Chapter 224: Miss Me??

Chapter 223

"Miss me?" Liyu said with a bright smile blooming across his face, his voice calm...far too calm...as though he had not just appeared from beneath an attack that everyone in the arena had believed was enough to erase him from existence, as though he had not just pierced Shi Tian’s heart, and as though the person standing before him was not supposed to be dead.

For the first time since the two of them had met, Shi Tian’s emotionless gaze shattered, his eyes widening in shock...pure, undisguised shock...because by all accounts Liyu should not have been able to survive that attack and there was simply no possibility.

The Thousand Wind Execution had been unleashed at its full power, and even a Peak Foundation Realm cultivator should have been completely erased beneath such terrifying destructive force, yet Liyu was standing right in front of him alive, bloodied, and wounded, but alive.

"No way. This is impossible. Impossible..." Shi Tian’s pupils trembled violently as he said it again, his voice low and filled with disbelief, his gaze remaining locked onto Liyu while Liyu merely looked back at him with a blatant grin plastered across his face.

Shi Tian wanted to say something as countless questions suddenly appeared within his mind...how, how was this possible, what had happened, how had Liyu survived?...but before he could ask even a single one of those questions, his entire body suddenly felt light, the strength holding him in the air vanished, and his body began to plummet from the great height. "Ah..."

There was no time to react as his body rushed downward at a terrifying speed before...BOOM!...he smashed into the ruined ground, the already-destroyed battlefield shook beneath the impact, dust rose around him, and Shi Tian’s body lay motionless among the shattered earth with completely still limbs and no sign that he would be able to rise once more.

Liyu calmly landed on the ground as crackle! Green lightning continued to crackle around his figure, the brilliant green arcs of electricity dancing across his body and illuminating his bloodied appearance as he looked down at Shi Tian, who was lying directly below his feet.

Blood rushed through Shi Tian’s mouth while more blood poured from the wound in his chest where the Void Piercer had pierced straight through his heart, leaving no doubt that Shi Tian had reached his absolute limit and his life force was rapidly fading.

Seeing that his surprise attack had worked, Liyu heaved a deep sigh of relief inwardly, thinking it worked... though only Liyu himself knew just how close this entire situation had been.

It had worked, but it had almost failed, and he had almost been completely decimated and erased by Shi Tian’s attack earlier with no exaggeration in the fear he had felt, because if not for the final card he had bought from the System Shop, he would be dead now...not seriously injured, not barely alive, but dead, with nothing left of him, not even a corpse.

Shi Tian’s gaze remained locked onto Liyu while the light in his eyes was slowly fading, feeling his life slipping away with every passing second, yet there was one thing he needed to know before everything ended, and he had to know. "Tell me..." his voice was weak as every word seemed to cost him an enormous amount of strength, "How did you survive that?"

His gaze seemed to be losing its light and it was obvious that he was reaching the end of his life, with every breath accompanied by pain and every movement sending unbearable agony through his body, which was understandable after all since his heart had been pierced through by the Void Piercer...a wound like that was enough to push even a powerful cultivator into the depths of despair.

"How?" Shi Tian asked again, this time his voice even weaker, while Liyu raised an eyebrow and then shrugged, saying, "It’s pretty simple." He unfolded his second hand, which until that moment had appeared as though he had been tightly holding something within his palm, slowly opened his fingers, and then showed it to Shi Tian: a talisman.

The talisman glowed with a pure golden light, and for a brief moment that golden radiance illuminated the area around Liyu’s hand while Shi Tian’s fading eyes narrowed slightly.

Liyu looked at the talisman, which was the final thing he had bought during the shopping session...his final card, the thing he had prepared specifically in case everything went south. And guess what? Everything had gone south. Not just a little. Everything.

The situation had become exactly the kind of hopeless scenario that required him to use every means necessary just to stay alive, and if it were not for this talisman, Liyu would have died with no doubt about that.

But before Shi Tian could examine it any further, the golden glow suddenly disappeared and the talisman began to change, its golden light fading and its surface quickly turning crispy black as though it had been burned by the flames of hell itself.

Cracks appeared across its surface, and then the blackened remains began to crumble, piece by piece, as the talisman started to fade away. Liyu’s eyes became somber as he watched it disappear...this was his final card, the last thing standing between him and death, and now it had been used, gone, and completely consumed.

Several minutes ago, Liyu stood on the shattered, ruined stage, the battlefield around him already reduced to a scene of devastation with broken earth, scattered debris, and dust filling the air, and above it all stood Shi Tian, who was preparing to unleash his attack with the terrifying killing move gathered around him. Liyu looked at him without the need for words, his gaze alone clearly showing how dire his situation was, knowing that he was in genuine danger.

Without wasting any time, Liyu quickly raised several barriers, green lightning erupting from his body as he used King Rayden’s lightning to create multiple barriers in front of himself...one, two, three, and more following in layer after layer of lightning barriers.

His intention was simple: he needed to soften the impact of Shi Tian’s attack, reduce its destructive force, and most importantly buy himself enough time to escape.

But the moment Shi Tian’s attack fully formed, Liyu’s back was instantly drenched in cold sweat and his expression changed as he looked at the air ahead where countless weapons made entirely from wind qi had appeared...blades, spears, swords, every one of them carrying an overwhelming killing intent, filling the sky, and being beautiful in a terrifying way.

Yet what frightened Liyu was not merely their appearance, but their power, which possessed far more power than the blades constructed by King Rayden...in fact, the two were not even on the same level, not at all.

The moment Liyu sensed the terrifying force contained within those wind-qi weapons, an overwhelming dread descended upon him, his instincts screaming at him to run, and his entire body telling him that he could not withstand this and there would be no surviving it, or rather, he would not have survived this if he had not prepared for a dire situation like this where everything had become hopeless, every other method had failed, his only objective was to save his life, and death could descend upon him at any moment.

What a coincidence, or perhaps maybe it was not a coincidence at all, because he was in genuine danger then and there and truly had reached the point where his life was hanging by a thread.

Inside the black space, King Rayden’s expression became grim and his lips pressed into a thin line, because even he could sense the terrifying power of the attack, and for a moment there was silence before King Rayden spoke in a grim tone, "We’re not surviving this one."

There was no way his barriers could stop all of those attacks, and heck, King Rayden doubted that they could even halt their advance at all, because the moment those countless weapons of wind qi descended, he had a feeling that his barriers would be nothing more than decorations placed in front of an unstoppable force that would not stop them, would not slow them down, and at best would buy him a fraction of a second while at worst would be shredded apart instantly.

Dead Eye Rayden did not speak and remained silent within the black space, but it was clear from his slightly shaking gaze that he had reached the same conclusion, and even he...someone who had once stood at the peak of an era...could not see a way out of this situation.

Liyu was silent for a while as he stared at the countless wind-qi weapons filling the sky, the killing intent contained within them overwhelming and the pressure alone enough to make the surrounding space tremble, yet after a brief silence Liyu smiled and said, "Don’t worry, guys," his voice calm...almost ridiculously calm considering the situation..."I am here."

King Rayden immediately gave him a side look with eyes that twitched, at that moment genuinely feeling the urge to knock some sense into his original host, because he’s here? So what if he’s here?

Whether he was here or not wouldn’t matter anyway, since the moment that attack descended King Rayden did not see them surviving this...not him, not Dead Eye Rayden, not Liyu, none of them. King Rayden sighed, already admitting it in his heart that we’re cooked, there was nothing else to do, and they were all dead anyway, or at least that was what he believed.

Then Shi Tian’s voice rang out, "Thousand Wind Execution..." as his gaze became cold and he said, "Advance!" BOOM! The attack came down, countless weapons constructed entirely from terrifying wind qi descending like a storm of death, the air itself seeming to be torn apart beneath their might, and the terrifying pressure swept forward. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

Before those weapons even reached within ten meters of Liyu’s barriers, CRACK! The force radiating from them alone was enough to shred the first barrier apart, shattering it instantly as if it were nothing more than brittle glass, and CRACK!

The second barrier followed, then the third, then the fourth, one after another... CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Every barrier was torn apart because none of them could withstand the terrifying pressure, shattering so easily that it was almost laughable.

Liyu’s expression changed, he reacted immediately with no time to hesitate, and his hand moved toward the storage ring on his finger as a white piece of paper suddenly appeared within his palm with golden letters written across its surface...words that were simple, but to Liyu represented his final hope, his final ace.

Liyu’s eyes became solemn, he immediately passed a strand of qi into the talisman, and the moment his qi entered it...BOOM!...the talisman activated.

A golden brilliance suddenly erupted from his body, dazzling, pure, and absolute, rapidly spreading across his entire body as it seeped into his skin, his flesh, his bones, his organs, his mind, and his soul, with every single part of him enveloped in absolute golden brilliance so that for that brief moment Liyu seemed almost divine.

Then the attack descended with its full bestial might, BOOOOOOM!, and the entire battlefield was swallowed by destruction while the stage was decimated, the ground was torn apart, everything caught within the aftermath was erased, and the terrifying wind swept across the battlefield with enough force to destroy anything below the Core Stage.

The protective barriers groaned, the earth shattered, dust and debris filled the sky, and everything disappeared beneath the destructive storm, yet Liyu remained completely untouched without even a scratch or the slightest injury, because the attack that should have erased him from existence had no effect whatsoever due to his final card...the Final Ace Talisman.

It was something that granted what the System called an Absolute Defensive Law, making all forms of attacks completely meaningless against Liyu for its duration, including physical attacks, mental attacks, soul attacks, killing attacks, and energy-based attacks, all of them completely nullified with nothing able to harm him while the effect remained active.

The talisman was not simply a defensive treasure, but an absolute protection against destruction, and its description within the System Shop was equally straightforward:

«Final Ace Talisman

Type: Consumable Defensive Treasure

Cost: 30,000 Essence Points

Description: A supreme defensive talisman capable of invoking an Absolute Defensive Law upon activation. Upon activation, the user enters a state of absolute protection in which all forms of external attacks are rendered completely ineffective.

Physical attacks, energy attacks, mental attacks, soul attacks, killing attacks, destructive laws, and other forms of hostile force are all nullified regardless of their method of attack. During the active duration, the user cannot be harmed by any external attack.

Duration: One minute.

Special Restriction: Once activated, the effect cannot be interrupted, transferred, dispelled, or extended. One-time use.»

Thirty thousand Essence Points...an extravagant cost, an absolutely extravagant cost that made Liyu almost feel his heart bleed when he purchased it, but now he knew that every single Essence Point had been worth it because without it he would be dead with no other possibility, and the Thousand Wind Execution would have completely erased him, making the talisman the only reason he had survived.

But Liyu did not simply stand there and wait for the attack to end, because he had another plan, using the enormous commotion caused by the attack to his advantage as the battlefield was being destroyed and the entire area swallowed by dust and debris by allowing himself to be buried deep underground using the force of the destruction itself and letting the shattered earth swallow him.

Then, beneath the ground, Liyu immediately triggered his Camouflage, his aura disappeared, his presence vanished, and his senses were completely concealed while the residue of the Final Ace’s effect still remained active.

And with the protection provided by that overwhelming defensive law Liyu was able to conceal his senses from the rest of the battlefield, even from someone as powerful as Elder Ting, proving how terrifying the combination of the Final Ace and his Camouflage had become.

The entire world believed that he had been erased, no one could sense him, no one could find him, and no one knew that beneath the ruined battlefield Liyu was still alive as he waited, remained hidden, controlled his breathing, and waited until the perfect opportunity arrived.

And when the time was finally right, Liyu launched himself forward at his top speed...BOOM!...his body shooting out from underground like a lightning bolt with no hesitation or wasted movement and only one objective: end the battle.

And Shi Tian believed the battle was already over, which was his mistake, because after unleashing his strongest killing move and seeing the battlefield completely destroyed, he had lowered his guard slightly...just slightly...but against someone like Liyu, slightly was enough, and that tiny opening was all Liyu needed. He struck, he made his comeback, and he launched the attack that would end the battle.

Back to the present, Liyu looked down at the Final Ace Talisman in his hand, its golden radiance already disappeared and the white talisman turned completely black with its remaining energy exhausted, until slowly the talisman faded and began to crumble into particles before disappearing completely into thin air.

Liyu watched it vanish with a blissful smile appearing on his face, genuinely glad that he had bought it, because despite its extravagant cost and despite the thirty thousand Essence Points he had spent, it had been worth it...more than worth it...since without the Final Ace Talisman Liyu would be dead right now with no comeback, no beating Shi Tian, no victory, and nothing, having been completely erased beneath the Thousand Wind Execution.

Liyu heaved a deep sigh of relief, knowing he had truly been walking along the edge of death, but now he was still alive and Shi Tian was lying before him.

The smile on Liyu’s face slowly returned, his eyes narrowed, and a small feral grin appeared across his bloodied face as he turned toward Shi Tian, his voice ringing clearly across the ruined battlefield: "You have lost..." He paused, his grin widened, and saying, "You, Shi Devil..." Liyu’s eyes gleamed with an intense light as he finished, " You lose... I won."

The next second, the arena erupted into cheers.