Chapter 285: Absolute Zero
As the elder continued being buried under the relentless assault of hundreds of clones who continuously exploded upon contact, she finally noticed something. Through the chaos of the endless explosions, she spotted one Li Yao that was different from the rest.
While the other clones giggled continuously, this particular one just stood there calmly with some sort of strange lightning puppet floating beside her. The elder’s eyes lit up with joy.
"Found you," she declared with triumph as she immediately disappeared from her current position, quickly moving past the dense horde of explosive clones that detonated upon contact. She didn’t care about the minor damage anymore as she had finally identified her real target.
She stretched out her hand toward Li Yao when she was just a few inches away. But suddenly, she was violently knocked backward, being thrown several meters away.
Xiang Yu appeared protectively before Li Yao, gripping the void sword. He took a moment to observe the weapon in his hands, thinking to himself that it was quite impressive.
"Kekeke, which genius blacksmith made such a nice blade"
"Senior brother, didn’t you make it?"
"Ahem, yes"
He really needed to make a similar divine weapon for himself.
The elder staggered backward before managing to find her balance. Her eyes met directly with Xiang Yu, who held the sword in a ready combat stance.
"The puppet?" she wondered aloud with confusion. Why were this kid’s methods so strange?
As she was trying to process this new development, the explosive clones were already catching up to her new position and beginning to self-destruct once again in waves. She quickly controlled her domain, producing hundreds of massive flaming hands that grabbed the incoming clones, flinging them away violently and clearing a direct path toward Li Yao’s position.
She then broke through space and appeared instantly before Li Yao. The transition was so incredibly fast that by the time Xiang Yu noticed the movement and began to react, it was already far too late to intercept, and she was about to deliver a crushing blow directly to Li Yao.
But before the attack could successfully connect, the scabbard appeared between the two, absorbing all the damage from the strike.
"Dammit," she thought with frustration, immediately trying to launch another follow-up attack. But Xiang Yu was already in perfect position this time, delivering a sword strike of his own.
She did a backflip, just barely managing to dodge the attack and quickly stepping back several meters to create some breathing room.
She thought to herself that the divine weapon was really annoying to deal with. She needed to find some way to permanently get rid of it if she wanted to end this fight.
She then looked at Xiang Yu with a calculating smile. "The puppet seems significantly weaker than the master. I’ll start with eliminating it first," she thought.
...
"This is taking forever," Xiang Yu thought in frustration. It had already been almost an hour since he had joined the fight, and despite their coordinated efforts, they seemed to be locked in an endless stalemate.
He glanced across the battlefield at the elder, who was staring furiously at them from the opposite direction. He smiled slightly as he observed that she looked a whole lot worse for wear than when the battle had first begun. Her robes were singed and torn, and numerous small wounds covered her body from the relentless clone explosions.
But then his smile faded as he glanced at Li Yao standing protectively beside him. She had also received quite a fair share of injuries throughout the battle, mostly from desperately trying to shield him from the elder’s attacks.
He sighed deeply. He kept telling her not to worry about protecting him since this was just a temporary clone body, but she didn’t seem to understand the concept.
Seeing that their current approach was getting them nowhere and would likely continue indefinitely, Xiang Yu decided to use another method he had been considering. He thought to himself that every fragment he created from his soul should theoretically have access to the void space within his soul. If he could successfully use this connection to summon his void domain, then he could potentially turn the battle around in their favor.
Though he remained uncertain whether this fragment could handle such a thing. When he had attempted something similar with the light clone, it had proven to be quite taxing and difficult to maintain.
Suddenly, he had another idea. Instead of trying to expand an entire domain and waste resources, why not just use a domain ability without projecting the full domain?
Thinking of this, he turned to Li Yao. "Teleport me directly to her," he said.
"What? That’s too dangerous!" she protested immediately.
"Don’t worry about it. I have a plan," he reassured her.
"Okay," she said reluctantly.
Instantly, Xiang Yu disappeared from his position.
When the elder noticed Xiang Yu’s sudden disappearance, she instantly became fully alert, her senses heightened and scanning for any sign of his reappearance.
Xiang Yu teleported silently behind her and reached for her head. But she instantly detected the subtle movement through and quickly spun around, launching a punch toward his position.
"Caught you, little puppet," she said with a menacing smile.
"No," Xiang Yu replied calmly. "I caught you."
Instantly, hundreds of tentacles emerged from his lightning body, wrapping around her incoming fist and beginning to spread aggressively throughout her entire body like parasitic vines.
"What are you doing?" she spoke in alarm, desperately trying to shake off the spreading tentacles from her hand.
Xiang Yu smiled...
"Nihility Collapse"
Instantly, it seemed as if time had stopped moving around them. The elder’s fist turned completely dark. Then the consuming darkness started spreading through the rest of her hand, reaching her shoulder and continuing to spread to the rest of her body.
When the elder realized what was happening, she quickly summoned all of her remaining power, channeling every ounce of her cultivation into her other hand. She even released her domain entirely and concentrated all her accumulated strength into a single point.
She then threw a punch toward Xiang Yu, who was still maintaining his grip on her corrupted hand. The concentrated fist landed squarely on him with tremendous force, completely disintegrating him.
As soon as he was destroyed, she sighed in relief as the spreading darkness finally stopped its advance. She had sensed imminent death approaching and wondered what kind of twisted, forbidden ability that had been.
But as she was contemplating this narrow escape, her affected hand suddenly started withering away. All the other parts of her body that had been covered in the void darkness began falling apart piece by piece.
"Huh?" she spoke in confusion, but her voice quickly turned into agonized screaming as almost half her body began falling apart. The pain was simply beyond anything she had ever conceived possible.
Li Yao, meanwhile, stared at the scene in complete shock.
"Senior brother?" she spoke weakly, not believing what had just transpired before her eyes.
Her senior brother... was gone, completely destroyed.
"No way," she spoke, clutching her head.
[Calm down! He’s still perfectly fine - it’s just a clone body,] the empress spoke urgently, trying to calm her down. But Li Yao didn’t seem to be listening.
The empress turned to the older Li Yao instead, hoping she might be more reasonable.
[Hey, tell your...] she paused mid-sentence, realizing this version was even worse.
The older Li Yao had a completely blank expression on her face. "Senior brother, senior brother? Senior..." she kept chanting the same words over and over again..
Then suddenly, she disappeared entirely from the spiritual sea without warning.
[No way?] the empress thought in shock, immediately understanding what was happening. She realized that the two personalities had the same overwhelming emotion - revenge - and since they were finally on the same emotional wavelength, they had synchronized and merged into a single, unified consciousness.
Outside in the physical realm, Li Yao returned to her mature form, then immediately entered her limit break transformation. Her hair turned pure white and her eyes became lifeless silver. She maintained a completely blank expression on her face as she slowly walked toward the elder, who was still screaming in unbearable pain.
As she approached, violent cracks began appearing aggressively on her skin. Then frost started manifesting around her, so intensely cold that even the space around her began freezing.
She finally arrived directly before the writhing elder. The elder was still trapped in excruciating pain, but managed to look up weakly, her gaze meeting Li Yao’s emotionless eyes.
Li Yao slowly lowered her hand. The elder couldn’t even move because of the completely frozen space and the overwhelming agony consuming her body.
Li Yao’s cold hand made contact with the elder’s forehead.
"Absolute Zero"
Instantly, the supernatural frost spread from the point of contact, covering the elder’s entire body within mere seconds. Li Yao then exerted just a small amount of pressure on the resulting frost crystal, causing it to shatter completely into countless pieces that scattered across the ground.
...
Author’s Corner:
So apparently, Li Yao’s domain wasn’t space related at all but rather an ice domain (who saw that coming). That’s how she froze space. As for how she broke space, she just froze it and exerted pressure, breaking through it.
As you guys said, Absolute Zero was indeed more of Li Yao’s ability than Xiang Yu. After doing a poll on discord (you should join btw) we decided on Nihility Collapse. Kinda like tensura, if ykyk
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