Hum—!
The guardian's body, formed of pure shadow, began to tremble slightly. It stopped focusing its energy into individual beams or launching close-range assaults.
It slowly raised its arms, which resembled blades of bone.
The surrounding space groaned under the strain as visible ripples spread outward from the guardian.
Pitch-black energy converged on it like a tide, gathering, compressing and twisting between its bone-blade arms...
No longer a beam, nor an energy sphere.
But a... pitch-black war spear, forged from pure darkness energy and fragments of shattered space!
Runes flowed across the war spear, which radiated a heart-stopping fluctuation. Space twisted violently around its tip, as though it led to a land of void and annihilation!
Merely having the war spear pointed at him from a distance made Xiao Han feel as though his soul were about to be torn apart. His Eternal Night Domain and Green Lotus Domain were like paper, easily pierced and suppressed by that incomparably sharp aura!
The shadow of death descended once more, almost palpable!
This time, it was more terrifying, more pure, more... desperate than any attack before it!
The guardian had unleashed its true killing move!
The tiny flame of hope that had just kindled seemed to have a basin of ice water dumped over it.
Xiao Han's heart sank to rock bottom.
He could clearly feel that, after that punch, his strength had been exhausted, his lamp out of oil. Though the Chaos Green Lotus was still healing him, it could not possibly keep pace with his accumulating injuries. The Eternal Night Monarch had also grown somewhat listless after forcibly resonating with the ruins' power.
Against this pitch-black war spear, which concentrated the power of the guardian's true body and might even contain a trace of true Domain power, what... could he use to block it?
Was this really the end?
After giving it everything he had, was all he got in return still an impassable chasm?
A trace of bitterness spread across his lips.
The instant the pitch-black war spear took shape, its terrifying aura of annihilation engulfed Xiao Han like a tide.
It was no longer mere energy pressure, but more like judgment from the laws of a higher dimension, seeking to erase him completely from existence.
Where the spear pointed, space twisted into a hideous vortex, like a gaping maw opening onto the void.
Fuck! Xiao Han cursed inwardly, his survival instinct drowning out every other thought.
Right now, he was a battered boat amid raging waves. Taking them head-on would mean the boat's destruction and his death. His only way to survive was to ride the waves!
"A Step to the Ends of the Earth"!
At that moment, Xiao Han pushed this divine-level movement technique to unprecedented extremes. His figure no longer merely merged into the shadows, but flickered and leaped wildly through the gaps in twisted, shattered space!
Every step was accompanied by the grating sound of space tearing apart, while invisible forces carved deep gashes into the solidified shadow beneath his feet.
The space of the sacrificial hall, the space of the sacrificial hall, wailed under the pitch-black war spear's pressure, as though it might collapse at any moment.
The war spear was like the reaper's scythe. Every swing opened terrifying spatial rifts that silently sliced toward Xiao Han's position.
The space was cramped, the attacks deadly, and Xiao Han had no chance to catch his breath. He was not dodging, but dancing on death's blade.
He pushed the Eternal Night King Martial Soul's power to its limit, bringing it into perfect harmony with "A Step to the Ends of the Earth."
His figure became elusive and unpredictable. At times he was like a shadow merging into the wall; at others, he vanished into thin air an instant before the war spear swept past, appearing in another shadow several meters away.
Sss! Sss! Sss!
Though Xiao Han's speed had reached its limit, the guardian's attacks were simply too strange and swift, and their range was enormous, sealing off nearly every escape route.
A spatial rift grazed his thigh, slicing away a large chunk of flesh in an instant and leaving stark white bone clearly visible.
The shockwave from another swing of the war spear struck his left arm, instantly numbing the whole limb and nearly leaving him unable to clench his fist.
Agony! Unbearable agony battered his nerves like a tide, but he gritted his teeth without making a sound.
Inside his body, the Chaos Green Lotus Martial Soul abruptly spun faster.
The green life energy was no longer a gentle stream, but a flood bursting through a broken dam, surging through his limbs and bones.
His muscles writhed as they tried to heal, his blood vessels attempted to reconnect, and his numb nerves prickled as though stabbed by needles. These were signs of recovery.
But in his wounds, the strange gray-black energy and the invisible force tearing at space clung tenaciously to the new tissue like maggots on bone, constantly undoing the green lotus's repairs and sending waves of piercing pain through him.
His wounds could not heal.
Even though the guardian's Domain had them firmly suppressed, Xiao Han's twin Martial Soul Domain Prototypes were not just for show.
The specks of emerald light released by the Chaos Green Lotus stood out in the twisted darkness. They stubbornly held open tiny areas, dispelling the suffocating sense of distortion.
Though their range was small and their effect limited, this faint interference caused slight hitches in the guardian's absolute control over space.
Its attacks would occasionally stray just a fraction.
And the Eternal Night King Martial Soul was now Xiao Han's second pair of eyes—or rather, a sharper sense.
Darkness and shadow became its home ground. Every movement of the guardian's energy and every subtle distortion of space fed clearly back into Xiao Han's mind.
Dancing on a blade's edge, dodging between life and death.
The tug-of-war between agony and recovery never stopped, but Xiao Han forced himself to calm down, focusing all his attention on the perceptions transmitted by the Eternal Night Monarch.
He kept his gaze fixed on the guardian.
Every time that damned thing swung its deadly black spear, every time it tore through space, the energy fluctuations inside it were different.
He caught one detail.
When the shining black crystal in the guardian's chest glowed brightest, the war spear was at its most powerful, and the spatial distortion was at its most terrifying.
And when it performed those rapid, small-scale spatial cuts, several inconspicuous spots on the surface of its body flashed in sync with the crystal in its chest, their energy reactions especially strong.
Those points...
Were they... energy nodes supporting its precise manipulation of space?
A crazy idea exploded in the depths of Xiao Han's mind.
This was his only way to survive!
It was also a desperate gamble in which one wrong step would doom him beyond redemption!
His evasion route began to change.
He no longer focused solely on widening the distance, but instead cut in from more dangerous angles, closer to the guardian.
He even deliberately slowed his pace by a beat.
He wanted to lure the guardian into changing its attack pattern!
"Hah... hah..." Xiao Han panted, the taste of blood in his throat. After narrowly avoiding the spear tip yet again, he jerked his head up and roared hoarsely, "Is that all you've got? Trash!"
Provocation! Naked provocation!
No change could be seen on the guardian's featureless face, but the shadow energy surging around it visibly erupted into turmoil!
Its attacks suddenly grew even more frenzied!
It seemed to understand Xiao Han's intentions. Rather than simply locking onto him and pursuing him, it began predicting the direction of his dodges, swinging the black spear faster and more relentlessly!
It no longer tore space apart over a wide area. Instead, its attacks became countless tiny, treacherous spatial blades, stabbing and cutting at high frequency!
Space throughout the sacrificial hall hummed, and a sharp sensation of being cut apart filled the air.
Xiao Han felt as though he had been shut inside a shrinking cage made of countless blades, with less and less room to maneuver.