Chapter 306: First Sword
The mountains trembled as Li Yao and the elder clashed. Just the little exchange they had done was enough to reshape the landscape around them.
Li Yao swung her sword continuously, striking the massive earth titan endlessly before teleporting when it tried swinging towards her.
Although each swing of her blade created deep gashes on the creature’s rocky skin, something felt wrong. It felt as though her attacks were being dampened and weren’t dealing any real damage. After all, her sword was supposed to be able to split space so how come it couldn’t split a creature made of stone and soil.
“A defensive treasure,” she muttered, her eyes narrowing as she studied her opponent. The titan’s body was releasing a subtle, almost imperceptible golden light that deflected most of her sword’s power.
She sighed, since she could get a divine grade treasure, it made sense that someone else could have a divine grade defensive treasure.
She decided to try a different approach instead.
She summoned her domain power, channeling the power around the titan and freezing the space around it then instantly trying to break through space to damage the titan. But even this method wasn’t working.
The defensive treasure also dampened the spatial anomalies as well.
The elder laughed from within his turtle shell.
“Is that all you’ve got, little girl? There is no way you can break my Eternal Golden Mountain Shield!”
Li Yao clicked her tongue in annoyance, then stepped back.
If direct attacks wouldn’t work, she’d have to get creative. A cold smile spread across her lips as she raised her free hand toward the sky.
“Fine. Let’s see how well your treasure handles this.”
The air around her began to change. Ice crystals formed out of nothing, and the temperature plummeted so rapidly that the air began to freeze.
Li Yao’s ice domain expanded, covering everything in a massive area.
She didn’t target the titan directly, instead, she froze space around it.
From the earlier exchange, she had noticed that the treasure seemed quite passive. Well, this was to be expected of a defensive treasure. As long as she didn’t attack directly, the treasure wouldn’t automatically try to undo the freezing space. Usually, the elder could use his domain to counter this but he couldn’t at the moment as he was using all his domain power to maintain that form.
This was what she had deduced from how he didn’t rely on his domain anymore but instead used a treasure which was arguably more expensive.
With this, she could finally execute her plan. Since the treasure was defensive, it wouldn’t automatically try to negate the freezing area effect. Of course the elder could always actively do it with the treasure, she was betting on the elder being startled and wasting a second or two which she could take advantage of.
The titan, caught within the frozen domain, found itself locked in place as the space around it turned solid.
Li Yao’s raised hand then shifted, stopping to expand the ice domain and summoning a huge ball of lightning that quickly expanded, covering the two of them instantly. This was the Third Heaven Domain.
Li Yao thought to herself that while the defensive treasure could defend against damage, it couldn’t negate all damage as seen from how the titan still had deep fissures on its skin.
Li Yao was planning to take advantage of this. With the elder frozen so he couldn’t move, she was planning to pump a large amount of lightning into the titan body, turning it into glass and breaking it.
The lightning required was quite high, and even higher in this case considering the treasure would negate some if not most of it. That’s why she had summoned the third heaven domain. With the third heaven domain, she had access to so much lightning energy it was virtually infinite. With this, she didn’t care if the treasure took ninety percent. After all, ten percent of a billion was still a hundred million.
Li Yao controlled all the lightning energy in her third heaven domain, feeding it all into the titan body.
There wasn’t an immediate effect as the lightning couldn’t move while space remained frozen so it simply accumulated, building up tremendous pressure within the titan’s rocky body.
Li Yao watched as tiny cracks began to appear in her ice domain. The elder had finally caught on and was trying to forcefully break through using the treasure.
“I was hoping it would last longer,” she muttered, clicking her tongue again. “But this should do.”
The titan’s head jerked slightly, then more of its parts started to regain their mobility.
The elder, feeling his mobility returning, laughed triumphantly.
“Did you think this could hold me forever?”
But his laughter died as the frozen space completely shattered.
The moment the titan could move freely again, so could all the lightning energy Li Yao had packed inside it. Electrical current exploded through every part of the creature’s body. Although most of it was resisted by the defensive treasure, there was still a lot of it left that proceeded to wreck havoc inside the earth body.
The elder’s scream of agony echoed across the mountains. The lightning wasn’t just damaging the titan body, it was also shocking him directly as he was inside it.
The earth creature began to glow from within as the lightning energy grew more and more intense. The rock heated rapidly under the tremendous current, changing from brown to red to white-hot.
Li Yao then waved her hand once again, summoning more ice energy and cooling the hot earth. In an instant, the entire titan transformed into glass. Because of the quick drop in temperature, the glass titan exploded into countless shards that scattered across the battlefield.
From the center of the destruction, the elder floated in the air, gasping heavily. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth, and his robes were torn and scorched. In his trembling hands, he clutched a small golden amulet that seemed to have seen better days.
At the last moment, he had stopped the treasure from protecting the earth body and focused all its defensive power entirely on him.
“That… that was too close,” he panted, staring at the cracked amulet in disbelief. The divine artifact had saved his life, but it was now out of commission.
“I need to get out of here. This girl is a monster.”
As these thoughts raced through his mind, he looked up and froze. Li Yao floated directly above him, her sword raised high above her head. Her eyes were closed in deep concentration, and the air around her seemed to bend and warp.
The elder’s blood turned to ice as he recognized what was coming. He tried to move, to escape, to do anything, but his body was too damaged and his energy too depleted.
Li Yao’s eyes snapped open. “First Sword,” she spoke softly.
She brought the blade down in an arc.
Space parted before her strike. The cut traveled in a straight line, slicing through everything in its path without distinction.
The elder’s eyes widened in terror as the spatial cut reached him. His defensive treasure flared to life one final time, trying desperately to protect him, but the attack was beyond what the damaged artifact could withstand.
The spatial slice cut through both the elder and his divine treasure as if they were made of paper, splitting them cleanly in half. But the attack didn’t stop there.
The cut continued its path, carving through the ground below, through the bedrock beneath that, and into the earth’s depths. Where Li Yao’s sword strike passed, a perfectly straight valley formed, stretching several miles into the distance.
The walls of this new canyon were smooth as glass, and no bottom could be seen, just endless darkness.
The two halves of the elder fell toward the bottomless valley, his expression frozen in eternal shock. His divine treasure, split down the middle, lost its golden glow and crumbled to dust.
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