Bian was frantically searching for Executioner Yellow while he evaded and destroyed her constructs.
[Gold Solum Mirror]
[Retaliation: 700/700]
[Soul Capacity: 150/700]
If she was facing anybody else, these golems would have been undying, but unfortunately Bian could put them to rest permanently.
Every one he killed meant one less for her and more souls for him.
ROAR!
A towering bull golem with wings jumped off a platform above him with a head-on charge.
Bian used his right arm to stab a stone puppet with six arms while his left hand clenched into a fist, punching at the head of the Stone Bull.
Bang!
The beast shattered and Bian was also pushed back, crashing into a stone bridge.
Serpent-like creatures emerged from the stone bridge, constraining his arms, legs, torso and neck.
Another Executioner Yellow appeared from the stone bridge ahead, wielding a dark brown stone spear with an exaggerated winding tip.
'Can't she use beast souls? All her weapons and armor are self-made by the earth.'
Bian dragged his arms out, breaking the serpents' binding in a second, but the drill spear of the Executioner had reached him, creating sparks as it drilled past his armor and contested against his jade body.
Pang!
Bian slapped her head off, dissolving the body into mud.
He looked at his shoulders where the drill had reached. The very tip of the spear had drilled into his skin, but it couldn't proceed any deeper.
Under his skin wasn't flesh and blood but more of his Jadebody. This was his specialty and what differentiated Jadebody from Jadeskin.
There were over a thousand clones of Executioner Yellow hidden in several stone bridges. They all had almost indistinguishable life forces, making it nigh impossible to tell where the real one was.
But of course, for Bian, who had just learned how to spot the cores of the Stone Knights, this meagre move was a step down.
It was akin to testing the basic principles of physics on a master of rocket science.
He had found Executioner Yellow, but if he went in her direction, she would be alerted and flee.
Her speed in the ground was no joke.
Even Bian, in this state of firing on all cylinders, could not hope to catch up to her.
Bian did not look in her direction. Instead, he faced what he assumed was the core of this maze, the Geo Core floated in a star-shaped rock.
There was a stone puppet standing on the tip of the star rock. Unlike the other stone puppets with six arms and six weapons, this one had twelve slender arms extending into blades.
These stone puppets were a different breed of trouble. Their agility was unrivaled, capable of pulling off moves no creature bound by gravity should be doing.
Even Bian's Phoenix techniques were more believable than these stone puppets. They had no strings, but the earth with which they were made could be controlled even better than strings, making them a pain to deal with.
"If I can destroy the Geo Core!"
The Solum Mirror flew to his front, the surface of the mirror turned blindingly bright like the midday sun.
Executioner Yellow felt a large amount of energy gathering, she sent hundreds of clones at once.
"It's too late, Retaliation!"
Bian wasn't going to give her the chance, a spherical beam of pure incandescent energy shot at the star shaped rock.
The twelve-armed puppet prepared to block the beam, giving the Geo Core a chance to escape.
Or at least it tried to.
The beam melted through the puppet and star rock in an instant. The Geo Core was reduced to ashes in less than a second.
"The core can't move through the earth as fast as her. This is it!"
Executioner Yellow, who was behind a pillar, coughed up blood. Before she could reorient herself, Bian was already before her.
She tried using earth escape to flee, but found that Bian had already destroyed the front and back of the bridge using the Edge of Ruin.
"You spaced out the ground too much. It's over!"
Bian wasn't known for idle chat. His blade moved faster than his mouth, beheading Executioner Yellow in one slash.
The sound of flesh being cut rang out alongside the breaking of glass.
Bian shockingly looked down at the crystal spear stuck in his chest.
Just before he had struck, the Instinct Pillar fired warning signals but Bian was too invested in the attack to avoid the danger.
"But how?"
"How?"
Executioner Yellow caught her decapitated head and put it back on. If Executioner White had not died and passed on his healing powers, she would have been dead.
"All I had to do was exchange a bit of my lifespan to create a spear sharp enough to pierce through your defence."
The spear in his chest suddenly grew spikes and spun like a drill.
Bian forcefully removed the spear, but the damage had been done. There was a hole in his chest, where his heart had been.
Pang!
Executioner Yellow struck with a hammer, sending him flying. Stone Dragons emerged, ready to rip him to shreds.
Weirdly enough, Bian was getting more and more calm by the second.
The teeth and claws of the Stone Dragons were made of the same material that pierced his body, so by all means, they could genuinely rip him to shreds, and yet it was this threat of death that made him so calm.
Bian was smart, way smarter than the average person. A smart person could easily find fault in others, but were usually blind to their own shortcomings.
'And I thought I had no pride in me. Here is my opponent sacrificing her life to kill me, while I should have been doing the same. I didn't want to lose my lifespan.'
Bian had made a choice not to use the Emperical Decree past his level as it would drain his lifespan.
Now he realised that such choices were only available for the strong. He was too weak to decide his own fate.
And now his heart was gone.
[Pawn piece set: Strength Overlord]
[Pawn Piece has begun Promotion]
[Strength Overlord is evolving]
[Pawn has been promoted to Rook]
Immediately Bian set Tyrant as a piece, the option for promotion came up. He didn't hesitate, and Tyrant, who was supposed to be in a chrysalis for months or even years, immediately finished his evolution.
As for why he chose rook? What would be a better piece than that for Tyrant.
The dark cocoon cracked apart, revealing Tyrant and his new self geno core. It was reminiscent of the Berserk Blade, Aeonshard, but much more.
Tyrant was now twenty metres tall, the same size as his halberd, but the halberd possessed a weird moving shadow.
The shadow shifted between corporeal and ethereal, vapour and solid, large and small.
Bian was still falling towards the Stone Dragons when he summoned Tyrant and whispered to him.
"Destroy it all."
"Roarrrrrrrr!"
A guttural battle cry shook the space itself. Tyrant swung out the halberd, forming a halberd shadow thousands of metres long.
Bang!
All the stone dragons were killed in an instant.
He turned his attention towards Executioner Yellow and her face paled considerably.
"Super creature!"
Before she could run, a halberd shadow blew up her body, sending mud flying everywhere.
She evaded by swapping with a clone, but a diagonal mark was left on her chest. The injury soon healed and the armor recovered, but another halberd attack was already on the way.
Bian saw Tyrant giving Executioner Yellow a run for her money and couldn't help but chuckle weakly.
He brought out the Regen Torch, but it was too low-level to heal him. If he fused it with anything else, it would most likely lose its healing properties.
"Damnation!"
Executioner Yellow lost all her stone golems, which she had acquired since she reached the fourth sanctuary.
She was currently running from Tyrant, only barely able to stay alive because of how fast her earth escape was.
The maze was actually holding her back, preventing her from escaping as far as she could. With the Geo Core destroyed, she couldn't control the maze anymore.
She could only hope to escape its radius, and once she touched the flat earth, even a deity couldn't hope to catch up to her.
[Gold Solum Mirror]
[Retaliation: 0/700]
[Soul Capacity: 690/700]
...
[Gold Solum Mirror]
[Retaliation: 0/700]
[Soul Capacity: 60/700]
[Gemstone Altering Brush]
[1500/1500]
[Altering Brush is evolving]
The Altering Brush levelled up to the highest tier attainable. It became a super geno core, akin to the geno cores of Emperor Spirits and Super Creatures.
While the boost did tremendously increase his powers with the Dongxuan Sutra, it did nothing for his body.
Bian wrote all sorts of words to heal his body and boost the power of the Regen Torch, but nothing seemed to be working.
He looked at Executioner Yellow, who had gotten so far she looked like a dot.
With her clone exchange, earth escape, crazy regeneration factor and complicated maze, she managed to flee from Tyrant and it seemed she would soon escape.
A deep anger burnt in Bian's eyes. His body normalised, returning the Three Inner Pillars back to their normal functioning speed.
Blood spurted out from his chest as he collapsed to the ground, feeling incredibly weak.
His heart was missing!
He would be dead in a few minutes, yet Bian didn't look like someone who was ready to die.
"Executioner Yellow can sacrifice her life to kill me. Good, very good."
Bian's eyes were bloodshot with anger and resentment.
"You pushed me to do this!"