Chapter 2717 - 2718: Flaw

"Heart Driven Spirit can be applied to Qi Realm Stance too? No, this seems... actually, yeah, it makes sense. After all, under Qi Realm Stance, your Ultimate Move startup is basically instinctive."

Watching that erupting Black Sun, Veronia’s surprise carried a trace of understanding. Because Qi Realm Stance involves the Mental State, Ultimates fall into the category of moves you can use the moment you have them, and at a fairly familiar level at that. That already meets the criteria for Heart Driven Spirit.

Of course, trying to use this to achieve Heart-controlling Spirit is impossible. If Qi Realm Stance really had that kind of capability, they would’ve discovered this usage ages ago.

The Fluffy Fire Wolfhound could naturally guess what Xiao Ji had done. Xiao Ji had said before it wanted to try combining these things and see what would happen. The Fluffy Fire Wolfhound, although it didn’t have a Special Spirit Beast Decoration, did have a Domain Crystal Stone.

Back when it was running around the village causing trouble, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound had deliberately gone to Feng Yuan to ask for the Blazing Earth Domain Crystal. Unlike Round Moon Forest, Blazing Earth only targets the Fire Attribute, so Xiao Ji doesn’t get any buffs from it.

As Blazing Earth unfolded, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound began to counterattack in place. Even with Heart Driven Spirit, Xiao Ji still found it hard to alter the attack pattern under Qi Realm Stance Defense.

Aside from a small number of Ultimates that can actively attack, all other attacks need some kind of trigger to be activated.

The Fluffy Fire Wolfhound didn’t have this restriction. As a result, it relatively held the initiative instead. At the very least, it could just barely decide whether to engage or not.

Watching the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound launch a Flame Jet via Heart Driven Spirit, Veronia said with some puzzlement,

"That’s odd. In this stance it should be able to use self-damaging Ultimates to brute-force a breakthrough in defense, so why choose a standard Flame Jet as the opener?"

Qi Realm Stance Defense is inherently focused on guarding and protecting teammates. Under this stance, their offensive ability is comparatively limited. The Fluffy Fire Wolfhound is further reinforced in terms of status and HP. Under these circumstances, those Ultimates that trade its own injury for huge damage are actually more suitable for the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound in this stance.

Veronia couldn’t figure out why the other side would choose an Ultimate with no extra edge at all to initiate offense.

Don’t forget Xiao Ji’s specialization is defense-and-counterattack. As long as you attack it, it can launch a fierce retaliatory strike. In that situation, shouldn’t you be trying to land a one-hit kill?

"Crystal Domain."

Tamur, however, had guessed what the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound was planning. Unlike Veronia, it hadn’t used its special abilities to glimpse the future, but carrying an entire era on its back, Tamur’s vision was in no way inferior, if not outright superior, to Veronia’s.

So it saw what the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound was up to at a glance. Normally, the status effects the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound gains are diffused and synchronized onto nearby allies. But right now it’s only fighting Xiao Ji, with no ally targets available, so that trait is directly rendered useless.

What the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound was doing now was trying to make that trait kick in.

Just as expected, the Flame Jet was blocked, followed immediately by Xiao Ji’s counterattack. However, right at that moment, the Flames of Blazing Earth changed, and several Flame Wolves suddenly condensed.

"Flame Illusion? That Ultimate... wait!"

At first, Veronia didn’t think much of those Fire Wolves, because Flame Illusion only creates Fire Wolves whose Attributes are one-third of the original body’s. While there’s no limit on quantity, it does require a Flame environment.

Once they leave the Flame environment, the Fire Wolves will rapidly lose All Attributes until they drop to one-tenth of the original body’s All Attributes.

That makes this Ultimate live up to its name—just a trick, basically. In real combat, it’s hard to make it do anything meaningful.

But the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound clearly didn’t see it that way. The Fire Wolves’ Attributes might be low, but their number isn’t much constrained, and on top of that, it can diffuse its own buff states.

Dodging Xiao Ji’s counterattack, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound unhesitatingly used the existing Fire Wolves to repeatedly layer Flame Special Moves and expand their numbers.

Flame Illusion is a special Flame Attribute Ultimate Move that can’t be used on its own. When cast, it has to be attached to another Flame Attribute Ultimate. If the Flames from the Flame Attribute Ultimate fail to hit a target, then as they scatter, they’ll generate a varying number of Flame clones.

The generated number depends on how much Flame scatters—the more scattered Flames, the more Flame clones. This is why the Flame Rain Ultimate often appears together with this move.

Although Flame Illusion consumes extra Energy, it can spur a large number of Flame clones during an attack. In the hands of certain Spirit Beasts, it can be played in quite a few clever ways.

The Fluffy Fire Wolfhound was no exception. After summoning a large group of Fire Wolves, it immediately started buffing up. Because of Qi Realm Stance Defense’s properties, in terms of buff states, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound can convert them into Aura Effects that diffuse outward, then apply another round of buffs to the Fire Wolves.

This is essentially doubling both the effect and the cap of its buff states.

"Xiao Ji’s in trouble."

Seeing those Fire Wolves whose states had been enhanced, Veronia muttered with a strange smile. This move from the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound was quite interesting. Xiao Ji’s Black Sun may be defense-and-counterattack, but the counterattack has an upper limit.

After all, a counterattack still needs to draw on its own Energy. Xiao Ji is currently only at Good Level strength, so its cap can’t compare to a proper Divine Beast.

If this were a Divine Beast-level cap, then this play from the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound would be nearly pointless. The auto-counterattacks alone would be enough to drown those Fire Wolves, not to mention how much stamina the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound would have left after being covered by that many attacks.

But Xiao Ji isn’t there yet. The number of Fire Wolves already exceeds its max target count for a single counterattack. As long as the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound can avoid Xiao Ji’s strikes, it just might catch a flaw.

Energy overconsumption will still bring certain negative effects, after all.

Granted, Xiao Ji is a Divine Beast, so the Energy it uses up can recover quickly, but that still takes time. During that interval, Xiao Ji’s Ultimates will either be interrupted or drop in power.

However, because a Divine Beast’s Energy recovery speed is extremely high, that window is very short. Whether the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound could seize that chance, even Veronia wasn’t sure.

Xiao Ji had clearly underestimated the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound. Even though the number of Fire Wolves had already surpassed its upper limit for counterattack targets, Xiao Ji still launched a counterattack at its maximum target count.

Even though, with the state buffs, those Fire Wolves’ Attributes had already been pulled up to match—or even slightly surpass—the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound’s unbuffed state, plenty of them still failed to avoid the attack.

There’s no helping it. A strike from a young Divine Beast is not easy to evade, never mind that they weren’t even the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound’s real body.

But because it was so familiar with its opponent, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound managed to seize an opening on the second wave of counterattacks, using the brief timing window of Xiao Ji’s Ultimate lag due to Energy overconsumption to fire off a Big Destruction Cannon.

This powerful Flame Attribute Ultimate deals massive backlash damage to its user. In return, even when used at Sacred Beast Level, the Big Destruction Cannon’s power upgrades by a tier, barely brushing the threshold of Divine Beasts—a terrifying level of strength.

This shot of Great Destruction Cannon directly reached Legendary Level power. Coupled with Xiao Ji being stuck in Ultimate lag, the attack unsurprisingly broke through its defense, hit Xiao Ji, and even blasted it out of Black Sun state.

"Pretty ruthless. But the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound really nailed that timing."

Seeing Xiao Ji get blown away, Veronia exclaimed in amazement. She wasn’t worried about Xiao Ji’s safety at all—the Mirror Space was set up with her protective rules. If the damage is too high, the target will be directly transferred away to avoid a fatal blow.

This was originally a safeguard Veronia had set up to protect the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound. In her view, with Xiao Ji being a Divine Beast at the same level of strength, beating on the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound would be child’s play. Yet reality turned out differently.

"It got careless."

Tamur said mildly. If Xiao Ji hadn’t gotten careless, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound might not have pulled off such results. Given how well the two sides knew each other, it wasn’t strange that the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound could grab the right moment.

Xiao Ji wasn’t strong enough to utterly crush its opponent. If it had dialed back the intensity of its counterattacks to avoid Energy overconsumption, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound wouldn’t have found the chance to do this.

Purely in terms of defensive power, Xiao Ji is still much stronger than the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound. And because of the constraints on its counterattacks, it practically loses the ability to attack proactively. The side effect of that is that Xiao Ji’s counterattack damage is even higher than the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound’s in the same stance.

Unfortunately, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound caught that flaw and went straight for a flaw break. If they’d ground it out slowly, the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound might not actually have outlasted Xiao Ji.

Simply put, when it comes to Attribute and Recovery Power, Xiao Ji truly does far outstrip the Fluffy Fire Wolfhound.