Damn it! To lose the initiative so quickly, allowing the opponent to seize the advantage and even assimilate one's own Dou Qi, was truly unexpected. In fact, even Xing Chen hadn't anticipated that the Dou Qi fusion created by Mo Hui and Mo Cha could actually be useful at this moment. In this Star Fall Nine Heavens, Xing Chen had only subconsciously increased the rotational speed of his sword qi, simultaneously infusing the fusion technique originally developed by Mo Hui and Mo Cha, yet he unexpectedly succeeded in merging with the opponent's Dou Qi energy!
This caused the power of the Nine Heavens Star River to surge by an unbelievable forty thousand points in an instant!
The greatest advantage of the Biological Radar was its ability to instantaneously and intuitively read combat power, whether it was the opponent's or one's own!
Thus, Old Niu immediately sensed that the situation was dire! With no other choice, Old Niu was forced once again to forcibly increase the intensity of his Dou Qi!
Blazing Flame Burn Level Two Dou Qi Intensity increased to one hundred thousand points!
Blazing Flame Burn, much like Soul Burn, was a method of drastically increasing combat power in a short period by drawing upon physical strength and Dou Qi reserves! It placed an immense strain on the body's endurance. Even with the monstrous physiques of Old Niu and Wei Peng, they dared not employ it lightly, especially executing it twice consecutively without pause.
In reality, this was analogous to the gearing system in a car when accelerating; to engage the highest gear and reach maximum speed, one must progress sequentially from first, second, third, and then fourth gear. Otherwise, it would be impossible to jump directly from first gear to fourth gear for instant forced acceleration!
This was the so-called "buffer period"!
And the buffer period for Blazing Flame Burn required at least five seconds for breath adjustment and physical acclimatization before the next explosive surge could occur. However, Xing Chen's opening move was a Dou Qi attack with an intensity of one hundred thousand points. Old Niu’s original Dou Qi energy of fifty thousand points was utterly incapable of defending against it.
Therefore, he was compelled to force the activation of Blazing Flame Burn Level Two—a gap of only two seconds—which precisely struck Old Niu's weakness. Before he could even adjust his breathing, being forced to initiate Level Two of Blazing Flame Burn completely disrupted his rhythm of Dou Qi control! Although his Dou Qi intensity instantly rose to one hundred thousand points, the surge almost caused internal injuries due to the sudden influx of energy.
Of course, even suffering internal injuries was far better than being struck by Xing Chen's sword qi!
Almost simultaneously with the Dou Qi escalation, a massive golden crescent moon erupted into the sky, meeting the onslaught from above!
Clang! Boom! The swirling vortex of starlight scattering across the sky finally met the golden crescent head-on at this instant! The clash of equally matched Dou Qi meant that Xing Chen's Dou Qi fusion had no time to take effect, and the descending vortex of starlight was violently shoved aside!
Yet, at the moment of the Dou Qi collision, Xing Chen cleverly employed another trick! At the instant of the explosion, he adjusted his stance and used the impact of the blast to launch himself diagonally outward!
At this moment, Xing Chen maximized the speed talent of Moon Shadow! By leveraging the shockwave from two intensely powerful Dou Qi explosions, his entire speed instantly multiplied by a factor of two! One could say that the preceding Star Fall Nine Heavens was merely a feint! His true target was Wei Peng! Choosing the distant target over the near one was generally not a wise choice, but under the terrifying velocity shock, the concepts of "distance" and "far" lost their meaning. For Xing Chen, the forty-meter gap was within easy reach! He had even calculated Old Niu’s reaction into his plan!
The speed of the change in maneuver, the subtlety of the movement! It was bafflingly brilliant! A purple afterimage, a crimson sword gleam swept past like a startled swan, casting a faint shadow beneath the scorching sun, carrying the momentum to split earth and cleave mountains as it charged towards Wei Peng!
"Well met." Xing Chen’s change of attack was somewhat unexpected, but Wei Peng, who had been fully charged and ready, showed no panic whatsoever! In truth, he never dared to be careless around this mysterious opponent!
And when Old Niu was forced to initiate Level Two Blazing Flame Burn earlier, Wei Peng knew that their previous assessment of Xing Chen's strength had been flawed. Thus, he quickly adjusted his breathing and forcefully elevated to Level Two as well—just in case!
It turned out his caution was warranted! Almost as soon as sufficient Dou Qi was gathered, the scorching sword edge was less than half a foot from his chest!
Roar! Amidst a fierce roar, Wei Peng, who had been poised for attack, instantly swept out a golden crescent moon! The golden crescent Dou Qi, imbued with Level Two Blazing Flame Burn, possessed an astonishing intensity of one hundred thousand points!
Clang! Boom! Amidst a muffled, heavy roar, the golden crescent struck the crimson sword edge with perfect accuracy!
The resultant terrifying Dou Qi explosion made the very space around them appear nearly twisted and chaotic!
However, Xing Chen was not repelled by this Dou Qi explosion! The purple figure spun violently like a top the moment the Dou Qi detonated, and like a swordfish riding a wave, he actually pierced through the incredibly intense shockwave of the explosion in an instant!
Swish, swish, swish! The crimson sword edge stabbed out like lightning! Dancing like a nimble serpent, appearing omnipresent yet elusive like a gentle phantom! He attacked Wei Peng’s vital points in rapid succession!
At this very moment, he closed the distance and unleashed a torrential storm of close-quarters combat!
Damn it! Accustomed to the sweeping, grand maneuvers of aerial combat—soaring high, diving low, covering a hundred meters in an instant—this delicate and precise close-range grappling was proving difficult for him to adapt to!
Instinctively beating his wings, he flickered upward, launching himself into the sky like a rocket!
Wei Peng’s intention was clear: to break free from Xing Chen’s entanglement!
But how could Xing Chen allow him to succeed so easily! Almost as Wei Peng flapped his wings and ascended, Xing Chen simultaneously agitated his Phoenix Heaven Wings, adjusting his posture. He shot upwards parallel to Wei Peng, like his shadow, maintaining his attack on Wei Peng’s vital areas with his thrusting sword!
Nuisance! Forced into a desperate close-quarters struggle by Xing Chen’s relentless pursuit, Wei Peng had no choice but to wield his greatsword, blocking repeatedly!
Clang, clang, clang!
A series of metal clashes echoed, with countless streaks of electric light flashing as the two swords impacted each other repeatedly! Wei Peng managed to block Xing Chen’s twelve lightning-fast strikes in an instant!
But even while blocking these twelve strikes, Wei Peng was forced back continuously by the opponent, leaving him not even a sliver of opportunity to counterattack! This astonishing frequency and speed of striking were beyond normal comprehension!
The twelve strikes were merely one set of combined sword techniques. After Wei Peng barely managed to fend them off, the next wave of attacks swept in immediately!
This was the terror of Xing Chen’s lightning fast assault! Like the endless surge of the raging ocean, showing absolutely no sign of stopping, until the opponent was utterly crushed!
On the other side, Old Niu was also inwardly shocked! The pincer movement tactic they had previously devised had failed. Instead, their opponent had used an astonishing burst of Dou Qi and terrifying speed to instantly break away, reversing the situation into a one-on-one tactic of isolating and defeating them!
For a moment, Old Niu felt like his elaborate plan had backfired! And Wei Peng, now engaged in close combat with Xing Chen, didn't have enough time to regulate his inner breath or boost his Dou Qi intensity! It was like a car that had just shifted into first gear but was immediately met with an uphill slope, unable to shift gears again to increase speed! He possessed immense power but could not unleash it!
This feeling was enough to drive one mad with frustration!
It could be said that at this moment, Wei Peng’s Dou Qi intensity was the same as Xing Chen’s—one hundred thousand points. However, Xing Chen held an absolute advantage in speed! All of this flashed through Old Niu’s mind in an instant. With his keen combat intuition, he quickly reached a very unfavorable conclusion!
The Boss is in danger! So Old Niu rushed forward regardless of the risk!
All this transpired in a mere two seconds!
But in those brief two seconds, Xing Chen’s lightning fast sword had delivered thirty-six strikes!
And Wei Peng, barely catching his breath, managed to block them purely on astonishing reactive intuition!
But even so, the shockwaves generated by the sword tips moving at such incredible speed left deep, shocking gashes on his enhanced Phoenix Heaven armor!
Fortunately, Old Niu finally arrived!
Just as Xing Chen launched his thirty-seventh strike!
A powerful, scorching aura descended from behind! It was the Blazing Fire Sword Qi slashed out by Old Niu, who was rapidly closing in!
Xing Chen seemed to have anticipated this! Instead of waiting for the sword qi to approach, Xing Chen let out another long cry! The Phoenix Heaven Wings suddenly flapped once, and his entire body shot upwards like a Roc soaring to the heavens!
With astonishing speed, he rushed towards the high altitude! The whistle was sharp and piercingly long! His momentum soared straight upwards as he climbed relentlessly! The sheer killing intent was almost suffocating, causing trembling!
Finally, the figure that had shot into the highest altitude stopped ascending! Then, in the high sky, a dazzling light exploded once more! Leveraging the continuous acceleration from before, Xing Chen's Dou Qi completed another instantaneous surge and reached a new, ultimate peak!
Sword qi like a tide, killing intent overflowing! Star clouds scattered and circled downwards! In an instant, the entire sky and the entire earth seemed to be torn and distorted by this violent aura, flying around chaotically like willow catkins and fallen leaves, forming a blurred world of disorder and color!
Perhaps no one expected it! Forcing Old Niu and Wei Peng together was Xing Chen’s true objective! This seemed utterly insane, yet it was a tactic Xing Chen had decided upon after deep consideration!
In fact, Xing Chen knew clearly that with his current abilities, killing either of them quickly was impossible!
The barrage of rapid attacks earlier seemed to have put Wei Peng in a bind, but it wasn't enough to make him unable to cope. Of course, if the opponent had only been Wei Peng, Xing Chen might have had a chance to completely defeat him before Wei Peng could unleash his full power!
But Old Niu, standing by, would never stand idly by, so the tactic of defeating them one by one was impossible from the start! Furthermore, their staggered positions made Xing Chen hesitant to use his full strength!
Now that he had finally forced them to stand together, forming a unified front against him, Xing Chen could finally unfold his true method of attack!
That was to launch a fierce assault against both of them by relying on the miraculous effect of stacking the power of the Nine Heavens Star River! This was Xing Chen’s final trump card—he had mastered six moves of the Nine Heavens Star River Sword Art!
In the past, Xing Chen had at most consecutively used the first four moves, resulting in a four-fold power stack.
According to Xing Chen's understanding!
The power stacking mechanism of the Nine Heavens Star River increases exponentially (by doubling)!
Xing Chen's base Dou Qi intensity is twenty thousand points. With the aid of the Boundary King Fist, the base Dou Qi intensity can be maintained at an average of 40,000 points! Using this as the basis for power stacking, the final resulting attack intensity should theoretically be: 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 280,000
Of course, this was merely a theoretical value; Xing Chen was unsure if reality would match his calculations!
But the current Xing Chen had no other choice; he had to make a final, desperate gamble!
The gamble was that the nature of this sword art would behave exactly as calculated!
Of course, he also had to pray that the opponents' combat power would not exceed 280,000, otherwise Xing Chen would have no chance of winning!
Seeing that his objective was achieved, Xing Chen no longer hesitated and finally unleashed the second move!
Raging Stone Nebula!
Like an exploding red sun, countless dazzling lights scattered outwards!
Beneath the sky, the eerie and unpredictable Starry Night reappeared! It seemed no different from the full canopy of stars moments before.
The starlight once again rained down upon the mortal world! As if the entire night sky, the entire Milky Way, was crashing down upon the earth in that instant!
This pattern of sword light was completely different from before! It seemed to follow some strange, spiraling trajectory as it descended! The vast expanse of starlight transformed into a single, immensely colossal vortex of starlight!
And hidden within this starlight vortex were several nimble, swift, and unpredictable streams of strange light!
These were precisely the several dragon shadows that had stealthily flown out, mixed among the stars! They resembled fish tumbling in the massive waves of the Yangtze River!
The entire world was pulled, drawn, and began to spin by the immense vortex's captivating force! Even more astonishing was the terrifying aura contained within it—sharper and more surging than before!
Danger! Target life field soaring linearly! Dou Qi Intensity: One hundred and twenty thousand points!
Is this the second move!?
Before this, Wei Peng and Old Niu had carefully studied the video provided by the White Sheep Daoist! They had also witnessed the power of this move!
But only when facing it personally did they truly comprehend the terrifying aura that the White Sheep Female Daoist had confronted back then!
This was not only reflected in the astonishing intensity of the Dou Qi energy!
But also in the killing intent that pierced directly into the heart!
A killing intent that had reached its absolute peak, reaching extreme savagery! This was unequivocally an aura that existed only for slaughter and destruction!
If the two of them hadn't been individuals with steadfast minds, this killing intent alone would have been enough to completely shatter their composure!
Beyond that, there was an ineffable sense of spirituality and throbbing energy! It was as if the entire field of starlight sword qi was alive—capable of breathing, capable of changing and maneuvering at will! This was something that Wei Peng and Old Niu, accustomed to data analysis, could not comprehend!
Yet, this was precisely what worried them the most!
This terrifying discovery shocked them deeply! They had never witnessed such a violently terrifying killing intent! Such incomprehensible techniques for manipulating Dou Qi!
Undeniably, both were strong! But their strength manifested in powerful Dou Qi energy!
And in their combat data, which was always precise and never deviated by even a fraction!
From the moment they were born, they had only been governed by preset data!
Physical strength, Dou Qi intensity, combat data—all of these things were rigidly defined by exact numbers!
Allowing them no room for deviation or change! They had never even considered changing anything!
This was an innate strength, possessed without the need for training or learning! A heaven-blessed endowment!
It was like a magnificent sports car; every component, every design from the inside out, existed for a specific purpose!
But precisely because of this, they lacked a certain spirituality! The spirituality that allowed for free evolution and growth!
The spirit and mettle forged through trials of blood and fire!
Compared to their near-perfect bodies and combat data, Xing Chen was more like a wild, untamed horse!
Perhaps his speed didn't match the sports car, perhaps his physical strength didn't match the sports car!
But every thought of his was vibrant, filled with spiritual energy, soaring like a wild horse across the heavens!
No one could predict his next move, perhaps not even himself! Because everything was a projection of instinct and spirit! Though it had rationale, it left no trace behind!
And this moment was the ultimate blossoming of that spirituality and mettle!
At this moment, Wei Peng and Old Niu were forced to overturn their previous evaluation of Xing Chen's strength once again, raising it to yet another, more terrifying level!
Before they had time to adjust their breathing and initiate a stronger Dou Qi burst technique, they could only act simultaneously!
Wielding their greatswords!
Two golden crescents swept out in unison, flying side-by-side! Like startled swans spreading their wings, a truly magnificent sight! They flew towards the descending vortex of starlight high above!
This move was precisely Wei Peng and Old Niu's joint ultimate defensive technique—Crescent Wing!
If they hadn't been driven into such a desperate situation, the two would never have been forced to employ this almost passive defensive ultimate move!
Clang! Boom!
The Crescent Wing finally collided with the descending vortex of starlight!
Clang! Rumble! Another head-on clash, devoid of any fancy maneuvers! The two mighty sword energies, like two meteors colliding in mid-air, were simultaneously blasted scattering in all directions, creating waves of blinding light explosions!
It must be admitted that Xing Chen's Raging Stone Nebula sword qi was incredibly potent, reaching an astonishing intensity of one hundred and twenty thousand points! However, Wei Peng and Old Niu were also at the extreme limit of Blazing Flame Burn Level Two!
The two crescents each contained a Dou Qi intensity of one hundred thousand points, and they met the attack side-by-side! In terms of pure Dou Qi intensity, they were actually slightly stronger than Xing Chen's Raging Stone Nebula! As a result, the shockwave from the explosion actually surged backward towards the descending Xing Chen in the sky!
But just as the two Crescent Wings pierced through Xing Chen's nebula sword qi, several strange streams of light suddenly flashed! Like flying fish breaking through waves! In an instant, they pierced through the turbulent blast wave and struck towards the vital points surrounding the two figures!
The speed was astonishing, the angles (devious/tricky), making it utterly unbelievable! As if they had developed their own eyes and were truly alive!
"Be careful." Although this was the first time Xing Chen’s dragon shadows had appeared since the start, the two already knew about these few extremely strange little things!
After all, the White Sheep Female Daoist had nearly lost her life because of these few elusive little things! Therefore, they were constantly vigilant against the appearance of the dragon shadows!
As expected, under the cover of the vibrating sword qi explosion, these little things finally appeared!