Chapter 598 Buried
The world itself seemed to release a cry, its fear reaching a palpable level as it was dyed in black and red.
Ryu could feel his arm trembling and threatening to shatter apart. Even while relying on his master's Visualization technique to activate and take the brunt of the pressure off of his body, this technique of the Dragon Race was even more difficult to activate than Dragon's Breath.
To make matters worse, Ryu had fused techniques of his Great Swordstaff into each one of his claws, effectively forcing himself to wield five blades at once, each fused with his own comprehensions and sword qi. This multiplied the difficulty of using this technique by several folds.
However… The results spoke for themselves.
The mountain barely held on by a thread, the land before Ryu splitting into six, five trenches with unfathomable depths forming. It was to the point where Ryu could even sense the very boundaries of this world itself just beyond its limits. Had his attack been any more powerful, this Legacy World itself would have been destroyed.
Sarriel barely hung on at the edge of one abyss. However, the lower half of her body had completely vanished. Her entrails, blood and flesh dripped down slowly, her features pale almost beyond recognition.
Her hair had returned to its original black, the ice armor that had once clung to her curves having disappeared. From this vantage point, Ryu could catch a clear sight of the tail end of her spine.
Even as Ryu stood in the air, breathing hard, he found it difficult to believe that Sarriel had been injured to this extent. He had expected that he would claim victory with this attack, but he hadn't thought the result would be so exaggerated.
What he didn't know was that when he shattered Sarriel's technique, he had caused a tear in her soul. That technique was meant to be a sacrificial technique. Usually, one could only use it one time in their lives before dying soon after.
As one might expect, this made the technique almost impossibly powerful. And, Sarriel, thanks to her pupils, was able to use it in exchange for just a large drain to her stamina, turning a sacrificial technique into one she could bring out as a trump card whenever the situation suited it.
However, even though she managed to avoid the greatest pitfall of the technique—that being the loss of her life—she still had to attach a strand of her soul to it in order to fool the Heavens into allowing her to use it in exchange for just a clone. This was why even with the blood sacrifice of her clone, she still had to exchange her real blood by running her blade up her thumb as well.
What Sarriel couldn't have expected was the fact that Ryu had a technique that could instantly obliterate her soul like that.
The truth was that [Divine Chaotic Annihilation] hadn't faced the true brunt of Sarriel's technique. What happened was that it latched onto Sarriel's soul and crushed it first. Once that happened, the structure of the technique completely crumbled, allowing Ryu to absorb it to fuel his next attack.
The moment Sarriel's soul was damaged, not only did her technique collapse, but she lost the ability to control her Demon Duke Summons. To avoid being ripped apart from the inside-out by it, she had no choice but to send it back to the Nether Realm.
But, the result of that was her power plummeting just as Ryu released such a powerful technique. Not only did she lose both of her Dominions, but her qi dropped. There was no way she could block it.
The only reason she wasn't dead was because at the last moment, she managed to use the rest of her qi reserves to shift her body. But, she didn't have enough to appear at a different location. In addition, the pressure of Ryu's technique and Dominion multiplied the difficulty even more so. So, she could only use her reality warping abilities to shift her body from a vertical position to a horizontal position. This was what led to her losing the lower half of her body.
Sarriel was furious, even in such a state. She had never been humiliated to such an extreme. She had actually lost to someone six substages beneath her.
To make matters worse, she had been too arrogant to even use all her power. She hadn't brought out her strongest Summon, she didn't use the most powerful abilities of her Pupils, and most importantly, she hadn't activated her Natural Enlightenment even right up until the end, believing she simply didn't need them.
Plus… She couldn't kill Ryu. She had needed him. If she didn't need him for something, why would she have bothered to try fooling him for so long?!
Ultimately, a single mistake, a mismatch of techniques, caused this to end in her loss. She didn't open her mouth to complain, nor did she make excuses. Her pride was bone deep. She disdained to explain herself, even in such a situation.
Sarriel looked up toward the mountain range, completely unwilling. Years of planning and she fell at this point.
Her jaw clenched. One would think that the greatest pain to her would be the injuries she had suffered. But, to Sarriel, all of that could be regrown. Plus, whether it was her uterus or ovaries, she had managed to protect them, so she wasn't in a situation where she would be barren either. What truly pained her the most was a path toward her goals being so cruelly cut away, and maybe what hurt even more was the fact it was her fault for not taking her opponent seriously enough.
In the blink of an eye, as though her emotions had been wiped away, Sarriel's features became expressionless.
'I won't make the same mistake again next time. Nothing can stop my rise to the top. I don't need handouts from others.'
Shackles that had been on Sarriel's heart suddenly vanished. An overwhelming pressure shot out from her. It was so suffocating that even Ryu felt his heart skip a beat as he flew shakily in the sky. He had been trying to approach Sarriel all this time to deal the finishing blow, but his stamina was also drained. Now, he suddenly found himself flying in the face of a wall of wind that blew him dozens of kilometers away.
'This…'
Ryu's heart trembled. He realized that Sarriel had just had a breakthrough. And, it was no normal breakthrough.
'The State of Immersion… No, it's already close to the State of Control…'
Ryu blocked his eyes with a forearm. By the time the pressure vanished and he could finally look again, Sarriel was nowhere to be seen. He didn't bother to look around. He knew that she had managed to escape. Clearly, she had already prepared something to vanish from this world without being detected.
A solemn expression took hold of Ryu's features.
'Natural Enlightenment…'
Compared to Mortal Endowments, he knew that they were on a completely different level. The power they provided was no joking matter. There were even folk tales of mortals who hadn't cultivated a day in their lives gaining the strength to battle Immortals after comprehending one.
Whether that was true or not, Ryu had no idea. But, regardless of the truth, Sarriel had comprehended one long before their battle. Ryu had sensed it, but she never used it. And now, it was even more powerful by not just a small measure.
After a moment, Ryu's solemn expression curled into a smirk.
"I'll defeat you just the same next time. There will come a day where no one in existence dares to challenge me."
Ryu shakily descended from the skies, his sudden roar causing several avalanches of snow.
What he didn't know was that this casual roar of his caused individuals who had already been struggling to walk up the other side o the mountain to be thrust downward once again.
During Ryu and Sarriel's battle, there had been several groups that managed to make it through without Sarriel's illusion formation interfering. Among these individuals included persons of the Zu Clan.
Many believed that the battle between Ryu and Sarriel was actually part of the trial, and as such did their best to climb through the pressure. After all, how could they possibly believe that individuals so strong were allowed to enter?
Unfortunately, as hard as they tried, whether it was the aura of the two or the cataclysmic activity of their clashes, it was all too difficult for individuals capped at the Immortal Ring Realm. And now, they were subject to Ryu's roar once again. To make matters worse, the qi sapping ability of the snow hadn't just disappeared. Now, they were being buried beneath it.
Uncaring about the fate of others or maybe being completely unaware, Ryu continued to climb.
'I'll consider us even.' Ryu thought to himself. 'Since you didn't target Yaana, we can cut things like that. However, next time, I'll be returning that punch to your pretty face.'
Ryu trudged to the peak of the mountain, his meridians running on empty. The snow that he had previously been able to ignore made him feel parched, dry and cold all at once. But, he continued to climb, his will indomitable.
But, when he sensed the aura at the peak of the mountain, he almost collapsed to his knees, his mind stuck in an odd state between relaxation and shock.
His mind swam, his legs feeling weak.
"… Grandma?"
Ryu collapsed, the snow quickly swallowing him whole. In just a few moments, his body was buried beneath a storm of snow, leaving him too weak to lift a single finger.