Two Deaths at War
Ouyang Qiangang spoke to Akasha.
'Akasha, Maximum Combat Mode!'
Acknowledged. Activating Maximum Combat Mode.
The instant Akasha's calm voice rang out, a radical transformation swept through Ouyang Qiangang's body.
> Accelerating cognitive processing. Switching dynamic vision to extreme mode.
His pupils dilated in an instant, and the world began to look entirely different.
Everything slowed to a turtle's crawl, and every last mote of dust drifting through the air sprang into razor-sharp focus.
Akasha's voice followed.
> Activating nanobots. Engaging muscle optimization program.
The nanobots began reforging his body from the inside out. Muscles hardened beyond steel; nerves sharpened finer than a spider's web. His body was no longer a living organism — it had become a single weapon, perfectly tuned for nothing but destruction.
> Physical defense systems online. Impact-reactive shield mode standing by.
Invisible nanobots deployed across the surface of his skin in standby formation. It wasn't yet a level of protection that could shield his entire body at once, but the moment a blow landed, the nanobots would form a barrier of Adamantine Invulnerability caliber at that exact point.
It was a mode he had almost never used since reaching the Transcendent Peak. He had no other choice.
The Corpse-Spirit Demon Lord was strong enough that calling him the most powerful opponent Ouyang Qiangang had ever faced would be no exaggeration.
Cheon Un-gi, of course, was the exception — for the man had never once been his enemy.
In that very instant, the Demon Lord's hand blurred into motion, and a palm strike wreathed in Gang qi came hurtling at him.
The speed of its release was beyond comparison with anyone he had ever fought. Had he not activated Maximum Combat Mode, his skull would have burst open before he could even register what had happened.
Even to Ouyang Qiangang's eyes, the Demon Lord's hand was a smeared afterimage — but its trajectory he could read with perfect clarity.
He unfolded the Illusory Phantom Shadows and shifted left through the air by a good two paces.
The movement flowed as naturally as running water. His nanobot-optimized nerves and muscles were responding to his will and his internal energy in real time.
The Demon Lord's palm force punched through the space Ouyang Qiangang had occupied like a falling meteor, and in its wake came a skin-crawling sonic crack.
Sssuuwaaang—
A palm force faster than its own sound. And yet Ouyang Qiangang had evaded it. Such was the power of Maximum Combat Mode.
Ouyang Qiangang issued the order to Akasha.
'Akasha — during the fight, use the Absorption Formation of the Transcendent Peerless Divine Art to drain the Demon Lord's internal energy.'
That monster's internal energy is purer and more powerful than the Blood Spirit Human Demon's by an order of magnitude. If the purification load exceeds critical threshold, your meridians could rupture first, Doctor. Furthermore — Hwangbo Pung and the others are watching. Are you certain about this?
'This is no time to worry about what to hide. I'll use whatever it takes to weaken him. Once you're dead, nothing else matters.'
'Understood. Splitting the Dual Mind Divine Art into two threads.'
With Akasha's voice, Ouyang Qiangang's consciousness cleaved in two. One awareness devoted itself entirely to the battle against the Corpse-Spirit Demon Lord; the other, synced with Akasha, prepared the Absorption Formation.
All of this happened before the echo of the Demon Lord's first attack had even faded.
In the next moment, Ouyang Qiangang hurled himself at the Demon Lord, who stood poised upon empty air.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
His Gale Lightning Palm hammered into the Demon Lord's chest in a relentless chain of strikes. In raw speed, he was no one's inferior, either.
The two men's reactions ran directly counter to common sense. The Demon Lord bellowed out a gloomy, delighted laughter as though he hadn't felt a thing.
"Kukukukukuku, that tickles, boy! Put your back into it!"
Ouyang Qiangang's expression, by contrast, had hardened to stone. The instant his Flashing Phantom Shadow Palm met the Demon Lord's bones, what he felt was not the sensation of striking flesh.
It was as though he had slammed head-on into a colossal iron rampart forged from hardened steel — a terrifying rebound came flooding back that felt ready to shatter the bones of his hand first.
The ash-gray Gang qi shrouding the Demon Lord's entire body. That Corpse-Spirit Adamantine Gang qi, harder than steel and dense as diamond, was neutralizing every one of his attacks as if mocking them.
But the accumulated shockwaves of the consecutive Gale Lightning Palms and the Explosive Thunderflame King Cannon finally snapped the Demon Lord's patience.
"You little……!"
His massive frame moved for the first time. Standing still, he had been like a mountain; the moment he moved, he was black lightning rending space itself apart.
Shwaaaaaaaaak—!
A speed that even the Illusory Phantom Shadows could not fully shake off.
Two bolts of light collided. Azure thunder-light against blackish-red death. The entire underground cavern became the battleground of two superhumans.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-KWANG—
Every time their silhouettes crossed in midair, thunderous detonations burst forth; every time they slammed into the walls, boulders came raining down like a downpour.
To Hwangbo Pung and his companions, the fighters had long since vanished from sight. All that remained were two streaks of light churning madly through the cavern, the boom of ruptured air that shredded their eardrums, and the shockwaves shaking them to the marrow — proof enough that the battle unfolding there had passed beyond the realm of men.
They could not even tell which of the two held the upper hand, let alone how the fight was progressing.
Divided by the Dual Mind Divine Art, Ouyang Qiangang's world had become two. One consciousness fought for survival within Akasha's real-time future predictions — forecasts updated every hundredth of a second — slipping past every attack the Demon Lord made.
The other consciousness burrowed into the gaps of that storm of offense and defense, draining the Demon Lord's internal energy through the Absorption Formation.
It was a reckless gamble played out on a tightrope strung above death itself. What had begun as a trickle fine as dewdrops soon swelled into a raging whirlpool, seeking to swallow whole the vast ocean of the Demon Lord's power.
As time passed, Ouyang Qiangang grew stronger — and the Demon Lord, imperceptibly weaker.
And the Demon Lord sensed that change.
'Something is… wrong.'
For the first time, bewilderment clouded his blood-red eyes. It was not battle fatigue — it was an uncanny sensation that his very existence was being eroded from its roots, bit by bit, and it seized dominion over his mind.
Worse still, the whelp before him was predicting his attacks with ever greater precision as time went on. The boy who had once dodged by a hair's breadth was now neutralizing his techniques with minimal movement — and turning those openings back against him.
'This bastard… he's reading my techniques. Not one he's seen twice ever lands again. No — he's actually exploiting their flaws to cut off my next attack before it begins!'
A possibility too absurd to believe flashed across the Demon Lord's mind.
'Could it be… he's dismantling my martial arts even as we fight? In this short a span? Does such a monster even exist in this world……!'
He was confronting a terrible truth: his martial arts were being taken apart and analyzed in real time by an unknown boy. He did not want to accept it — but in the end, accept it he could. What he was facing was an incomprehensible monster, one that soared far beyond anything the word "human talent" could contain.
Akasha was recording every single technique the Demon Lord performed, perfectly catalogued down to the flow of his qi and the finest micro-movements of his muscles. She then analyzed that data in real time, isolating each technique's inherent flaws and the patterns linking one move to the next.
Given that, using the same technique twice against Ouyang Qiangang could only be inviting disaster.
The Demon Lord's crimson eyes burned with a grim, shadowed light.
'This one absolutely cannot be left alive.'
Until now, the Demon Lord had toyed with his enemies, savoring their despair. But this human was far too dangerous. There would be no more toying.
The Demon Lord, who until that moment had fought with only ninety percent of his power, made his decision and began pouring in his full, overwhelming strength.
At once his movements doubled in speed, and his silhouette split into dozens of afterimages that filled the cavern. False and true interwoven, each laden with Gang qi, the Corpse-Spirit Blood Heaven Palm forces traced a dozen different trajectories and crashed down on Ouyang Qiangang like a colossal tidal wave.
It was the final ultimate technique he had held in reserve until this very moment.
Huuuuuuuuuung—
It seemed as if space itself was screaming, and the stones along the floor, caught in the palm force's wake, crumbled to fine dust and scattered on the wind.
Completely new attack pattern! 0% match with existing data! Analysis impossible! Evasion path: cannot be computed.
Even Akasha was visibly flustered. Every scrap of data gathered so far had been rendered useless in a heartbeat.
The once-even contest collapsed in an instant, and Ouyang Qiangang was driven to the edge of a cliff just as fast.
'Too fast!'
Even with his dynamic vision cranked to the absolute limit of Maximum Combat Mode, he could not pin down the Demon Lord's true body.
'I can't dodge it!'
He threw everything into the Illusory Phantom Shadows, but he was already one step too late.
The Corpse-Spirit Blood Heaven Palm force, laden with monstrous power, slammed into his chest head-on.
KWA-KWA-KWANG!
With the detonation, a geometric pattern of azure light rippled across his chest like a spreading wave — and vanished.
The impact-reactive nanobot defense system. Thanks to it, his bones and organs had been spared shattering, but the shockwave drove straight through into his interior all the same, delivering agony as though his five viscera and six bowels were being shaken apart whole.
"Kghk!"
A torrent of blood fountained from his mouth, and he was hurled backward a good four or five paces.
But before his feet even touched the ground, Ouyang Qiangang twisted at the waist and sprang back up like a coiled spring. Showing weakness at a moment like this would gain him nothing whatsoever.
Seeing it, the crimson light in the Demon Lord's eyes flickered.
'He survived a direct hit from the Corpse-Spirit Blood Heaven Palm? A boy who couldn't even raise his protective Gang qi? Don't tell me… Adamantine Invulnerability? Absurd! That is a domain even I have yet to glimpse…….'
Unable to comprehend how Ouyang Qiangang remained whole after taking his strike squarely to the chest, the Demon Lord was seized by astonishment that went beyond rage.
For the first time since he had first learned the martial path, he felt fear before an enemy.
And yet, the more his emotions dominated him, the more savagely his killing intent blazed.
"What in the world ARE you?!"
The Demon Lord roared and unleashed the Corpse-Spirit Blood Heaven Palm once more. The blackish-red tide of death surged in, fiercer than before.
Recognizing that evasion was impossible, Ouyang Qiangang summoned every last scrap of his power.
'If I can't block this one, I die!'
Above his right hand, azure thunder-light bloomed, seeming to swallow every trace of light in the underground cavern.
"Explosive Thunderflame King Cannon!"
KWAAAAAAAAM—!
A roar as though the entire cavern were caving in. The instant the azure sun and the blackish-red tide collided head-on, every sound in the world vanished.
"Khek!"
When the split-second of silence broke, Ouyang Qiangang's body went flying like a kite with a severed string, tumbling across the floor a good ten paces away.
Kudang-tang-tang—
Blood geysered from his mouth and nose as he rolled, and his whole body was left a mangled ruin.
At the very moment that second impact struck, something inside him gave way — a dam that had been sealed shut for years collapsed.
The five great acupoints of his long-suppressed Nine Yin Severed Meridians ran wild, spewing forth cold of the most extreme order. His blood froze to ice, and white frost bloomed across every joint of his body.
Nine Yin Severed Meridians — control system collapse! Your entire meridian network is freezing over at catastrophic speed! Doctor, at this rate… your heart will freeze solid within 3 minutes!
A crisis at the very brink of death. Akasha's voice — always so composed — was trembling.
…Executing emergency protocol. Doctor — I am now committing my entire computational capacity to suppressing the Ultimate Yin energy of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians.
Akasha did not hesitate. Without purifying the sinister internal energy she had drained from the Demon Lord through the Absorption Formation — the Corpse-Spirit Demonic qi itself — she poured it directly into Ouyang Qiangang's meridians.
There is only one antidote strong enough to beat a poison: a stronger poison still.
Into meridians frozen by the vicious cold, a molten flood of blackish-red death qi — a force that rotted everything it touched — began to flow backward.
'Khuoaaaaaaaaaagh!'
A cataclysmic war within his body — one he could not even scream about. The Ultimate Yin energy seeking to freeze his meridians, and the Corpse-Spirit Demonic qi bent on destroying and putrefying everything in its path. Two deaths made his body their battlefield, each attempting to devour the other.
Through the agony of meridians being shredded and viscera being wrenched out of true, Ouyang Qiangang's consciousness, strangely, sank into a cold as still as ice.
'I have to hold on…….'
Brrrrrk—
Thin red blood trickled from the corner of his tightly clenched lips.