Chapter 1601: Demonic Assault (Part Four)

Because Mu Guyue was moving at such extreme speed, arcs of black light trailed along both sides of her plummeting form, and the space around her emitted a series of sharp cracks. If this knee-strike truly connected, Ling Shan would be crushed into a mere pulp of flesh and blood.

Ling Shan’s reactions were naturally swift. Her fish-scale artifact flared, expanding to the size of a grown adult in an instant.

“Go!” she shouted, thrusting the fish-scale artifact forward to shield herself. Simultaneously, though she could not turn her body in time, her other hand flicked her long whip upward. The tip of the whip extended with lightning speed, lunging upward like a monstrous serpent flipping its body. It aimed directly for Mu Guyue’s throat with a viciously calculated angle.

Ling Shan knew her opponent wanted to end the duel quickly, but she felt that was wishful thinking. Now that one of her sect’s Supreme Elders had arrived, the other would surely follow shortly.

“You shall all die!” Ling Shan felt a towering rage. Aside from Han Zhumei, she was the strongest individual within the Mountain River Diagram, yet she had been the first to suffer defeat, nearly resulting in her entire squad’s annihilation. Even if they managed to wipe out the Broken Army Sect afterward, the shame of it was nearly unbearable.

Mu Guyue seemed to ignore the whip lunging toward her throat, maintaining her offensive without pause.

A sharp sound of grinding muscle and bone echoed from within Mu Guyue’s body. In that singular heartbeat, her rapidly falling form shifted several inches horizontally in mid-air. Even for a Body Cultivator, such a level of physical control was bordering on the inconceivable. At such speed and proximity, this was the first time Ling Shan had ever encountered such a maneuver.

Before Ling Shan’s incredulous eyes, Mu Guyue’s body descended like a bolt of lightning, her knees slamming down onto the whip—not the tip, but the length of the weapon itself.

Ling Shan immediately felt a surge of titanic force that she was completely unable to withstand. At this moment, forty percent of her magical power was invested in the fish-scale artifact ahead, while the remaining sixty percent was poured into her whip. This was the optimal balance of offense and defense she had calculated after her brief exchange with Mu Guyue moments prior.

However, Mu Guyue suddenly seemed as if she had consumed some miraculous tonic; her strength was so immense that Ling Shan had no time to react.

‘This is bad!’ The thought had just flashed through Ling Shan’s mind as she tried to dodge, but she had already fallen behind. Mu Guyue pinned the whip down with her knees, and under the weight of her overwhelming aura, the weapon plummeted.

Being a Spirit Transformation expert, Ling Shan instinctively leaned her body forward the moment her heart skipped a beat. At the same time, she yanked the whip backward with all her might. This caused Mu Guyue’s high-speed descent to veer slightly away from its original target.

Mu Guyue plummeted with a dull thud, her knees grazing Ling Shan’s back as she crashed down. The fierce gale generated by the movement instantly shredded the clothes on Ling Shan’s back, exposing two patches of jade-white skin. Ling Shan felt a sudden chill followed by a searing, knife-like pain, but she had no time for shame or fury.

Although Mu Guyue’s knees were still pressing against the whip, her missed strike had placed her directly behind Ling Shan. During her descent, she abruptly raised both arms. In an instant, a restrictive space formed around the two of them, enveloping them in a cage.

Mu Guyue tucked her arms and drove her elbows inward. Executing the move Twin Winds Funneling the Ears, she slammed the tips of her elbows from both sides toward the head right in front of her.

Ling Shan was currently leaning forward, but her fish-scale artifact, which was busy blocking the Crescent Moon Handguard Sabers, also blocked her path of retreat. Her arm holding the whip was stretched back to its limit, and her body was in an awkward forward-leaning posture. Having realized she could not match Mu Guyue’s raw power, she was frantically trying to adjust her magical power, leaving her in a state where her old strength was spent and new strength had yet to be generated.

In that moment, she sensed Mu Guyue manifesting a restriction to shroud this small pocket of space. The restriction wasn’t particularly strong, but her face grew pale as she realized the intent behind it. In truth, she only needed a single thought to counter-attack.

With a muffled boom, both Ling Shan and Mu Guyue remained suspended in mid-air, as if time had frozen. Ling Shan’s protective spirit shield over her head suddenly erupted with a brilliant red light. Outside that red glow, the tips of Mu Guyue’s elbows met with a heavy impact on Ling Shan’s left and right Taiyang acupoints, unleashing a chilling black light.

As the muffled sound of the collision rang out, Ling Shan’s body shuddered as if she had been dazed. Mu Guyue’s knees remained pinned to the whip, but a brief, high-pitched sizzling sound erupted between the black light of her elbows and Ling Shan’s red shield. To the divine sense, that sound seemed to stretch on, but in reality, it lasted only half a breath.

Then, the red light around Ling Shan’s head flared with blinding intensity.

Following a loud explosion, the red light was crushed by the black light into tiny sparks that flew in all directions. Ling Shan’s beautiful head was gone. Her headless corpse wobbled for a moment before exploding into countless crystalline motes and vanishing without a trace.

Combat between Spirit Transformation cultivators was too fast for the naked eye to follow; Mu Guyue’s decisive strike had occurred in less than a single breath.