Chapter 775: Faster and Stronger

A sneak attack!

This sword strike, coming from a horizontal angle, was extremely fast!

Using the golden thunder above as cover, the Emperor flashed down to the lower level at the speed of Heavenly Thunder, launching an attack from the flank.

This tactic could be said to have no technical depth; it was the simplest form of feinting to the east while attacking in the west, with its entire essence being the word "fast." As long as one is fast, one can catch the opponent off guard.

The speed of thunder—need more be said?

Added to that is the National Fortune outside of the thunder; setting aside Imperial Might, National Fortune is omnipresent. Theoretically, within the borders of the Great Jin, there is a National Fortune bonus. Furthermore, if one views National Fortune as a substance, it can even act like water or fire, serving as coordinates for an Escape Technique.

In other words, a flashing Sword Technique can use National Fortune as a medium to achieve a leap. It transforms movement directly into teleportation!

Therefore, unless there was a prior prediction, this surprise attack by the Emperor was impossible to dodge!

The thunder arrived, the sword arrived!

Yet at this very moment, the Huayuan monster suddenly moved, its speed equally inconceivable, moving smoothly without even a motion of exerting force—it was actually sliding over the grass.

To an outsider, that lush green grass was a messy, muddy wilderness, or even a thicket of sharp thorns, but to it, it seemed like a flat boulevard, or even like an ice surface, completely devoid of resistance; it was almost perpetual motion, never to stop again.

With just this movement, plus its thin frame bending desperately downward, nearly ninety degrees parallel to the ground, it barely dodged the golden thunder. The thunder grazed past a few inches above its head, only knocking off that rather large conical hat on its head.

The conical hat burned in the air, swallowed by the Thunder Light in an instant, revealing the monster's strange, full face.

Compared to wearing the conical hat and revealing half a face that was seventy percent human, creating a human-like uncanny valley effect, its face was actually less human-like once fully exposed. Its head was flat, completely devoid of hair, and unlike a human cranium, it resembled a whetstone, appearing to lack sufficient brain capacity, while those ears, besides being pointed, also appeared too large in comparison to the head.

Faced with such strangeness, no one, including the Emperor, would be inclined to think it was some kind of freakish human anymore, only assuming it was a monster standing on two legs. The Gaoyuan Marquis in the sky, however, would be reminded of the settings in certain stories.

Seeing its appearance, the Emperor paused slightly, but did not stop; instead, his body followed the thunder, the thunder became his silhouette, and he surged forward again.

The monster did not know if it was prepared to counterattack; it seemed unable to switch from offense to defense, but its speed did not stop. That patch of grass was truly its paradise, not hindering any of its movements, and sliding did not reduce its speed. Whenever it exerted force, there would be an acceleration, and the accumulation of acceleration would push its speed to an inconceivable level, even one that thunder could not catch up to.

At the same time, the entire Huayuan began to move. All the plants grew as if they had gone mad, their leaves and grass stems shooting toward this side like the sharpest swords. Huge flowers opened their petals, some extending their flower necks to use their petals as teeth, biting over like mad dogs, while others opened their buds in place, and countless visible and invisible powders permeated the air, turning the already suffocating environment filled with carbon dioxide into a place wreathed in toxic gas.

Even more terrifyingly, the earthworms, grasshoppers, aphids, snails... and all sorts of massive insects among the grass rushed over like madmen at this moment. Even the bird perched on the top of the pavilion revealed its ferocious long beak, flew high into the air, and then dove from the heights, joining the main force to besiege the Emperor. Although it was impossible to achieve the feat of "being hunted by all the snails in the world," being hunted by a garden full of snails was possible.

Only those sickles, teacups, and buckets remained motionless in place, not because they could not move, but because there was no need to yet; the swarms of grass insects were already large enough. Those implements swayed slightly in the air, appearing to be a natural oscillation caused by the wind, but it was more of an intimidation.

When all is said and done, this is the Momentum of the Huayuan master; it is its home field! Everything dead or alive is subject to its command; it can do whatever it pleases.

Once trapped in a Sword Technique's Momentum, even a Sword Immortal of the same level would be passive, so a Sword Immortal would not easily allow themselves to be trapped in an opponent's Momentum. Even if they were to go in, they would open their own Momentum, spreading out their Sword Essence and rules to invade head-on and duel at the level of a Sword Immortal.

Could it be that the Emperor, this pseudo-Sword Immortal, does not understand this?

He actually does understand. Now that he has the instruction manual for his cheat, he is no longer purely groping in the dark. Although the tactics are decided by himself, he is also following the rules of a Sword Immortal to lay out his Momentum. Once he enters, wherever his physical body passes, golden traces are left behind, as if a golden filter had been applied to the vision of the Huayuan.

That is not golden mist, nor is it merely materialized National Fortune, but genuine golden thunder. Wisps of golden thunder began to permeate the space; they are extremely thin and fine, but omnipresent. They are the manifestation of the Momentum of the Heaven-Walking Seal. Wherever the Emperor travels, golden thunder descends, at least ensuring that within his trajectory, it is no longer just the Huayuan's Momentum, but the Superposition of two types of Momentum. It is currently night, and although the gold is very thin, it lights up with a dim, brilliant glow, and one can see the difference at a glance.

Wherever the golden thunder descends, the Huayuan monster can no longer act unscrupulously, because that is already a contested zone of Sword Technique Momentum. Whether it be earthworms or snails, anything that rushes into the area covered by the golden thunder has countless bolts of thunder explode off its body with a crackle. Although they are not instantly turned into powder like the golden thunder striking the summit, they are trapped in the encirclement of Thunder Light, struggling to move forward like some sacrificial victim in the midst of a Sword Immortal's strangulation.

Although the Emperor's Sword Technique Momentum is a latecomer, it does not fall behind compared to the Huayuan's Sword Technique Momentum that was deployed first! This is the foundation of the Human World, which is inherently strong among Sword Immortals and cannot be easily suppressed.

However, that is useless. The Emperor's Sword Technique Momentum only covers the Emperor's own path of travel, which is the route he is currently pursuing and hacking at the Huayuan monster; only where he passes is there Momentum, with none on either side. This makes his Momentum completely unable to be called "Great Momentum," let alone fully confront the other. He can only ensure that no monster backstabs him from behind, and cannot even block the surprise attacks of various monsters from the sides or rear-oblique angles.

However, all the miscellaneous objects are temporarily unable to catch up to him.

Perhaps he is too focused, only concerned that the sneak attack did not succeed, so he must pursue and kill it strike by strike; or perhaps he is naive and does not know the importance of laying out Sword Technique Momentum, so after the pursuit, he cannot do anything else. But regardless, his pursuit is not a case of "looking at the ocean and sighing."

The speed of the Huayuan master has not decreased but increased, continuously accelerating, gradually becoming so fast that its silhouette is blurred, almost breaking the limits of reaction and thought. Yet, even at such extreme speed, it still cannot shake off the Emperor. Its acceleration is very graceful, seeming not to take any effort at all, always staying one step faster than the limit of the Emperor's surprise attack, seemingly toying with this pursuer. However, one can tell from its increasingly ferocious face that it is by no means relaxed or comfortable.

Because the Emperor's speed is also getting faster and faster, also constantly applying acceleration, and there is no visible upper limit.

This is truly hellish; the Emperor is not only pursuing and killing, but also constantly striking with his sword, and every strike is at full power. This kind of attack, which gives force forward, should logically have to delay his own figure.

But it does not; the Emperor seems to be infinitely accelerating as if someone is pushing him from behind, with no ceiling, and his power is also getting stronger and stronger!

Previously, when his attacks were dodged by the Huayuan master and swept into the surroundings, they only cut down a patch of grass. But as his speed became faster and faster, those Sword Techniques that failed to strike the Huayuan master leaked outward, and the area swept by them became larger and larger. After being swept, those plant monsters had no power to resist and were flattened like dry wood being snapped. The open space left by the Emperor's sword strikes and the golden trajectory he left behind caused irreversible destruction in this huge garden, from small to large, with increasingly stronger destructive power.

The speed is continuously increasing, and the power is actually increasing as well, and it is one strike stronger than the last, one moment faster than the next. This kind of increase even has a sense of linear growth, as if there is no upper limit at all, and he can keep growing as long as he keeps pursuing. This kind of growth makes the gap between the pursuer and the pursued increasingly obvious.

Although both are accelerating and the distance has not shortened for the moment, the Emperor's Son of Heaven Sword is becoming sharper and more unstoppable, and sooner or later it will transcend the barrier of distance and pierce directly into the heart.

This is completely contrary to reason.

Not to mention seeking physical laws in a subjective sword, the Emperor's current fighting style is completely different from the State Preceptor's back then, and thinking about it is shocking. Not to mention the monster master crazily sliding on the ground in the garden, the Gaoyuan Marquis in the sky is truly shocked. She keenly perceives: the Emperor has actually used the Heaven-Walking Seal to re-establish rules for himself in a short time, and this kind of rule has feedback almost immediately, capable of being put into actual combat. This simply makes one mistakenly believe that establishing Sword Technique Momentum is a very easy thing.

However, from ancient times to the present, there has indeed been no easier way to obtain the strength of a Sword Immortal than the Emperor's. Not only can the power accumulated over a hundred years be taken directly, but the combat experience and the establishment of Sword Technique Momentum are also taught hand-in-hand by the original owner of the power, which is no worse than a direct infusion of power. Rather than saying the Emperor is a genius growing at lightning speed, it is better to say that the Grand Ancestor who designed this process was the top genius. He is worthy of being the powerhouse who established the dynasty; that he did not go further might be because he spent all his energy on blessing his descendants.

Just as the Gaoyuan Marquis was observing the process of a new Sword Technique Momentum forming in the high sky and gaining some additional reference, the Huayuan monster, which could only flee passively after losing the initiative to the Emperor's surprise attack within its own Momentum, finally could not hold back. While passing a patch of grass, it suddenly reached out its hand—

And grabbed a sickle stuck in the mud!

Backhand, slash!

A red light slashed back, tracing a mark like a new moon!

That red light could not be said to be very powerful, but it was a force of counterattack. This was the Huayuan master drawing out power to counterattack, and, it was using the original implements in the garden.

The Emperor's offensive was hindered for a moment, and the full acceleration experienced a stutter.

Almost in an instant, those implements placed in various positions—sickles, teacups, buckets, and the like—were completely mobilized, flying toward the Huayuan master. Although there appeared to be only a few scattered pieces, they moved like a sudden rain, arriving beside the Huayuan monster with a rustle.

It finally used the last power it could openly mobilize!