The phantom image of the Northern Abyss Sea roared behind him.
Under Xuanming's suddenly constricted pupils and Styx's disbelieving gaze, Guiyuan's body began to expand and stretch with terrifying speed!
His shell was vast and ancient, its patterns like dragons, resembling an age-old continent that bore the Primordial World.
His limbs were pillars propping up the heavens, rooted in the void. He raised his head, his gaze indifferent as he looked down at Taowu and Xuanming, who seemed like hills below.
A giant turtle's True Form, so enormous that it blotted out half the sky, descended upon the skies above Changbai Mountain!
Its size and overwhelming presence were enough to make even the frenzied roar of the Taowu King falter!
Styx and Xuanming were both shaken.
They had never imagined that Guiyuan's true form could grow to such a terrifying size!
But what left them—and Taowu—completely unprepared was yet to come!
"Eight Gods Return to the Ultimate!"
Guiyuan's voice rang out across heaven and earth, deep as a great bell.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!...
In an instant, the void trembled and divine light flashed!
One, two, three... A full eight giant turtle forms appeared out of thin air, each identical to Guiyuan's original body and boundless in size!
Nine giant turtles propping up the heavens, like nine divine mountains descended from primordial times, surrounded the Taowu King!
The sight was enough to shatter the minds of anyone who witnessed it!
"Die!"
The nine Guiyuans spoke in unison. Their voices overlapped, blasting forth with the Mantra Art like nine thunderclaps exploding at once!
The next moment,
nine enormous claws, each seemingly able to cover the sky,
tore through the chaotic streams of primordial chaos, bearing the purest and most savage force as they crashed down on the Taowu King at the center from every direction!
Before the claws even arrived, the concentrated gale had already crushed the ground below, sinking it several yards!
Taowu sensed the deadly threat and let out a resentful roar.
It forcibly wrung out the last of its origin. The chaotic ripples of the Chaos Great Dao around it surged violently once more!
"Roar—!"
It staked everything on one last attempt to draw upon that sliver of Daluo's power!
The power of time rippled obscurely, trying to scatter and divert the nine devastating attacks!
"Rumble—!!!"
The nine claws came crashing down, slamming into the forcibly condensed Daluo power!
Space shattered inch by inch like a mirror, revealing the pitch-black void beyond.
A chaotic storm swept outward like a tsunami, flattening distant mountain ranges!
Taowu's body shuddered violently. Its shell, harder than divine iron, gave off a piercing cracking sound.
It had forcibly blocked the blow, but the price was that the bloodied hole in its chest—which had only just closed—burst open again, spraying black blood like a waterfall!
"Now! Attack!"
Guiyuan's urgent shout rang out like thunder, jolting Styx and Xuanming back to their senses after they had momentarily lost themselves in the astonishing sight.
Both were battle-hardened. They instantly suppressed their shock and unleashed their killing moves!
"Yuantu! Abi! Godslayer!"
Styx's gaze was sharp as a sword. The two swords behind him transformed into scarlet rainbows, interwoven with pure principles of slaughter.
He no longer attacked elsewhere, focusing only on the widening bloodied hole in Taowu's chest as he thrust and slashed furiously!
"Xuanming Sha Fist!"
Xuanming forced herself to draw on her strength. Her True Form of the Ancestral Wu swelled once more, and the icy baleful energy around her fists condensed to its limit, forming two war hammers forged from primordial ice.
Working in tandem with Styx's killing swords, she drove punch after punch deep into the bloodied hole!
"Splurt! Bang! Crack!"
The sounds of blades piercing flesh, fists exploding with force, and bones snapping rang out without end.
Taowu let out a pained, furious roar.
It wanted to fight back, to draw upon Daluo's power again and use time to trap and slaughter the two irritating "bugs."
But the nine giant turtle forms of Guiyuan were an unbreakable fortress.
Nine pairs of indifferent, enormous eyes locked onto it. Nine mighty auras formed a cage, severely restricting every move it could make!
When it swung its claws, a giant turtle's claws met them and knocked them back.
When it tried to bite, mountain-like turtle shells stood firm, unmoving.
When it whipped its tail, it was like striking Mount Buzhou, which bore up heaven and earth; the force rebounded, nearly cracking its own bones.
With his own strength, Guiyuan bore the brunt of Taowu's ferocious might and counterattacks!
That left Xuanming and Styx free to unleash their attacks without a care.
Under the three of them' seamless assault, Taowu's enormous body crumbled at a visible pace.
The bloodied hole in its chest grew wider and wider, almost revealing its pulsing organs and the core of its origin, wreathed in Chaos Sha.
Its limbs were severed by Styx's killing swords, then shattered into ice by Xuanming's sha fists.
Its head, too, was battered by the occasional blows of Guiyuan's giant claws, its scales shattered and its face mangled beyond recognition.
Taowu's roars shifted from furious rage to anguished cries, then gradually weakened, filled with resentment...
At last,
Styx unleashed a scarlet sword beam infused with all the principles of slaughter he could muster, piercing straight through Taowu's ruined core of origin.
Then Xuanming struck with a sha fist that nearly froze space itself, smashing the core into icy fragments.
Taowu's mountain-sized body suddenly froze.
Then, all its strength gone, it toppled like a mountain pushed over, crashing onto the shattered earth and kicking up clouds of dust and baleful energy.
"Is it over?" Xuanming panted slightly as she looked at the motionless corpse.
Styx relaxed a little as well. The Yuantu Abi Twin Swords circled him, humming incessantly. They had clearly absorbed an enormous amount of murderous baleful energy, their spiritual essence now much fuller.
But their delight had only just begun to show—
when another change occurred!
At the spot where Taowu's body had supposedly "perished,"
a mass of Chaos Sha so dense it seemed almost solid writhed and swirled like a living thing, radiating an aura that surpassed Taiyi!
At the core of that baleful energy, a sliver of Daluo's "undying" power stubbornly glimmered. It began forcibly absorbing the remnants of baleful energy and fragments of laws scattered through the surrounding world!
Under the influence of this power, the ruined body began to grow back and mend, slowly but steadily!
"Not good!" Styx's pupils contracted, his expression turning gravely serious. "It still has a remnant of Daluo's power protecting its origin!
"At the Daluo realm, as long as a sliver of one's true essence remains, one can reform through time!
"Though this Taowu isn't truly Daluo, with this sliver of power, if we can't completely erase it, we may have to spend an endless stretch of time before we can finally kill it!"
Daluo was hard to kill!
It was an ironclad law of the Primordial World.
Even though Taowu was a Ferocious Beast, not fully in accord with the Great Dao of the Primordial World, the instant it touched that sliver of power, the very essence of its life had transformed, far beyond the understanding of Taiyi.
Xuanming's expression also showed a hint of concern.
The Wu Clan had no way to erase this kind of Daluo power, either.
"Daluo is hard to kill?"
Just as Styx and Xuanming were beginning to feel that the situation had become unbearably troublesome, a cold voice rang out.
Guiyuan had withdrawn his eight copies, leaving only his enormous True Form of the Black Turtle hovering in the sky. His giant eyes looked down at the mass of baleful energy trying to revive.
"Hmph! That's true for everyone else!"
Before his words had even faded, an abstruse aura unlike any divine ability or law he had ever used suddenly spread from within Guiyuan!
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