Chapter 612: Confrontation

As the Void Emperor heard Li Pin's words, he turned his head and looked at him. There was no fluctuation on his face, not even a ripple. At this moment, he seemed to have lost all empathy and emotion.

He felt nothing.

As he looked at Li Pin, Li Pin also looked at him. Their gazes met. One was indifferent, the other sincere.

After a long silence, the Void Emperor called out, "Li Pin."

𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"I'm here," Li Pin answered.

"You said you would help me."

"That's right," Li Pin replied. "I think this help should be used now."

"Then..." The Void Emperor looked at him indifferently. "What are you waiting for?"

Li Pin bowed slightly. "As you wish."

In the next moment, he clasped his hands together.

A phantom image of a world appeared behind him before rapidly contracting and rushing into his body.

In an instant, Li Pin seemed to bear the weight of a celestial body, and a terrifying gravity emanated from him, seemingly warping time and space. Yet, this distortion lasted briefly before being completely retracted, as if all the gravity, mass, and energy were perfectly controlled without any leakage.

"Be careful. I don't know if your True Spirit has reflected my real strength, but I think... I might be stronger than you expected..." said Li Pin.

Buzz!

Li Pin took a false step and simply reached out, pressing toward the Void Emperor.

"Stronger!"

With that press, the surrounding space completely solidified.

This solidification wasn't happening due to a leakage of power, but rather because Li Pin precisely manipulated the surrounding space with his will, causing it to solidify layer by layer as it evolved into a world that pressed down with crushing force.

It was like a Transcendent Emperor throwing a punch. An emperor who held absolute power, whose one word could decide anyone's fate, throwing a punch at his official.

The truly terrifying aspect of his punch was not the power it contained but the symbolism behind it. The sheer visual and psychological impact of a Transcendent Emperor attacking his minister in such a manner.

It was an absolute suppression of identity, status, momentum, and inner spirit.

One could imagine the extent to which that minister's inner spirit, thoughts, and consciousness would be suppressed at that moment. Not only would he not dare to move, but he would also be filled with incomparable fear, afraid that the emperor might suffer pain from striking him.

Even if the minister were as strong as the emperor, even if he could match him evenly in a fight, his mind would be occupied by nothing but these thoughts.

Li Pin's punch, powered by the momentum of space and driven by his unshakable will, carried the same overwhelming presence as that of an emperor's might.

On one side was absolute power! On the other side was absolute strength!

Merged with the force of space, his perfect, unshakable belief and will formed an unrivaled, supreme strike, capable of crushing any opponent on the physical, energy, spatial, spiritual, and inner spirit levels.

This had already surpassed the realm of technique. This was Dao.

An emperor's Dao, where all under heaven belonged to the emperor!

His Dao had not yet fully formed, but within this punch, the will to dominate and surpass everything still manifested in a way that suppressed all things and shook the galaxy with a single strike.

It didn't matter whether the opponent could dodge or not. Even if they could, every dodge was an affirmation of his Dao, a transcendence of himself and his enemy, making his power even stronger.

Until he truly overpowered and surpassed his opponent, crushing them like rotting wood.

At this moment, the Void Emperor had already stepped onto the Transcendent path and instantly saw through it. His unmatched computational ability allowed him to grasp Li Pin’s true intent in challenging him.

Unlocking the Dao. Li Pin wanted to use the Void Emperor to forge his own path and validate his Dao.

He intended to treat the Void Emperor, an opponent who had achieved omniscience and omnipotence, capable of detecting any flaw in his Dao, as a whetstone to perfect it. If his Dao could hold firm, even against the Transcendent path, then how far could his will and conviction reach?

It was an act of extreme arrogance.

But that wasn’t what mattered most. The real issue, in the Void Emperor’s eyes, was that Li Pin had chosen the wrong opponent to validate his own Dao.

Even that wasn’t the heart of it. What truly mattered... was that the Void Emperor would shatter his Dao. He could destroy it. He would destroy it, and he would make Li Pin fail in validating his own Dao.

In an instant, the Void Emperor's mind operated at its peak. Li Pin's body proportions, energy flow, combat will, martial belief, interests, emotional fluctuations, and more, everything was incorporated into his calculations and transformed into a counterattack strategy.

Facing Li Pin's incoming fist force, the Void Emperor tapped out a finger.

A star-like brilliance flickered from his fingertip, compressing and condensing at an unimaginable speed.

Under the illumination of True Spirit, all microscopic atomic and particle transformations and reactions clearly appeared in his mind and instantly assembled.

With this finger strike, he had already annihilated matter, condensed energy, and, in the next moment, triggered vacuum tides, forming zero-point energy.

This energy came from space itself, generating waves of spatial tides that collided with the solidified space Li Pin had stirred.

The next moment, space twisted violently around the two men at the center.

Unprecedented gravitational waves erupted from the distorted space, surpassing the speed of light and spreading continuously, influencing the gravity of the Moon Goddess Domain's starry domain.

The Moon Goddess Domain, spanning millions of miles in diameter, was pulled and trembled under the gravitational waves, slowly drifting toward their battlefield.

Farther away, a brilliant star radiated endless light, triggering intense nuclear fusion reactions. Countless bursts of energy erupted from the star, forming visible solar corona and solar storms.

These solar storms scattered across the cosmic void and projected toward the battlefield as luminous energy.

It seemed as if a black hole had appeared here.

No, it was not an illusion! After the zero-point energy and the fist force Li Pin unleashed to suppress the galaxy clashed, a near-black hole effect in this region had indeed been created.

It could even be said to be a Great Attractor. However, their magnitude was far smaller compared to an actual Great Attractor spanning billions of light-years in diameter.

Despite this, the gravitational tides formed from their battle still shook the entire galaxy centered around the Moon Goddess Domain.

The primary planet, other stars, satellites, and all planets in this region had their orbits disrupted, shaken, and deviated by this sudden, black-hole-like gravitational source.

If these orbits were not corrected, the gravitational balance of the galaxy would completely collapse in a few years, leading to chaotic disruptions, planetary collisions, and even star-on-star impacts, ultimately causing unprecedented destruction to the entire galaxy.

Li Pin strode forward with great strides, his fist force suppressing everything. "Transcendent!"

The twisted space advanced, crushing the space in front of the Void Emperor layer by layer.

All obstructions were ground into dust before this force, which seemed to cause the entire world to collapse upon them. Even the zero-point energy was no exception.

Space could not destroy space.

At this moment, his fist and his Dao transcended everything.

True Spirit? Transcendent? They were merely techniques of power utilization.

At this moment, he only needed to prove that his Dao was stronger.

However, just as Li Pin carried this overwhelming force capable of surpassing everything and was about to strike the Void Emperor, something seemed to break.

It was like a mirror, where a crack first appeared, and then—

Boom!

The space he had stirred and controlled was completely shattered. The endless zero-point energy surged back like a tsunami, carrying invisible ripples as it swept toward Li Pin.

Relying on his Clairvoyance, Li Pin precisely sensed how the Void Emperor had broken through his attack.

He had made use of the seething force generated from the clash of the zero-point energy with his spatial force, splitting it into billions of portions within an instant.

Each portion of the power seethed madly and annihilated in a wild frenzy.

The sheer magnitude of energy, far beyond what he could control, overwhelmed his perfect grasp of the surrounding space, causing it to collapse.

This level of computational power far exceeded what perfect control could counter.

A conventional being's mental processing speed could not handle billions of calculations in an instant.

They were not even competing on the same track.

If it was said that he was waging war like a great army, overpowering through sheer strength. Then the Void Emperor was employing tactical penetration, breaking the whole into countless small squads, weaving through the battlefield, and tearing apart his grand army.

Li Pin clenched his empty hand, and the shattered space reformed, as if turning into a fortress wall. "Control!"

The control granted by his state of perfection allowed him to instantly form a new attack, even if his previous one had been shattered.

The dispersion and condensation of power happened without interruption.

As he formed this wall, he purified his inner spirit as much as possible, making it as tranquil as a still lake, reflecting all the ripples that disturbed its surface with absolute clarity.

Thereafter, no reaction, perception, nor specific counter was required. The lake would naturally smooth out these ripples.

This was a battle of True Spirits. And yet, it was not really one.

A true battle of True Spirits was never confined to the present but was focused on the future.

A temporary defeat was merely preparation for the ultimate counterattack.

But Li Pin... despite having reflected his surroundings through his inner spirit lake, he could only achieve perfect defense in the present. He could not foresee attacks that arrived ahead of time, much less extinguish his opponent's attack before it even formed based on foresight.

Thus, at this moment, he was clearly suppressed.

The Void Emperor seemed like a cold, unfeeling machine, unaffected by any external factors. It was as if he truly heard nothing, saw nothing, and sensed nothing.

He controlled the zero-point energy with absolute rationality and neutrality. He never interfered with its natural flow, merely guiding it with the slightest push, allowing it to transform into an annihilating wave that continuously surged toward Li Pin.

His operations executed hundreds of millions, tens of billions, even trillions of calculations each instant.

Li Pin could defend against all attacks with his perfect control of power, but there were still too many changes and variables.

Tens of billions, even trillions of variations in attack patterns, supported by an omniscient, omnipotent level of computation, were enough to break through any indestructible shield.

"Transcendent! Transcendent!"

At this moment, Li Pin was like a warrior battling against a tsunami, continuously striking the towering waves. With blazing and fervent conviction, he stirred the space, solidifying it into an unshakable force that crushed forward.

Yet, every unshakable force he unleashed was shattered and dissolved by the Void Emperor's ever-changing power at every instant.

It was a flawless mastery in application, a near-omniscient grasp of the battlefield, combined with an ability to seize even the slightest opportunity with unparalleled computational power.

The scales of the battle instantly tipped.

Just as the world understood the nature of the Transcendent, at the same level of cultivation, no one could defeat a Transcendent.