Chapitre 256: Battle for the tower.
Yao Jun arrived in front of the entrance to the cave and stepped into it, Xuhuan rising from her seat on the couch and giving him a polite bow. He returned her greeting by nodding at her, his gaze moving sideways before landing on Yuri, who was in the final stages of healing from her wounds. She was sitting with her side facing him, her upper body completely bare as the flesh around the deep gash that went from her shoulder to her waist was wriggling, a strange yellow paste seeping into her flesh.
Yao Jun moved his gaze away without any change in his expression, a chair rising up from the ice in front of him and allowing him to sit down. Yuri seemed to have noticed his arrival, a robe quickly covering her bare upper body as she turned her body so that her back was facing him, her head turning slightly to look at him.
"What, not even a change in expression after you got to see something that nice? Do you know how many people would kill to be in the position you had just been?"
He hadn't been able to see everything, but he had still gotten a perfect view of her breasts from the side. Yuri considered herself a very attractive person, a fact many people would agree on, so it somewhat dented her pride as a woman to see that Yao Jun hadn't reacted in the slightest. Yao Jun simply gave an indifferent shrug of his shoulders, only offering a simple explanation.
"Sorry, but I'm happily married so you won't get anything from me. How long until you've finished healing your wounds?"
Yao Jun wasn't actually married to Guo Luo yet, but as he was planning on marrying her sooner or later he chose to just keep telling others that he was married. Yuri looked Yao Jun up and down with a surprised expression after hearing his response, a somewhat sly smile spreading on her face.
"You're married? Despite how young you are? Seeing as you didn't bring her in here, and assuming that she is about your age, she should have a rather low cultivation. You sure nothing's happened to her while you're running around here? This is a dangerous universe after all, so there might still be a chance for something to happen to her so that someone else can sneak into your heart."
Yuri knew what was the most terrifying thing about Yao Jun, his age. She had cultivated for nearly four hundred years already just to reach her current realm. Had she not picked up her Supreme Law fragment and been forced to start from scratch she would have reached this realm after about two hundred years, fast enough to be called a prodigy. And yet, standing in front of her was a youth she could tell was just in his twenties, and this youth had the same cultivation as her.
Just knowing a fact like this was almost enough to crush the motivations of some people, Yuri refused to believe that there were others like Yao Jun out in the universe, his wife had to be a more normal person.
The air within the cave turned frigid right after Yuri finished her sentence, an unearthly chill crawling up Yuri's spine. She saw that Yao Jun was looking at her with dangerously narrowed eyes, an all-encompassing feeling of death invading her mind and heart. She threw up both her hands, quickly changing the topic upon realizing that she had said something she shouldn't have.
"Not the topic to joke about, got it. Give me six more days, I'll be fully healed then."
Yao Jun moved his gaze away, his expression returning to normal. Guo Luo was one of his reverse scales, touching it would always lead to disaster. Shortly after Yao Jun's expression returned to normal he seemed to remember something, turning his head towards Yuri again.
"By the way, where did Berius go during the previous battle? I didn't see him when I arrived and I completely forgot to ask about it earlier."
He didn't know what happened after he started chasing Xiao Yan, he only knew that everyone was somewhat wounded upon his return. In the heat of the moment, he had completely forgotten about one of the fragment holders that should have been there, Berius Daeman, the one holding a fragment of the Supreme Law of Souls. Yuri shrugged her shoulders casually and gave a quick explanation.
"He fled shortly after you started chasing Xiao Yan, he knew that his odds of getting anything were too low so he didn't want to risk anything."
Berius was a cautious person, he fled once the scales tilted too far away from his favor. After all, he wouldn't get to enjoy the treasure if he ended up dying, no point in risking his life for nothing. Yao Jun nodded his head, he had only asked due to a passing interest. He didn't have any relationship with Berius, neither hostile nor close, so he didn't really care too much what happened to him. Yao Jun closed his eyes and took a deep breath, quietly cultivating while Yuri returned to focusing on healing her wounds.
Just as Yuri said, she was done recovering six days later, finally returning to peak condition. She let out a deep breath and stood up from her seated position, stretching her body and enjoying the sounds of all her joints popping after not moving for a while. She turned around to face Yao Jun, who had already stood up and was beckoning towards the cave entrance with his chin. She nodded her head, the two leaving the cave with Xuhuan following closely behind Yuri, making sure she didn't launch any sneak attacks.
The two walked a bit away from the mountain, making sure that they had plenty of space for the upcoming battle, each of them taking up position a short distance away from each other. Yao Jun raised his arm, the yellow tower appearing in his palm for a short moment before returning to his God Gate. He only brought it out to show that he still had it, he didn't want to risk leaving it outside in case someone was actually able to spy on them, they might be able to steal the tower then. Yuri nodded her head, stating the terms of the battle.
"I know that I said I wanted a proper battle, but it seems like both of us would end up rather injured if we were to engage in a true battle here, and it would leave a terrible aftertaste if someone ambushed us while we were wounded and stole the tower. As such, I want to change the terms of the battle a bit. I'll unleash my strongest attack and you'll unleash your strongest attack, one attack to decide the battle, what do you think?"
Back when she proposed that they engage in an actual battle, while she felt that Yao Jun was dangerous, she didn't think that he was so strong that both of them would end up seriously injured should they fight with their all. But now, now she felt that even if she might be able to win, she would end up losing at least two, maybe three of her limbs in the process, and that was only if he didn't keep some cards hidden from her. As such, the terms of the battle had to be changed.
Yao Jun didn't have a reason to reject a battle like this, it was right up his alley to finish this as quickly as possible, so he nodded his head and agreed to her new terms. Xuhuan suddenly vanished, returning to the God Gate after Yao Jun gave her a quick mental order. Wind gathered in his palm and formed his sword, Yuri taking a deep breath as a suit of thick brown metal armor appeared on her entire body, a crack-like pattern covering the entire armor.
There was no start signal, the battle simply started the moment both of them entered their stances. Yao Jun's shadow suddenly extended, rising up from the ground and covering the entire area around them and forming a black dome that blotted out all light. All his various elements raged around within the dome, battering Yuri's armor to the point where she felt like there were hundreds of people around her attacking her all at once.
She moved her arm slightly but found that a horrible pressure was acting on every inch of her body, it was like being at the bottom of the ocean, all movement draining a large amount of energy. She couldn't even breathe within the domain, all air in the area sucked out the moment the domain rose up. This particular aspect of the domain was new, Yao Jun only becoming able to do it once he reached the Earthly Deity realm.
Yuri let out all the air in her lungs before the air in them could get compressed from the pressure and injure her lungs. She stretched out her right arm, a large hammer that seemed to be made from the skull of an elephant-type Demonic beast with three horns appearing in her grasp. The Qi within the entire domain started vibrating once the hammer appeared in her grasp, Yuri's voice spreading throughout the domain thanks to her Qi.
"Yao Jun, this is my strongest attack, let me see if you will be able to crush it!"
The moment her voice rang out, the vibrating of the surround Qi got worse, cracks spreading throughout the entire domain as it started to rapidly shrink. Before long, the entire domain had shrunk down to the size of an apple, concentrated in the midst of the three horns on Yuri's hammer. All of Yuri's energy flooded into the hammer, entering the apple-sized orb that used to be Yao Jun's domain, further strengthening it.
Cracks started to appear in the surrounding space, each of the cracks unleashing a suction force that started to pull at everything in the area. Yao Jun still stood in his previous position, looking at the cracks in space as well as Yuri's hammer. He had no control over these spatial cracks so teleporting through space would be quite a bit harder than usual, and far riskier, he might accidentally be snatched up by one of these cracks and be forced to deal with it. But his plan had never been to dodge, he would do just as Yuri said, he would crush her attack head-on, the domain was only brought up to see if it might be enough.
Yao Jun's energy started to flood into his sword, the tip vibrating faintly as all the surrounding space seemed to be dragged towards his sword, even Yuri's armor creaked slightly. Since she wanted to see his strongest attack, he would oblige her and attack her with the prototype of his single-target attacking technique, Void.
Yuri grasped her hammer with both arms, her armor bulging slightly as she seemed to somewhat struggle to hold onto her hammer. She raised the hammer as high as she could, bringing it down in an overhead smash with all her might, the head of the hammer leaving a thick rift in space wherever it passed. She didn't even have to move closer, the attack would hit Yao Jun the moment it was unleashed.
Yao Jun crouched slightly, his left leg sliding back a bit as he pulled back his sword a little, the tip pointing at Yuri and her attack. His eyes narrowed slightly as he opened all five channels of his Crumbling The Nine Heavens technique, simultaneously drawing on the strength of five of his Demonic beasts. He had been able to slice through Luosho Li's shield in this state, he refused to believe that he would be unable to slice through the incoming attack.
Yuri's hammer made contact with the ground, a terrifying earthquake rocking the entire area as cracks several hundreds of meters thick spread through the area. The mountain where they had been just minutes earlier collapsed under the force of the earthquake, fragmenting into small pieces that eventually turned to dust. When Yuri unleashed all her might, the resulting force was enough to alter the terrain around her, she was already strong enough to shatter smaller planets, like Yao Jun's own home planet.
The moment her attack was unleashed, a crushing shockwave rippling through the air, Yao Jun also made his move. He turned into a black blur as he shot forward and stabbed out with his sword, the tip leaving a thin line in the air as it cut through space. The tip of Yao Jun's sword collided with the incoming shockwave, piercing cleanly through it and tearing a large hole in it as the tiny void at the tip of his blade sucked in everything around it.
His sword continued to move forward without pause, causing far less destruction than Yuri's attack. But even as large chunks of earth rose up and tried to block his sword, it simply pierced cleanly through them and continued to move forward, reaching Yuri's neck before long. Yao Jun moved his arm slightly, the path of his sword changing so that it missed Yuri's neck by a few centimeters. But even then it still cut cleanly through her armor and left a nearly three-centimeter deep wound on her shoulder and neck, blood gushing forth and staining her armor.
The earthquake rocking the surrounding area stopped, the hammer and Yuri's armor vanishing as she raised her arms in defeat, her gaze locked on Yao Jun's sword. The sword hadn't even touched her body but had still been able to pierce through all her defenses, she had even felt it pull at her flesh and Qi, sucking her Qi directly out of her body. She didn't even dare imagine what would have happened if that attack hit her body, she had no idea how she could possibly survive that. Yao Jun pulled back his sword after Yuri raised her arms in defeat, Yuri letting out a sigh.
"I lost, overwhelmingly so too, the tower is yours. Are you sure you don't want to start traveling with me? I'm certain I'll be able to learn a lot by sparring more with you. Oh, also, is that attack how you killed Xiao Yan? Also, what are you planning on doing now? I imagine that there aren't a lot of people who can stand against you if you have that kind of strength, you should be able to aim for the top three if you wish to."
If it was the attack she had just seen, she was certain that it would be enough to kill Xiao Yan, it would probably be enough to kill anyone but those who had a chance to aim for the top three of this competition. Yao Jun's sword vanished into the wind as he gave a light shrug of his shoulders, his eyes growing a bit sharper.
"I'll enter the top 10 at least, there's something I need to get my hands on. But for now, there's someone that I need to find and kill, it's about time I laid that grudge to rest."
He had dealt with everything he should deal with for now, it was time to track down and kill Peyton so that he could finally ease some of his worries. He turned his gaze onto Yuri and was about to open his mouth when she raised her arms once more, interrupting him with an exasperated sigh.
"Yeah yeah, I get it, you'll be going alone. If you're ever in the mood for sparring or just get lonely and miss my charming voice, you can use this to contact me, just insert some Qi into it and speak into it, I'll be notified and be able to immediately respond."
She swiped her ring and took out a grape-sized oval orb of milky jade after she finished talking, tossing it to Yao Jun while explaining how it worked. Yao Jun accepted the orb and nodded his head, such items were quite common in this universe so he had heard about them plenty of times before, he even owned quite a few of his own, taking out one and tossing it to Yuri just for safety's sake. Yuri accepted the orb and put it away, giving Yao Jun one last nod before he vanished from the area, the only sign of his passing being a faint ripple in space.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone