Clearly, the Bull Shark manifestation was not enough to defeat the Sword Cultivator. However formidable its body, it could not withstand such slashing from the flying sword. It had imposing power but lacked agility, leaving it hampered at every turn.
Hou Niao feinted east and struck west. His repeated slashes at the belly were a feint; his true target was still the giant shark's head. But he also knew that killing such an enormous manifested body in a single blow would be difficult before he found its weak point, so every attack probed the manifestation's structure for strengths and weaknesses.
The blow to the head was not fatal, and Yu Kuohai had deliberately allowed the manifestation to collapse, using the momentum to transform into another manifestation-the Great King Conch.
It was precisely this transformation that let the Canghai Pirates Group see its true form. Yu Kuohai was not a human cultivator at all, but a Sea Demon!
Its manifestations also differed from those of human body cultivators. They were mutations that fused manifestation and body; whatever it became, it gained some of that sea beast's divine abilities. It was extraordinary.
The Great King Conch it had now become, for instance, was an ultimate defensive form. A hard shell protected its body on all sides, allowing it both to defend itself and to tend to its earlier injuries within.
But the Great King Conch's attacks were rather limited: it blew its conch!
Sound waves radiated in every direction from its body, almost tangible. They also carried hallucinatory attacks that harassed a cultivator's Sea of Consciousness; how much they could accomplish depended entirely on the opponent's mental resolve.
Generally speaking, inflicting actual injury was difficult, especially against Heaven-Connecting Realm cultivators who had already opened their Sea of Consciousness. But they would cause