Chapter 288: Chapter 274: Slaughter 2
The next instant, Lin Hui’s figure gently materialized behind him.
"You’ve lost."
He spoke as he turned his head.
"Lost!?" A torrent of high-temperature, blood-like liquid fire erupted from the Purgatory Duke’s body.
He burst into laughter.
"This is just the beginning!!"
SQUELCH!
In the next instant, he shoved his hand viciously into the wound on his shoulder, ripped out a handful of fiery flesh, and tossed it aside.
BOOM!!
As his injuries worsened, the immense pressure and high-temperature radiation around him more than doubled again!
"Pain only makes me stronger!! Come on!!"
The Purgatory Duke’s figure flickered. His speed was now a great deal faster, far surpassing the typical super-speed of a Fog Person, allowing him to barely keep up with Lin Hui’s movements.
His fists, burning with black flames writhing with bizarre, insect-like shapes, thundered toward Lin Hui.
SWISH!
The punch missed, passing straight through Lin Hui’s body as if hitting a phantom.
The next moment, another huge gash split open on the Purgatory Duke’s chest.
Molten blood gushed from the wound. It scattered in mid-air, turning into a shower of fiery little meteors that blasted craters of varying sizes into the earth below.
He shook his head. Seeing a fresh drop of molten blood drip slowly from the blade of Lin Hui’s Longsword, he knew he’d been hit again.
"Interesting! Again!!"
SWISH!
They streaked past each other like lightning. This time, the Duke’s speed had increased yet again!
This time he completely kept up with Lin Hui’s movements. Not only did he keep up, he even managed to counterattack.
But this strike...
Lin Hui gently pinched a strand of blue hair drifting down through the air.
’The more he’s injured, the more his power surges?’ A flicker of fighting spirit ignited within him.
He hadn’t had a chance to unleash his full strength since killing Tuyue. No, even then, he hadn’t needed to.
His power was constantly and wildly skyrocketing.
His Star Breath Sword Manual might be stuck at the Death Sacred Form, but the physical enhancements from the Life Sacred Form were still progressing. As a result, even he didn’t have a proper benchmark to gauge the true extent of his own power.
In this world, you couldn’t determine strength just by shouting out levels and ranks. The only real way to judge strength was to fight.
Relics, Secret Techniques, Evil Energy, and so on, could all grant a person a massive boost in combat power.
"Kill!!"
In the air, two phantoms—one red, one blue—clashed and weaved at incredible speeds.
The gray cyclone and crimson flames around the two of them also mixed and clashed.
Violent winds, accompanied by currents of high-temperature flames, quickly scoured giant, scorched trenches across the surrounding area for over a hundred kilometers.
Master Yunxia led the group in a swift escape from the vicinity, sprinting toward the medicinal garden.
Fleeing for their lives, everyone used every ounce of their strength to charge madly forward.
Thankfully, Lin Hui’s typhoon domain had stopped the Purgatory Duke’s burning husks in their tracks. With nearly all the husks reduced to a super-slow-motion pursuit, the group escaped the burning zone without incident and plunged into the dense white fog ahead.
The Fog Wall, which they had always considered dangerous, now gave them a sense of security, blocking the line of sight of any pursuers.
"Is that Xiaoliu’s younger brother?? Daoist Master Qingfeng, Lin Hui!?"
In the group, as they entered the Fog Wall, Vice Palace Master Jiang Zhixia heard a colleague’s voice transmission. He glanced back at the sky with a complicated expression and nodded to confirm the guess.
He was a mess of complicated emotions.
He had finally found an apprentice—talented, hardworking, outstanding, with a good temperament. She was filial and deeply respected her master.
He had thought his retirement was secured.
But as it turned out... his apprentice’s younger brother was revealed to be freakishly strong. He thrashed his own superiors as if they were children...
It often made him feel inadequate in front of his own apprentice...
Then, the situation changed drastically. Wars broke out one after another, and now he had fallen so low as to be saved by his apprentice’s younger brother...
"Alas, life is truly unpredictable..." Jiang Zhixia shook his head, following the group into the Fog Wall.
Huang Shan, behind him, also withdrew her gaze.
The Daoist Master Qingfeng she remembered, the senior brother and Master of Qingfeng Temple who always used to patrol among the disciples, seemed to exist only in her memories now.
That vivid, real person was now shrouded by a veil of unimaginable power.
Unseeable, untouchable...
’Some people in this world are born peerless geniuses, destined to be the center of attention. Maybe Lin Hui is one of them... An ordinary person like me should just stick to her own path, moving forward slowly, one step at a time.’ After offering a silent prayer for Lin Hui, she followed the group into the fog.
"Daoist Master..." As she was the last to rush into the Fog Wall, Master Yunxia looked back at the distant sky. Although flames, gales, and dark clouds blocked her view, preventing her from seeing anything, she could still clearly sense two terrifying auras—immense and powerful beyond her comprehension by countless times—clashing furiously at a speed she couldn’t fathom.
"You have to win!" she whispered in prayer, then turned and chased after the departing group.
*
*
*
Meanwhile, Han Xiaoyue and her two companions swiftly retreated from the battle’s Core Area.
The three had all returned to their human forms, having condensed only simple, grayish-brown keratin armor to cover the essential areas.
This was the most worry-free, time-saving, and effort-saving method. After all, ordinary clothes were a complete burden for Super Adaptables like them who needed to transform frequently.
So, aside from daily life, they always used their Super Adaptable traits to transform and create simple leather armor during battle.
Han Xiaoyue had retracted her wings, her impressive, fair-skinned figure intermittently concealed by her long black hair whipping in the wind.
The other two: the Lizardman’s human form was a petite, playful, and cute girl with long, ink-green hair and a delicate figure.
The Rhino-headed Elephant Man’s human form was a buxom beauty with a somewhat cold temperament, sporting shoulder-length black hair and a rather prominent upper body.
The three of them now stood at the edge of the combat zone, gazing at the battle in the center.
"I knew it. Why else would the captain suddenly start fine-tuning her figure... and even coming to me for advice every day..." the buxom beauty muttered, unable to resist complaining as she looked at the distant sky.
"So, you can be loved even if only half your face is good-looking?" the petite, ink-green-haired girl on the side murmured, touching her own cheek.
"That’s not love! It’s friendship!" Han Xiaoyue turned and slapped each of them on the forehead.
"Right, right, friendship! Friendship!!" The buxom beauty covered her head, took a step back, and nodded repeatedly.
"Mhm, a great friendship that makes you travel thousands of miles to fight the Purgatory Duke! Ah, why the hell haven’t I found such an excellent friendship!?" the petite, green-haired girl giggled.
"Say one more word and I’ll use your mouth for dinner tonight," Han Xiaoyue warned, an almost imperceptible blush rising on her cheeks.
When she said mouth, she meant literally cutting it off, stir-frying it, and eating it. Super Adaptables like them grew flesh back extremely quickly. Sometimes, when bored, they would even eat parts of themselves.
For example, Han Xiaoyue previously felt her chest was a bit small, so she cut it off, ate it, and then fine-tuned a much larger replacement. Later, because she felt the shape wasn’t perfect, she went to her sisters for advice...
"Let’s go! Stop your lip. If the fight spills over here, we’ll get caught in it!" Han Xiaoyue gave her another slap in annoyance.
The three quickly entered the Fog Wall. With that, all remaining survivors had escaped Tuyue’s former territory.
Lin Hui sensed this from afar through his Typhoon Swordsmanship and no longer held back.
Feathering!
The next moment, he activated his Special Effects, and his speed exploded again, catching the Purgatory Duke completely off guard.
After they crossed paths dozens of times, the Purgatory Duke’s right hand was slashed into a bizarre, backward-bent shape, but it wouldn’t break off, remaining attached to his body.
Moreover, this excruciating pain caused his speed and power to surge once again.
"It’s useless! Pain and injury will only make me stronger, and stronger! The strongest!!"
The temperature around him had now risen to several thousand degrees. His injuries also enhanced the terrifying flames that radiated naturally from his body.
Lin Hui’s brows furrowed. He struck with his sword again, but this time, the opponent actually managed to keep up with his speed once more.
The two clashed hundreds of times in an instant. He flashed back and raised Ruyi high.
In an instant, a dense forest of massive black tornadoes rose behind him, unleashing a saturation attack on the Purgatory Duke’s entire position.
Each tornado was ten thousand meters long and a hundred meters in diameter. They were long and slender, twisting like snakes, and they writhed as they rapidly encircled the opponent.
PFFT! PFFT! PFFT!
But as soon as the black tornadoes covered the area, they were easily smashed through by red meteors.
But this was just a minor tactic from Lin Hui to buy time. The current Purgatory Duke’s strength had far surpassed the previous Tuyue’s. You could say that even three Tuyues wouldn’t be enough to fight him.
The truth was that Fog People were extremely difficult to kill. Unless you could whittle away their True Evil Fog, they were essentially immortal. This was likely how he had managed to escape the urban area.
SWISH!
In the next instant, three golden runes lit up behind Lin Hui. His speed and strength surged again.
This time, he was truly going all out.
All Special Effects plus the Qingyuan Body, and then the final killing blow—the Star Breath Sword Manual. He intended to finish off the Purgatory Duke before him in one fell swoop.
Denying him any chance to grow stronger from his injuries.
As if sensing Lin Hui’s decision, the Purgatory Duke laughed loudly, his body rapidly transforming amidst the red, fiery meteors.
A large amount of blackish-red, high-temperature liquid gushed from the gaps in his armor. The liquid extended and expanded behind him, forming a gigantic, black, humanoid, half-bodied monster in the blink of an eye.
The monster was covered in menacing black spikes. Beneath the spikes, its skin was riddled with countless pustules and scorch marks.
"Take my Secret Technique! Unrivaled Martial Annihilation!!" he roared, swinging his right fist with all his might.
The giant, black, half-bodied monster behind him simultaneously swung its own giant fist along with him.
The two fists, one large and one small, instantly punched through the air, leaving two clear pseudo-vacuum trails.
At this moment, the two fists bloomed with a strange flash like blue-red fluid. The surrounding temperature once again climbed rapidly, reaching over ten thousand degrees.
And just then, a vast, deep, starry sky had already spread out and appeared behind Lin Hui.
He held his sword in one hand, raising it high. Behind him, a vague humanoid figure made of white light faintly flickered into existence.
One was all motion, the other stillness, yet they rapidly closed the distance between them.
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