning old foxes, and Perfected Lord Bu Zhou still wanted to bluff? Perfected Lord Bu Zhou would rather watch Perfected Lord Jinghong and Yaoguang kill each other than fail to cut down the brambles and pave the road for Zong Wenxian.
Such a heartless man... To think that I am on the same side... Gu Li thought.
Gu Li's expression went cold. "You're so capable? Then you fight him! I'm done here! From this day on, I, Gu Li, take no further part in the struggle between Zong Wenxian and Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang."
With that, he immediately rushed away, streaking ahead of them toward the borders of the southern domain.