If the space where Ling Tian and the Venerable Sword Saint would fight later shrank, the Venerable Sword Saint would pose a much greater threat to Ling Tian and Xiao Shi. After all, Ling Tian was no match for him in a direct fight. This was especially true once the space shrank enough for the Venerable Sword Saint's Phantom Clones to fill it. Under those circumstances, if he used Phantom Combo, Ling Tian would have nowhere to hide and would have to meet the attacks head-on. That would leave Ling Tian in serious trouble and badly injured. Given enough time, Ling Tian would undoubtedly lose—and might even be captured alive.
Fortunately, Ling Tian soon thought of a way to deal with this: wear down the Venerable Sword Saint as much as possible before the space shrank to a certain size. Once the Venerable Sword Saint was exhausted, even if he had only used up most of his strength, he wouldn't pose much of a threat to Ling Tian. At the very least, he wouldn't be able to use Phantom Combo at will.
That was right. Phantom Combo was an extremely powerful secret technique. Even the Venerable Sword Saint had to go to considerable lengths to use it; at the very least, he could only pull it off when he was in fairly good condition. That meant he would find it difficult to use this technique after he had exhausted most of his strength.
Although Ling Tian was about evenly matched with the Venerable Sword Saint in a battle of attrition, perhaps just a little weaker, the difference wasn't great. More importantly, when fighting in the God Realm, Ling Tian couldn't influence or control the Circulatory Universe to draw on a great deal of Origin Power and suppress the Venerable Sword