The ash smoke stagnated above the crater, and the Evil Buddha’s black flames licked the edges of the vitrified stone producing a continuous sizzling sound.
BaiShe slowly straightened up at the center of the devastation. Blood flowed down his cheek. Yet, his eyes carried no trace of fear. On the contrary, a psychopathic exaltation illuminated his purple pupils like two embers in the night. He felt his bones cracking under the effort, but his Omega Heart pulsed at a frantic rhythm, pumping torrents of Khao to repair the damage caused by his opponent’s titanic punch.
The entity facing him no longer had anything of the serene monk that Chong Da had been. The Evil Buddha now measured nearly four meters tall, and its presence crushed the air around it. Its scarlet skin, inherited from the Ashura, was streaked with corrupted Buddhist tattoos that glowed with a purple light with each beat of its monstrous heart.
Its eyes were two wells of nothingness, and they stared at BaiShe with a hatred that seemed to date from the beginning of time, a millennial hatred accumulated through centuries of captivity and rage.
A roar emerged from its throat, and this roar was composed of millions of superimposed voices screaming in perfect harmony.
"A mere insect that gets back up after tasting my justice," thundered the Evil Buddha’s voice, and this resonance made the stones around them tremble. "Your body is robust, Devourer, but your existence is an error that I will erase from this world. You should never have been born, and I will correct this aberration."
BaiShe let out a stifled laugh, and this melodious sound quickly transformed into a predator’s smirk that revealed his white teeth still tinged with blood. He adjusted his monocle with insulting slowness, ignoring the searing pain in his cracked forearm that radiated all the way to his shoulder.
"You talk a lot for a corpse that just fused with a freak," replied BaiShe in a monotone voice, while his aura began to change radically. The pressure around him suddenly became heavier, more oppressive. "This young scholar hates interruptions during his meals, but I must admit that your essence is much more appetizing than I had imagined. You will not only be a stepping stone on my path. You will be the main dish of my stabilization, and I will savor every bite."
Simultaneously, BaiShe released his full power without the slightest restraint. A luminous notification crossed his field of vision, accompanied by two sound signals that echoed in his mind.
<Primordial Devourer Physique: one hundred percent.>
[Ding! Activation of Dragonification: Synchronization with the Long Huang bloodline.]
The spectacle of his transformation was a direct insult to the laws of the Dao as taught by the monks. His silver hair instantly turned jet black, and it lengthened to float around his face like ribbons of shadow animated by an invisible wind.
Ebony and gold scales emerged under his porcelain skin, and these scales possessed a hardness that surpassed that of divine artifacts forged in the celestial forges. They covered his forearms, his temples and his torso, forming a living armor that crackled with energy.
Two black horns, curved and shiny like polished obsidian, pierced his forehead on each side, and the Yin-Yang symbol between his eyebrows took on a purple tint.
However, he did not stop there. BaiShe knew that facing this fusion of two paths of reincarnation, restraint was no longer a viable option. He used his deep understanding of spatial laws to fragment his inner reality, and his fingers traced symbols in the corrupted air.
<Chaotic Qi Arts: Demonic Division>
In a fraction of a second, ten identical forms of Xuan BaiShe appeared in the crater, arranged in a circle around the Evil Buddha. Each of these forms was surrounded by a mist of Chaotic Qi so dense that it eroded the basaltic ground producing an acidic hiss. The ten clones carried no physical weapons, because their hands had transformed into sharp claws. Each nail was a blade of Khao capable of slicing the soul itself without even touching the flesh.
The Evil Buddha, seeing BaiShe multiply before it, let out a visceral roar that made the remaining standing stones around the crater explode. It could not tolerate that a being it considered inferior would use such refined arts in front of it.
"You think that numbers will save your corrupted soul?" shouted the entity, and its voice now carried a note of fury that contrasted with its previous calm.
Simultaneously, a disgusting sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones filled the air. Two new pairs of arms burst from the Evil Buddha’s ribs, tearing its scarlet skin in a splash of golden and black blood.
This blood instantly vaporized on contact with the burning air producing an acrid smoke. With its six arms now operational, each hand forming a different mudra, the Evil Buddha projected a spiritual pressure so intense that it caused the last walls of the Sealing Pagoda in the distance to collapse, turning the ruins into fine dust.
The combat began with a brutality that defied any human description. BaiShe’s ten clones launched themselves like devouring shadows, and their claws traced trails of purple light in the darkened air.
<Arts: Abyss of the Thousand Hungry Hands>
"Devastation Form."
The space around the Evil Buddha tore open at thousands of points simultaneously. From these dimensional rifts emerged skeletal and monstrous hands, and the toothed palms of these hands sought to bite the entity’s flesh wherever they could reach.
The Evil Buddha reacted with a supernatural speed that defied its imposing mass, and its six arms moved in a macabre dance of defense and attack. It grabbed three skeletal hands and crushed them with a simple squeeze, making them explode into fragments of bone and shadow that fell like a macabre rain.
However, BaiShe’s clones reached contact before the Evil Buddha could parry all the attacks. The first clone plunged its claws into the Evil Buddha’s shoulder, and it tore off a strip of red muscle that still pulsated in its hand before dissolving.
Blood gushed out in abundance, and this blood stained the clone’s face which showed no emotion in the face of this projection. The Evil Buddha responded with a punch from its central arm, and this fist struck the clone squarely in the plexus with the force of a meteor.
The impact was visceral and loud. The clone’s chest caved in under the violence of the shock, and its ribs burst outward in an explosion of silver blood that projected bone fragments several meters away. The clone was thrown backward, crossing the air like a thrown stone, but instead of dying, it used its Devourer form to absorb the energy of the impact and stabilize its internal structure. It was already getting back up, its flesh closing on itself, before charging again without a second of hesitation.
"Your regeneration is an insult to the cycle of life!" roared the Evil Buddha, while it joined its two upper hands to create a fusion technique whose power made the air vibrate.
<Corrupted Arts: Black Sun of Bloody Illumination.>
A sphere of black fire, saturated with extreme Yin Qi to the point that light seemed to flee before it, formed above its head. This sphere grew in a few seconds until it reached the size of a house. It hurled it to the ground, and this projection triggered a shockwave that pulverized everything within a five-kilometer radius.
The petrified trees turned to dust, the rocks evaporated, and the basaltic ground began to melt to create a lake of purple lava. BaiShe’s clones had to deploy their own domains of Khao to avoid being instantly vaporized by this inhuman heat.
As a result, the battlefield became a zone of absolute nothingness where only the purple lava bubbled producing bright bubbles. The smell of sulfur and burnt flesh saturated the unbreathable air.
BaiShe, the original, rose into the ash sky, and from there he observed his clones fighting hand-to-hand against the six-armed monster. He summoned his Draconic Bone Sword, and the bone blade illuminated with a binary glow that alternated between pure white and absolute black, fused with his Executor authority.
He dove toward the Evil Buddha, and his body became a trail of purple and black death that tore through the air with a supersonic whistle. The Evil Buddha raised its six arms to intercept the bone blade, and the clash between the Draconic Bone Sword and the entity’s mudras produced the sound of a cracked bell that tore space-time itself. Black fissures appeared in the air around them, revealing the void between worlds.
BaiShe’s blade sliced deeply into one of the Evil Buddha’s arms, and it severed the radial bone in a dry crack that resounded like a thunderclap. The red hand fell into the lava with a heavy splash and disappeared into the bubbling depths. The entity did not weaken however, and it used its five other arms to seize BaiShe by the neck and by the limbs in a crushing grip.
"I will tear you apart piece by piece!" screamed the Evil Buddha, its voice now carrying a note of pain mixed with fury.
It pulled in all directions simultaneously, seeking to dismember the Devourer. One could distinctly hear the sound of BaiShe’s tendons stretching to the limit of rupture, producing sinister cracking noises. The golden scales on his skin began to crack under the titanic force, and fine lines of silver blood appeared between the fissures. BaiShe’s silver blood gushed out in fine mists from his joints under the pressure.
Yet, BaiShe smiled...