The Snow Soul True Aura condensed around his fists, and with every strike, a comet-like force shot downwards, an icy chill pervading the air around the blow, truly resembling a rain of meteors descending from the heavens.

Du Carte stood firm on the ground, watching Gu Xiechen’s dense, rain-like assault with nothing more than a dismissive sneer.

A flood of silver scales seeped out from Du Carte’s body, accompanied by a harsh metallic clanging sound, rapidly solidifying into overlapping, conical armor plates. The fine scales writhed and wove across Du Carte’s surface as if alive, quickly encasing him in a set of strangely shaped armor nearly two inches thick. Du Carte clenched his fists, a blazing red light erupting from them, and he hurled his full-strength punch towards Gu Xiechen.

Streaks of white comets slammed into Du Carte’s fists, but before the full force of his concentrated true energy eruption, every single comet shattered.

Gu Xiechen’s Snow Soul Divine Fist collided head-on with Du Carte’s punch. The irreconcilable red and white brilliant lights warred and crashed against each other. A colossal roar echoed across the small island, the ground around Du Carte splitting open violently; meters-thick slabs of rock were continually lifted, flung away, and ultimately pulverized by the incessant shockwaves.

Gu Xiechen pushed the Ruyi Gauntlet to its limit. The sharp gauntlet sliced through the punch energy of Du Carte’s Nine Yang True Aura, sinking deep into Du Carte’s metal gauntlet. The smooth, unstoppable sensation he usually felt was gone; this time, Gu Xiechen’s palm only managed to penetrate Du Carte’s metal fist guard by a mere two or three li, unable to advance further. Gu Xiechen distinctly sensed a faint trace of consciousness from the Ruyi Gauntlet: Du Carte’s gauntlet was still no match for it, but Gu Xiechen’s current strength was insufficient to drive the Ruyi Gauntlet to tear through it. Gu Xiechen could even perceive through the gauntlet that Du Carte’s armor was entirely cast from the alloy described in the bamboo slips left by Daoist Wuchen, and furthermore, these alloys had been meticulously refined by Du Carte himself, rendering them extraordinarily resilient.

“This is big trouble!” Besides possessing combat power at the Jupiter level, Gu Xiechen’s greatest reliance was the indestructible Ruyi Gauntlet. He never expected Du Carte’s armor to have been modified so quickly using Wuchen’s alloy formula.

The Ruyi Gauntlet originated from Wuchen’s hands; the alloy formulas left behind by Wuchen were very likely components of the alloy used in the Ruyi Gauntlet itself. It was natural that the Ruyi Gauntlet’s destructive power against these alloys would be severely diminished.

Gu Xiechen was stunned, but Du Carte remained fully focused on the fight.

In that brief moment of distraction, Du Carte’s left fist brutally hooked into Gu Xiechen’s lower abdomen.

Swift as thunder, heavy as a mountain, aggressive as fire—Du Carte’s punch gave Gu Xiechen three different yet perfectly harmonious sensations. This punch was impossibly fierce, so violent that Gu Xiechen couldn't even block it; it was incredibly heavy, sending Gu Xiechen flying back over five hundred meters high; and it was scorching hot. Even though his Daoist robe and crane cloak had neutralized seventy percent of the punch’s force, Gu Xiechen still felt as if a red-hot iron stake had been driven into his abdomen, or perhaps a miniature incendiary bomb had detonated in his Dantian, searing his internal organs until they nearly cooked.

Spitting out a mouthful of blood, Gu Xiechen expended sixty percent of his Dantian’s true energy to forcibly expel the invading power from Du Carte’s punch. The spurt of blood vaporized into mist as soon as it left his lips due to the intense heat, leaving several noticeable blisters on Gu Xiechen’s lips.

“Xiao! Your fist—that felt amazing!”

Gu Xiechen laughed loudly, staring down at the intensely focused Du Carte with shining eyes.

The swirling air currents in his one hundred and eight major acupoints spun rapidly, each diverting a portion of true energy to feed the Dantian. If the one hundred and eight acupoints were the auxiliary engines within Gu Xiechen’s body, the Dantian was the main engine. Normally, the power from the auxiliary engines was enough for combat, but when facing a formidable foe, reliance on the main engine’s immense power was necessary!

One hundred and eight streams of true energy blasted into the Dantian, merging into one—an explosive power surged forth from it!

Gu Xiechen’s heart rate skyrocketed to twelve hundred beats per minute. The frantic throbbing stimulated the blood in his vessels to surge violently, causing the bone marrow to work even harder, generating more blood, faintly tinged with white, which continuously flowed in to integrate with the old blood in Gu Xiechen’s vessels. The berserk energy decomposed the old blood, causing a dark-red mist to seep out from his pores. Bathed in this dark-red mist, Gu Xiechen was illuminated by the three moons in the sky, appearing like a demon god descending from the heavens.

The violent energy erupting from the Dao Embryo fused with Gu Xiechen’s true energy. This power, so immense that it instilled fear and felt uncontrollable even to Gu Xiechen, surged joyously through his meridians, concentrating in his hands. Crack, crack, crack—his blood vessels, muscles, and skin, unable to withstand such potent energy infusion, ruptured, spewing continuous jets of bloody arrows.

His gore-smeared hands drew a Taiji symbol in the air around his body, drawing his own blood forward to condense into a blood sphere the size of a fist before him.

With a loud cry of “Hah!” the Snow Soul True Aura froze the blood sphere into ice, which then fractured into hundreds of fine ice shards, harder than refined steel. Gu Xiechen swept both palms downwards. These shards, imbued with his essence and blood, shot downwards like guided projectiles. The recoil from launching the ice shards propelled Gu Xiechen upward by several hundred meters more; he disappeared into a bank of clouds that happened to drift overhead.

Facing the rapidly descending ice shards, Du Carte did not blindly rush forward to absorb the impact. He let out a few cunning hisses, and streams of metallic cold light flickered from his brow. Dozens of massive armed robots materialized beside him. These six-armed mechs raised their enormous limbs and unleashed a barrage of fire toward the ice shards raining from the sky.

Du Carte had clearly modified these robots; instead of large-caliber machine guns, every arm was fitted with a fifty-centimeter high-energy particle cannon. Streams of pale-blue particle beams, trailing massive plasma waves, shot skyward, meeting the ice shards head-on.

A continuous chorus of explosions rang out as the plasma energy clouds erupted in the air, bathing a space spanning several thousand meters in pale-blue plasma flames. However, the ice shards, injected with Gu Xiechen’s vital blood, only slightly blunted their momentum and continued accurately toward Du Carte. Dozens of armed robots ascended, powerful plasma flames jetting from their feet, propelling them above Du Carte’s head to form a thick, steel defensive line.

The ice struck these robots, piercing straight through their metal bodies. The immense kinetic energy attached to the shards ripped the metal shells apart, shattering dozens of robots into fragments. The ice shards continued to fall, but more armed robots poured in from all directions. Robot after robot lunged forward, robot after robot was torn apart by the ice shards, until finally, the ice shards expended their energy and disintegrated tens of meters above Du Carte’s head.

The ice shards were infused with all of Gu Xiechen’s true energy plus the berserk energy surging from the Primal Dao Embryo, equating to twice his current maximum strike power—a force equivalent to forty thousand Zakkra standard units.

Ice bombs with the explosive yield of forty tons of standard TNT detonated tens of meters overhead. Had it been an ordinary person, they would have been reduced to mud and bone, but Du Carte stood steady on the ground, relying on his silver scales. The blast wave lifted a layer of the island’s surface, yet Du Carte did not budge an inch!

“Mr. Gu Xiechen, thank you for finding those bamboo slips. Since obtaining them, my defense and combat power have increased by at least tenfold in a short time!”

The deafening roar of the explosion still echoed in his ears, but Du Carte was already shouting,

“I am deeply grateful! My armor is formed from my innate ability. By utilizing the metal alloy formulas from those bamboo slips, the strength of my armor has increased by more than ten times! Because my Boundary Puppets now possess your alloy formula, their defense and energy recoil tolerance have been vastly improved, which is why I could mount energy cannons of such a large caliber on them!”

“Because of you, my power has been elevated! Therefore, I will use my absolute strongest power to kill you head-on!”

Du Carte roared, his armor around his feet suddenly twisting, accompanied by a grating metallic collision sound, as the foot armor transformed into two high-powered plasma engines. The armor around Du Carte’s abdomen bulged, and a Zakura crystal the size of a human head was embedded in the protrusion. With a sharp whistle, blinding plasma flames jetted from Du Carte’s feet. The armor on his back wriggled similarly, then deployed two five-meter-long metallic wings.

Like an angel from mythology, Du Carte soared high, rocketing straight up toward the clouds obscuring Gu Xiechen’s figure.

“Gu Xiechen! I will tell you frankly! I was born with two innate abilities! Besides my talent for manipulating metal objects and mechanical engineering, I possess formidable physical strength!”

Du Carte bellowed, “When I was three, I could lift ten tons of metal. Now, my physical strength is one hundred times what it was at age three! Except for my deceased mother, no one knew about my innate talents! As thanks to you, and out of respect for this duel, I will reveal my trump cards so that you may die without regret!”

Boom—In the Roman base, Pol Pot Holsom, who was watching the duel broadcast via satellite in the command hall, drew his sword and smashed an instrument into pieces. Young Roman men like Poljin and Yakin stood by, offering mocking smiles. Du Carte Holsom was supposedly one of the extremely rare mixed-blood individuals with excellent innate talent, yet it seemed Pol Pot Holsom and Du Carte Holsom were not on good terms! This was simply excellent news!

Du Carte rocketed straight up over three hundred meters high, and immediately heard a tremendous sound of tearing air above him.

“Hahaha, Gu Xiechen, stop your futile resistance! Let me kill you with one punch…”

“What the hell!”