Chapter 514: Astonishment and Head-on Bombardment

The instant he saw that black-robed figure, Jie Ming’s mind completely focused, taut like a fully drawn bowstring.

All stray thoughts, doubts, and the desire to finish off the fleeing enemies were forcibly suppressed. In his eyes, only the target radiating overwhelming sixth-ring pressure remained.

The life-and-death confrontation with the [Annihilation Hand], one that had nearly scattered his soul, had already etched an indelible wariness of sixth-ring wizards deep into his bones.

Facing this unknown powerhouse, Jie Ming had no leisure for “probing” or holding back.

In the flash of a thought, the twelve Trigram Fire Floating Cannons moved according to his will.

Two of them slightly adjusted their angles. Dark-golden “continuous irradiation” beams swept through like the scythe of the Grim Reaper, slicing across the last few enemy wizards still trying to flee into the distance.

Screams cut off abruptly. Several wisps of rapidly dissipating cyan smoke appeared in the air.

The remaining ten floating cannons’ muzzles suddenly blazed with intense light!

Ten beams of Trigram Fire Divine Light shot from the barrels and converged with pinpoint precision in midair.

Jie Ming’s vast spiritual power forcibly guided and constrained these ten streams of annihilating energy, compressing and fusing them again across an extremely short distance!

Hum!!!

Space let out a groan as if it could no longer bear the burden.

A beam only as thick as a thumb—its color a profound darkness like condensed black sun, yet edged with blinding white-hot patterns—suddenly took shape!

Wherever it passed, light was devoured, and space exhibited a subtle twisting collapse inward toward the beam.

Silent yet carrying an absolute resolve to pierce through everything, the beam shot straight toward the vital point at the chest of the black-robed figure a hundred li away!

The moment the beam fired, Jie Ming’s pupils locked onto the target, ready to observe any response.

However…

He felt as though his vision had experienced a brief “frame skip.”

One moment, the black-robed figure still hovered in midair, dark-red gaze fixed on him.

The next moment, the opponent’s right arm seemed to blur slightly—and his palm was already raised, held level in front of his chest.

And that converged beam, produced by the full power of ten floating cannons and capable of instantly shattering an ordinary sixth-ring wizard’s defense, silently vanished right in front of the raised palm.

It was as if it had been fired into an absolute point of nothingness. Not even the slightest trace of leaking energy remained; it simply disappeared completely into thin air.

Jie Ming’s heart clenched violently. A chill raced up his spine to the crown of his head.

But the key point was not how the opponent had neutralized the attack.

Why had this enemy raised his hand?

Why was the position of that palm precisely in the path of the beam?

Could it be… he could react to light itself?!

The shock of this possibility struck Jie Ming even harder than the fact that his attack had been dispelled.

The speed of light was the ultimate limit of information transmission in the material plane.

An attack traveling at the speed of light would cover a hundred kilometers in only 0.0003 seconds!

To “react” to a light-speed attack meant the opponent’s perception, thought, and movement had already touched—or even surpassed—the boundary of certain physical laws!

This was absolutely not something an ordinary sixth-ring wizard could achieve!

Yet Jie Ming forcibly suppressed the instant surge of alarm. His battle instincts and analytical habits kicked into overdrive simultaneously.

Soon, under the high-speed operation of his mind, he noticed a crucial detail: the two beams he had diverted to clean up the miscellaneous soldiers had not been intercepted.

With the terrifying capability the opponent had seemingly demonstrated—to react to light-speed attacks—erasing those two beams would have been effortless.

Unless… he was so cruel that he deliberately allowed his subordinates to die?

But the expressions of delighted surprise on those ambushers’ faces when he arrived could not be faked.

A commander so ruthless that he disregarded the lives of his subordinates would hardly inspire that kind of “the savior has come” anticipation in a moment of crisis.

Therefore, the more likely explanation was—he could not truly react to light-speed attacks across his entire field of view!

His ability was perhaps limited to a certain range around his body, using some unknown method to deal with “light-speed attacks that entered that zone.”

“Is it a localized alteration of time flow? A preset spatial curvature trap? Or ultra-high-tier predictive perception…?”

In the spark between thoughts, several possibilities flashed through Jie Ming’s mind, but none could be confirmed with certainty.

He needed more data.

He also knew he had to conduct further probing immediately.

However, the enemy would not give him time for calm analysis.

In that very “instant” while Jie Ming’s thoughts raced, the opponent’s counterattack arrived like a shadow.

The black-robed wizard simply raised his other hand. His index finger pointed lightly toward Jie Ming’s direction.

In an instant, surging fire elements were mobilized, forming a sea of flames in the sky that resembled an ocean.

Following the motion of the wizard’s finger, the sea of fire in the sky surged toward Jie Ming like a tsunami crashing down!

Yet although the scale of the fire sea was enormous, in Jie Ming’s perception, the energy intensity it contained… was not particularly high.

At the very least, it was far inferior to the palm strike of the [Annihilation Hand] that had carried multiple annihilating forces.

This attack seemed imposing in momentum, but aside from its exaggerated area of effect, it was essentially just ordinary elemental mobilization.

The Return to Ruins Armor should be able to block it easily.

Jie Ming subconsciously judged.

He could sense that the Return to Ruins Armor domain was operating stably, preparing to absorb and convert this “low-intensity” energy impact.

But the moment the flames were about to touch the invisible domain of the Return to Ruins Armor, every hair on Jie Ming’s body suddenly stood on end!

The intuition for lethal danger, honed through countless brushes with death, struck his soul like a red-hot brand!

“Wrong!”

He didn’t even have time to think about what was wrong. His body had already reacted on pure instinct.

Within his inner cave-heaven, a specially prepared witch tool—encapsulating the complete activation rune array of the Return to Ruins Armor—was instantly triggered!

Another completely new layer of Return to Ruins Armor domain unfolded almost zero-distance inside the old domain!

And at almost the exact moment the new domain was about to fully deploy—

Crack!!!

A faint yet soul-shaking sound—like the crisp shattering of glass—rang clearly in Jie Ming’s soul.

He watched helplessly as the first layer of Return to Ruins Armor domain—which should have stood unshakable and easily absorbed this “low-intensity” attack—shattered into countless pale-golden motes of light the instant it contacted the sea of fire, completely collapsing and dissipating!

The destruction of the Return to Ruins Armor came without warning and without reason!

Immediately afterward, the follow-up torrent of energy bullets slammed solidly into the newly deployed second layer of Return to Ruins Armor, producing dull, drum-like explosions.

The invisible domain didn’t even ripple violently; it merely showed some erratic waves before easily withstanding the impact, absorbing and converting all the remaining energy.

Jie Ming’s heart pounded wildly in his chest. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back.

How was this possible?!

The energy intensity of the opponent’s attack clearly fell far short of the limit he had tested for the Return to Ruins Armor.

Compared to the attack from the Annihilation Hand, this one could even be described as “negligible.”

Yet this “feeble” attack had, in an incomprehensible way, directly shattered the Return to Ruins Armor!

The feeling of that shattering was not overload, not erosion—it was more like a denial at the level of rules!

As if what that finger pointed out was not merely energy, but carried an “armor-breaking” characteristic specifically targeted at “energy absorption and conversion type domains,” one that ignored intensity entirely!

If not for the crisis intuition from his body-forging method prompting him to preemptively add a second layer of Return to Ruins Armor, that single strike would have landed solidly, forcing him to eat the full follow-up barrage of elemental bombardment!

With his current physical resilience, he would have died without question!

This enemy… was even more dangerous than the [Annihilation Hand]!

Jie Ming’s inner alarm instantly rose to maximum.

A hundred li away in the void, beneath the black-robed sixth-ring wizard’s hood, the dark-red pupils flickered slightly. A nearly inaudible soft “Huh?” escaped him.

Though his earlier attack had not been at full power, the rule characteristic it carried was enough to shatter the defenses of most sixth-ring wizards—and even penetrate many seventh-ring defenses.

Yet this little fifth-ring fellow… had actually blocked it?

Although the method of defense seemed somewhat opportunistic, it was worth noting that many sixth-ring wizards couldn’t block even this seemingly ordinary strike using opportunistic means.

Jie Ming’s response finally made this wizard take him seriously. Very quickly, he searched through his memory and found the corresponding information.

“This spiritual force signature and elemental fluctuation… very similar to the remnants left on Kallon and Alice.”

The black-robed wizard’s expression grew slightly more solemn.

In that case, the one who had dealt with that madman [Annihilation Hand] was this little fellow in front of him—who appeared to be only fifth-ring, yet possessed extraordinarily strange methods.

To be able to kill the [Annihilation Hand], he indeed had unique aspects.

In this first clash of offense and defense, both sides had immediately sensed how troublesome and unfathomably deep the other was.

The brief shock and evaluation were completed almost simultaneously in their high-speed thinking.

The next moment, cold light exploded in both their eyes. No more holding back!

Hum!!!

Behind Jie Ming, the twelve Trigram Fire Floating Cannons emitted a piercing resonance!

The runes on their muzzles fully lit up. No longer pursuing extreme convergence, they instead unleashed dark-golden Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light at the highest possible frequency in a frenzied torrent!

These beams no longer maintained “continuous irradiation” but switched to a storm-like burst-fire pattern, blanketing every direction around the black-robed wizard—head, limbs, torso, and even vast swathes of space above, below, left, and right!

Jie Ming wanted to test whether the opponent’s suspected “light-speed reaction” ability covered his entire body or was limited to a specific region or posture!

At the same time, the witch arrays engraved on his legs suddenly blazed. [Great Void Step] activated!

His physical body phased, producing high-frequency resonance with the surrounding environmental energy.

His entire figure turned into a hard-to-track pale-golden afterimage, retreating backward at extreme speed along irregular, sharply angled trajectories, desperately increasing the distance from the black-robed wizard!

Against an enemy who might “react to light-speed” and whose attacks carried bizarre “armor-breaking” properties, close combat was absolute foolishness.

Maintaining distance, using long-range firepower saturation and mobility to kite—this was the wise choice.

Meanwhile, inside his inner cave-heaven, the specially prepared “Return to Ruins Armor activation witch tools” began to be triggered at a steady rhythm.

As soon as one invisible domain fluctuated from taking an attack, the next layer quietly formed either inside or just outside the previous one—like layering shell after shell of eggs around his body.

Although he couldn’t yet understand the principle behind the opponent’s “rule-breaking” characteristic, Jie Ming had confirmed one thing: the Return to Ruins Armor itself could withstand that strange power!

As long as he kept refreshing the layers, he could maintain effective defense!

The cost was merely the rapid consumption of the reserves in his inner cave-heaven.

But all the preparations Jie Ming had made before the war began were precisely for a situation like this!

Facing Jie Ming’s sudden explosive storm of firepower and high-speed maneuvering, the corners of the black-robed wizard’s mouth beneath his hood seemed to curve into an icy arc.

He did not choose to close in and pursue.

Confronting the barrage of Trigram Fire Divine Light bullets coming from all directions at extreme speed, his response appeared almost “casual.”

His figure remained rooted in place. Only his hands moved in front of him, seemingly slowly tracing strange trajectories as though plucking invisible strings.

With every motion, a swath of incoming dark-golden beams silently vanished at some invisible interface before him, as if plunging into a bottomless black hole.

His movements were fluid and precise, as though he could foresee the path of every beam—yet they carried a bizarre sense of coordination that was not “reaction” but “synchronization.”

At the same time, his counterattack never paused.

His ten fingers moved as though playing an invisible piano. Each light tap unleashed torrents of tens of thousands of energy bullets!

After discovering that the little fellow could resist his rule power, he deliberately chose energy bullets—a simple release method with extremely high attack frequency.

At the level of a sixth-ring wizard, each casting round could release tens of millions of energy bullets.

Under his deliberate control, some energy bullets no longer pursued maximum speed. Each round was divided into dozens of waves, forming a dense, continuous metal-storm-like barrage.

It swept toward the direction of Jie Ming’s madly fleeing, constantly changing afterimage, blanketing the sky!

Every wave of attack could easily shatter a layer of Return to Ruins Armor, with the next wave following immediately behind—leaving Jie Ming no choice but to continuously expend reserves to maintain that fragile “eggshell defense”!

Boom boom boom boom!!!

Dark-golden Trigram Fire Divine Light clashed, annihilated, and intertwined madly with dark-gray barrages in the sky above the gray-white Gobi.

One side was precise light-speed sniping; the other was an overwhelming flood of energy.

Jie Ming’s figure flickered through the gaps in the barrage like a phantom, his floating cannons firing at full power.

At this moment, the Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light no longer served only as an attack.

Under Jie Ming’s control, every shot became enormously thick, clearing all energy bullets along its trajectory and carving out blank paths through the air.

The black-robed wizard stood unshakable as a boulder. As his hands danced, he effortlessly neutralized every beam that penetrated the barrage, while simultaneously drowning and plowing Jie Ming’s entire space again and again with a near-infinite rain of energy bullets!

In an instant, the earth wailed and space trembled.

From the very moment they met, both sides had launched an unimaginably ferocious exchange of blows!