Chapter 665: The Hunt

Destruction! Destruction! Destruction!

Tang Zhao's sword was wreathed in dense Destruction Power; this was not necessarily the entire source of the great power he had just used to sever the body of the Xin Wang Liang, but it was the lethal weapon with which he would thoroughly annihilate it!

Growth granted him great power, allowing him to slice open the body of the Xin Wang Liang; Illumination caused the sword Momentum to descend, granting him the acceleration to move freely in space; and Destruction annihilated everything his sword tip pointed toward.

For instance, the Xin Wang Liang!

Tang Zhao knew well that the Xin Wang Liang could not be destroyed just by being hacked to pieces; its regenerative ability was even more formidable than that of the Dazai, who possessed a million lives. As long as a single shadow remained, the Xin Wang Liang could not be considered destroyed. Only by using Destruction to thoroughly erase every single shadow could it be solved at the root.

Therefore, once he caught it off guard and split it open, he immediately followed up by hacking like he was mincing meat, crazily slashing at the Xin Wang Liang's head, body, and limbs without distinction, determined to ensure the Destruction Power evenly contaminated every inch of the Xin Wang Liang's tissue, annihilating as much as possible.

Under his lightning-fast offensive, the entire upper body of the Xin Wang Liang, including its sword, was hacked into nothingness; that was something even the power of a Sword Saint could not recover.

When Tang Zhao turned to hack at the lower body, he saw that the lower body had already run far away.

Tang Zhao was not surprised—the Xin Wang Liang only looked like a human; it didn't even have organs, so why distinguish between upper and lower body? It looked like it could escape even without a head, with only two legs left.

It wasn't impossible to hack both sides at once earlier; one slash here, one slash there, sharing the rain and dew equally, ensuring not even two legs would be left.

But it would have been difficult to concentrate power to thoroughly annihilate a portion of the tissue; it would only have been minced more evenly. In that case, the Fragments would still have been able to cling together.

It is better to break one of the enemy's fingers than to injure all ten; Tang Zhao naturally understood this principle.

However, after concentrating his energy to annihilate one part of the power, could he let the other parts off the hook?

Of course not!

Having come with a mission, the only thing Tang Zhao could do was to thoroughly annihilate it.

He pursued without hesitation, because within the range of Illumination, his speed surpassed all existences, almost equivalent to teleportation, so he caught up easily and then slashed again.

Slashed into two halves, those two halves ran off in different directions before they even hit the ground; although each had only one leg, their speed remained incredibly fast.

Tang Zhao followed the same prescription, continuing to pursue, slash, and annihilate, squeezing oil out of a toad. Naturally, when the slashing was halfway through, the thigh and calf also ran off separately; Tang Zhao swept with his sword, first splitting them into four pieces, then grabbing the largest one and fiercely annihilating it. In the end, he thoroughly annihilated most of the thigh, then chased after the entire foot that had run away.

His principle was to chase the largest piece and thoroughly annihilate it—if the Xin Wang Liang seized the opportunity to escape separately when he struck the first blow, he would choose the largest piece among them again, until one whole piece was thoroughly annihilated by him, never neglecting one thing at the expense of another.

This efficiency could not be called high; the Xin Wang Liang had too many split bodies and could easily split up and flee in different directions. Tang Zhao was only one person; although his speed was incredibly fast under Illumination, as long as he swung his sword to work, he could not help but pause, giving the Xin Wang Liang a chance to run further away.

If he used certain lights, such as the Little Golden Crow, as an avatar to divide his forces, perhaps he could inflict more damage...

Dividing forces was impossible!

Tang Zhao knew very well that the power he could master was the power of the Jinwu Sword. This power was extremely great, but if one were to ask by how many orders of magnitude it exceeded the Xin Wang Liang, he could not guarantee—because this exceeded his ability to evaluate.

It was difficult for him to evaluate whether he could still crush the Xin Wang Liang once he divided his forces—he had to crush it; just being stronger than the Xin Wang Liang was not enough. Once the battle with it became a back-and-forth, and the Xin Wang Liang lost its fear of the Jinwu Sword, this unstoppable Momentum would be halted.

This Xin Wang Liang clearly already possessed a personality and emotions, and therefore would feel fear and hesitation. The fear of being split open head-on by Tang Zhao made it lose its nerve for a moment, wanting only to escape. Just like when Gui Rong had pursued the various Abyss Envoys with the power of death. Even though so many Abyss Envoys might not have been unable to win if they had joined forces, they were simply scared out of their wits and became a routed army being unilaterally hunted down.

So the current Xin Wang Liang was also a routed army. The more it split up to escape—and it could escape—the less courage it had to turn and fight, and it dared not cross swords with Tang Zhao again, only able to use the Great Method of Differentiation to save its life, rejoicing in how much more of itself had escaped.

Therefore, Tang Zhao maintained this breath, with the Momentum of a Heavenly Soldier descending to earth, annihilating as much as he could.

Let it come from many paths, I shall only go one way!

He pursued and killed all the way, chasing the Xin Wang Liang until it could not escape in time, especially within Illumination, which was light almost without shadows. Except for the Xin Wang Liang's true body, it could find no other Shadow to take refuge in or connect with, so its power decreased rather than increased. It moved forward, gathering other scattered shadows and reshaping itself into the form it favored, then continued to flee.

This process of reshaping was very similar to its movements when it reclaimed the Yingyuan into its body, but at that time, how high-spirited it had been, intending to sweep away a few ignorant things in one go, a stark contrast to its current flight in defeat.

But fortunately, the way out was right before its eyes.

It had reached the boundary of the Illumination Sword Technique.

Back then, Tang Zhao had drawn a boundary with one sword, and Illumination had formed a sword Momentum, covering a large area of territory; this sword Momentum range was actually limited.

Compared to ordinary Sword Techniques, that range was actually very large, but compared to the great Momentum created and managed by a proper Sword Deity like the Yingyuan for over a hundred years, this range was not even one-tenth of it. The rest was the ordinary space of the former Yingyuan, which had been drained of power; the Xin Wang Liang could see the dim colors outside the brilliance.

That was not its territory, but it was not the Jinwu's territory either; once it reached there, everything would be better, right?

Outside, it could even release its own form again and return to the sword Momentum.

The reason it had chosen to shrink the Yingyuan and shape a single form before was because it judged that doing so would make its offensive power stronger.

Clenching a fist is, of course, conducive to attacking.

At that time, it was on the offensive, thinking about how to injure the enemy, so that decision could be considered reasonable.

But the first punch hadn't been thrown, and it had been beaten senseless head-on; its confidence in this form plummeted instantly, and it already felt that the decision to shape itself that way had been a mistake.

This path was a dead end; it was better to go back to the old ways.

The reason it did not open its sword Momentum on the spot was that this was the center of someone else's sword Momentum. Although one cannot simply distinguish between the superiority of sword Momentums, and they can merge with each other, or collide and strangle, and it is even difficult to thoroughly determine a winner, that is only when each has established their sword Momentum and stood their ground in their own territory; only then does equal attack make sense. It is like the Momentum of water and fire; it is said that water can overcome fire, but if the fire is large and the water is small, it is not impossible for the fire to evaporate the water entirely.

But if one unfolds one's own sword Momentum from scratch in someone else's sword Momentum, it is like dripping water into fire, or lighting a fire in water; that is too stimulating. Unless it is an absolute crushing like the Jinwu Sword against the Dazai, otherwise it is just a "fuel-adding" tactic, purely courting death.

Now that the Xin Wang Liang had lost its confidence, it naturally did not have the self-assurance to crush its opponent as soon as it released its sword Momentum. It was thinking of returning to the sword Momentum after getting out, at least to stand in an invincible position—I have so many shadows, how can you kill them with one sword? Release the sword Momentum and grind against each other? That would take a long time to grind. Let's just fight a war of attrition. It was the landlord; it would have the advantage in the end.

Seeing the edge, the Xin Wang Liang's mood improved; the shadows gathered more and more, turning back into the full-bodied appearance of Dongjun, and it stepped out of the Illumination Domain one step ahead—

"Sizzle!"

"Ah—"

The foot that stepped out was like it had been extended into molten steel, immediately melting into blue smoke!

Destruction Power!

On the periphery of the Illumination sword Momentum, there was actually a layer of Destruction Power, thin as the chocolate layer on the outside of a candy, or like the wide-open mouth of a hunter, specifically waiting for an unsuspecting prey to take the bait.

This was a sneak attack!

The Illumination sword Momentum had no direct lethality, while the Destruction sword Momentum looked exactly the same as Illumination on the outside; it was just a single layer, specifically waiting to ambush those who saw the exit and were full of hope. Even a veteran would be fooled, let alone this newborn Xin Wang Liang, which could almost be said to be in its infancy!

Having been ambushed once, even though that Destruction layer was not wide and it should have been able to pass if it pushed hard—it would just be a matter of peeling off another layer of skin—it seemed to be the last straw that broke the Xin Wang Liang's heart.

"This is really... too much!"

"How could you bully me like this? What do you take me for?"

It boiled over, and the appearance of Ju Dongjun began to disintegrate, turning into a pitch-black monster of an unclear shape: "A guy whose strength is not worth mentioning, relying on a good sword to bully me everywhere. You Humans are just relying on the help of swords—don't I have any? I have plenty!"

"I don't want to be human anymore!"

In an instant, the monster opened its mouth, and sword after sword was spat out from within.

Those were all the swords the Xin Wang Liang had confiscated back in the day, sunk deep in the Yingyuan. Although many Sword Guests had died, the shadows had cut off all connections, allowing the swords to maintain their original swords and Sword Images; that was how the Abyss Envoys were born.

Although the original Abyss Envoys were all gone and those swords had dimmed, returning to the state of having no Sword Guest and being unusable, the Xin Wang Liang had many treasures. The reason it hadn't brought them all out to create Abyss Envoys was that it discovered those Abyss Envoys were useless; either the quality was problematic, or the brains were problematic, or both were problematic, so it had called a halt to the manufacturing.

The swords remaining in the depths of Yingyuan were still vast in number—yes, one could say vast. Because Wangliang Mountain was famous for its Sword Washing Seed, and the by-product White-haired Swordsman numbered in the thousands, even counting those that had died and sunk into Yingyuan, it was truly a vast amount.

The swords that Wangliang spat out were all powerful, each one crystalline and lustrous, each with its own profound mysteries. It extended many hands, grabbing one with each, and danced them through the air. In this way, although its head and face were still those of a monster, it looked overall like some kind of sea creature.

Tang Zhao had by this time finished eliminating the parts it had left behind and hurried over; seeing the tentacle monster that had transformed into swords, he found it somewhat amusing and said, "Very well, if that is how you are going to strike, then I will not be polite."

Compared to the countless hands of Wangliang, Tang Zhao only had two hands.

It just so happened that he had two swords.