Attack where the enemy must defend! Break the whole by striking one point!
The guardian's movements visibly froze for an instant. It seemed it had never expected this ant, when faced with its killing blow, not only to refuse to flee in terror, but to dare charge straight at it!
But it was, after all, a terrifying existence at the Martial Grandmaster Realm, and its reactions were swift to the extreme.
The tip of the pitch-black battle spear it had been about to throw paused slightly. Its terrifying energy changed direction in an instant, and the spear stabbed straight at the oncoming Xiao Han like a venomous snake darting from its hole!
Fast! Too fast!
Space collapsed in sheets wherever the battle spear passed, leaving a pitch-black trail!
Yet in the instant before the battle spear struck Xiao Han, his figure moved at an angle that defied all reason.
As if teleporting, he forced himself half an inch sideways through the extremely distorted space!
Under the pressure of life and death, his understanding of the profound principles of A Step to the Ends of the Earth had actually deepened!
He did not evade it completely. Instead, paying the smallest price, he slipped past the edge of the battle spear and closed in on the guardian!
Pfft!
The terrifying power of annihilation contained in the battle spear merely grazed Xiao Han, yet it instantly vaporized his left shoulder and a good portion of his chest!
Even the life energy of the Chaos Green Lotus had no time to react!
Agony engulfed Xiao Han's consciousness like a tsunami, but he bit hard on the tip of his tongue, forcibly preserving his last shred of clarity. His right fist, filled with all his strength, shimmered with the luster of chaos.
Without losing momentum, it slammed fiercely and precisely into the wildly pulsing black crystal in the guardian's chest!
Boom!!!
An immensely muffled sound rang out, as if someone had struck a sheet of ten-thousand-year-old black ice!
Time seemed to stand still at that moment.
Immediately afterward—
Crack!!!
A crisp shattering sound, as beautiful as heavenly music, suddenly rang out in the hall!
On the surface of the indestructible black crystal in the guardian's chest, which even a previous full-powered strike of the Annihilation Divine Fist had barely managed to mark...
A fine web of cracks suddenly appeared, spreading from the point where Xiao Han's fist had landed!
Though the cracks were slight, they continued to spread, racing across the entire crystal like fractures struck into a sheet of ice!
"Hh... Aaaargh—!!!"
A shriek suddenly erupted from the guardian. Unlike its earlier cries, neither human nor beast, this one was full of unbelievable pain and rage!
Its body, formed of pure shadow, trembled violently. The energy of the pitch-black battle spear condensed in its hand instantly spun out of control and exploded!
Violent, chaotic currents of energy swept outward like a hurricane!
Xiao Han, who bore the brunt of it, was hurled away by the rampaging energy storm before he could even grunt.
His body smashed through several ruined stone pillars like a ragged sack before finally embedding itself deep in the wall at the far end of the hall, his life or death unknown.
The guardian also staggered back several steps. It looked down at the core crystal in its chest, now covered in cracks and rapidly dimming, and its smooth face twisted to the extreme.
It had been injured!
An ant in its eyes had grievously damaged its core in a way it could not understand!
This was an unprecedented humiliation!
Uncontrollable fury erupted within it like a volcano!
Buzz, buzz, buzz—!!!
The space throughout the sacrificial hall groaned even more desperately under the strain of the guardian's fury!
Pitch-black spatial rifts slithered and sliced around it like living things, denser and more violent than ever before!
Its scarlet gaze locked firmly onto the shallow, human-shaped hollow in the wall. The life force there was faint to the extreme, yet like a guttering candle in the wind, it stubbornly refused to go out!
It would crush him!
It would use the cruelest means to crush this ant that dared defile it, soul and all, completely into nothingness!
Terrifying killing intent spread like a tangible substance, and the entire space of the ruins seemed to tremble with the guardian's wrath!
The agony of being embedded in the wall nearly sent Xiao Han's consciousness into complete darkness.
Every bone in his body felt as though it had been crushed and then haphazardly pieced back together. His internal organs seemed to have turned to a puddle of sludge, and every faint breath brought a heart-rending pain.
The area from his left shoulder to his chest was an empty void. Even the pain there had gone numb, leaving only a sense of nothingness, as though it had been utterly "erased"—the terrifying mark left by the power of annihilation.
If the Chaos Green Lotus's green light of origin had not served as his final line of defense, fiercely protecting his heart meridian and sea of consciousness while constantly repairing his ravaged body, he would probably have been a cold corpse embedded in the wall by now.
"Roar—!!!"
Within the sacrificial hall, the guardian's roar whipped up an even more violent storm of energy.
The light of the cracked black crystal in its chest flickered on and off. The energy spilling from it no longer condensed into a pitch-black battle spear as before, but instead became countless tiny, chaotic, erratic blades of fractured space, madly cutting through every inch of the hall like a meat grinder run amok.
Stone pillars collapsed, the floor cracked, and the ancient murals on the walls rapidly peeled and blurred beneath the raging energy.
The entire space of the ruins groaned and trembled under the guardian's fury, as though it might collapse completely at any moment.
A wounded beast was often more dangerous, for it had lost its reason, leaving only a pure desire to destroy.
"Cough... cough, cough..." Xiao Han coughed up a mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs. The green light of the Chaos Green Lotus suddenly flared, forcibly suppressing his churning qi and blood, and a trace of clarity returned to his eyes.
I can't die here!
Using the last of his strength, he moved his still-intact right arm and both legs, wrenching himself out of the hollow in the wall and landing unsteadily on his feet.
Almost the instant he landed, several pitch-black blades of fractured space sliced silently toward him, cutting off every path of escape.
Though the guardian's attacks were chaotic, they were denser and even harder to defend against!
A Step to the Ends of the Earth!
Xiao Han's thoughts raced. He squeezed the power of the Eternal Night King Martial Soul to its limit, creating a faint resonance with the already distorted dark space around him. His figure flickered like a guttering candle in the wind, and he slipped through the gaps between several spatial blades by the narrowest of margins.
Rip!
One blade still grazed his back, tearing open a wound that the green lotus's power had only just barely repaired, deep enough to expose bone.
"Damn it, rabid-dog mode?" Xiao Han cursed inwardly. The searing pain made him bare his teeth and grimace, but it also roused the ruthlessness in his bones.
Though the guardian was raging, its attacks had clearly lost their former precision and focus. It was more like it was venting its power in impotent fury.
This might... be an opportunity!
As he dodged the spatial blades, which came at him like a violent storm, to the very limit of his ability, he forcibly circulated the Creation-Heaven-Penetrating Art, trying to draw a sliver of power from the chaotic energy around him.