[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-lord-of-the-immortal-food":3,"chapter-lord-of-the-immortal-food-lord-of-the-immortal-food-chapter-86":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Lord of the Immortal Food",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2313209,4524,"Chapter 86: Duel","lord-of-the-immortal-food-chapter-86",86,"\u003Cp>Outside Fenghuai County, the land bore scars of mountains and wounds of earth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yue Muzhou also felt immense pressure in this battle—first, because it was the only fight of his life, as if fighting another version of himself; second, because the enemy’s bizarre abilities were truly unexpected.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In prior exchanges, Yue Muzhou had nearly exhausted his understanding of this divine strangeness: an incredibly resilient body, terrifying combat instincts, frost that inflicted injury on contact, fire that flickered in and out, and above all, the ability to manipulate flesh and blood—something that left him with no foothold at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And this was only the power it had attained in less than a day since awakening—what abilities might it possess if given another day, five days?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This thing… is indeed very strong.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And it has no vital point—even a Tianlou cultivator, if decapitated, would die, but to destroy this thing, you must either shred it inch by inch with sword qi, or erase its spirit and mind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But there seems to be another method: “consume” it—each time he touched its body, something stirred in his abdomen, yet this enemy was clearly not as docile as the one in the county office; that softening had never returned.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So there was still no shortcut.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Every time he inflicted damage upon it, it would return the exact same wound to him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He did not possess such a strange body.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had to find a way… to use the small to overcome the great.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Suddenly, a prickling sensation surged into his chest and abdomen; Yue Muzhou immediately pressed his true qi to contain it—and sure enough, the next instant, terrifying heat exploded within.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Dealing with such distractions in a battle where every fraction mattered was infuriating; in truth, this kind of interference had once been his own favored tactic—but that eye was gone now.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When the image of “eye” crossed his mind, the enemy’s golden pupils suddenly became impossibly bright and vast.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A pair of cold, detached pupils appeared within Yue Muzhou’s spiritual realm.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Chunshou】—this mental power, finally finding a crack in the old man’s spirit through a connection, slithered in like a venomous snake.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yue Muzhou had heard Pei Ye describe this ability, and at the time had thought the boy was simply inexperienced and easily awed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Methods of controlling the spirit were indeed terrifying across the martial world, often paired with the words “strange and intractable,” but once one reached a high enough level, one realized that while rare, such powers were ultimately nothing special.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The lower-tier ones relied on drugs or hypnosis; the higher-tier ones used qigong that manipulated xuan qi—ultimately, they were always tools of the superior over the inferior, like a cultivator over an ordinary person, or a higher realm over a lower one.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To counter someone of equal or higher level, one needed meticulous planning, waiting like a fly in the shadows for the target to lose emotional control or destabilize their spirit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not to mention now—even in his most youthful, arrogant days, Yue Muzhou’s will had never been ensnared by such tricks.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And now, even if this power was stronger, it should not be able to crack his solid spiritual realm.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The earlier battle had unfolded as he expected: though the golden pupils had been elusive from the start, circling his spiritual realm, they had never found an opening.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet the moment he merely thought of “eye,” it seized his tail.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>How could there exist a spiritual technique that invaded through nothing more than a single thought?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To elevate spiritual manipulation to this level… only the famed Sword of Shattered Mind and Glass might rival it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the spirit is invaded, one cannot instantly become a puppet, but under such entanglement, the perilous struggle in battle inevitably leads to mistakes—yet if one focuses on fighting, the spirit is further eroded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In a single moment of inattention, a dilemma decisive enough to determine victory or defeat had already formed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yue Muzhou swiftly withdrew his sword, suddenly abandoning all bodily support, closing his eyes and falling from the air, his entire body limp as if surrendering all resistance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pei Ye, watching anxiously from the city wall, did not know what had happened—his fingers clenched tightly around the city bricks.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Immortal Lord lunged like a ferocious tiger toward the falling body, like a bird with broken wings—he would never let such an opportunity slip away.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet from that limp, falling body, a blade of light suddenly poured forth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The moment that blade appeared in his vision, Pei Ye felt his heart crushed beneath something cold and heavy—he stopped breathing, froze in place, and only after a long while gasped for air again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So powerful, so alien, yet… so familiar—a sword strike… 【Yuntian Zhe Mu Shi Yu】!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was truly 【Yuntian Zhe Mu Shi Yu】?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was 【Yuntian Zhe Mu Shi Yu】!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For the first time, Pei Ye felt deeply his own naivety and crudeness in swordsmanship—Ming Qitian had not used the same sword art as him back then.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His gap with them was not that he had not learned sufficiently sublime sword techniques.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unlike the distant observer Pei Ye, the charging Immortal Lord faced this sword strike directly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Its outstretched claws were sliced open by the sharp blade—for the first time, it did not press forward to trade blows with the old man, but halted its charge and dodged the strike.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Though this sword strike filled Pei Ye with a deep, chilling pressure, it had no such effect on the Immortal Lord.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As Ming Qitian had said, the greatest sharpness of this sword lay in “asking the heart with blood”—but that applied to humans; for the Immortal Lord, a being of cold detachment, “asking the heart” was a joke.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What forced back the Immortal Lord was the sword technique and its intent—but the sharpest edge of this sword, Yue Muzhou had aimed at himself!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sensory-blocking effect of 【Yuntian Zhe Mu Shi Yu】 does not seal all senses—it directly strikes the spirit, leaving the body functioning normally while the mind is severed from it, sinking into a state of unawareness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No one understood this power better than Yue Muzhou, its creator—he subtly reshaped it, then applied it with divine precision to his own spiritual realm, sealing everything in an instant, including the golden pupils.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Faced with such a dilemma, the best response would normally be to endure the Immortal Lord’s blow and swiftly resolve the spiritual threat—but before the old man, one sword resolved both: the outer sword forced back the enemy, the inner sword punished the spirit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And in secret, Yue Muzhou knew this sword had a third effect.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had tested it: this sword inflicted upon the Immortal Lord greater damage than a normal claw strike inflicted upon him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Otherwise, it would not have retreated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He now knew what lever to use for his small-to-great strategy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, since there was only one chance, the “great” had to be truly great—【Yuntian Zhe Mu Shi Yu】 was not enough.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He turned to face the Immortal Lord; its golden pupils remained emotionless, yet its movements pressed upon him with violent fury. Yue Muzhou crossed his sword, blocked and pulled—his blade formed an iron wall to halt the assault, then slashed a massive gash across the Immortal Lord’s chest.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But he himself was blasted to the ground by exploding fire.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The same wound naturally hurt Yue Muzhou more, his body already weakened.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The momentum had subtly been suppressed further.\u003C\u002Fp>",1247,"2026-06-20T13:17:09.438Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","c31e0f6ada8ea0a5dbd866cc6e3b9316f26d100fe6be1bed2223d7dfb13d473c","lord-of-the-immortal-food-chapter-87","lord-of-the-immortal-food-chapter-85",771,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Flord-of-the-immortal-food-cover.jpg"]