Shen Wulong remained standing on top of the car. With a look of mild surprise, he raised his hand and touched the back of his head.
His signature long ponytail was completely gone.
In that microsecond exchange just moments ago, he had perfectly predicted Lu Li's kinetic trajectory. He had calmly dropped his center of gravity, intending to smoothly evade the hypersonic decapitation slash. However, the sheer, explosive speed of his own descent caused his hair to momentarily hang in the air, and Lu Li's blade had cleanly severed it.
What genuinely surprised him wasn't the sudden haircut. It was the fact that he had originally intended to simply raise two fingers and utilize his absolute 'Principles' to effortlessly catch the blade mid-swing. But the exact microsecond that pitch-black katana approached his neck, his deepest, primal survival instincts had violently overridden his conscious tactical decision, forcing him to abort the catch and immediately execute an evasion instead.
"Fascinating. The last person capable of genuinely threatening me with a blade was Long Yi..." Shen Wulong muttered, a hint of profound nostalgia in his voice.
He gently touched his shoulder, seemingly reminiscing about the spear thrust that had wounded him eighty years ago.
Lu Li tilted his head slightly, baring his blindingly white teeth in a savage grin.
"Why did you dodge, Shen Wulong?"
"Yes. Why exactly did I dodge?" Shen Wulong murmured, equally perplexed by his own actions. He stared at Lu Li, a look of sudden realization dawning on his face.
"Ah... I understand now. You are incredibly strong. I suppose it makes perfect sense; you were the one who managed to kill Xia Yan, after all."
"Your so-called 'Principles' are nothing more than a highly refined, transcendent application of martial technique. The fighters who failed to harm you were simply paralyzed by their own psychological awe of your 'invincibility'."
Lu Li slowly slid Qiu Mo back into its scabbard, lowering his center of gravity into a lethal, coiled stance.
"But in my eyes, your technique is absolutely not flawless."
"Very impressive. You are likely the strongest individual I have encountered in over ten thousand years," Shen Wulong said, his tone finally shifting. For the very first time, he was taking a fight genuinely seriously.
Throughout his endlessly long, agonizingly boring existence, his primary motivation for wanting to partition his ego into two separate vessels was simply to finally have a worthy opponent to fight against.
But now that I've found one... won't I be bored again after this?
Why did I even want to find a worthy opponent in the first place?
"It seems you still harbor a genuine desire to cross fists with the strong. What a profound tragedy that the endless passage of time is so utterly merciless..." Lu Li sighed deeply.
"It has completely stripped away your fundamental humanity, to the point where you've even forgotten your original purpose."
In the next microsecond, both men moved simultaneously.
Their silhouettes violently clashed in mid-air. The blinding, purple-black flash of the blade intersected with an impossible flurry of strikes and kicks. The moment they hit the ground, their footwork erupted, traversing dozens of meters in a fraction of a second.
The catastrophic, hypersonic shockwaves generated by their movements violently bent the surrounding inferno backward. The sheer kinetic force of their missed strikes pulverized nearby vehicles and shattered the concrete facades of the surrounding buildings.
When the two monsters finally separated, the blade of Qiu Mo was dripping with fresh blood. Lu Li's shirt was torn in several places, revealing faint, bruised indentations on his hardened musculature where Shen Wulong's strikes had landed.
"Shen Wulong! What the hell are you doing?! This isn't your true strength, is it?!"
Up on the roof of a nearby building, the Devourer screamed, unable to contain his absolute, terrified disbelief.
He couldn't comprehend what he was witnessing. This man named Lu Li was actually fighting Shen Wulong completely evenly!
In fact, in that brief, apocalyptic exchange, Lu Li had not only severed Shen Wulong's hair, but had actually managed to draw blood, slashing Shen Wulong's arm!
"Shut up."
Shen Wulong's voice was dangerously low.
He didn't even glance up at the Devourer. His eyes were locked intensely onto Lu Li. Within those ancient, perpetually apathetic eyes, a profound change was occurring.
It started like a single pebble dropped into a perfectly still pond, creating tiny ripples. Those ripples rapidly escalated into a surging, violent tidal wave.
He felt the blood in his veins boiling. A bizarre, long-forgotten emotion was violently rising within his chest. It was a sensation he hadn't experienced in over ten millennia.
This nameless, intoxicating euphoria completely washed away his desire for revenge and entirely erased his agreement with the Devourer. The only thing he cared about right now was staring at the man standing in front of him.
"Ah, almost forgot. We still have a spectator. You just stay up there in the VIP section and quietly wait for your execution," Lu Li said, briefly glancing up at the Devourer.
His gaze was so utterly flat and apathetic that the Devourer felt profoundly, deeply insulted.
"Shen Wulong is the absolute strongest entity in this world! Do you seriously think you're going to survive today?!" the Devourer shrieked, desperately trying to mask his terror with bravado.
He had never, in his wildest nightmares, imagined that the Terminus Space would deploy an Adjudicator this apocalyptic to a Tier 1 world. To be able to trade blows evenly with Shen Wulong... didn't that mean Lu Li's combat proficiency had already breached the [Grandmaster] tier?!
However, Lu Li didn't grace the Devourer with another response. His entire focus was now exclusively locked onto Shen Wulong.
The aura was shifting. The suffocating pressure radiating from Shen Wulong had fundamentally changed. It had become unfathomably deeper, incredibly aggressive, and highly predatory.
During their initial two probing exchanges, Lu Li had actually been slightly surprised. Shen Wulong didn't feel quite as overwhelmingly invincible as he had anticipated. In fact, Lu Li suspected that if he had completely abandoned defense and unleashed his absolute maximum output in a suicidal, mutual-kill strike right from the start, he might have actually succeeded in killing the Connector immediately.
But I missed the opening. That's fine too.
"Raian. I assume you aren't dead yet? Keep your eyes on the rat on the roof. Do not let him escape," Lu Li commanded.
His entire body was tightly coiled, his gaze rigidly locked onto Shen Wulong. As the fight escalated to its true climax, he couldn't afford to show a single microsecond of vulnerability, or the match would be decided instantly.
"Hah?! Don't you fucking dare order me around! Keep my eyes on him? I'm going to rip him to pieces!" Raian Kure roared as he hauled himself out of the rubble, his bloodshot, psychotic eyes locking onto the Devourer on the roof.
Lu Li didn't bother bickering with Raian. His kinetic intent was perfectly synchronized and locked against Shen Wulong's. The two monsters slowly paced toward each other, steadily closing the distance.
During their brief exchange and subsequent conversation, the Kure Clan had successfully evacuated the entire street. Lu Li could finally fight with absolutely zero physical or moral restraints.
He didn't know exactly how Shen Wulong operated in the canon storyline, but he could now definitively confirm one thing: the Shen Wulong standing in front of him possessed a genuine 'Demigod' constitution. The raw, biological muscle density and kinetic output hidden within that slender frame were actually vastly superior to the mutant Takeshi Wakatsuki's.
This terrifying musculature didn't just grant Shen Wulong apocalyptic strength; it granted him impossible, hypersonic speed. That was exactly what had allowed him to successfully evade Lu Li's initial decapitation strike.
At the end of the day, martial technique had absolute limits. Facing Lu Li's ultimate, unblockable slash, if the unarmed Shen Wulong hadn't possessed the raw, biological speed to physically vacate the space in time, his head would be rolling on the asphalt right now.
The power of 'Principles' was not omnipotent. Without an apocalyptic physical vessel to serve as the foundation, if an attack was biologically impossible to dodge, you would get hit. If it was physically impossible to block, you would get crushed.
However, after their brief exchange, Lu Li had to admit: Shen Wulong's ten thousand years of continuous existence hadn't been wasted. Purely in terms of raw [Martial Arts Proficiency], Shen Wulong had likely already surpassed Captain-Commander Yamamoto from the Bleach universe. It was a completely absurd, logic-defying level of mastery.
That was the terrifying, absolute power of Time. Yamamoto's martial prowess wasn't just built on innate genius; it was the result of thousands of years of relentless, blood-soaked refinement. Shen Wulong had lived for over ten millennia—perhaps even longer. To ordinary martial artists, his level of technical refinement was so incomprehensibly profound that it simply looked like literal magic or reality-warping 'Principles'.
That was why Lu Li knew that in the canon storyline, no matter how much fighters like Agito Kanoh evolved, they could never realistically defeat Shen Wulong. The sheer, insurmountable gap in combat experience forged by millennia of time was impossible to bridge.
Even Lu Li felt completely suppressed in the realm of pure Martial Arts Proficiency. Unlike his brutal sparring sessions with Captain-Commander Yamamoto—where he had eventually managed to find openings and trade blows relatively evenly—Shen Wulong's technique was flawless.
If Lu Li and Shen Wulong possessed identical physical attributes, Lu Li knew with absolute certainty that he would be completely, utterly dismantled. There would be zero suspense.
But in this world, there are no 'ifs' or 'buts'. The current, undeniable reality was: under the massive buffs of his Shikai, Lu Li's physical vessel was vastly superior to Shen Wulong's!
As Lu Li continued his slow advance, the suffocating aura radiating from his body violently spiked once more.
The purple-black, demonic veins spread aggressively across his skin like thick vines. His flawlessly dense, knotted musculature violently expanded, completely shredding his remaining shirt. His heart rate instantaneously skyrocketed to an apocalyptic 300 beats per minute.
The entire world slowed down to a crawl in his vision, as an endless, torrential flood of absolute kinetic power was injected into every single fiber of his being.
The terrifying, ambient body heat instantly vaporized his sweat, creating a thick, blood-red steam that perfectly intertwined with the ethereal purple mist of Qiu Mo, wrapping around his body like a divine mantle.
In this exact moment, Lu Li looked like a demonic god—an absolute, apocalyptic Asura descended upon the mortal realm.
[Secret Art: Kishin] (Demon God)
Strength and Agility Attributes +5!
Lu Li's [Strength] instantly skyrocketed to a terrifying 28 points. His [Agility] breached 27 points. And thanks to the Kure Clan's medicinal baths, his [Constitution] now sat at a rock-solid 25 points.
This wasn't a severely imbalanced, self-destructive transformation like Fei Wangfang's Divine Demon. It was a flawless, highly optimized synthesis of [Fallen Demon], [Removal], and [Advance], entirely conceptualized and forged by Lu Li himself. Not only did it grant a massive, explosive leap in core attributes, but it possessed highly impressive sustainability.
He could currently maintain this apocalyptic state for over ten minutes of maximum-output combat without any risk of his biological vessel detonating like Fei Wangfang's had.
A look of pure, unadulterated fanaticism burned in Lu Li's eyes as he stared down Shen Wulong.
You can use four ounces to deflect a thousand pounds?
Fine.
What happens when I hit you with ten thousand pounds? Or a hundred thousand pounds?
You possess the absolute beauty of transcendent technique. I possess the absolute beauty of overwhelming numerical stats.
"Come! Let's bring this world to its absolute end!"
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