Fallen Demon Hunter VS Superpowered Individual 6

I stared in shock at the place where Zhuang Cheng had fallen.

The headless corpse lying on the ground suddenly burst into flames without warning, as if an invisible person had poured gasoline over it while I wasn't paying attention and then set it alight. Not only that, even the pool of blood spreading across the ground and the splattered brain matter began burning fiercely like gasoline.

Incredibly, despite being engulfed in flames, the charred corpse, the blood, and the brain matter showed no signs of burning or damage. More than that, upon closer inspection, these things didn't seem to have been set on fire at all. It was more as if they were transforming into flames themselves.

Yes, they were transforming into flames themselves. I wasn't even sure what I was saying, but these tangible biological tissues seemed to have originally been transformed from flames, and now they were gradually reverting to their original forms.

Immediately afterward, an even more unbelievable scene unfolded before my eyes.

The headless body, which was gradually becoming as ethereal and insubstantial as flames, actually slowly climbed to its feet right in front of me, its killer, as if nothing had happened.

In a daze, he felt around for his nonexistent head. After his hand found nothing, he paused, then bent down, found the head lying on the ground, picked it up, and cradled it in his arms.

He—he could still move?

The unexpected sight left me dumbfounded. "You, you..."

Had he revived? No, had he never been killed in the first place?

He could survive even after being beheaded? What kind of superpower was this—an immortal body? But wasn't he a Flame ability user? What did this ability have to do with immortality?

He adjusted the direction of the head in his arms so that it faced me. His horrifying face, its eye area destroyed by the slash, seemed to be staring at me.

His undamaged mouth moved, however, and spoke with a sigh. "I lay on the ground and thought about it for a while before I finally figured it out... So you were pretending the whole time. Are you the mastermind?"

How had he managed to speak with his head and body separated? His vocal cords shouldn't have been able to function normally.

No, calm down. Calm down, Kong Da. Although this was my first time encountering a superpowered individual who could continue moving after being beheaded, in this world, immortality of this level wasn't anything strange. His power probably wasn't Flame Manipulation, but some other mysterious ability. But so what?

There were countless mysterious powers out there. Most agents and Demon Hunters, no matter how unwilling they were, had to face strange powers they couldn't make sense of at all. Real combat wasn't like a battle-of-wits manga, where one had to solve the mystery of an enemy's ability before winning. If I wanted to seize the advantage on a battlefield whose course couldn't be predicted, there had always been only one method—the method I had always used—

Strike first!

Without hesitation, I transformed into my monster form and charged while swinging my blade-like arms. There were no unnecessary words or movements. In an instant—an instant so short that ordinary people probably wouldn't even have time to blink—my slashes came down on Zhuang Cheng's body one after another, without holding back in the slightest.

The slashes I had unleashed in my partial transformation earlier had been surprise attacks, with concealment as the top priority and power as secondary. Now, my fully transformed slashes pursued the utmost destructive force.

If Zhuang Cheng thought I could only launch physical attacks, he was gravely mistaken. The slashes in my monster form could not only destroy physical bodies, but also kill spiritual entities.

In other words, I possessed the power to attack souls directly.

Especially now, my heart was filled with killing intent, and all I wanted was to attack his soul. The magical power concentrated along my blades was therefore astonishingly lethal. An ordinary person with no magical power would have their soul scattered just from being grazed by it, and most superpowered individuals without soul-related abilities would meet the same fate.

Every slash struck home, and Zhuang Cheng was instantly torn into pieces. After completing my charge, I braked behind him and finished my attack.

I had won...

Just as that thought reflexively surfaced in my mind, Zhuang Cheng's voice came from behind me. "Physical attacks are useless against me."

As his words rang out, my right hand and both legs suddenly burst into flames out of thin air. The intense pain made me howl involuntarily.

I could understand why my right hand was burning. Zhuang Cheng's blood and brain matter were still clinging to it. Since the biological tissues splattered elsewhere had caught fire, naturally my right hand would as well. But why were both my legs burning out of nowhere? He clearly wasn't looking at me now!

Before this, why hadn't he died?

Howling in pain, I twisted around and fell to the ground, his figure entering my field of vision.

He was actually standing there completely unharmed, while the head in his arms continued speaking to me. "I originally planned to show you this form earlier. If you hadn't suddenly opened fire back then... I see. So that demon that attacked from behind earlier was testing whether I could sense things behind me..."

Toward the end, he seemed deep in thought, muttering to himself.

How was that possible? My blades had clearly cut through his body. Why hadn't a single new wound appeared on him? More importantly... my soul attack had been useless! Not only that, he hadn't even realized that his soul had been attacked!

No, I had to deal with the flames on my body first!

I hurriedly swung my left blade, quickly severing my right hand and both legs. The intense pain made me wish I were dead, but compared to letting the flames spread to my torso, this level of pain was still bearable. As long as I gave this monster body enough time, my right hand and legs could regenerate later.

Everything happened in the blink of an eye. After that, I temporarily had no intention of trying to kill Zhuang Cheng again. Trying to kill an opponent who couldn't be killed no matter how I attacked was simply a waste of effort. If necessary, I could find a way to assassinate him later. I had to escape—using shadow power to transfer myself!

Under the control of my consciousness, the surrounding shadows immediately surged toward me like a tide. I had to escape as quickly as possible. Zhuang Cheng's attacks weren't slow, and their power was unparalleled. If I was even a tenth of a second late, I would be burned to death on the spot.

Yet I was still a moment too slow. Zhuang Cheng's flames arrived instantly.

I still couldn't see which direction the flames came from. This time, they didn't even start burning from the surface of my body. I felt a terrifying heat arise out of nowhere deep within my chest and abdomen, as if someone had teleported a massive amount of boiling water into my stomach. The agony and internal pressure spreading from within forced me to open my mouth.

My vision suddenly plunged into darkness, and I couldn't hear anything. Then I felt something violently surging out through my nose, mouth, eyes, and ears.

No, I understood. It was flames... The flames had appeared directly inside my body and were erupting outward from within!

At the same time, the muscle tissue throughout my body seemed to have been destroyed, leaving me completely unable to move. Only one thought remained in my mind—

He could actually summon his flames directly inside my body? How outrageous!

But... I wasn't dead yet. By all rights, with his firepower, I should have died instantly. In truth, I felt as if I were on the verge of death, and even my consciousness had been drained by the pain. But I wasn't dead yet. He had held back. That was the greatest mistake he had made.

The surrounding shadows continued following my earlier command. As flames gushed from my seven orifices, the shadows on the ground also opened an entrance for teleportation, allowing me to fall into it under the pull of gravity.

Shadow Transfer activated successfully, and I entered the world of shadows.

Completely unlike the colorful real world, the Shadow World had neither light nor sound. It was like the deep sea. I wasn't saying this merely because my eyes and ears had been burned away. This place was simply that monotonous. I couldn't even sense up, down, left, right, front, or back. I could only barely sense that I seemed to be moving toward somewhere.

Anyone without the relevant ability couldn't even think or survive here, because this place didn't even possess the concepts of time and space. Even for me, its user, this place was extremely dangerous. The slightest mistake could cause me to become lost, never to return to the real world. The only places I could reach through Shadow Transfer were locations I had previously visited in the real world.

Zhuang Cheng had once mentioned that a spiritual connection existed between him and his flames. Yet beneath the cave in the room on the Fifteenth Floor, this spiritual connection had once been severed.

The reason was obvious. Beneath the cave was an alternate dimension that didn't exist in reality.

The spacetime accessed through shadow teleportation likewise existed outside the laws of the real world. No form of radio signal could reach this place, and the connection between Zhuang Cheng and his flames must have been the same. As proof, the flames scorching my body quickly extinguished after I entered the shadow spacetime. My tortured consciousness finally regained a measure of calm.

I concentrated my magical power in my eyes and ears. Before long, I felt that I had regained my sight and hearing. Then, like breaking through the surface of the water, I escaped from this shadow spacetime and arrived at a place I had visited before.

This was the abandoned construction site I had investigated with Zhuang Cheng earlier. I had transferred directly to the upper levels of the unfinished building. Because construction had stopped, the upper floors consisted only of a skeleton. Looking up from the floor where I stood, I saw that the levels above had neither ceilings nor walls, only gray frameworks of reinforced concrete crisscrossing layer after layer.

If I had escaped here, I should be safe, right...? I let out a temporary sigh of relief.

The shadows solidified into three-dimensional matter and formed prosthetic limbs. With temporary replacements for my right hand and legs, I managed to stand up.

Suddenly, a fluctuation of magical power appeared nearby.