A huge loss

Seeing that Zheng Fan and Leomon remained unmoved, Black King Sukamon had no idea what had gone wrong. He stared fiercely at them until Zheng Fan was nearly unnerved, then finally said, "I see. If I'm not mistaken, you're Leomon, aren't you? A battle-hungry fellow, just as expected. But two Champion Digimon like you couldn't possibly defeat an Ultimate Digimon like me."

"How would we know without trying?" Holding the Night Dawn Sword, which had regained its shine, Zheng Fan smiled. "Right, Black King... Sukamon?"

Black King Sukamon said, "Don't assume I'm just like a Sukamon simply because I evolved from one."

"Black poop!" Black King Sukamon hurled a lump of black poop from his hand. The data energy emanating from it was an utter jumble. How could Zheng Fan dare catch something of such dubious origin? "Tai Chi, sword-drawing stance!" An inexplicable force arose in the air and forcibly dragged the black poop aside. Black King Sukamon was an Ultimate, after all, a terrifying opponent compared with a Champion. Although a fully enhanced Leomon or Zheng Fan with his digitized arms could surpass Black King Sukamon in strength, that was all they could do. Yet now Zheng Fan had diverted the black poop without even touching it. At the very least, Black King Sukamon had never encountered anything like this.

Spacing out in battle was never a good idea. Leomon had already leaped high into the air beside him. "Shatter Kick!" His huge foot slammed into Black King Sukamon, but just like the earlier black poop, Leomon's special move accomplished nothing. Even an ordinary Sukamon could use his soft body to negate impact attacks, so how could Black King Sukamon be injured by Leomon's Shatter Kick? Leomon had anticipated this, however. He had only used Shatter Kick to get close. Seeing Leomon reach Black King Sukamon, Zheng Fan immediately released his hold on the black poop. "Ice Sword Art, bind!" Drawn by the sword art's power, the flowing sewage surged out of its channel and drenched Black King Sukamon, then froze solid, encasing him in ice.

Digimon like Sukamon could negate impact attacks, but only by deforming their bodies. Had Black King Sukamon been free to move, Zheng Fan might not have been able to trap him.

Though Black King Sukamon had been frozen, it was only a momentary mistake. An Ultimate Digimon was hardly that fragile. The increasingly violent shaking of the ice encasing him made that clear. Of course, this was because Zheng Fan and Leomon wanted a proper showdown with him. Otherwise, adding a few more layers of ice while they had the chance would have been no problem.

As the shaking grew more violent, cracking sounds rang out. A fissure opened in the ice, and a large, round eye poked through. At that moment, Leomon moved. "Lion King Maru!" After countless battles with Zheng Fan, Leomon had long since learned that wielding a weapon also required technique. Zheng Fan had even taught him a set of saber techniques. Lion King Maru was no longer merely a supplementary attack as it had originally been. With Man Soul in hand, Leomon was invincible within the foot of space before him when he unleashed Lion King Maru.

"Aah!" Blade light flashed, and Man Soul sliced off the large eye Black King Sukamon had poked out. The round eyeball bounced on the ground, then rolled back toward him. Zheng Fan was hardly going to stand by and watch. "Sword Qi!" He pressed his left index and middle fingers together into a finger sword. A streak of blue-green light shot from his fingers and shattered Black King Sukamon's eye.

The Six Meridian Divine Sword that Duan Yu learned in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils was a finger-sword technique, but what his fingers fired was merely true qi, not Sword Qi. Firing Sword Qi from one's fingers was extremely difficult. Like drawing spiritual energy into the body through Spirit Absorption to condense spirit force, it required the Profound Body Realm. Spirit force, however, was relatively gentle and had many uses, while Sword Qi existed purely to attack. The way of the sword was to press forward without hesitation. Sword Qi was itself a sword; once unsheathed, it advanced relentlessly. To injure someone, it traveled in a straight line, inevitably first piercing the wielder's meridians, bones, and flesh. Bursting out of the body was not a figure of speech, but a statement of fact. Yet everything in the world had its counter, and the counter to Sword Qi was a sword. A sword's guard was generally also called its Sword Dantian, and sword cultivators condensed their Sword Qi directly within it. With enough Sword Qi stored in their Sword Dantian, Spirit Realm sword cultivators could achieve Dao Realm attack power—and that referred only to the amount of Sword Qi they could control at the Spirit Realm. If they recklessly disregarded the consequences, creating a zone of death in the ordinary human world would be easy. Of course, other weapons and cultivation methods had trump cards of their own.

Zheng Fan's physical body barely qualified for the Emperor Realm, but his arms were digitized. Though they likewise could not withstand the power of Sword Qi, they could simply move out of its way. Andromon had already strengthened Zheng Fan's shoulders to the limit, making them as strong as possible short of Super Alloy. With his arms serving as swords, his hands as their blades, and his fingers as their edges, his shoulders naturally became his Sword Dantian. Whenever he used Sword Qi, Zheng Fan controlled the data energy in his arms to open a passage for it. It was both powerful and stylish.

Although Zheng Fan had easily shattered Black King Sukamon's eye, that was all he could manage. He was no centuries-old sword cultivator. Having even one or two strands of Sword Qi was already good enough.

Black King Sukamon finally broke free. He was missing an eye, but eyes were not particularly important organs for sewer dwellers.

"Leomon, and you, strange Digimon... now I'm angry." A terrifying pressure radiated from Black King Sukamon. Zheng Fan was unbothered, but Leomon nearly collapsed. This was an ability only Ultimate Digimon could potentially learn, because its power came from the Digicore. Its effect was the absolute suppression of lower-level Digimon by an Ultimate. Leomon no longer had the strength to explain, and Andromon had never mentioned this ability either, since neither of File Island's two Ultimates had mastered it.

"So you're an Ultimate. Which Digimon's Ultimate form are you? Your aura isn't particularly strong." Seeing that Zheng Fan had not been suppressed, Black King Sukamon guessed that he was an Ultimate. After all, Zheng Fan and Leomon had joined forces to kill so many Sukamon. Still unwilling to give up, Black King Sukamon said, "Did you feel that power just now? That is the true power of us Ultimates, an innate power that only Ultimate Digimon who have experienced battle can learn. If you become my subordinate, I'll teach it to you."

Seeing that Leomon had completely lost the ability to fight, Zheng Fan knew he had no chance of winning alone. But he knew even better that stalling would only leave Leomon more deeply suppressed. With no better option, he had to use his final trump card.

Zheng Fan had a primordial energy-type martial constitution. It was rare even among martial constitutions, but if he tried to cultivate War Aura or fighting qi, it would be utterly useless. Primordial energy types were better suited to nourishing the flesh, and Zheng Fan's body actively absorbed energy to strengthen itself. Cultivating primordial energy posed no problem, naturally. But if he insisted on cultivating fighting qi, his body would actively absorb its energy too, and he would be finished. Fortunately, Zheng Fan had been born in a place like Buzhou, where no resources were lacking. Only through that good fortune had he attained his current cultivation.

Having made up his mind, Zheng Fan began circulating his cultivation method to absorb the surrounding data energy. Black King Sukamon sensed Zheng Fan drawing away his suppressive energy, but paid it little mind. He did not fully understand the Digicore's suppressive power himself, though he felt that absorbing this energy would cause Zheng Fan to change.

As the suppressive energy was drawn away, Leomon finally caught his breath. Watching what Zheng Fan was doing, he seemed nervous yet also rather happy. He was not taking pleasure in Zheng Fan's misfortune; like all living beings, he simply thought his own species was best.

Zheng Fan sat cross-legged, gathered the absorbed data energy in his dantian, and guided it downward all the way to the Yongquan points in the soles of his feet. Then he released his control. Like a swarm of locusts spotting food, his flesh divided up the data energy in an instant. Black King Sukamon felt his power abruptly slip out of his control. That suppressive energy came from his Digicore, so losing control of it was equivalent to having it extracted from the core. Weakness reduced him to a puddle of sludge. Meanwhile, Zheng Fan's feet had become completely digitized, along with a quarter of his lower legs. Though digitized flesh was stronger, it had lost its purely "human" nature. Now he could only hope the human world could accommodate data energy; otherwise, he would be left weeping in the Digimon world.

Black King Sukamon had recovered from his weakened state, but weakness was still weakness. Even if his offensive and defensive power remained formidable, his endurance could not last. "You forced me to do this. Poop Storm!" A tornado suddenly appeared above his head, spraying countless lumps of poop at Zheng Fan and Leomon. They were only slightly more powerful than the earlier Sukamon volley, but at least twenty percent of them were black poop. Though these black lumps were only half the size of the one thrown earlier, their sheer numbers made up for it. They were enough to keep Zheng Fan and Leomon from charging through at will. "Beast King Fist!" Leomon's Beast King Fist knocked a lump of black poop into the sewer wall. A tremendous boom rang out, and the entire sewer reverberated. Caught off guard by the sound waves, Zheng Fan, Leomon, and Black King Sukamon all immediately lost their ability to fight. With no one controlling it, the poop fell to the ground. The black poop turned back into data energy, but the ordinary poop did not disappear. With an ugly expression, Leomon said, "Zheng Fan, this... couldn't be real poop, could it?" At that possibility, Zheng Fan could no longer stay calm either.

Sound waves were devastating to soft-bodied Digimon. Green data energy drifted out of many branch pipes, presumably from Sukamon killed by the vibrations, and Black King Sukamon had completely lost his ability to fight as well. Thinking about the outcome, Zheng Fan could not help regretting it. He had only wanted to find an Ultimate Digimon to practice against, yet he had paid for it with his feet-and in the end, he had not even defeated Black King Sukamon with his own hands... dividing line...