Chapter 569: The Swan's Reckoning

The beast tide was frightening in size.

Zhang Lie twisted his head, his eyes gleaming with a rainbow sheen. Multicolored mist rose from the ground, stupefying the genetic lifeforms at the head of the pack. As they reached Zhang Lie, they stopped short.

The genetic lifeforms' eyes all took on a rainbow sheen. Zhang Lie pointed at the swan, and they all looked toward it.

The swan shivered and honked, but it had already lost control of all its genetic lifeforms. A horde of lifeforms yelled, screeched, and howled as they swarmed the swan. Zhang Lie's mistmeld clam soulshard had trapped all these lifeforms in an illusion; he had swapped their perception of the swan and Zhang Lie.

The swan had no choice but to trigger the seeds embedded in each lifeform's forehead. Their hearts thumped loudly as black capillaries spread all over their skin.

The genetic lifeforms rushing toward the swan keened in pain as they fell to the ground.

A black flower grew over their heads as black energy was extracted from their bodies.

Some of the genetic lifeforms had beads of black energy as large as watermelons, whereas others were small like green beans. Once all the energy had been extracted from the lifeforms, their bodies quickly became thin and emaciated, nothing more than skin and bones.

All that energy gathered on the swan's body, which expanded like a balloon.

Zhang Lie watched on with interest, curious how much stronger the swan would get. It was right at the border of peak- and disaster-grade, but this was a known bottleneck that stymied countless lifeforms. At the very least, Zhang Lie had seen three such lifeforms, two at the pinnacle of peak-grade and a third that had almost crossed into disaster-grade, die at his hand.

At this point, Zhang Lie had no interest in peak-grade lifeforms. They had to be at least pseudodisaster-grade in order to augment Zhang Lie's strength.

Now that the swan's lifeforms had been controlled by Zhang Lie, it was reclaiming its strength through the seeds embedded in their bodies.

The swan's body grew larger and larger. Its head broke through the roof of the chamber as it transformed from a 1.5-meter tall swan to a 15-meter tall one. Muscles bulged all over its body.

It had taken in too much energy, so much its body couldn't handle it. Its skin began to crack; its eyes had turned blood-red. Blood-red tendrils quivered around its body like little snakes. Those tendrils twisted and twined against each other before finally coalescing around the swan's neck.

Zhang Lie considered the swan carefully. Based on the fluctuations in its aura, it had certainly reached disaster-grade, but its body was nowhere near crystallizing.

"Indeed, the transformation to disaster-grade isn't straightforward."

There were no shortcuts to such an evolution. Even if it boasted energy and power commensurate with that of a disaster-grade lifeform, it would still need a suitably strong body to match that power.

The swan roared. Waves of energy spread out around it like a tsunami. Its voice was filled with notes of anger and pain. A crazed madness seemed to have taken ahold of it.

The walls of the castle, whose foundations had grown more and more unsteady as the fight progressed, crumbled. Given the amount of energy at its disposal, the swan could almost be considered a pseudodisaster-grade lifeform.

Blood-red tendrils flew around it as Zhang Lie unsheathed his blades and cut them apart.

The swan unfurled its wing at Zhang Lie, boundless energy filling its body to such an extent that it felt it was about to explode. It was a miracle that it hadn't. It charged at Zhang Lie, trying to expend its reserves of energy before it could wreak more damage on its own body.

Zhang Lie leapt high in the air and struck with [The Boundless Blade: Yawning Wave].

A tall wave of sword energy clashed against the swan's wing, drowning it in a massive explosion and wounding its body.

[Fists of the Silent Sea: Quake]! The swan's wing, draped in inky-black liquid energy, caused heaven and earth to shudder.

Zhang Lie watched on with wide eyes—the swan had somehow managed to replicate his technique! The swan's latent ability, magnified in times of stress and strife, had somehow enabled it to copy Zhang Lie's technique whole. As it fought an uphill battle, as it tried to slough off the energy that filled its body, it was slowly evolving to disaster-grade.

Zhang Lie sliced apart the swan's attack, tearing space as he cut a narrow path to safety.

"[Shadow and Light]!" He dashed toward the swan and appeared right above its head, where he thrust his blade into the swan's forehead. However, the swan's body had grown so large that his thrust was almost as effective as pricking himself with a needle.

The tendrils on the swan's neck exploded, morphing into thousands of spikes that shot toward Zhang Lie.

"[The Boundless Blade: the River Lethe]!" With another slash from Zhang Lie, an underworld river hurtled into existence. The haunted souls of the underworld could almost be seen in the darkness, tearing the spikes apart.

The swan reared back. It attacked Zhang Lie once again with its stolen technique. [Fists of the Silent Sea: Soar]! Waves of energy, so intense they warped space, spread out from the swan's wings, crushing all resistance in its way.

With its life on the line, the swan's latent potential erupted. Given the energy it had just absorbed, the strength and range of its blows were even greater than Zhang Lie's own.

"Size doesn't determine everything! [First Form: Parting the River]!"

Gleaming light honed the edge of Zhang Lie's sword, and a beam of sword energy rose into the air. Waves of sword aura poured from Zhang Lie.

The bright sword energy rushed toward the sky before falling back down like brilliant rays of sunlight, dissipating the darkness in a wave of energy so intense it was forced to shield its eyes.

Just because the swan could imbue its techniques with more energy didn't necessarily make them more potent.

𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

To Zhang Lie, the swan's [Fists of the Silent Sea] was essentially a novice's. Although it looked impressively intimidating, it had hardly managed to capture the essence of the technique, a level of mastery born of repetition and experience.

In the end, Zhang Lie only cut off one of the swan's wings without killing it completely. He wanted to see whether the swan could evolve into disaster-grade, furnishing Zhang Lie with even more rewards...