Chapter 103: There is no strongest Killer Move in the world, only the strongest Gu Master.
Kao Dao Ji raised his eyebrows.
Ice was shot towards his right, wind towards his left, and fire above him.
"Ahhhh!" A Rank 8 Immortal Gu's aura surged with intensity.
A dense blue cloud formed around him.
Yet.
His pupils widened.
The flames reacted with the lead, producing a chemical reaction stretching towards the heavens.
He waved his hand to try and command the lead, yet.
He was struck on the side by a Rank 8 Immortal commanding the snow.
"ahhh…Eh…." He squinted his pupils.
He waved one of his hands to try and repel, whilst with the other he summoned several particles of blue lead and used them to shield his body.
The movements were awkward, and the particles of blue lead trembled as he struggled to control them.
The techniques of Blue Lead were extraordinarily exquisite and profound, borrowing thousands of years of understanding and theory.
Kao Dao Ji lacked all that theory and understanding.
Hell, he did not even know the name of 99% of the Gu's he employed!
The only reason he could manage somewhat competently was by borrowing Blue Lead's attainment and muscle memory.
And yet.
Those memories were flickering.
Every second he grew sloppier.
And his opponents knew it.
They deliberately stalled him, while keeping their distance.
Trying to keep their losses to a minimum.
Kao Dao Ji turned to stare at one of the group, his expression cold.
He frowned deeply.
And then.
He screamed in rage.
The pupils of the female Immortal widened; she raised her arms, commanding the wind.
The wind looked dyed by black splendor.
"Extreme-Yin?" Kao Dao Ji realized.
And unlike the method of Shung Mia Yin, she did not rely in Qi Path to mimic this transformation, which means that the transformation was more pure, more perfect, more powerful.
Furthermore, its effects were completely unknown.
Amidst those circumstances, the wisest move would be to retreat.
And yet.
Kao Dao Ji curled up his lips into a wide grin.
"FATE HAMMER!" He shouted.
The pupils of the woman widened.
"What did he say? Fate??? No, no, there is no way. He must be bluffing! How could he have grasped the power of Fate?"
But then her lips trembled, as he realized what he meant.
From the aperture of Blue Lead.
Le Tu, whose body had been zombified, was summoned.
And Kao Dao Ji slammed his body towards the wind.
There was a powerful shockwave as the wind exploded in all directions, whilst she coughed blood as her Killer Move was dispelled.
But the nightmare was far from over.
Le Tu's shiny bald head hit her stomach.
While the situation seemed nonsensical, there was actually a logical factor behind this.
Le Tu held the power to multiply the weight of his own body, and whilst his durability was not enough to withstand an ordinary Killer Move, he held one Gu.
Fate Armor!
"How does it feel? To have what you protected your whole life turned against you!" He shouted in righteous fury.
In a way.
The plan of the one who stole his body had been fulfilled somehow in a strange twist of destiny; the power of Fate Armor Gu was finally turned against Heavenly Court.
And there was nothing they could do.
Kao Dao Ji slammed the body of Le Tu several more times towards that Immortal until she perished.
Before turning his gaze towards the others with a devilish smile.
Who tried to retaliate.
However.
He merely shouted.
"You know what to do."
Le Tu's eyelids trembled; helplessly, he devoured a mushroom and his body rapidly grew in size.
Blocking every move in Kao Dao Ji's way.
Then.
He devoured another, and his body shrank rapidly.
The process was extraordinarily quick; however, during this short gap Kao Dao Ji had already arranged another Killer Move.
From his mouth, blue flames were unleashed with devastating fury.
An Immortal who commanded Fire Path gritted his teeth; his own Killer Move was a step slower; he was about to be devoured by the flames.
Fortunately, another immortal who commanded the snow intervened.
Kao Dao Ji, however, just as he perceived that they were about to interfere, changed his target; his immortal essence was set ablaze.
He moved as quickly as he could manage to.
Blue Lead stuck around his body like glue and was rapidly set alight.
Thousands of Dao Marks were consumed one upon another, but he really did not care about such costs, without hesitation.
He cut his body in half.
But then his pupils shrank.
Darkness permeated just as his body was sliced in half.
An immense number of Dao Marks were consumed, and his surroundings were cut by blackness.
The intent was extremely obvious.
He may try to use Le Tu as a shield, but what could he do when every inch around him was consumed by such blight?
Kao Dao Ji curled up his lips into a smile.
He ordered telepathically to Le Tu to absorb him inside his aperture.
Even if he could not shield himself, Le Tu was more than able to.
Le Tu obliged rapidly; he hugged his body.
The darkness intensified around him like a supernova exploding; his body was tossed towards the heavens and yet.
A blow that would have normally reduced his body to ashes did nothing more than push him towards-
The pupils of Le Tu widened, whilst the members of Heavenly Court grinned.
Naturally, the one who had sacrificed himself knew that Kao Dao Ji would do this; he never intended to kill him.
Merely to force Kao Dao Ji to enter the body of Le Tu and use that explosion to toss him towards the others.
Whilst his compatriots would immobilize Le Tu, then they would use this opportunity to seize Fate Armor.
For however powerful the Gu was, as long as it did not directly target the user, its defenses would not be triggered!
At the same time, if they struck Le Tu's Aperture, Fate Armor itself would prevent Kao Dao Ji from escaping as it would coat the aperture in a golden aurora which would prevent anything from entering or leaving.
They believed to have won.
And so did Kao Dao Ji.
Whose smile widened.
Le Tu's body shone with a white aurora.
A massive web sprouted in all directions, whilst he pressed his palms together.
[Fate Cage]
Fate Armor summoned the strings of Fate to act as a coating to protect the user, however.
By acting in resonance, one could also affect the surrounding strings, turning the intangible strings of Fate into a real force.
Star Constellation's pupils shrank.
"A Heaven Path Killer Move? And one so powerful!"
Naturally.
Kao Dao Ji lacked the attainment, but Fang Yuan did not.
Some time ago, while fighting, he managed to get Fang Yuan out of the body and transplant his Will outside.
Of course, Fang Yuan could have prevented this, had he wanted to.
But he knew that if he resisted, Kao Dao Ji would simply choose to eradicate him; thus, he agreed to move on.
After transplanting his Will outside, he made a Spiritual Contract with a single clause.
'You cannot lie to me.'
Once he ensured Fang Yuan could not deceive him, he asked for a way to use Fate Armor.
Almost immediately, Fang Yuan gave him this method.
…
The immortals from Heavenly Court tried to escape from the cage that was being built before their eyes.
They wanted to approach Le Tu, but several golden strings sprouted, covering his body like a cocoon.
And emerging from that shell.
There was a long hand followed by another.
Soon the full body of Blue Lead was laid on display; one of the greatest symbols of Heavenly Court was now staring at them in mockery.
"There is nowhere to run now." The grin in Kao Dao Ji's face widened.
At the next moment, the cage surrounding the area closed completely, isolating the world completely from the outside.
Not even Star Constellation herself or any other Venerable would be able to see what was happening inside.
But 3 minutes later.
The cage opened.
There was only one person floating in the air.
He stared at the sun above.
His expression impossible to read.
As he recalled certain memories.
"Fang Yuan…I have a question for you. What was of my main consciousness once I used the Cicada? Did it fade completely? Or are there now two me's existing simultaneously?"
"What an odd question. Souls may be unique, but wills are not.
In the same way that your Will can stretch through Treasure Yellow Heaven and from here.
It can inhabit multiple bodies at the same time; there are no incompatibilities."
"Then…Why did you never do it? Back when you had Spring Autumn Cicada, why didn't you simply steal the bodies of your adversaries and use their corpses to activate Cicada? You could have built an unstoppable army."
"Because I could not, not back then. Spring Autumn Cicada never held such a limitation in the first place. However, Red Lotus could never allow such a flawless method to exist.
He purposefully altered the River of Time so that when such an attempt was made, the activation of Cicada would fail.
Even with Spring Autumn Success, I ended up wasting the Gu, forcing me to refine it again, heh." Fang Yuan sighed melancholically.
"Truth be told, had he truly wanted to. I could never have been reborn, not the first nor second, nor third time. His grasp over the River of Time was too deep.
And while he had no other choice but to let me be reborn the last time, the truth is…
That he could have simply killed me afterwards.
I do not know why he never did so.
Did he expect something out of me? Or from the very beginning had he arranged for this?
It truly is so hexing, and so…Exciting. Don't you think?"
"Arranged, heh? I too have my suspicions…My mind keeps spinning; I feel like the world itself is compelling me to forget."
Fang Yuan raised his eyebrows.
"Hah...Forget. Even now I still have a strange feeling. That I too am forgetting something important."
Kao Dao Ji smiled to himself.
He clenched his fists and stared at the Heavens.
"When the dream fades, and reality awaits…" He chuckled as he recited the prophecy.
Before shaking down his head repeatedly.
"The prophecy. The pain, the suffering. The tragedy.
They never mattered in the big scheme of things.
In the end, they were all just bread and circus.
That is what all this was about."
He closed down his eyes.
"The one who figured out everything was killed by me.
Even if he had told me the truth, once the dream faded, I would simply forget about it as the Killer Move would affect me once more.
I would be freed once more of the Killer's Move influence.
But I would be blinded by my emotions, be it the hatred I felt for killing my race, or the rush of power of having a body a thousand times stronger than before.
Or by the despair of realizing that this body was doomed to die.
All those emotions were meant to drive me to rage, to despair.
I was meant to die without ever understanding why…."
In that moment, his smile widened.
"But those final words of his…"
There is another layer you never noticed
Those words. Were so cryptic, so seemingly nonsensical.
But precisely because they danced around the truth without ever reaching it, the Killer Move never erased those memories.
Preserving them in his current body enabled him to reach the truth.
After all.
"There is no strongest Gu in the world, only the strongest Gu Master!"
Even seemingly invincible Killer Moves can be broken through cunning.
He stared at the skies above with absolute confidence.
And yet.
He dared not gloat.
Are you watching?
Are you always watching?
What is the extent of your power? What are your intentions?
He dared not reveal a single hint of his knowledge.
He did not even dare to share this knowledge with his main body.
The memories would be erased anyway.
Besides.
How could he know if whoever was the culprit had not tampered with the main body in such a way that everything the main body saw was perceived by them?
Only a single note had been sent.
Floating through the Blessed Land of Le Tu meant to only be seen by him.
In the note, he was meant to only share the truth when it mattered the most.