Boom!!!
Two fists carrying completely different powers collided fiercely in the air!
On the surface of Jie Mingâs fist, the pale golden spiritual light of the Body Forging Method intertwined violently with the lingering traces of the invisible [Imaginary] Law. They annihilated each other madly, erupting into a muffled thunderous roar!
Pure physical strength confronted the lawâs erosion head-on. The overflowing power transformed into visible ring-shaped shockwaves that scraped away another thick layer of the already riddled gobi rock below, grinding it into fine powder!
To conserve budget, the black-robed wizard no longer flickered and âflashedâ about. Instead, he advanced with an eerie stride that seemed to skip parts of the acceleration process, pressing in like a ghost at close range!
Every one of his attacks was concise and sharp to the extreme!
And each strike carried the feeling of a âpredetermined result.â
Often the moment he made a move, the result of âhittingâ or âproducing a certain effectâ would partially manifest, making defense extremely difficult!
Jie Mingâs pupils contracted sharply. The Great Void Step operated at full power!
His figure turned into a golden rainbow streak, executing all kinds of illogical dodges and blocks within a tiny space.
His fists and feet were equally heavy. Every strike contained the terrifying physical power tempered by the Body Forging Method and the vast Spiritual Qi of a Spirit Transformation Stage cultivator.
In the instant of another fist-palm clashâŠ
A highly compressed ball of Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light exploded at the point of contact. Dark golden light detonated violently.
The black-robed wizardâs brows furrowed slightly. Although he had already defined the result of âcompleting the defense,â the edge of his robe was still singed with a charred mark.
Jie Mingâs eyes brightened.
His combat instincts sharpened madly at the edge of death. Those eyes, almost dyed red with blood, immediately caught this detail.
This was the flaw!
As long as he attacked frequently enough and forced the opponent to exhaust his budget per unit of time as quickly as possible, he could inflict effective damage!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
But before he could feel any joy, a series of crisp bone-cracking sounds entered his ears, making oneâs scalp tingle!
This exchange caused Jie Mingâs arm to explode section by section.
From finger bones to wrist bones, from forearm to scapulaâevery single bone shattered completely.
Flesh turned into a mist of blood filling the sky!
Only white bone fragments remained, barely holding their shape through the connection of fascia.
Yet in the next instant, the broken bones in this arm automatically healed. Flesh and skin grew over them at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The black-robed wizardâs figure paused slightly, then attacked again.
Facing the palm that was once more inches away, Jie Ming raised his other arm without hesitation to block.
During the block, he twisted his elbow half an instant in advance, shifting the impact point from the vulnerable joint to the thicker forearm.
Crack!
This time, only the ulna of the forearm shattered!
Pale golden regenerative spiritual light surged over almost simultaneously with the break. The speed of reconnection was a full half-beat faster than before!
The black-robed wizardâs offensive remained airtight like a storm, but the âwillow-fluffâ feeling of fragility that could be destroyed at any moment was rapidly fading from Jie Mingâs figure. In its place was an extreme, taut resilience!
Boom boom boom boom!!!
Continuous explosions thundered across the gray-white wasteland!
Dark golden light, invisible law ripples, and shockwaves born from pure power clashes turned the entire area into a deadly zone of rampant energy!
The earth wailed as it continuously sank, shattered, and melted. The sky was dyed into bizarre, chaotic colors by turbulent energy flows!
From a distance, it looked like a scene of apocalypse!
Jie Ming discovered that this black-robed wizard was also an absolute master of body techniques and close-quarters combat!
His moves were exquisitely subtle, his force exertion unpredictable, and his control over his body had reached a shocking degree.
Combined with the [Imaginary] effects, every strike was lethally threatening!
âAs expectedâŠâ Jie Ming understood in his heart.
As a law that could âskip the process and reach the result directly,â the [Imaginary] power was indeed most suited to two extreme combat styles: one was, large-scale âresult definition,â such as directly causing a certain area to collapse or a certain group of targets to annihilate.
The second was the current close-range instant kill!
The Imaginary Law could realize the complex result of âthe attack hits and causes maximum damageâ with the highest efficiency!
With every clash, Jie Mingâs arms, legs, feet, even scapulae and ribs would have their bones shattered and flesh disintegrate under the enormous force and the erosion of the [Imaginary] effect!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The sound of breaking bones never ceased!
Agonizing pain surged against every nerve like tidal waves, nearly drowning his consciousness!
ButâŠ
The adaptive evolution of the Body Forging Method displayed its terrifying power at this moment!
The shattered flesh had yet to fully scatter, the broken bones had yet to completely separate, when a vast surge of life force came rushing madly!
Flesh wriggled and intertwined like living creatures!
Bones mended and reshaped at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Often in the blink of an eye, a heavy injury that would incapacitate an ordinary fifth-ring wizard had already recovered completely!
The newly grown tissue even seemed denser in microscopic structure, gaining another fraction of resistance against the [Imaginary] power!
This allowed Jie Ming to fight like an tireless, continuously self-strengthening combat machine, engaging the black-robed wizard in the most brutal exchange of injuries!
Severed arms regrew, shattered bones restored, flesh reshapedâŠ
However, as the fight continued, the excitement in Jie Mingâs heart gradually cooled. His brows furrowed slightly.
Although he had pulled the situation back, he had now encountered a new bottleneck.
The evolution of the Body Forging Method mainly enhanced survival and endurance capabilities.
His fists could barely withstand the opponentâs attacks without complete annihilation, but his own attacksâwhether the physical strikes carrying immense force or the close-range bursts of Trigram Fire Divine Light and spatial tearsâhad almost negligible effect when they landed on the black-robed wizard!
Clearly, after discovering that he could not quickly disintegrate Jie Ming with the [Imaginary] power in a short time, the black-robed wizard had swiftly adjusted his strategy.
He allocated more of his available âbudgetâ preferentially to the defensive side!
Jie Mingâs fist, brimming with Spiritual Qi, slammed into the opponentâs chest. The force was like a mud ox entering the sea, completely absorbed by an invisible barrier!
A point-blank exploding Trigram Fire Divine Light vanished silently before it could even touch the opponentâs skin!
Once the âbudgetâ tilted toward defense, the flaw Jie Ming had previously discovered quickly lost effectiveness. The black-robed wizard seemed to have donned a conceptual âabsolute defense armorâ!
Although his attack frequency and instantaneous threat had decreased somewhat, it made him almost invincible!
âTch⊠troublesome,â Jie Ming thought with secret annoyance.
He could endure, he could fight, he could recoverâŠ
But he just couldnât break through the defense!
On the other side, while steadily parrying Jie Mingâs storm-like and ever-changing attacks, the black-robed wizardâs heart filled with growing astonishment and confusion, sprouting like wild grass!
This minor wizard before him had far too many unreasonable aspects!
Those defenses, attack spells, summons, and bizarre movement methods that surpassed his current rank could be set aside for nowâŠ
That monstrous physique capable of withstanding the erosion of [Imaginary] power without being destroyed could also be temporarily ignoredâŠ
What he found most incomprehensible was Jie Mingâs seemingly endless stamina and recovery resources!
They had been engaged in this high-intensity close-quarters combatâwhere every strike was powerful enough to shatter mountains and split the earthâfor nearly ten minutes!
Ten minutes was very short for mortals.
But for wizards whose neural reaction speed increased exponentially with rank, every second was stretched extremely long, enough to complete dozens or even hundreds of tactical thoughts, energy mobilizations, and move variations!
From the moment the two had encountered each other, various probes, long-range attacks, eerie defense, severed arms, and evolutionâŠ
Until Jie Ming, relying on the adaptive evolution of the Body Forging Method, could resist a single strike from the black-robed wizard, the total duration had been no more than a dozen seconds. Yet after that, the two had fought for another ten minutes.
One could imagine just how intense the confrontation between both sides had been during this âlongâ ten minutes!
Even the black-robed wizard himself could barely remember how many times he had smashed and shattered Jie Mingâs body.
Arms, legs, feet, chest, even the head had all deformed and shattered under his fists and palms!
Yet every time, the opponent would recover completely in the blink of an eye, full of vigor, and charge forward again!
âJust how much biomass and energy has this guy stockpiled?!â the black-robed wizard could not help roaring inwardly.
He had used the characteristics of the [Imaginary] Law very early on to âdefineâ and destroy all the spatial storage equipment on Jie Ming that he could perceive during the fight.
Logically speaking, once a wizard lost his storage equipment, it was equivalent to cutting off his supply line!
But Jie Ming?
Where was the biomass and energy for his regeneration coming from?!
Could he have an elemental pool and biomass synthesis factory built inside his body?!
How could this possibly be something a fifth-ring wizard could achieve?!
What shocked him even more was that even he himself, during these ten minutes of high-intensity offense and defense, had already consumed a large portion of the high-grade energy crystals, rapid recovery potions, and spare wizard tool materials stored in his own spatial storage!
Maintaining high-frequency use of the [Imaginary] Lawâespecially allocating large amounts of budget to defenseâplaced enormous strain on spiritual power and specific resources!
In contrast, Jie MingâŠ
Aside from his face being somewhat pale from intense pain and consumption, his breathing was growing longer and steadier, and his eyes were becoming brighter!
There were even faint signs that the power and energy intensity of his occasional counterattacks were increasing!
âHeâs actually getting more spirited the longer he fights? What kind of monster is this?!â
The black-robed wizard felt a wave of absurdity and faint unease.
On Jie Mingâs side, he indeed felt his condition was quite good.
The energy transmission between his inner grotto-heaven and the Incense Fire Divine Dao was stable and efficient. Spiritual Qi flowed endlessly.
Under the continuous high-pressure confrontation, the evolution speed of the Body Forging Method seemed to be accelerating further!
From the initial need to sacrifice an entire arm to block a single strike, to now often only needing to suffer damage from the forearm to the palm to neutralize the exchange, the situation had shifted from him being unilaterally beaten to a mutual back-and-forth!
He could even seize opportunities to launch some effective counterattacks, forcing the opponent to expend more budget on defense!