Volcanic Age-Chapter 424: The Return of the Dark Heavens Association (1)

Volcanic Age-Chapter 424: The Return of the Dark Heavens Association (1)

I don't have any more chances!
With the Manifestation of his Path, Regression, he could return his body to a previous state, so long as he avoided instant death.
The issue was that it only allowed him to do it once a day. Moreover, after using it, the unbearable fatigue left him nearly unconscious.
Zhou Xuchuan hadn’t intended to use it unless it would end the battle. But after losing both arms, he had no choice.
The moment his arms were severed, he activated Regression, hoping to catch the Dark Heavens Association Lord off guard.
It's going to cut me!
The Dark Heavens Association Lord’s eyes widened in surprise.
Though he was a true Absolute Master and his body often moved faster than his thoughts, this time was different.
His reaction was just a bit too slow.
Zhou Xuchuan gripped his sword tightly. He felt his calluses tear open under the pressure of his qi.
Tendons bulged across the backs of his hands, and the surrounding muscles locked in place.
South Sea Single Sword Flow!
The flowers that had bloomed just a moment ago were nowhere to be seen. The fragrant scent that had been wafting around had also completely disappeared.
Zhou Xuchuan focused on the Association Lord’s back, holding his breath. He forgot how to move his muscles and also how to circulate his qi.
The sword came down as the air split cleanly in two. Even the sound of the air tearing had vanished long ago.
In terms of power alone, it was far inferior to the Violet Haze Sword Sutra.
However, even if something was powerful, it was useless if it didn’t hit. That was why he had chosen speed and accuracy over power.
Squelch!
It landed!
In the end, that judgment had been right.
The Dark Heavens Association Lord had succeeded in turning his head, but otherwise had failed. He allowed the sword to hit his back, leaving a line of blood.
They had finally succeeded. They felt joy at the thought of inflicting a serious wound on a monster that they had been unable to touch no matter what they did.
And…
It made Zhou Xuchuan certain of one thing.
"Now!" he shouted.
“Ha!”
Leng Yuefei also poured out her full strength.
She brought both hands together in front of her chest and thrust them forward with all her might. Her hands glowed white and released Extreme Cold True Qi.
The hole in her hand felt numb and was excruciatingly painful. Her eight extraordinary meridians were also in tatters, perhaps reaching their limits. However, she didn't care at all.
It's the end!
BANG!
Leng Yuefei’s double palms struck the Dark Heavens Association Lord’s chest.
The moment the palms touched the chest, the Extreme Cold True Qi engulfed his skin with a wave of ice, creating a shockwave.
Her muscles, inappropriately strong for her age, rippled like waves. All the aura she had accumulated, starting from the great nature of the North Sea shot out thick streams like waterfalls like cannons, completely transmitting the shock to the Association Lord's insides. It was an explosive force, no, a palm eruption.
The blow came at a price. The recoil sent her knees buckling.
The thin layer of ice sealing her earlier wound shattered.
Her hair shook violently, then fell limp without a breeze.
"Hmm…"
The Dark Heavens Association Lord furrowed his brows, clearly displeased.
Pffft.
Blood spilled from his tightly clenched lips.
"It hit!"
Unknowingly, Yun Guang clenched his fists, forgetting his dignity, and rejoiced like a child.
“As I thought.”
Zhou Xuchuan said with a smile.
“Dark Heavens Association Lord, I have another question. By any chance, is this ‘Opposing Heaven’ of yours not infinite?”
Zhou Xuchuan also heard about Opposing Heaven from Wu Qu.
When I heard about Opposing Heaven, I honestly despaired.
There was a massive disparity in power between realms, even if it was just a single stage. Just the difference between the Harmony and Coruscant Realms was enough to show the immense gap.
When he had heard about the realm of immortals, or rather, the Extremity Realm, he had despaired.
It was literally no longer in the realm of mortals.
However, when I think about it, something was strange.
Zhou Xuchuan narrowed his eyes and looked at the Association Lord's back.
“The Extremity Realm, in the end, means Divinity. If you really were in that realm, even if your enemies were in the Coruscant Realm, you shouldn’t be struggling like this or allow our attacks to land.”
Zhou Xuchuan finally completed Leng Yuefei's unfinished guess.
"So by that logic, what we can determine is…"
"Achieving the Extremity Realm through your Opposing Heaven is only temporary."
Leng Yuefei continued, feeling certain.
That was the correct answer.
That was why Wu Qu had been unable to gauge the Dark Heavens Association Lord's realm even after seeing him in person a few months ago.
The reason that he hadn't been able to abandon his human body or ascend to the immortal realm or a higher dimension despite being in the Extremity Realm was simple.
His power went against the natural order of the world and wasn't perfect.
If it truly was an infinite realm, there was no need for him to specifically display his Manifestation and declare his Path to show it. His Extremity Realm should have been fixed within the material world long ago.
The Association Lord remained silent for a moment. Then he swallowed the blood in his mouth and laughed.
“Hahaha!”
His laughter was bright. There wasn’t a trace of negativity.
“That’s right.”
Hiss!
Zhou Xuchuan looked down in surprise. Black lines were creeping up from the ground around his feet.
"But why does that matter?"
The Association Lord's momentum didn't decrease, but rather increased, his aura swaying like the devil’s tongue.
The Dark Heavens Association Lord remained indifferent even though the true nature of Opposing Heaven had been revealed.
He wasn’t pretending not to care. He really didn’t care at all.
“…!”
Leng Yuefei tried to retreat urgently, but failed.
Dark Heavens Association Lord grabbed Leng Yuefei's slender wrist.
Crunch!
"Ahhh!"
Her flesh and muscles were crushed. Even her protective bones could not withstand the pressure. They weren't only crushed, but pulverized.
She screamed involuntarily at a pain she had never felt since she reached the Harmony Realm.
"Even if you know that, nothing will change."
Boom!
Leng Yuefei’s vision flipped upside down. In an instant, the sky became the ground, and the ground the sky. Her body had been hurled into the air.
She tried to think fast, to find a way out, but the power of the force that gripped her was monstrous. She couldn’t resist it.
Dark Heavens Association Lord swung Leng Yuefei like a hammer.
"Hmph!"
Yun Guang crossed his arms and blocked it with a grunt.
BANG!
His breath caught from the sheer force of the impact. He tried to brace both legs to hold on, but it was too much. He was lifted off the ground before his feet could even stagger. It was too much force to try to regain his footing.
His head spun and his brain was buzzing. His sense of balance was off and he could feel a crack in his arms.
Before he could even cry out in shock or disbelief, the force overwhelmed him. He was flung backward and slammed into the ground.
BOOM!
The Violet Haze Sword Sutra, which ranked at the peak of Divine Arts, was in fact an exception to the rule. The South Sea Single Sword Flow was by no means a weak technique.
He had cut deep into the Association Lord's back. It wasn’t just a question of how shallow or deep the wound was, it should have been fatal. Moreover, after that, the Association Lord had been hit directly by a Frigid Pale Divine Palm.
It wasn't an attack by a Harmony Realm Master, this was the power of Coruscant Realm Masters.
Let alone moving, speaking itself would have been a miracle.
“So you underestimated me.”
What bullshit.
Zhou Xuchuan had never underestimated the Dark Heavens Association Lord.
Rather than underestimating the man, he had thought about him so many times, dozens of times even, to the point that others would point out that his worries were excessive.
In both his past life and this one, the Dark Heavens Association Lord had always been an object of fear.
“That arm and hand.”
Curiosity filled his bottomless pupils.
“That must be your Manifestation of One's Path.”
Zhou Xuchuan’s face darkened.
"I'll have to see if it can reattach your head if it falls off."
The Dark Heavens Association Lord definitely couldn't use the power of the Extremity Realm indefinitely, as Zhou Xuchuan and Leng Yuefei had guessed.
Since it was a power that went against nature, there were many side effects, so it was impossible to use it for a long time.
Normally, he broke time into fragmented moments, unleashing his attacks in rapid succession, hundreds of strikes delivered in bursts.
"Zhou! Xu! Chuan!"
The Dark Heavens Association Lord entered the Extremity Realm once more.
He moved again, as if existing alone in a different timeline.
The eyes of the Empyrean Overlords couldn't follow his movements.
It wasn't that they had missed it, they simply couldn't perceive it at all.
I’ll give up on seeing it with my eyes!
Since vision was useless, Zhou Xuchuan stopped trying. While it was no different from gambling, he focused on his other senses.
Don’t think! Feel!
His thoughts slowed. His reasoning blurred. He approached the realm of the unconscious and left everything to his body.
As his concentration deepened, distracting thoughts, in fact, his thoughts disappeared altogether.
Zhou Xuchuan instantly reached a state of selflessness.
Shing!!
He didn't know what technique the Association Lord had just used. He even forgot about the techniques of the Preceding Heaven Sword Technique that he had heard from Wu Qu.
He took a deep breath and his muscles swelled. The purple light that swirled around his sword also became stronger.
Infinity Enclosed in the Six Directions!
He unconsciously displayed the Violet Haze Sword Sutra.
He didn't know where he was facing.
Zhou Xuchuan didn't move the sword, the sword moved him.
His arms stretched out in a straight line, and along the end of his blade, six plum blossom petals spread out in full bloom.
In the boundary between life and death, the two swords clashed.
RUMBLE!!!
This wasn't a battle between people. It was a scene that seemed to come out of a heroic tale, or rather, a myth.
Three of the six leaves disappeared, causing a storm and creating an abnormal phenomenon.
“Zhou Xuchuan.”
The air’s temperature dropped, then spiked. The surrounding area froze, thawed, and froze again.
The crowd couldn't even open their eyes properly. Some of those with weak cultivations fell to their knees, vomiting blood.
Some held their ears in pain because their eardrums had been ruptured.
“This is as far as you go."
Squelch!
"Ugh!"
It was as if they were dreaming.
Just a moment ago, a purple storm was raging and causing chaos, but it disappeared without a trace as if it had never happened.
His right hand gripped the sword tightly, as if refusing to let go, but there was no movement.
Squelch!
“This… can’t be…”
He couldn’t put strength into his legs. He felt his body collapse backward, as if on its own, and he realized his right hand had been severed.
Thud.
“Cough, cough!"
He tried to speak, but the hole in his throat made it impossible. And then, the exhaustion he had feared came rushing in.
Sleep crept in like a demon, forcing his eyes shut. No matter how hard he fought, his limbs wouldn’t respond, and his eyelids grew heavier by the second.
“Ah…"
His lips, dry and cracked like dirt, barely moved. Only a faint groan escaped. His vision had blurred into fog. Everything was distorted.
He thought he heard someone calling to him, but the words were muffled. He had gone deaf.
I…
He had tried. He had poured everything into stopping it somehow.
But in the end… this was how it ended.
Considering it was this much… shouldn't it have been enough?
When he closed his eyes, he saw a familiar sight.
He saw the backs of those he had admired his whole life.
It's… too hard…
He had admired the lives of heroes. So when he realized that he could start over, he decided to stand together with them.
However, it wasn't as easy as he had thought.
He had always run without stopping. There were times when he almost gave in to temptation and fell.
He wanted to enjoy the pleasures of a beautiful woman that he had never experienced in his past life, or to enjoy being supported by those around him.
But he had ignored everything and kept trying. He had worked so hard that anyone would recognize him.
He kept pushing forward and came all this way.
Don't you think so…?
His mind sank into darkness, deep and endless.
The world fell silent.
All the screams from moments before vanished, as if they’d never happened.
Above, a falcon that had been circling in the sky finally landed.
Its yellow eyes, split vertically, reflected a figure.
“What is it?”
The Dark Heavens Association Lord didn't understand.
“Just what the hell… sort of bastard are you?"
In front of him stood a young man who was completely battered.
His right hand was cut off. His side had a gaping hole in it. There was a hole in his neck. It was impossible to tell if he was a person or a corpse.
His face was covered in dirt and hardened blood.
“Answer me.”
Ssss.
His hair blew in the wind.
His once beautiful black hair, as if it had suddenly lost its life, rapidly aged and turned white.
“Mount Hua Sect.”
The young man reached out and grabbed the sword lying on the ground.
“Zhou Xuchuan.”
Cyncoco's Thoughts
It's me, Cyncoco! The end is nigh!
Now, I just wanted to explain Opposing Heaven just a little so everyone understood what it is.
To be honest, it's a cheat and a ridiculous ability. It's so ridiculous in fact, that the main critique of this novel when it came out was that the villain is too strong lmao.
People didn't believe that they were able to beat the Association Lord in Zhou Xuchuan's previous lifetime because of how strong he was in this lifetime. Remember, the Association Lord ALSO had the Ten Thousand Convergence Art in Zhou Xuchuan's previous lifetime.
It's to the point that even the wiki for it in Korea literally states that people refused to believe how he could be killed in the previous lifetime. Just goes to show author-nim is too good at being strong.
If only author-nim could make
me
this strong, then we wouldn't have to have delays every time I get sick…
Now, to explain, Opposing Heaven, like Jing Bai's Ideal, isn't an action, but a phenomenon.
While Jing Bai's Ideal made all of his attack return to the root of martial arts and was just pure expression, Xun Yingguan's Opposing Heaven allows him to oppose the barrier of the Coruscant Realm and break through to the Extremity Realm while he's using it. So basically, he gets to cheat code into the higher realm by blowing through his qi.
Crazy.
So that's why they just kept throwing Opposing Heaven around without describing it. They all just assumed that his Manifestation had allowed him to break through two levels, and only just now realized it in fact was just a temporary break through he was sustaining with his qi.

.
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Chapter 424: The Return of the Dark Heavens Association (1)