Chapter 812: Self-Destruction and Revival
The fourth, the fifth, the sixth demon were dealt with in much the same way as the first three, but the seventh demon managed to block Zhou Ying's lethal blow after it had been trapped by the wood dragons. Fortunately, Zhou Ying was still able to pierce through the demon's head with a quick toss of her dagger.
After that, the demon entered a stage of paralysis as its head tried to regrow, and Zhou Ying successfully killed it then. The eighth demon then appeared, and it too blocked Zhou Ying's blow.
These demons that appeared one after the other seemed to have the exceptional ability to learn from their previous counterparts' death, though they seemed a little slow to pick up on the appropriate counters for the strategies that Zhou Ying was using.
After all, it took them eight tries to learn to block Zhou Ying's single devastating blow.
Of course, part of that reason was that Zhou Ying's sneak attack was both fast and lethal, so much so that it was difficult to avoid or counter even if you knew that the blow was coming.
The demons seemed almost like bosses in a game that had been granted such a statistical advantage over the player that they could never be defeated.
Zhou Ying was certain that these demons had to be a singular entity; there was too much that couldn't be explained otherwise.
Even so, despite the fact that these demons had learned to block Zhou Ying's blow, she was still able to kill them.
The demon swatted Zhou Ying with a palm. Zhou Ying's body split apart into a flurry of leaves, only to have a second Zhou Ying suddenly appear atop the demon's head and stick a dagger straight into its brain.
Zhou Ying was testing a hypothesis: this time, she wouldn't kill the demon immediately. She would trap it and see if she could discover anything new.
Although each of the demons was individually quite weak, the fact that they would keep appearing right after she had killed one made them particularly troublesome foes.
The demon trapped by the wood dragons smirked. "It's useless. Your struggles are futile!"
The trees in the forest rustled as Zhou Ying's voice echoed. "So you can talk? I thought you were a doddering fool who only knew how to fight!"
The demon roared out in laughter. "Foolish, foolish indeed. No matter how many times you kill me, I'll just come back to life. I'm invincible. A thousand deaths, ten thousand deaths—nothing will hurt my immortal body."
"So you are the primordial great demon, after all!"
The demon king smirked again. "As charged. I'm a special existence, one that can never die."
"So not only can you reproduce by contact with other lifeforms, you must have some exceptional abilities of your own—regenerating your body from a drop of blood, perhaps, or being able to clone yourself?" Zhou Ying hedged.
Given the demon king's extreme regenerative ability, it could very well have left a piece of its flesh in a hidden location, which would regrow into a new demon king once its previous body had died.
However, the possibility of this happening was rather small. After all, who knew if the flesh that the primordial demon cut off would grow into another primordial demon and swallow up the first?
The next possibility Zhou Ying thought of was that the demon king in front of her wasn't its true body, but just a piece of flesh that the true demon king cut off and somehow induced to grow into a clone or facsimile of the real thing, while the true body lay in hiding. But if that were the case, why didn't the demon king just manifest hundreds or even thousands of such clones?
Zhou Ying then considered the possibility that these clones were time-limited, and that it was impossible to have too many active at the same time. But that didn't seem right, either. If that were the case, why wouldn't the demon king summon a group of them all at once to attack Zhou Ying after realizing that she was strong enough to easily defeat them?
Why did the demon king create one, and only one, clone at once?
Zhou Ying then recalled how, when she sliced off the demon king's wrist, that it immediately became a pile of toxic sludge. It was apparent that the demon king's flesh was no longer able to restore itself once it was separated from the main body. That flesh would quickly spoil and turn into a pile of toxic sludge.
Could the demon king have, like the sura monarch Suiyue in the second realm, gained access to mastery over time? No. Zhou Ying shook her head immediately.
She had experienced temporal power before at the hands of Zhang Lie and Fang Yi. Zhou Ying couldn't claim to be an expert, but she was certain that the demon king's power was something other than time.
The demon king that Zhou Ying's wood dragons had subdued was now little more than a ball of meat and flesh, so these bodies couldn't be illusions, either.
Zhou Ying settled on one possibility. "In the end, the most likely answer is that these bodies are all your clones."
The primordial demon laughed. "I don't know what these 'clones' are, but my power is inexhaustible and far superior to anything you puny humans might possess. You could hardly understand it."
"The power to be killed over and over again?"
The primordial demon was certain of his own superiority. "Your struggles are meaningless. Even the strongest foe would be exhausted to death after facing me time and time again."
It was Zhou Ying's turn to smile. "Your ability isn't all that strong. At the very least, it has a major flaw."
"Oh? That's impossible. My perfect, unparalleled ability has no such flaw!
Surely you don't think that you'll be able to deal with me just by trapping this body of mine?"
Zhou Ying fell silent.
The primordial demon raised his head to the skies and laughed. "Haha! I hadn't expected that my opponent would be so naive. Indeed, as you've seen, only one of me can be in existence at any point in time. Before the previous me dies, the next me won't be able to appear—so you just have to stop the previous me from dying. Don't you think I have a contingency for this obvious mechanism?"
Zhou Ying continued curiously, "Considering how quickly you regenerate, you certainly can't be able to commit suicide if you're all bound up."
The demon continued to smile.
"Your body might give off a toxic poison that's harmful to my ebony dragons and continuously corroding their bodies, but my dragons can restore themselves, and it won't be that easy for you to escape."
Zhou Ying was supplying more and more of her vitality to her dragons, restoring the damaged wood faster than the poison could corrode it.
"This poison is convenient," the demon king agreed, "but it's not my only means of escape."
Suddenly, the demon's stomach bloated, and something seemed to be making its way out of its body, as though it were about to vomit. The demon's constipated expression looked as though it was simultaneously trying to induce a gag reflex while preventing the vomitus from flowing out of its mouth. Its eyes turned bloodshot as yellow bile trickled down its nostrils, so corrosive it made its own body decay.
Zhou Ying grew alarmed at the sight. A thick vine grew out of one dragon and plugged up the demon's mouth, but it was already too late. As though the vomitus had finally found an opening, the demon king's body burst apart with such frightening corrosive ability that the poison seeping out of the demon king's body was nothing in comparison.
Simultaneously, the pustules on the demon king's skin all exploded, sending yellow-green phlegm, vomitus, and dark blood all over. Zhou Ying shuddered in disgust—the demon king had self-destructed, and the resulting explosion of bodily fluids had dissolved thousands of her dragons.
Zhou Ying sucked in a deep breath.
If not for the fact that she had bound the demon king up tightly, she might very well have perished from the attack as well. More importantly, the demon king was still hale and hearty, and its next body would be pristine.
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