Chapter 952: Infiltration

Li Pin's eyes turned grave. "Indestructible Matter can have an effect like that after going through special refining methods?"

He had already realized the danger. Perhaps, this was the true way Liberators fought.

In the Void of Chaos, laws did not exist. Everything was void. The limits of the Liberators' senses were the furthest boundaries they could reach, and there was no sense of direction—the concept of "up," "down," "front," and "back" simply didn't exist.

Someone like him had to sense the existence of another Liberator before he could lock onto their position. But the other party clearly didn't need to do so. The other party did not need to sense Li Pin, yet could still determine his approximate position and launch probing attacks in that direction.

Just like the long spear that had been shot at him at the very beginning. And the collision between Li Pin's vast body and the long spear was precisely the result of the opponent's probing strike.

The energy fluctuations exploding from the impact were like a beacon emerging in a fog, broadcasting his coordinates to his opponent. Once the enemy confirmed his exact location, they would then calculate his strength, size, and energy reactions through other methods.

In other words, they would determine his strength.

Only after all the calculations were complete would they launch a truly lethal attack using Indestructible Matter.

"The way other Liberators sense us should be through the traces of our 'existence.' Since I exist in the Void of Chaos, I will inevitably affect it. Just like a ship, even if it had perfect stealth and stayed still in the ocean, the ripples scattered by waves against its hull could still be detected by precise instruments, revealing that a warship existed in that sea."

Recalling the mysterious being's earlier attacks, Li Pin quickly reached this conclusion.

But the problem now was that the opponent could calculate his position through the traces of his "existence" in the Void of Chaos. However, he could not find the slightest trace of the opponent, leaving him completely on the defensive.

Buzz!

Just as Li Pin realized the peril he faced, another Indestructible Matter attack descended with a roar.

This strike was less destructive than the previous one, but because it was larger, its impact on the operations of Li Pin's True Body was far more immediate.

He realized that his state of balance had been broken.

Other areas might still operate, but the region struck by the Indestructible Matter was already dead. Moreover, these dead regions would affect his true body wholly, causing its overall strength to decline. As this went on, his counterattacks would grow weaker. And the weaker he grew, the easier he was to strike.

This would ultimately form a vicious cycle, until he completely collapsed and perished.

Li Pin's thoughts raced.

Something must change.

He began suppressing the fluctuations of his existence. At the same time, he swiftly shifted his position.

This method quickly yielded results, as the opponent reverted to using long spears to probe his whereabouts.

So, to a Liberator, these spears formed from energy and mass are expendable, but Indestructible Matter is a crucial strategic resource. Unless they are certain of a critical hit, they would not use it lightly.

Li Pin summarized the battle experience while swiftly maneuvering through the Void of Chaos.

But his speed and size were all within that mysterious opponent's calculations.

At first, his swift movements and constant changes of direction had caused the opponent's attacks to miss again and again. But as the opponent grew familiar with him, or perhaps as he drew closer, the difficulty of evasion increased linearly.

Li Pin tried to fully accelerate toward the mysterious enemy, yet the opponent clearly did not want to expose themselves, acting with extreme caution. Once he drew near, the opponent immediately shifted away.

In the end, all he did was run aimlessly in the Void of Chaos, without achieving any results.

Li Pin's heart grew heavy. "This won't do."

The opponent's attacks were very infrequent—years apart—yet within merely a hundred years, four pieces of Indestructible Matter had already gathered within his body. One of them was even especially large. Together, these pieces affected the functioning of his True Body.

Li Pin's heart turned heavy. "If this continues, I'll be worn down to death by this kite-like tactic in less than a thousand years."

He had never experienced anything like this since beginning cultivation. This was a battle where he could not even see his opponent and could only passively take hit after hit.

Li Pin took a deep breath. "I had thought battles between Liberators were simply contests of size and temporal acceleration, but now... it seems the true way of combat at the Liberator level is far more complex than I imagined."

Since he's calculating my presence through traces of my "existence," then.... if I shift the battlefield near the starry cosmos, it should be enough to interfere with his judgment.

He had a clear battle plan now. The only problem was that, if he resorted to using the starry cosmos to disrupt the enemy's judgment, their battle could bring catastrophic destruction to the universe.

"No, I must find another way to break this deadlock."

Li Pin gazed into the distance. That Void of Chaos, far beyond his perception, was like a fog in mortal eyes.

No matter what, he had to find that mysterious existence's true body. Only through finding it could they fight on equal grounds. Otherwise, he was just a living target.

"My body is far too vast. Whenever I move, the aura of my 'existence,' to one so sensitive, is like a lamp in the dark. He can detect my position instantly, shift his position, and adjust his next attack accordingly..."

Thus, he needed to approach the enemy in a form of weaker "existence."

At the very least, he needed to see him. Then, his avatar could provide coordinates, allowing his true body to launch a counterattack to overturn the passive situation.

"A weaker 'existence' aura.... The Transcendent Path is the best option."

Li Pin understood clearly. Unfortunately, he had not studied the Transcendent Path deeply, so only one clumsy method remained.

A moment later, an avatar separated from Li Pin's body. Concurrently, the aura of causality twisted upon him. His ties to all matter, energy, and spacetime were swiftly stripped away, leaving only his most primal self.

This was his simulation of the Transcendent Path using the rules he had mastered. Though far from reaching the level of void creatures like the Void Emperor, it was not much weaker than the Transcendent power gained through mechanical intellect.

While Li Pin's True Body continued entangling with the mysterious Liberator... or rather, as he was being one-sidedly suppressed, his avatar silently slipped toward the direction from which the mysterious being had attacked.

To aid this avatar's stealth, he also scattered random attacks of condensed matter and energy into the Void of Chaos, disturbing the traces of existence in the region.

In this way, the mysterious being seemed unable to detect Li Pin's avatar. Though still shifting positions, the distance between them grew ever closer.

Finally, after several dozen stellar years of attempts to approach, the Void of Chaos before Li Pin's avatar suddenly became clear.

An existence of unimaginable vastness loomed within his perception.

Since he was now only a small avatar, and his perceptions of matter, energy, and space-time were minimized on the level of cause and effect, he could not even see the full immensity of this great existence.

"He feels even more vast than the starry cosmos itself, and the starry cosmos spans over a hundred billion light-years in diameter!"

Li Pin's heart skipped a beat.

His own mass spanned a few billion light-years. On the other hand, this terrifying, mysterious existence's mass had far exceeded one hundred billion.

The difference between them, in terms of mass, was not merely ten thousandfold. It was much more!

And now, he could see parts of this towering existence's body.

Just as Yong Yao, Miao Ya, and the other Creators had described, this Liberator had taken a completely different path. His body didn't house a universe of stars, but rather countless stacking planes and worlds, each of a different size and energy level.

Within the planes lived countless beings, just like the countless stars scattered across the universe.

Almost at the moment Li Pin saw this mysterious existence, a thread of karma formed between them, and the avatar's Transcendence state was broken.

That towering being immediately became aware of Li Pin's presence.

Right after, a black thunderbolt, stretching for billions of miles, carrying power enough to annihilate any ancient Creator, crashed down in an instant.

The expression on Li Pin's avatar shifted. "This is bad!!"

He had spent dozens of stellar years to reach this towering existence, catching it off guard, relying on his unfamiliarity with this form of Transcendent disguise. If this avatar got destroyed, the next one might not even come close.

Furthermore, if he delayed for another few decades, his true body's functioning would be severely disrupted. By then, even if he continued to provide coordinates, this massive being could still surge forth, relying on its vast accumulation and immense size to crush his true body head-on into powder.

In an instant, his avatar, still in a state resembling Transcendence, completed a leap of consciousness, twisting the forces of time and space to the extreme.

The black thunderbolt should, with accelerated spacetime, destroy him instantly. But in that moment, his distortion of spacetime reached the very limit of the thunderbolt's acceleration, causing the spacetime around it to stagnate and even reverse.

In that fleeting instant of stagnation and reversal, Li Pin's avatar fully entered the Transcendence state, transforming into an eternal sword light that pierced into one of the worlds within the towering being's true body.

Upon entering its true body, he severed all karmic ties with the outside world. He fell into the void and transformed into a Void Creature, vanishing without a trace.