Chapter 176: Chapter 166: Burning 4
"N-no... I’m fine... At the last moment, I used that relic to trap him... Quick! Do it now!!"
Black Blade coughed up blood, his face pale as he sat on the ground, urging him on.
White Blade knew what he was talking about. He immediately stood up and turned around, unleashing the full, unrestrained aura of a High Priest.
It was an invisible force radiated from a combination of Inner Strength, Void Power, and an immense Spiritual Consciousness Power.
’Ten Thousand Transformations Divine Decision!’ At the same time, Black Blade reached out and placed a hand on White Blade’s back. Their Power connected, and their spiritual consciousness synchronized in that instant.
’Kui Seal!’
The space between both their brows distorted, and a strange, crescent-moon-like symbol appeared on each of their foreheads.
Not far away, Lin Hui stood his ground, sword in hand. The recent ultimate Secret Technique, Cyan Moon Mist Kill, had only forced him to retreat quickly and leap upward to dodge, slowing his rhythm just slightly.
The so-called Nine-Layered Void Force Net was meaningless if it couldn’t touch the enemy.
Just as he was about to finish the two of them off, an invisible, heavy pressure suddenly descended on his entire body, immobilizing him.
He tried to struggle but only managed to loosen its grip slightly.
SHIING!
In the next instant, with a casual swing of his sword, he slashed the invisible bonds apart.
After his body was enhanced by Purgatory, the sheer scale of his power increase made him seem like a completely different person.
This also shored up what was previously his only weakness.
In a direct confrontation, his sword was tough enough, his speed fast enough, and his strength powerful enough—the three elements had officially formed a perfect, stable structure.
Even without Purgatory Transformation, when his power couldn’t be fully unleashed, he was still four to five times stronger than before.
This level of strength, stacked with his now-faster Body Tempering Body Technique and the speed boost from the Special Effects, instantly elevated his impact force to a whole new level.
Just after he sliced through the invisible restraint, the Black and White Blade brothers, not far opposite him, simultaneously released a new wave of energy.
From the moment it appeared, the wave bypassed the distance between them and directly affected Lin Hui.
He suddenly felt his body grow heavy, and his brows furrowed slightly.
"What’s this? A final struggle, knowing you’re about to die?"
He casually swung Ruyi, but the sharp longsword suddenly felt faintly unfamiliar in his grasp.
"Hmm!?" Lin Hui glanced at the Black and White Blade brothers, who looked as if they were facing a great enemy. He vaguely sensed that something was wrong and stopped in his tracks.
"High Priests?" he guessed, identifying their level.
"You’re actually... not a High Priest!!?" Only now, after successfully landing the Divine Decision’s killing move on Lin Hui, did White Blade instantly realize that the man who had been suppressing them both this entire time wasn’t a High Priest at all!
If they were on the same level, the Divine Decision’s ultimate move would have surely been met with fierce resistance.
But based on its effect just now, the Divine Decision had taken hold with perfect ease.
"Of course I’m not." Having given the two a sound beating, the anger in Lin Hui’s heart had subsided somewhat, and his mood calmed.
He carefully raised his sword, sensing every minute change occurring in his body.
’So that’s it... Is it the weight? It changed my perception of the Ruyi Sword’s weight. No wonder it felt heavier.’
"Since you don’t understand the Divine Decision... then today... we’ll let you witness the Ten Thousand Transformations Divine Decision that my brother and I cultivated together!" White Blade gripped his blade with both hands, crouched down, and stared intently at Lin Hui.
At this moment, he no longer saw Lin Hui as a low-level Martial Artist. Even if his opponent didn’t understand the Divine Decision, he didn’t dare to relax in the slightest, still treating him as his most dangerous adversary.
"The Ten Thousand Transformations Divine Decision..." Lin Hui raised his sword, also gripping it with both hands. "All things have their limits. So where, I wonder, are yours?"
WHOOSH!
As he raised Ruyi high, invisible air currents began to rapidly swirl around him.
"Wind."
He whispered.
This time, he wasn’t activating the Gale Sword Technique.
But rather...
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「Inside Qingfeng Temple.」
Mingxia, who was in the middle of asking Wang Hongshi about the perfect version of the Qingfeng Sword, suddenly frowned and looked up at the sky.
The sky, thick with fog, suddenly began to churn.
Massive amounts of fog started to spin, slowly forming a faint, blurry vortex above the small town.
’It was perfectly calm just a moment ago. Where did this wind come from?’
Even with her keen perception, she couldn’t sense how this swirling airflow had formed.
But all sorts of strange and bizarre relics existed within the fog. Mingxia thought for a moment, then decided to focus on the matter at hand.
’With the Moon Tower here, the sky won’t fall, anyway.’
Inside the temple, many disciples who were practicing their swordsmanship also witnessed the change in the weather with their own eyes.
The fog, which usually barely moved, was now slowly rotating and forming a cyclone. This novel sight attracted many disciples, who stopped their practice to gaze at the shifting fog, looking thoughtful.
For some reason, they faintly perceived a trace of the mysterious artistic conception of the Perfect Clear Wind Sword within this change.
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「Lin Mansion.」
Lin Shunhe was dozing off, his chin propped on one hand. A messy pile of account books was scattered before him, and on the edge of the desk sat a thick candlestick that had been burning all night.
As he was drifting in and out of sleep, he suddenly shuddered and opened his eyes, looking out the window at the sky.
The low-hanging fog, which was usually unchanging, was now slowly rotating to form a huge, indistinct vortex.
Lin Shunhe clicked his tongue in wonder. After a moment of contemplation, he took a pale-yellow calendar from his desk drawer, opened it, and recorded the strange sight at the bottom of today’s page.
Aside from making money, his greatest hobby was recording all these strange and bizarre occurrences.
He planned to compile these strange events into a book when he was old. He had even picked out a name for it: *Lin’s Records*.
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「Edge of the Fog Wall.」
Dragon Maiden and the man in the crocodile mask were gathered together, discussing something, when they both paused and looked up at the sky over the town.
"The Outer City actually gets weather like this?" Dragon Maiden asked, puzzled.
"I have no idea," the man in the crocodile mask said, shaking his head. "But I have to say, this vortex is actually quite pretty to look at." He gazed with interest at the sky above the town.
"...I can’t shake the feeling that this weather isn’t normal," Dragon Maiden said thoughtfully, rubbing her chin.
"What’s not normal about it? It’s not like someone could have climbed up there and stirred it with a stick, right?" the man in the crocodile mask said, speechless.
"That’s true..." Dragon Maiden laughed as well. "Alright, let’s get back to what we were talking about. Where were we?"
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「Boundary Zone.」
Countless streams of fog swirled and spun in the sky, forming a grayish-white vortex that pressed down on the land.
Lin Hui gently held Ruyi horizontally. The Special Effects of the Wind of Surrounding around him were madly absorbing the countless air currents stirred up by his Typhoon Swordsmanship.
Layer upon layer of air currents were continuously compressed into the Wind of Surrounding under the control of the Typhoon Swordsmanship, forming an armor of air far more solid than before.
Around him, fierce winds howled and swept, blowing away dirt, rubble, the remains of wooden houses, and most other objects, sending them spinning in circles on the ground.
The lighter debris had long since been pulverized into a ring of gray-black matter, which mixed with the fog and spun furiously around Lin Hui.
From a distance, it looked as if a gray-black ring, more than ten meters in diameter, had appeared around him.
The Black and White Blade brothers were completely dumbfounded.
They had lived for the better part of their lives and had seen countless experts and powerful figures, but this was the first time they had ever witnessed such a grand and spectacular scene.
Above them was a vortex of fog that covered almost the entire town.
Before them was the ten-meter-plus diameter ring of a gray-black cyclone surrounding Lin Hui.
And all around them was the ubiquitous, raging turbulence.
At some unknown point, a cold, oppressive feeling quietly arose in their hearts.
Their limbs were silently being entangled by layer after layer of invisible air currents. These currents were like invisible ropes and shackles, making their every move, and even speaking, feel exceptionally difficult.
"Is the Divine Decision’s effect still active!?" Black Blade asked, gritting his teeth as he struggled against the ever-increasing burden on his body.
"It is!! It’s still in effect, but the problem is, we have no idea how any of this is being formed!!" White Blade shouted.
Within a several-hundred-meter radius around them, fierce winds howled and air currents spun at high speeds. The immense gravitational pull that was gradually forming forced them to constantly expend energy just to keep their footing.
"Retreat!!" Watching Lin Hui’s eyes slowly turn toward them, Black Blade finally couldn’t take it anymore and forced the word out.
"What about the relic!?" White Blade was unwilling to give up.
"No matter how precious the relic is, you have to be alive to use it! Retreat!!" Black Blade sent via voice transmission again.
"Before he adapts to the mental modification of the Ten Thousand Transformations Divine Decision! Quickly!"
As a Grand Priest Level killing move, the Kui Seal of the Ten Thousand Transformations Divine Decision was an ability that could expend a large amount of Mental Power to alter an opponent’s perception of weight.
Under normal circumstances, if the two of them joined forces, this ability could affect an opponent’s perception of any weight under one thousand kilograms.
They didn’t need to completely increase the weight; by instantly altering the opponent’s perception of weight during combat, they could easily force an opening and settle the fight with a single blow.
But, at this very moment... as they tried to alter Lin Hui’s perception, they felt, for some reason, an unnerving sense of dread.
It was as if they might detonate something at any moment.
And after the raging air currents began to stir around them, this feeling became even more pronounced.
The two made a swift decision, getting up to retreat at top speed.
But just as they got to their feet— "Where did he go!?!" White Blade shuddered, realizing that Lin Hui, who had just been standing there bound by the Divine Decision, had now vanished.
He looked left and right, trying to find Lin Hui’s current position.
But the violent vortex of air, mixed with fog and dust, obscured his vision, making it impossible to see anything clearly.
His vision was a murky blur beyond five meters. Everything was a gray haze.
"Brother!?" He suddenly sensed something was wrong and turned to look at Black Blade.
To his horror, he discovered a figure standing silently behind Black Blade, one hand raised, a single finger gently pressing into the wound on the back of Black Blade’s neck.
Meanwhile, Black Blade stood woodenly in place, his entire body flushed red and convulsing violently.
White Blade furiously tried to activate the Divine Decision, but he hit nothing. Lin Hui’s figure vanished into the gale like a soap bubble.
Leaving behind only the twitching Black Blade, who was starting to look more and more unnatural.
"Brother... what’s wrong with you?! Brother!!" White Blade rushed forward to support Black Blade.
But the next second.
Black Blade suddenly went still.
And then...
PLRCHT!!
A savage Void Blade Slash, imbued with terrifying power more than twice as strong as before, viciously struck the side of White Blade’s neck.
A spray of blood flew out, caught by the wind, and stretched thin, blooming like an alluring red spider lily.
White Blade’s head flew high into the air, his expression dazed, wooden, and uncomprehending... before finally being devoured by the wind, becoming part of the high-speed rotation.
