Green and red flames burned on the hammer. When it came down, it practically filled Chen Chuan’s entire vision. He lowered his center of gravity, stomped down, and dodged to the side.
Boom!
It was as if a meteor had struck the merged space. The ground trembled, and the trees in the area shattered into tiny pieces. The shockwave from the violent attack leveled the entire area.
Chen Chuan was more than a hundred meters away, and he was shining in gold and white. His biofield formed a protective layer around him to block all the wood chips and broken stones that came charging at him.
That one hit alone contained about the same strength as a mental attack. The man’s large body brought him this advantage in strength. Even if Chen Chuan’s physical attributes far surpassed the martial arts masters at his level, he couldn’t compare to this man-turned demon. He had to avoid fighting against him head-on at any cost.
The demon lifted the hammer like it weighed nothing. With a spin, he moved again and charged at Chen Chuan at lightning speed. All the obstacles in his way were sent flying, and the ground trembled.
The demon was going to arrive in front of Chen Chuan in just a few steps, but since he was simply too big, he wasn’t as nimble or fast as him.
No matter how strong a person was, as long as their attacks didn’t hit, it was meaningless.
The demon suddenly looked Chen Chuan in the eye, and the myriad of eyes on his face let out a strange light.
The spirit flames around Chen Chuan were smothered. He then sensed an invisible energy bind him, causing him to be unable to move for a brief second. All he could do was watch the large hammer come hurtling down at him from above.
Before the hammer hit him, the air that it pushed out of its way caused Chen Chuan’s hair and clothes to fly backward.
Chen Chuan’s gaze sharpened. He didn’t choose to endure the attack head-on. Instead, he relaxed his body and had the air pushing at him turn him slightly to the side so that he faced the hammer with his side profile.
The flames from the hammer hit his skin. Without the protection from his spirit flames, Chen Chuan took the hit with his body. His second self turned faint before shattering and disappearing.
In this brief moment of reprieve, the restrictive energy holding him down vanished. The spirit flames that had been smothered rushed out of his body and gathered in front of him.
At the same time, Chen Chuan activated his mutated tissue and used a yielding force to push back against the hammer. A shockwave blasted out from the point of contact. Their spirit flames flashed where the hammer and body touched, and everything in the area was swallowed by blinding light.
Chen Chuan was sent flying hundreds of meters away and broke a line of trees.
As the force from the impact gradually died down, Chen Chuan did a back flip in the air and landed on the ground, though he still skidded backward a bit before finally stopping.
In front of him was a ditch separating him from the demon. He had created it when he was thrown back. Smoke curled up from it, and burnt leaves spun around it. Rumbling sounds filled the air from trees falling on the ground.
Half of his body had gone numb. Even though he had used yielding force and gathered his defensive power in front of him, the demon’s attack had practically destroyed all of his spirit flames.
If the attack had struck him in the head, Chen Chuan wouldn’t have been able to withstand the impact. His second self hadn’t grown to match his strength, so Chen Chuan would have been heavily injured if he hadn’t turned to the side.
However, as long as he didn’t run out of energy, his life force as a martial arts master made recovering easy. The most dangerous thing to him was instant powerful attacks from the demon.
If the demon had managed to bind him in place for a little longer, who knew what would have happened?
Chen Chuan looked ahead. Before mutating, the demon might have been an ancient martial arts master who reached the Longevity Stage, so he wasn’t at all like the martial arts masters Chen Chuan had encountered before.
It was no wonder why Wei Guochan and Gai Shuhe were forced to retreat. There was no way they could win against him. They were lucky to have managed to escape alive.
The reason for it might be because the demon wasn’t as fast as they were, so they used their speed to escape.
When the demon saw that Chen Chuan had managed to regain his footing, he didn’t stop to observe. Instead, as if his instincts were making him rush forward, he dashed toward Chen Chuan again.
Chen Chuan spread his arms, and a powerful light blasted out from his palms.
Since the demon wasn’t as fast as he was and was so large, mental attacks were the most effective tool against him.
In the days prior, Chen Chuan had absorbed a lot of energy and stayed at the peak of his condition, so it was no trouble to do such an attack. This time, he didn’t release the mental attack immediately after forming it. Instead, he gathered power until he was almost entirely swathed in light.
When the demon was about to reach Chen Chuan, the light crashed into him.
Boom!
Their spirit flames fell apart and scattered in all directions, lighting up the entire area.
The demon was forced to a stop. The powerful impact even forced him back. In the end, he was engulfed in golden-white light.
A long while passed before the light finally faded away. By then, the green-red light around the demon had become much fainter. A large portion of it in front of him was even missing. His chest plate and cuirass were burnt. Large pieces fell off from time to time, and wisps of golden-white light rose from his chest and stomach.
Soon, green-red light flashed, and the golden-white light was pushed out. After the demon took another breath, more green-red light came from within his body to cover his entire being again.
Then, he looked up and trained all his eyes on Chen Chuan.
Upon seeing this, Chen Chuan narrowed his eyes. Despite the powerful strike, he wasn’t able to heavily injure the demon. His defenses and energy far surpassed those of all the opponents he had met before.
So, he decided to not stay around to continue the fight. Instead, he retreated and called out for Dawncall.
He wouldn’t be able to win against such an opponent with ease. Night was going to arrive soon too. If he continued fighting here, he would have to fight against the demon and the corruption from the other world at the same time. It would put him at a major disadvantage, so he chose to leave.
He was going to fight against the demon again, but he would do it at a proper time.
When the demon saw that he was going to leave, he immediately gave chase. However, due to the difference in speed, the distance between them kept getting wider. Soon, Chen Chuan left him in the dust, and the demon couldn’t see him anymore.
Around ten minutes later, night arrived, just as Chen Chuan had predicted.
All sorts of strange sounds entered his ears. It was as if there were countless things in the darkness trying to tear through the thin barrier separating the mental world from the merged space and come straight for him.
While he ran, his spirit flames and biofield protected him and kept him firmly in the physical world.
This time, he wouldn’t be able to train at night, because he could sense the demon still chasing after him.
Considering the fact that the demon had so many spirit flames, Chen Chuan was sure that it would need to burn even more energy through the night. There had been a lot of merged space creatures around the hill where the demon was, so he should have been in a dormant state, which meant that he hadn’t been burning any energy.
This led him to believe that the demon relied on absorbing some form of energy from the night in the merged space to build up his energy to fight. If that were true, he was only going to be stronger at night.
But Chen Chuan wasn’t going to spend any time proving his theory true, because the cost of being wrong was just too great. Once the mental world arrived, he couldn’t use the logic of the physical world to understand the world around him anymore.
When Chen Chuan was alone, he could ward off the effects of the mental world and didn’t have to worry about it, but if he had to fight against an enemy, the mental world was going to be a problem. Hence, he didn’t stop for even a second and just ran faster.
When he had ventured into the undeveloped area, he had often stopped to hunt. Now, though, he was practically leaping forward as he escaped. Even though he didn’t move at full speed because he had to protect Dawncall, he made it out of the forest by the end of the night. When the sky started turning bright, he was back at his starting point. The fort on the cliff stood tall before his eyes.
Chen Chuan patted Dawncall and had it fly into the sky to check out the area while he went into the fort. The fort’s continued existence meant that the demon didn’t attack it. Perhaps he stopped giving chase after he was a certain distance away from his hill.
Chen Chuan had the light around him fade away and took out the vacuum container to pour out some seeds and flesh from the Demon Vine. He threw them into his mouth and chewed. Right away, his mental energy and stamina recovered a bit.
Suddenly, he noticed something and looked behind him. The demon was standing on the path Chen Chuan had taken to come back. All the eyes on his face were trained on him.
A moment passed before the demon slowly turned around and headed back from whence he came. As the ground trembled, he soon disappeared into the depths of the forest.