Chapter 586: Annihilating the Asura

As he brandished his two fists, the asura summoned two mountains of flame around him, countering the assault of Zhang Lie's genetic energy. Neither party backed down; space began deteriorating at an ever-increasing rate.

"[Fists of the Silent Sea: Fade]!" Zhang Lie loosed another blow. Genetic energy transformed into a frightening dragon, one which rushed toward the asura with domineering authority.

The asura punched forward with his six arms, sending a sea of blood to devour it whole.

Zhang Lie's body flashed as he summoned his dual blades, with which he defended against the onslaught of the sea. With a slash of both blades, he cut a cross in the asura's chest, but no blood leaked out. Instead, Zhang Lie saw a pulsating mass of red crystal.

The asura had, of course, undergone the disaster-grade crystallization.

"You won't be able to beat me, lad—I'm the god of the sura realm! Now, die!"

With black flames wreathing his left arm and a wave of bloody water circling his right, the asura morphed into a gigantic demon over hundreds of meters tall. He was an asura, hegemon of the realm! How could he lose to an outsider a few thousand years his junior?

"Asura, times have changed!" With his blades in his hands, the aura surrounding Zhang Lie seemed to grow even sharper. "[The Boundless Blade: Yawning Wave]!"

The sword energy bisected the gigantic demon in half, leaving another scar on the asura's chest.

𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Roaring in anger, the asura charged forward. Blood-colored flame covered his body and filled heaven and earth.

Zhang Lie activated his blood ant and dragonwolf soulshards simultaneously, transforming into his draconian form. His blades, gleaming with rainbow light and a timeless authority, slashed down.

"[Ninesoul Dragonblade—Fourth Form: Warping Space and Time]!" His blades sliced through the flame, the sea of blood, and even the asura's disaster-grade form cleanly, as though they were all made of nothing more durable than papier mache.

.

It bisected the asura's soul and simultaneously the constraints of space and time.

The asura's eyes widened and gradually lost their color. "H-How could this be? I'm a god of the sura realm!"

He was among those who had brought the sura to glory and dominion, a status that had lasted for millennia. The sura's current strength could, in large part, be attributed to him—as was the fact that this realm was commonly termed the 'sura realm'. In that case, how could he have lost to an outsider, a weak and paltry human?

The asura stared in shock at the sword that had impaled his chest. His indomitable will refused to succumb to Zhang Lie's genetic energy. As a sea of blood and red flame roared behind him, he once again transformed into a gigantic demon.

Flames burned earth and sky, but Zhang Lie called out with a cool smile, "It's useless. Your soul has already been cut apart—it's time to perish! [Blades, Reverberate]!"

Zhang Lie's twin blades struck the asura's chest in the shape of an X, sending crystalline flakes of red flying. Sword energy gathered at the tip of the blades in the intersection of the X and culminated in a massive explosion that consumed them both.

Even so, the battered asura didn't give up. As energy swirled around the gigantic demon, the six thorns on his elbows began to spin.

Wreathed in flame, he seemed to be at the eye of a tornado that extended high into the sky. This was the asura's strongest attack, as well as the last one he would ever use. He sacrificed his lifeforce and steeled his will for a single deathblow, one so intense that, if it were to strike the ground, the entire continent might sink into the ocean.

Zhang Lie glanced at the technique casually. Before he had maxed out his disaster gene fragments, he would surely have perished, but now, even an asura's deathblow was straightforward for him to deal with.

"[The Boundless Blade: the River Lethe]!" An underworld river hurtled into existence, roaring into the skies. Sword energy suffused the air like a thick mist and overwhelmed the asura's sea of blood immediately.

The asura's deathblow was nullified; his technique was sucked into Zhang Lie's underworld river and destroyed.

After that, the asura had no choice but to recognize his defeat. All the energy had been drained from his body, his soul had been split in two, and he was on the verge of drawing his last breath. With listless eyes, he dropped from the sky and fell to the ground like a puppet.

A god of the sura had fallen...

"Y-You, how could you be so strong?!" The asura had been at the peak of the second realm. Even among his kin, he was unparalleled and unmatched, let alone to outsiders or alien races far beneath his scrutiny. And yet, despite all that, the asura had been soundly defeated, crushed by Zhang Lie's strength.

He simply couldn't understand how Zhang Lie had come into his strength—but that was natural. Zhang Lie's path to evolution had long since deviated from what was rational or plausible; he had gone to extremes in everything he did, acquiring disaster gene fragments, the status of a peak-grade lifeform, and hitherto unknown limit fragments in the first realm.

Even before maxing out his superior gene fragments in the second realm, he had sufficient strength to kill a disaster-grade lifeform.

After he had used the seven forbidden regions of the sea as his own personal farm, he even managed to max out his disaster gene fragments and elevate his status into that of a disaster-grade lifeform.

Zhang Lie's true strength was far beyond the limits of the second realm, and he even had to hold back during the fight against the asura so as not to trigger a cataclysmic instability in the second realm as he had in the first.

As a result, in response to the sura's question, Zhang Lie sighed and replied, "Because I'll never stop advancing. If you had chosen to ascend rather than to continue guarding this small fraction of the universe, perhaps you would have accomplished far more yourself."

The asura glanced up at the shattered sky, at the ground veined with magma, and his lips curled up in a smile ringed with self-mockery.

Zhang Lie stepped forward, thrust his sword into the asura's forehead, and claimed his six thorns.

All the ingredients he needed for Potion #5 were now complete. Times had changed, and the asura who had refused to ascend had fallen prey to a rising star. Thus the world ever moved forward; to halt in the path of cultivation was to fall prey to time and the clutches of history.

The asura's body slowly crystallized. Crystals emanated from his body and spread throughout the ground, causing a whole field of red spider lilies to bloom. The cracked skies slowly began to repair themselves, absorbing whatever energy they could from the realm.

The crystals that now pervaded the ground were filled with energy; if used appropriately, they would become a valuable resource for Renhuang.

In death, at long last, the asura gave back what he had reaped from the realm...