Transcendent Battle

For some time, Yaan and the Transcendent Realm woman stood in silence and stared at one another.

After discovering his opponent's divine stage dao of light comprehension, Yaan knew that he couldn't match her speed, and since she was currently stood 20 miles away from him, if he tried to catch her off guard, she would definitely be able to retreat before he was able to reach her. If he wanted to kill this person, then his best bet was to entice her into attacking at a closer range.

However, the Transcendent Realm woman was very wary of Yaan, so for a while, she simply stood still with caution in her eyes, watching him carefully, ready to react as soon as he moved. When she saw the faint smile that lingered on Yaan's face, she understood that he was waiting for her to make the first move.

"Who are you? Why are you attacking this place…do you understand that you are defying the Divine Court? Do you know what kind of power you are making an enemy of?" The woman asked slowly.

"Of course I understand the might of the Divine Court, who doesn't? Now, come…or are the subordinates of the Divine Court so cowardly that they won't even defend the Divine Court's territories when they are being attacked?" Yaan responded in a taunting manner, showing no change in his facial expression from that same faint smile.

The woman furrowed her brows. She knew that this strange robed child was trying to entice her into attacking, however, what he said was true; as a subordinate of the Divine Court, and a Transcendent Realm powerhouse, she was supposed to represent the righteous path in this world. Since her opponent clearly wasn't a divinity, she should be defending the Divine Court's territory with pride and bravery!

However, her mind suddenly froze.

'Wait a minute, a red-robed child…he is…?!'

She tried to hide it, but Yaan saw the hint of shock flash through her gaze. Even the Spirit Plane Lord couldn't hide her inner emotions from Yaan's eyes, so how could this Transcendent Realm person hope to conceal her heart?

'She recognised me, as expected. The Divine Court definitely passed along everything they know about me to their members and key subordinates – they don't know much about me, but they definitely saw me when I first arrived on the Spirit Plane. Not only that, Law Empyrean might have seen me back on Yushu Planet too. Hmm…well, no matter. Either the Primordial Sage will stick to her word and keep the divinities out of my way, or the Spirit Plane Lord will step in and prevent them from coming to this 6th Layer of Heaven. If they don't, I will definitely die…but if those two both turn against me before I complete this formation, I will die regardless, so there's no point worrying about it.'

In the end, Yaan was well aware that his plan was fraught with dangers, but what other choice did he have? He was in an extremely precarious situation for a multitude of reasons, but that was why he needed to take these risks in the first place. A desperate situation, called for desperate measures.

The Transcendent Realm woman stared at Yaan with a sharp gaze. Her mind worked quickly as she thought through her options…

Naturally, she first thought to inform the Divine Court that she had identified the red-robed child, as she had been instructed. She didn't know exactly why the Divine Court was so insistent on searching for this person and any information pertaining to his existence and whereabouts, but she knew that it was somehow related to the cycle of rebirth's destruction.

But then, she considered…rather than informing the Divine Court that she had discovered the suspect, she could instead capture him herself! However, she quickly crushed this idea.

For one, she probably didn't have the ability to capture this red-robed child alive, she could tell that much after their first exchange. Secondly, and more importantly…there were rumours circulating that the child before her was being supported by divinities. Even though she was a Divine Court subordinate, she still didn't want to anger any divinities, especially not if she was going against her orders.

After coming to a decision, she acted quickly. She rapidly connected her mind to the formation and used it to send a message to the true Divine Court members on the Central Layer, then disconnected from the formation once again. She was worried that her opponent would take the opportunity to attack her, but she found that after disconnecting from the formation, her caution was for naught; he was still standing there, waiting.

Yaan waited for the Divine Court subordinate to approach. He naturally saw that she had briefly utilised the golden formation, and it wasn't difficult to guess that she had alerted the Divine Court to the current situation. However, as expected, as soon as this was done, she didn't retreat, but instead charged directly at him.

'As expected, the Divine Court issued a command to immediately report the situation if any of their subordinates encounter me. For now, they don't actually want to kill me, they want to capture me alive, so they deliberately told their subordinates very little about me aside from detailing my appearance. However…she is still a Divine Court subordinate, and I am an intruder; she can use this fact to justify attacking me, now that she has made her report.'

Yaan didn't bother charging forth to attack his opponent during the brief moment of her distraction. For one, she had obviously anticipated that he might do this, so she was ready for him. But more importantly…

He was using this person to test the full extent of his abilities. Why would he waste this opportunity by killing her whilst she was distracted?

A beam of light shot towards him at a speed that seemed impossible to dodge. The long-haired woman had clearly planned to charge at him immediately, under the circumstance that he didn't choose to attack first. She probably believed that if she attacked suddenly like this, she would be able to deal a serious blow to him with a single move, given that her speed was so formidable.

Yaan raised his illusory wooden sword at the last moment. Her speed might be incredible, to the extent that he struggled to keep up, even when his eyes were shining with the light of Reveal Truth, but Yaan's reaction speed, and his mental deduction ability that allowed him to easily see through her tactics, allowed him to react in time.

Agile Illusion Art, 2nd step!

It was as if the entire world had slowed down to a crawl. The beam of light which had been travelling towards Yaan at an inescapable speed, now seemed to slow down so much that the person within the beam could be seen, her face filled with shock.

Yaan's body became a blur. As the wooden sword was lifted up to his head height, a trail of illusory swords was left behind in its wake, but this illusion also spread out further, covering the countless potential paths of where the sword might be travelling towards. These innumerable paths of illusory swords made it completely impossible to ascertain exactly where the sword was, and before long, the illusion also encompassed Yaan himself, turning both Yaan and his wooden sword into a distorted wall of illusions.

The long-haired woman was shocked to the extreme and tried to pull back, realising that she had walked directly into her enemy's trap. However, when she tried to move, she felt an immense force pushing back against her, as if she was being dragged towards the wooden sword at a set speed, making escape impossible!

This was the mystery of the 2nd step of the Agile Illusion Art. It was a method that Yaan used to counter fast and powerful attacks, and whenever he had used this method in the past, his enemies had never been able to escape. Of course, that was also because he only used this technique when he knew that it would work; it required planning and precision, it wasn't something that he could use hastily or without thinking it through carefully.

However, a Transcendent Realm powerhouse shouldn't be underestimated.

As the sword traversed its obscured illusory path and made its way towards the long-haired woman's neck, her eyes shone with the strange light. Yaan narrowed his eyes, focussing on this light and quickly adjusting the trajectory of his technique when the light flew out from her eyes and covered her body, allowing her to somewhat resist his sword art and pull away.

'The dao of light…and the dao of storm! This is a soul spell that makes use of these two daos. This is very specific, did she make this spell herself?'

The dao of storm was one of the many derivative daos, it wasn't exactly common. For someone to possess a spell that just so happened to make use of this dao, as well as their strongest dao? It was almost certainly self-created.

Yaan focussed intently on the strange spell, which encompassed her spirit body with a golden storm cloud and furthered the distance between them.

A powerful force exploded between Yaan and his opponent, attempting to push them away from one another. However, in this moment, Yaan's eyes shone with a demonic light.

'So this is a Transcendent Realm powerhouse…' Yaan thought to himself as the power of the golden storm tore into his illusory body. Countless cuts appeared across him as blood sprayed out in every direction. This blood was also just an illusion however, and soon after it was shed, it dissipated into nothingness.

But the damage done was very real. This was the first time that his illusory body had been injured, and the first time he had come to understand exactly how he could be injured.

'So attacks imbued with the strength of divine stage dao comprehension are capable of harming my illusory body, meaning that Transcendents and divinities will have no issue with injuring me.'

He had now developed a fairly strong understanding of the strength possessed by Transcendents, and he had finally discovered the weakness of his illusory body. This was within his expectations, but he was glad to find this now, rather than in a more dangerous situation.

Despite the cuts which continued to dig into his illusory flesh, inflicting a pain directly to upon his Dao Soul - the sort of pain that would leave others screaming and begging for mercy - Yaan was still calm and collected.

After all, even as the woman pulled away from him and showed an expression of relief, he still had an unused method that he had the utmost confidence in.

WAM!

The crimson illusory domain that Yaan had copied from Devil, suddenly overlapped with another domain. This domain was not a true domain, but a pseudo-domain, and whilst it was also illusory, it was no copy.

A desolate emotion filled the entire golden palace as white and black light exploded out from Yaan's form. The sudden explosion of desolate emotion caused the retreating woman to falter for a moment, and her expression became aghast at the sight before her.

One of Yaan's eyes had turned black, reflecting the abyssal black cracks that now reappeared across his body and throughout the pseudo-domain, constantly destroying the white figures as they formed. A cycle of life and death manifested within the cycle, but that wasn't all; the region of the pseudo-domain became a region of absolute carnage, as countless daos appeared one after the other and interfered with one another in a destructive manor. These daos didn't combine properly and there was a sense of incompleteness about the whole system, however…this only made it even more terrifying, creating a feeling of confusion within the hearts of anyone who saw it.

Yaan's second eye had turned completely white, and when the woman caught a glimpse of this eye, her body shuddered. For a brief moment, her mind became void of all emotion, and her spell dissipated.

The look in Yaan's eye was identical to the emotion expressed by the countless illusory white figures as they were endlessly destroyed by the abyssal black cracks: desolation. The white figures were all Yaan, and they all wore the same expression, the same expression that had plastered Yaan's face when he first arrived on the Spirit Plane…

Yaan's pseudo-domain had changed many times over the years, and now, this was its current mess of a state. Although it was a mess, it was also the strongest that it had ever been.

Even the Spirit Plane Lord had felt disturbed by the look in Yaan's eyes when he first arrived on the Spirit Plane back then, so Yaan had the thought that he could use this against his enemies.

He was right. A single look into his eyes reflected the countless tormented gazes of the illusory white figures in the Transcendent Realm woman's mind. It was as if an explosion of desolation and despair had enveloped her heart in that moment, causing her entire being to shudder, and completely ruining her tactical retreat.

Ching…

Yaan's wooden sword finally collided against the remnants of his opponent's original attack, the beam of light which she had intended to strike him with. When his sword made contact with that beam, the various spells and techniques instantly vanished from the golden palace, and for a moment, there was silence. Only Yaan the long-haired woman remained, though of course, the mad elephant watched from afar with wide eyes, and the Primordial Sage observed from the shadows.

In this moment, the long-haired woman looked into Yaan's eyes, which had now returned to their crimson state. His face was expressionless and he showed no emotion, but she couldn't help but feel that beneath that indifferent veil, there was a pain that nobody in this world could understand.

She had caught a brief glimpse of it…and that glimpse spelled her immediate death.

BOOM!

The explosion didn't cover a large area, but it was oddly condensed into the small region around the woman. Her spirit body was torn to shreds and her dao heart was extinguished, leaving nothing behind of her other than the look of confusion which lingered in Yaan's mind as she took her last breath.

As the explosion spread out further, Yaan raised his illusory wooden sword and did his best to defend himself. He could use various daos to further his self-protection, but his instincts told him that it wasn't necessary to ensure his survival, and since the Primordial Sage was watching, he didn't want to reveal anymore than necessary.

Yaan's body flew out from the palace-shaking explosion, until he eventually landed on something soft. Tiredly, Yaan tilted his neck back, then smiled when he saw where he had landed.

"Thank you, little elephant…it seems that your back is very good at supporting me…" Yaan laughed to himself dryly, before sighing and closing his eyes. His injuries were quite bad, and frankly, he wasn't quite sure what it meant to be 'injured' in his current state.

This was also something that he wanted to 'test' by participating in this battle. He relied heavily on his instincts, which told him that the wounds weren't fatal, but beyond this vague feeling, he didn't yet understand his current state of being. If he wanted to walk further along his path, it was essential that he learned all of these things by himself, since this was a new path, unwalked by anyone else in this world.

*****

As Yaan and the Transcendent Realm subordinate of the Divine Court fought, the Spirit Plane Lord faced the Spirit Plane's three Divine Court divinities on the 1st Layer of Heaven.

"Spirit Plane Lord, we refrained from questioning you after the matter on the 6th Layer of Abyss, but now, my subordinate is under siege in our territory on the 6th Layer of Heaven. Please tell me, what is the meaning of you stopping us here? If you do not clear things up, the Divine Court might misunderstand your intentions…"

When faced with the polite words of the teenage boy, whose hair glowed with seven fluorescent colours, the Spirit Plane Lord's gaze became even colder.

"I have decided that you Divine Court divinities are no longer permitted to leave the Central Layer."

"What?" The teenage boy had been trying to remain polite, but when he heard her response, he couldn't help but furrow his brows. He was the oldest and most wisened of the three, so naturally, his two juniors showed even more unpleasant expressions.

"You heard what I said. Go back to the Central Layer."

BANG!

The trio were unable to say anything else, because the Spirit Plane Lord's words resonated with the fabric of the world plane. The trios' expressions changed into looks of shock and fear, but the Spirit Plane Lord just watched coldly as they were forcefully expelled from the 1st Layer of Heaven, and she sent them back to the Central Layer in a shocking display of power.

They were completely helpless to resist her…or rather, they didn't dare to resist this sort of strength. They could feel that she hadn't attacked with killing intent, but if they actually tried to resist, even if they managed to avoid being expelled, they didn't doubt that she would attack them more violently the second time.

After the trio vanished and the Spirit Plane Lord found herself alone once again, the coldness vanished from her face. She looked up, as if her gaze could pierce through the world itself. In fact, all of her bodies that weren't currently preoccupied, looked towards the 6th Layer of Heaven in this moment…but before their gazes could reach Yaan, they all sighed again and looked away, choosing not to peak into the source of their uncertainties.

"Brother, just what are doing, attacking the Divine Court in your current state…?"