Chapter 756: Chapter 756

"It truly was inner spirit suppression," mused Li Pin.

It took him six rounds of searching to locate the Sky Clan's Tyrant. He only managed to locate the Tyrant after freezing him.

On the eightieth step, his opponent attacked with an inner spirit secret art, which Li Pin had resisted using the Endless Reincarnation secret art.

However, this time, the opponent's secret art was not offensive. Instead, it clouded Li Pin's inner spirit perception using the power of the secret art.

This caused Li Pin, who had not truly condensed a True Spirit capable of illuminating all things, to lose his lock on the opponent entirely.

Perhaps this was related to the Sky Clan's natural talent, but it also revealed Li Pin's serious shortcomings in many aspects.

The sword light turned.

Li Pin aimed his new strike straight at the Sky Clan's Tyrant. However, this strike failed to achieve any result as well.

Just as the Quantum Sword Intent was about to hit, the Sky Clan's Tyrant vanished once more.

That flickering movement, flowing as smoothly as water and perfectly in tune with space, gave the illusion of facing a Human Sacred Monarch.

Li Pin didn't hesitate in the slightest. He instantly activated the power of the True Spirit to freeze the past.

At the same time, he thought. A battle between Cosmic Radiances is ultimately a contest of the inner spirit. For a being who has attained Cosmic Radiance, victory often hinges on who can pierce through their opponent's True Spirit Light using an inner spirit secret art, thereby seizing the natural initiative. However, upon reaching the Tyrant level, this approach is no longer the sole path to victory. Tyrants wield overwhelming offensive power, which often spills beyond control, especially in environments like the Abyssal Rift.

In a duel between gunmen, every detail had to be meticulously controlled. A 0.1 second difference could reverse a life-and-death situation.

However, if the other side launched a cannon directly, a rough hit would suffice. Being off by even a meter or two wouldn't make much of a difference.

While Li Pin was in the middle of his thought, the sharpness of the Quantum Sword Intent erupted once more. This time, the process of the universe's evolution accelerated drastically, and its range expanded to the extreme.

It instantly erupted across a distance of tens of thousands of meters, then rapidly spread to thirty thousand, and a hundred thousand meters, like a universe evolving, expanding, and taking shape at high speed.

The Quantum Sword Intent lacked a proper structure and did not have enough matter, energy, space, or time to fill it, causing the universe's evolution to collapse and be destroyed.

Despite that, the speed at which it was spreading out still caused everything within a hundred thousand meters, centered on the Quantum Sword Intent and the Sky Clan's Tyrant's position, to be replaced with destruction.

Li Pin squinted. "Something's not right!"

He had poured in his full power into that strike. However, the scope of the universe's manifestation, collapse, and destruction had not produced an equal level of annihilation.

If this had taken place in the Astral World, the Eternal Oblivion Force that was continuously drawn in would have overwhelmed him. It would have counted as a mutual destruction between him and the Sky Clan's Tyrant.

Yet strangely, it was as if his strike hadn’t hit his opponent at all.

In an instant, Li Pin's True Spirit power was activated again, illuminating in all directions.

Alongside the True Spirit's illumination came wave after wave of inner spirit power scouring the area.

As the waves of inner spirit swept through, Li Pin suddenly discovered that the movement speed of the Sky Clan's Tyrant exceeded even the universe-expanding speed caused by his Quantum Sword Intent.

This was like an ordinary human running faster than a bullet.

"No, he's not just faster than me! He predicted where I'd strike and dodged in advance."

In a battle between Tyrants, especially one within a place like the Abyssal Rift, the most important thing was not just to evade the opponent's attacks, but also to ensure that one's own strikes landed.

Li Pin's Endless Reincarnation secret art had been modified, now leaning toward a defensive and supportive type. It could even be considered a supplement to the third layer of the Phantom Space Technique.

When facing this Tyrant who had mastery over concealment and perception-type secret arts, he was completely on the defensive.

If it weren't for the support of the True Spirit Light, the opponent would've already closed in silently and finished him off with a single sword strike.

I've mastered too few secret arts. My inner spirit is practically a blank slate. At the Solar Flare level, where everyone only had one low-tier Inner Spirit secret art, this wasn't a problem. A Cosmic Radiance can make do with three or four Inner Spirit secret arts. But at the Tyrant level, cultivators have to possess secret arts encompassing all aspects of battle—offense, defense, and perception. They have to be all-rounded.

Li Pin ran through the list of the inner spirit secret arts he had mastered in his mind.

For offense, there were the Galactic Starburst and Ten Thousand Deities Mantra.

For defense, there were the Transcendent True Form and Primordial Abyss True Demon Form.

For support, there was Endless Reincarnation.

Amongst them, the Ten Thousand Deities Mantra was exclusive to the Divine Race and extremely difficult for humans to cultivate.

The Transcendent True Form significantly boosted inner spirit resistance and was a purely defensive secret art.

The Primordial Abyss True Demon Form required the construction of a void world within the body and possessed multiple functions, including defense and concealment.

In theory, he should've chosen the Galactic Starburst to break the stalemate, but having only recently learned the Galactic Starburst, its activation was inevitably slow. Therefore, it might not pose a threat to this Void Tyrant who had mastered perception-type arts.

The Transcendent True Form was no good either. The opponent possessed both perception and concealment secret arts and wasn't launching direct Inner Spirit assaults.

The only one that might be useful was the Primordial Abyss True Demon Form.

With it, he could remain still and await the opponent’s strike, unleashing a counterstrike when the opponent came into close proximity.

Li Pin swiftly widened the distance between himself and the Sky Clan's Tyrant. "As expected of a Cosmic Tyrant! As I am now... I'm at best comparable to a newly ascended Tyrant. Against even slightly more experienced ones, my disadvantage is obvious."

Yes, mastering a Supreme secret art from scratch was extremely difficult. But wasn’t it his wish to encounter opponents who could push him to his limit? Opponents whom he could use to probe out his limit, using their strength to uncover his own shortcomings and eliminate his every flaw?

Cultivating the Primordial Abyss True Demon Form would undoubtedly be a daunting task. However, under the extreme pressure of his opponent within the special environment of the Abyssal Rift, the time required would be shortened infinitely.

"In the Abyssal Rift, the so-called derivative universes of Cosmic tyrants are no more than rootless duckweed, reflections on water. Only truly stable universal laws can manifest terrifying power—that is, the power of the Supreme and the Highlord," said Sasha, her voice echoing in Li Pin's mind. "In other words, as long as you can unleash a mysterious power similar to Supreme, you can end this battle quickly."

Li Pin was slightly surprised to hear her voice. "You can exist on the Supreme Ladder?"

Sasha analyzed the tone and any underlying metaphors in Li Pin's words. The result was that there was no hidden meaning behind his words. Li Pin meant exactly what he said.

Sasha stayed silent for a moment before finally saying, "Aren't you underestimating the abilities of a near-Transcendence-level intelligent lifeform?"

"Am I?" Li Pin asked. Weren't intelligent lifeforms just glorified navigation systems or search engines? Oh, but Sasha herself likely wasn't any weaker than a Human Sacred Monarch.

Nevertheless, when it came to battles he personally experienced, he didn't want her to intervene.

"In a battle, the outcome matters, but so does the process." Li Pin continued. "That's why even when challenged by someone clearly weaker than me, as long as they show something that surprises me, I will still fight them."

"Then, how will you deal with this opponent?" Sasha asked.

"It's very simple. I'll take him as my whetstone to hone my weaknesses. And from this moment on, I'll cultivate the Supreme secret art—Primordial Abyss True Demon Form. If I can master it, even if it's just to an elementary phase, the outcome of the life-and-death victory between us will be rewritten!" Li Pin answered.

"You're going to cultivate a Supreme Secret Art from scratch?"

Sasha's voice was filled with astonishment.

Sasha had intended to explain how incredibly difficult it was to cultivate a Supreme-level technique, but she quickly thought of something.

Li Pin had taken less than a hundred stellar years to go from achieving Astral Godhood to reaching the level of Cosmic Radiance. During that time, hadn't he also cultivated the Supreme Endless Reincarnation secret art?

Even though he had modified it extensively, greatly reducing its power, what was impossible for others... perhaps might not be impossible for Li Pin...

"Perhaps... you really can do it," Sasha said. "I look forward to seeing you create another miracle."

Not long after, a stream of light was suddenly ejected outside the Supreme Ladder, condensing into Li Pin.

From the look in his eyes, it was clear that he still carried a trace of the shock from the moment before death.

Sasha didn't want to say a single word. She felt that her database on Li Pin was already riddled with bugs, almost reaching the level of being completely garbled. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel-fire.ɴet

"How did I lose?" muttered Li Pin. "The technique he used at the last moment... was beyond my limits? That was definitely a Sacred Monarch-level technique."

"It wasn't," Sasha responded.

She dared not make any judgments, but her words definitely carried a lot of weight when it came to recording data. "The other party borrowed the power of a Divine Weapon, momentarily becoming like a Sacred Monarch, crossing space. Only then was he able to land a lethal blow on you the instant your attack reached its peak."

After speaking, she even gave a rare note of praise. "This was a Sky Clan's assassin who met all the standards of excellence. Unless he encountered environments like black holes or super neutron stars, which would render his concealment techniques useless, his strength was likely equivalent to the eighty-third step of the Supreme Ladder."

"The power of a Divine Weapon..." Li Pin looked at the Ruoxi Sword in his hand. "A top-tier Cosmic Radiance Divine Weapon?"

"Of course," Sasha continued to share. "The Sky Clan is different from the Human Race. The number of Sky Clan's Tyrants is only one-fifth to one-sixth that of ours. So, isn't it perfectly normal for each person to have one Top-Tier Cosmic Radiance Divine Weapon?"

She looked at Li Pin with a complicated expression. "You didn't really lose this time. At the final moment, you used yourself as bait... When that Sky Clan's Tyrant struck you down, your final attack, an all-out energy release, would have taken him with you. The two of you... had perished together."