This novel is finished, and I have posted all the advanced chapters on my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395
"Not good!"
Seeing this scene, Shi Ji's eyes nearly split apart.
Rowen's deduction was not wrong; the bloodline power within Rayleigh was indeed a preparation Shi Ji had made for his revival. However, there was one thing Rowen didn't know: even if Rayleigh died, that power would not disappear.
It would only disperse once more, gathering within other living individuals who possessed the Silvers bloodline.
If Shi Ji wished, he could create new puppets at any time.
But…
Here came the crucial problem.
Did he have that opportunity?
Looking at Rowen before him, Shi Ji's mind was crystal clear.
The answer was no!
Not to mention re-gathering the power to create new puppets, he didn't even have the time to devour the power within Rayleigh's body right now.
So Rayleigh could not die. He had to stay alive!
Once Rayleigh was killed, Shi Ji would be left with only the small amount of power he had just devoured from Imu within this newly revived body.
Facing the cunning and dangerous Soryu (Azure Dragon) and that starry-sky behemoth with such little power, the outcome went without saying.
Even if he won, it would be a miserable victory.
And he might even fall back into a state of feigned death.
If that happened, Imu being carved up, the Sea Saintess sealed away, himself falling into slumber once more, the Soryu (Azure Dragon)'s physical body destroyed and entering the next cycle of reincarnation to wait…
Everything, everything, would turn out exactly as Rowen wished.
This world would no longer have any Gods!
"What ruthless scheming!"
Only those who are cruel even to themselves are worthy of being called ruthless.
Seeing Rowen's black-lightning-wrapped fist about to land on Rayleigh, the blue glow covering half of Shi Ji's body flared violently, transforming into a streak of azure light that vanished from the retina in an instant.
Boom!!
A figure was sent flying, still gripping a pitch-black, vicious, long heavy halberd.
"Cough, cough… ptoo!"
After tumbling for over a thousand meters, Rowen spat out a mouthful of bloody phlegm, flipped over, and steadied himself.
"How does that feel? Like a pig crashing into a tree, you… never mind, forget I said that."
He had originally wanted to quote *waiting by a tree stump for a rabbit*.
"Hmph!"
Ignoring whatever madness Rowen was spouting, Shi Ji pulled open the torn section of his half-monk, half-Daoist robe. A gash as wide as a baby's arm appeared on the front of his body.
Within the wound was still a stone body of Seastone mixed with Seacrystal particles, except that after the recent movement, the proportion of Seacrystal had clearly increased.
But that wasn't the important part.
What mattered was that, at the position of Shi Ji's heart, a thick, viscous liquid, similar in color and texture to laundry detergent, was flowing out.
That was Shi Ji's blood!
Even a God evolved from Sea crystals had something that could flow.
With Rowen's original strength alone, it would have been impossible to create such a terrifying wound. He had achieved it by ramming straight into Shi Ji in order to save Rayleigh.
What Rowen did was nothing more than a method ancient hunters often used when hunting brown bears, planting the spear or gun into the ground, and when the bear reared up and pounced down to bite, killing it with its own weight.
Naturally, choosing a bear as one's opponent was something that rarely happened in the first place.
The rescued Rayleigh showed no gratitude. His mind had already been dominated by Shi Ji when he was activated, which was why Rowen had called him a clone.
When the dust settled, Rayleigh decisively transformed into a streak of blue light and rushed toward the distant Mountain Ancestor.
"You actually let him face the Mountain Ancestor alone? That confident?"
Even after being heavily injured in succession by Shi Ji and Imu, the Mountain Ancestor was not someone to be trifled with.
Unable to be fully infused with divine power and transformed into a Seastone body, thus changing his life's essence, Rayleigh did not possess Imu's level of defense. If he were hit, the outcome would be tragic.
"Delaying it is enough… isn't that exactly what you want?"
Shi Ji was no fool. The Mountain Ancestor was powerful, but it was not a friendly unit to either of them. Rowen's purpose in "waking" it was obviously to split Shi Ji's attention in two and prevent him from being double-teamed.
From the consecutive exchanges just now, it was clear, Shi Ji had been completely suppressed.
If he hadn't desperately exploited Rayleigh as a weakness to land a dirty move, being beaten to death was only a matter of time.
An undying Void God with a physical body, he had truly never seen such a thing.
Because once there is a physical body, it means it can definitely be killed!
Just like himself.
This contradicted the very nature of a Void God, like a beautiful mermaid wanting to go ashore to see a prince yet refusing to give up her fishtail.
Only those who committed the ultimate heresy by seizing divine power would be shackled by an attachment to a physical form.
Rowen's gaze slowly turned cold. "So, you're sure you can kill me before he can't hold on anymore, right?"
The best method was undoubtedly for Shi Ji himself to quickly deal with the Mountain Ancestor, leaving Rayleigh behind to stall for time. Injuring ten fingers was inferior to severing one, maximizing the disintegration of enemy strength was a universally applicable truth.
But he didn't dare.
Almost everyone who had fought Rowen before had experienced this feeling. No one dared to expose their naked weakness before the Soryu (Azure Dragon).
To that end, they would rather use a clumsier method to fight to the death, completely reversing priorities.
Yet fear was precisely the thing that could make such "reversed priorities" seem "perfectly reasonable."
Rowen grinned, flashing a mouthful of white teeth. "Then I wish you get what you want!"
Something was wrong!
Shi Ji was suddenly alarmed, what else had he failed to consider?!
No, it was a feint, meant to distract him!
Noticing the black lightning striking toward him, Shi Ji snorted coldly as blue light surged forth.
Azure Fist!
No matter what schemes you have, strength is what truly matters!
Boom!!
His charge-up was interrupted, but his arms and legs had already been completely assimilated into Seacrystal. Shi Ji didn't bother forcing it any further, once assimilation was complete, the burden on him was enormous as well.
A beautiful blue aurora lit up the eastern hemisphere. The curtain of black lightning was almost instantly swallowed by the light, followed by a muffled explosion.
Rowen was sent flying backward, his body expanding midair, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth, eyes wide open.
Titan Mode!
Eye of the Firmament!
Ding ding ding ding!
Crisp, trembling chimes rang through the sky. One after another, eyes outlined in black lightning appeared hundreds of meters behind him, angled at roughly thirty degrees to the ground, gazing obliquely toward the blue radiance.
Then,
Black light surged forth!
Countless black lightning dragons burst into existence amid deafening thunder. The moment they appeared, they lunged downward, tearing and biting. As far as the eye could see, the entire field of vision was filled with these terrifying thunder beasts, with no visible end.
Boom boom!
Bang bang bang!
Shi Ji swung his crystalline, gem-like fists, continuously releasing blue light. One lightning dragon after another was torn apart, explosions chaining together as he rapidly closed the distance to Rowen.
In terms of pure speed, he was even faster than Rowen, who was the incarnation of lightning itself!
Because he was the will of the ocean, wherever the ocean existed, so did he.
This was fundamentally different from lightning, which required conduction. The ocean, from the moment it came into existence, already encompassed an immeasurable expanse!
After knocking Rowen away yet again, a sudden and overwhelming sense of danger surged in Shi Ji's heart.
Ding ding ding ding!
The Eyes of the Firmament floating in the sky rang sharply once more, then exploded on the spot with a boom.
"Using your own body as bait to lure me in?" Shi Ji instantly understood what had happened and sneered coldly. "That only proves you've reached the end of the road, Soryu (Azure Dragon)!"
If Rowen had any other trump card, there would have been no need for something this complicated.
Shi Ji firmly believed this.
BOOM!!
It was as if the sky itself had shattered. The Eyes of the Firmament exploded like broken glass, and the distance of several hundred meters vanished in an instant. Black lightning roared, devouring everything in its path.
Buzz!!
But almost immediately, accompanied by a sharp buzzing sound, a blue-lit figure burst out of the lightning encirclement and appeared before Rowen.
"Die!!!"
He couldn't endure it anymore. Even with the Mountain Ancestor still present, he would not miss a single chance to kill Rowen.
This man, alive, was a threat in and of itself!
At the moment Rowen lowered his gaze toward him, Shi Ji's eyes suddenly fired two blue beams of light, piercing straight into Rowen's brain.
This was his final trump card.
A technique that erased the opponent's soul directly through eye contact.
As the incarnation of the ocean, Shi Ji wielded more than mere destruction. Like the ocean itself, he possessed the power to nurture countless forms of life.
In this regard, he was remarkably similar to the Heavenly Demon within Rowen, both destruction and rebirth, both an ending and a beginning.
And the essence of life,
Was the soul.
The lightning in space vanished in an instant. Watching Rowen's corpse fall downward with eyes closed, Shi Ji covered his aching, swollen eyes, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
"In the end… just an arrogant heretic."
He took a deep breath, then added in a low voice:
"An extremely troublesome heretic…"
In the eyes of his former self, Rowen was still not strong enough, but the threat he posed far exceeded that of any previous opponent.
Shi Ji dared not imagine what would happen if such a monster were to obtain power equal to his own.
A God terrifying the entire universe would be unable to stop his march.
After the pain in his eyes subsided, Shi Ji slowly lowered his hand and turned around.
"Next, there's only you left, you wretched beast!"
But at that moment,
BANG!!!
A terrifying force, vast as an abyss and deep as hell, descended from the starry sky. The oppressive aura rapidly closed in, what began as lightly rippling raindrops escalated into a torrential storm in mere seconds.
"Nani?!?!!"
As expected, tempting fate never ends well. Shi Ji proved that truth with his own strength.
He stared downward in disbelief, his mouth unconsciously parting.
"This… how is this possible?!"
There,
Rowen was floating upward, his entire body wrapped in lightning, eyes still closed. Yet the trembling of his eyelids clearly showed that he was on the verge of awakening.
"So… you're not as careless as me after all? Really…"
Suddenly, Rowen's slightly dissatisfied voice echoed.
At the same time, he slowly opened his eyes.
In that instant, lightning roamed through the space before him, the void continuously collapsing, then healing, over and over again.
That terrifying fluctuation of power, merely its aftershocks, shattered space itself.
A word abruptly surfaced in Shi Ji's mind.
Feigning death.
Rowen, eyes now open, glanced at Shi Ji, then at the blue light surrounding the Mountain Ancestor in the distance, and let out a long sigh.
"And once again, reality proves that plans can never keep up with change… doesn't it?"
For someone like Rowen, whose schemes ran as deep as the sea, having his plans derailed by unforeseen variables was the thing he hated most.
(End of Chapter)