Douluo: Manifesting the Black Abyss and White Flower at the Start-Chapter 322 - 321: Cú Chulainn Defeated

Cú Chulainn's mouth twitched uncontrollably. He shot a helpless glance at the gaping, blood-soaked wound in Xiao Wu's chest—still ghastly to behold—felt the ever-rising surge of divine power, and could only let out a bitter laugh.
Why was he always this unlucky—running into absurd opponents whose traits were utterly antithetical to his Noble Phantasm?!
Before he could react—
Boom!!!!
A godly force far surpassing anything before—so violent it could tear sky and earth—erupted from Xiao Wu's seemingly slender body like a seafloor volcano.
Her left hand, gripping the spear's shaft, burst with dazzling sea-blue divine light, forcibly pinning the crimson magic spear where it impaled her. Using it as a fulcrum, she closed the distance in a single blur.
Her right fist clenched. Vast divine power gathered upon it, as if dragging an entire furious ocean along, and in the simplest, most brutal, and utterly unavoidable manner, she hammered it into the dead center of Cú Chulainn's chest.
"Guh—!!!!"
Cú Chulainn felt an irresistible force slam into him, as if struck head-on by a falling star.
His sturdy Servant's chest caved in at a speed visible to the naked eye, the crackling of shattering bones popping like strings of firecrackers.
Blood, mixed with pulped organ fragments, geysered from his mouth.
He flew backward like a stone hurled with all one's might, like a kite with its string cut, completely out of control.
Rumble—rumble—rumble—!!!
His body smashed through several already-ruined gigantic buildings in succession, the terrible kinetic force not diminishing in the slightest, then plowed a thousand-meter-long, bottomless trench into the ground.
Everything along the way—brick, steel, even the wreckage of soul tools—was ground to ultrafine dust by the terrifying power engulfing him.
At last, with a deafening crash that shook the earth, he slammed into an enormous, preternaturally solid foundation wall and finally came to a stop.
Dust billowed skyward, shrouding the entire area.
Cú Chulainn was wedged deep into the cracked wall, unable to move. Every breath came with heart-rending pain and a mouthful of blood foam—he was clearly in a state of grievous, critical injury.
One thing left unsaid: aside from possessing heaven-defying luck that could twist fate, there's another way to counter causality reversal—having a life force so formidable and beyond common sense that even being pierced through the heart wouldn't kill you.
Xiao Wu gazed coldly toward the cloud of dust where Cú Chulainn had fallen. She slowly released her left hand from the spear, then clenched her right and yanked—the crimson magic spear was wrenched free from her chest.
The instant the tip left her body, no additional blood spilled out. Instead, a vast, gentle sea-blue divine power washed over the gruesome through-and-through wound.
A moment later, a miracle occurred—the injury that could have instantly killed any mortal, even a Titled Douluo, began writhing and knitting back together at a speed visible to the eye.
The bleeding stopped; exposed tissue and bone were swiftly reconstructed by divine power. In just a few breaths, only a faint pink scar remained—and even that was soon erased entirely by the surging divine flow. Her skin became smooth and flawless, as though never touched by harm.
As a true deity with a divine core, her form of life had long since shed the mortal and even ordinary transcendent shackle that "the heart is a fatal weakness."
The natural laws of birth and death were almost meaningless to her. A pierced heart might cause intense pain and a brief energy disruption, but it was by no means a lethal blow that could end her life.
So long as her divine core remained intact and her divine power not utterly exhausted, she could rely on that power to rapidly and almost endlessly repair her godly body—an undying form, in a certain sense.
Which is to say, Cú Chulainn had truly picked the wrong opponent this time.
His famed Noble Phantasm that reversed causality—a nightmare to countless heroes—might be a sure-kill trump against mortals and ordinary Servants.
But when facing a true deity like Xiao Wu, whose level of life utterly transcended the mundane and whose mode of existence was fundamentally different, its core kill mechanism became completely ineffective.
After all, if the "effect" of a pierced heart, forcibly fixed as the "result," could not actually produce death, then so-called causality reversal amounted to nothing more than inflicting a wound that cost the foe a bit of divine power to fix—meaningless.
Xiao Wu casually flicked the still-ominous crimson spear in her hand. The divine blood on its shaft was shaken free and evaporated by flowing sea-blue power.
Vast divine radiance ebbed and flowed around her like breath, rapidly repairing every minor injury and expenditure from the prior battle.
Once more, she fixed her icy gaze on the ruined trench where Cú Chulainn had fallen, her eyes devoid of all emotion.
Even without her memories, she retained the deity's inviolable, absolute pride by instinct.
To be wounded by a mere Servant—and in such a bizarre way—was, to her, a grave desecration. Even if she recovered immediately, she would not let him off.
Far away, having rematerialized his spear, Cú Chulainn managed to prop himself up with a struggle, coughing violently. He suddenly felt that frigid gaze lock onto him again—cold as ten thousand years of ice—and he shivered.
Clutching his entirely collapsed chest, agony drilling through him, coughing up mouthfuls of blood, he showed a bitter smile.
"This time… I've really kicked an iron wall. Big trouble…"
He had thought his Noble Phantasm's nature guaranteed victory, but never imagined his opponent simply didn't care about a pierced heart—a fatal wound for almost any being.
It seemed the battle he thought was ending had not only refused to conclude but was heading into a phase even more troublesome and perilous for him.
"Die!"
Xiao Wu snorted coldly, and the sea-blue divine power around her surged like a boiling ocean.
She faintly sensed several extremely powerful energy waves—so strong they even made her feel a twinge of dread—emanating from the direction of Huo Yuhao. Anxiety pricked her heart. She wanted to finish this opponent at once and go check.
At the same time, she felt vexed by the sudden lapse of focus she'd suffered moments ago—as if something extremely important and extremely bad was happening or about to happen. The dangling, uncontrollable urgency kindled a nameless anger in her heart—and the stubborn Lancer before her became the perfect outlet.
"Tch, am I about to be forcibly retired?"
Cú Chulainn clicked his tongue, blood flecking his lips, unwillingness and regret flashing in his eyes.
He hadn't yet had his fill of fighting the strong of this strange world; hadn't savored the fresh bloodrush and ultimate thrill of cross-world combat. He didn't want to retire so stifled and wretched.
If not for Battle Continuation barely propping up his final breath and keeping his core from immediately dissipating, that god-powered punch would likely have robbed him of all ability to act—maybe even kicked him straight out.
He knew it well—he was at his limit.
His body's damage and his remaining strength were insufficient to sustain a high-intensity fight with Xiao Wu.
He stood no chance of stopping her next, wrath-fueled assault.
If his true body were here, he might, with the near-omnipotent Primordial Runes he commanded, find a new path—maybe even reverse the battle.
But what had descended here was merely a memory-form summoned by the Holy Grail War, with power and abilities premised on the Lancer template. Even his rune sorcery's potency and versatility were greatly diminished.
Not to mention he was in a different world with different rules. How much efficacy runes—rooted in another world's system—could retain here was unknown.
It's like a tiger, king of the mountains, suddenly plunged into the boundless sea. Never mind defeating the ocean's lords—surviving the drowning depths would be fortune enough.
And a whale, sovereign of the ocean, once beached, becomes a salted fish at others' mercy. A drastic change of environment can cripple any powerhouse, even strip them of what they rely on most.
Different universes have different foundational rules and power systems.
Cú Chulainn was feeling this "climate mismatch" keenly.
Even slight differences in baseline physical constants—gravitational constant, speed of light, energy conversion efficiency—could reduce a superweapon that annihilates galaxies in one universe to untriggerable, structurally unstable scrap in another.
This was why Herta, after being summoned by Lu Jingming, did not rush to reproduce her universe-level strategic constructs that had been miracles in her original universe.
Base materials were only part of it; with Herta's capability, substitutes or synthesis could be found. The crux was the subtle differences in fundamental physical rules between the two universes.
The transcendent knowledge and blueprints she brought had to be adapted and rebuilt to "localize" before they could stabilize and achieve their intended effect here.
Thus, most of the time since arriving, Herta had been immersed in analyzing and modeling the Douluo universe's underlying rules.
Sometimes, on a whim, she would casually study local soul tool tech—not to imitate it, but to more quickly and intuitively grasp this world's unique physics and energy logic.