"Catch!"
The Devourer screamed from the rooftop, violently hurling an ancient, unadorned long spear down to the street. It was a weapon Shen Luohan had prepared in advance. Shen Wulong hadn't initially brought it to the island, but thankfully, Shen Luohan had the foresight to store it inside the Devourer's Spatial Inventory just in case.
Looking at Lu Li's current, apocalyptic state, the Devourer had a terrifying premonition. He genuinely believed that if Shen Wulong continued to fight bare-handed, the Connector might actually lose.
Seeing the spear falling from the sky, Lu Li made absolutely no move to intercept it. He calmly watched as Shen Wulong caught the weapon.
The moment Shen Wulong's hands wrapped around the wooden shaft, he casually dropped into a stance. Yet, that simple, effortless posture radiated the absolute, transcendent majesty of a supreme Grandmaster.
He stared at Lu Li, who looked like a literal demon god. His voice trembled, rising in pitch with an unfamiliar emotion.
"You are so strong... What exactly is this feeling?"
"That is exactly why I called you pathetic. You don't even recognize your own excitement. Isn't this exactly what you've been desperately searching for? A life-and-death struggle against an equal."
Lu Li bared his teeth in a blindingly white, feral grin.
"Come. Enjoy this. The absolute pinnacle of combat."
The microsecond the words left his lips, Lu Li launched his attack from an Iaijutsu (quick-draw) stance. It was a god-speed strike, seamlessly fusing absolute power with peerless technique, unleashing the absolute strongest slash Lu Li had ever executed in his life.
The purple-black blade violently tore through the air, screaming toward the Demigod of the martial world.
Shen Wulong lunged forward, thrusting the dark-red spear to meet the blade. Within the momentum and the posture lay the absolute essence of ancient spear arts:
The Azure Dragon Extends Its Claws!
CLANG—!
The deafening, ear-piercing screech of metal colliding with metal erupted. Blinding sparks exploded at the exact point where the spear tip met the katana's edge. In an impossible display of retroactive interception, Shen Wulong had struck after Lu Li, yet his spear tip arrived first, perfectly blocking the katana before the rotational momentum of the slash could fully descend.
What terrifying kinetic vision! What unfathomable technique! He was entirely worthy of his ten thousand years of martial arts refinement, and entirely worthy of the anticipation burning in his opponent's eyes.
The two monsters rapidly shifted their footwork. Shen Wulong's spear movements were perfectly circular and flawlessly fluid, creating an impenetrable, airtight defense. Yet, seamlessly woven into that defense were venomous, lightning-fast thrusts mimicking a dragon's bite, and devastating, wide-arcing sweeps mimicking a dragon's tail.
Every single movement he made seemed entirely instinctual, approaching the very concept of the Dao itself. Using a physically weaker biological vessel, he was actually suppressing Lu Li for a brief moment, making it impossible for Lu Li's blade to touch his flesh.
The two powerhouses clashed and maneuvered at hypersonic speeds, tearing down the street like a catastrophic, localized hurricane. Wherever they passed, telephone poles were sheared in half, parked cars were pulverized into scrap metal, and concrete walls violently collapsed.
It was an absolute clash at the zenith of martial arts. The collision between a Demigod and a berserker Asura.
"This is completely exaggerated... No wonder the old man called him an immortal."
Raian Kure, having just sprinted up to a nearby rooftop, was genuinely stunned by the apocalyptic spectacle unfolding below.
Even though his pride hated to admit it, the battle between Lu Li and Shen Wulong had already breached the realm of the inhuman. Whether it was their speed, their kinetic output, or their technical mastery, everything completely exceeded the fundamental parameters of human comprehension.
They already possessed superhuman biological strength, and they were relentlessly, flawlessly executing ultimate techniques, exponentially multiplying their destructive power.
There was absolutely no room for anyone to intervene. The street had become an absolute death zone. If anyone else dared to step into that battlefield, they would instantly be reduced to a bloody mist.
"Truly unmatched technique," Lu Li praised mid-clash, his eyes burning with pure, unadulterated fanaticism. It had been a very long time since he had fought such an exhilarating, thoroughly satisfying battle.
He genuinely admired the absolute beauty of Shen Wulong's technique. Under the apocalyptic buffs of his [Kishin] state, his dynamic visual reflexes were pushed to their absolute limits. He could perfectly perceive every single micro-movement Shen Wulong made, analyzing exactly how the Connector generated kinetic force and how he manipulated the flow of the spear.
And it was precisely because he could see it so clearly that he was deeply in awe of it.
His master had once told him:
A month for the staff, a year for the blade, a lifetime for the spear.
The spear was a weapon that required an agonizing amount of time to truly master. So, what terrifying realm had Shen Wulong reached after grinding his spear arts for over ten millennia?
Based on his systemic evaluations, Lu Li estimated Shen Wulong's comprehensive attributes hovered around 22 points—vastly lower than Lu Li's current heavily-buffed state. Yet, the Connector was flawlessly parrying his overwhelming assaults and even managing to launch lethal counterattacks. His technique was so absurdly broken... that it caused Lu Li's adrenaline to spike into overdrive.
Lu Li's martial arts talent had once been praised by his master as a "once-in-a-millennium" miracle. If he had been born in ancient times, he would have undoubtedly become the undisputed sovereign of the martial world. Lu Li didn't entirely understand the weight of that praise, but he knew one thing for certain: he possessed the innate, anomalous talent to rapidly absorb, adapt to, and master any martial technique he witnessed.
The Shen Wulong standing before him was a colossal, walking treasure trove. Every single movement the Connector made was aggressively pouring knowledge into Lu Li's sponge-like brain. As he continuously adapted to Shen Wulong's offensive rhythm, he was simultaneously stealing his techniques.
Unarmed combat, force redirection, spear arts, footwork... all of it. In this brief, apocalyptic exchange, Lu Li's various combat proficiencies were skyrocketing at an impossible speed.
The duel between the two supreme powerhouses was so intense and breathtaking that Raian completely forgot his primary objective of assassinating the Devourer, his eyes glued to the street below.
The Devourer didn't attempt to flee, nor did he try to ambush Raian. He knew his ultimate fate was now intrinsically tied to Shen Wulong. Having exposed himself to the Kure Clan, he was permanently marked. Even if he ran now, he could no longer hide on this island.
Furthermore, he knew Adjudicators possessed specialized systemic tracking abilities. Since he had already shown his face to Lu Li, he would be relentlessly hunted to the ends of the earth.
Right now, his absolute only hope was to pray that Shen Wulong slaughtered Lu Li quickly, and then proceeded to exterminate the Kure Clan. If that happened, his mission in this world would still end in a perfect, flawless victory.
BOOM—!
Following a deafening shockwave, Lu Li and Shen Wulong were simultaneously blasted backward. Lu Li crashed heavily into a reinforced concrete wall, while Shen Wulong slammed violently into a traffic light pole.
Lu Li stepped out from the resulting pile of rubble, cracking his neck. As he grinned, his teeth were stained with blood. Yet, with every step he took forward, his internal injuries were rapidly mending, and the shallow cuts left by the spear tip were visibly closing.
[Kaido] (Healing Kido) was proving absolutely invaluable in this war of attrition. Under the extreme biological stress of the Kishin state, he was highly susceptible to severe blood loss. Without Kaido constantly patching him together, he likely wouldn't have lasted three minutes before his body gave out.
"As much as I'd love to keep stealing your techniques, my physical vessel simply won't allow it..." Lu Li sighed.
Seven minutes of catastrophic, high-speed offense and defense had already passed. The entire street had been reduced to a pulverized, unrecognizable wasteland, yet neither side had managed to land a definitive, fatal blow.
Shen Wulong's technique was truly flawless. By perfectly manipulating the flow of kinetic energy, he redirected the overwhelming force of Lu Li's strikes, occasionally even utilizing Lu Li's own momentum to whip the back end of the spear into Lu Li's ribs.
"What a profound shame. Have you already reached your limit?" Shen Wulong asked from beneath the dented traffic light. His tone expressed genuine regret, yet his face was flushed with intense excitement, bearing a wildly euphoric smile.
"So you are capable of making that kind of face. Did you finally remember what it feels like to be human?" Lu Li laughed.
"Fighting a life-or-death battle against an equal... it's intoxicating, isn't it?"
"Intoxicating? Perhaps. I just feel like... everything else has suddenly become completely irrelevant. All those annoying, complicated voices have completely vanished from my mind," Shen Wulong replied softly.
When the battle first began, the residual influence of Shen Luohan's ego was constantly screaming in his mind, urging him to signal for the stealth helicopters and annihilate Lu Li with overwhelming modern military firepower.
But now, he didn't care about any of that. His mind was completely free of distractions.
What made him feel a slight twinge of guilt was the realization that he was no longer fighting to avenge Xia Yan. He was simply, purely enjoying the thrill of the battle. He wanted to use his own martial arts to completely crush the powerhouse standing before him.
"Come! Show me the absolute culmination of your ten thousand years of martial arts. And I..." Lu Li lowered his center of gravity, his aura growing increasingly unstable and apocalyptic.
"...will show you my absolute peak."
"Martial arts... So you finally acknowledge my martial arts."
Shen Wulong smiled warmly. Gripping his spear, he dropped into his final stance.
"Come, young powerhouse."
In the next microsecond, the traffic light pole behind Shen Wulong completely collapsed, and the concrete rubble behind Lu Li exploded outward. The two monsters launched themselves at each other at their absolute maximum speed.
Shen Wulong moved like a graceful immortal riding the wind beneath the moonlight—ethereal and impossibly agile. As he spun the spear, it looked like a seamless extension of his own body, drawing the surrounding wind and residual flames into a swirling vortex around the shaft.
The spear thrust forward like a roaring, fiery dragon!
As Lu Li sprinted, his musculature expanded yet again. Tiny, microscopic fissures tore open across his skin, unable to contain the catastrophic pressure. His skeleton groaned in agonizing protest.
He had pushed the output of [Kishin] to its absolute, 100% maximum capacity. His Strength attribute had officially breached the absolute ceiling of a Tier 1 Explorer!
He was deeply thrilled. Thrilled to have met such an incredible opponent. Yet, he also felt a tinge of melancholy, sad that he couldn't prolong this magnificent duel any further.
What happens when absolute, peerless technique collides with overwhelming, absolute power?
The asphalt street violently ruptured beneath their feet. Shards of concrete blasted upward like blooming lotus flowers. And charging straight through those lotuses was a demonic Asura, completely consumed by bloodlust!
The Demigod points the way with his spear; the Asura severs the soul with his blade!
Driven by sheer, absolute speed and explosive power, Lu Li was ultimately a fraction of a microsecond faster. Shen Wulong completely failed to locate the 'weak point' in Lu Li's kinetic trajectory to redirect the force. The pitch-black blade slammed squarely into the dead center of the wooden spear shaft.
Carrying unmatched sharpness and catastrophic, apocalyptic kinetic weight, the dark blade violently cleaved downward. The strike was so impossibly fast that Shen Wulong couldn't adjust his technique in time, and so crushingly heavy that it felt as if an entire mountain range had just been dropped on his shoulders.
This ultimate clash between Technique and Raw Numbers had finally reached its conclusion...
The blade fell.
A geyser of blood erupted into the sky, followed by a decapitated head that still wore a completely satisfied smile.
As Lu Li slid past the falling corpse, his momentum faltered. He stumbled heavily and coughed up a massive mouthful of black blood. Forcibly redlining the output of the Kishin state placed a catastrophic burden on his biology; his physical vessel had very nearly collapsed entirely.
But the victor had been decided. He had successfully executed the absolute strongest entity in this world.
He looked back at Shen Wulong's fallen corpse.
"In the very end... you truly were a supreme powerhouse. I acknowledge your martial arts."
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