"Second Knight down!"
Bian flung his head back and let out a long sigh while running both hands through his hair.
His eyes were bloodshot, veins bulging and worse of all was the splitting headache assaulting him.
The rest of the Numbered Series split up, barely managing to stall the Stone Knights, but they were getting pushed back ever so slightly.
'Should I leave now? Come back later when I'm rejuvenated and pick off the knights slowly?'
Normally, Bian would have chosen to do this, if not for one crucial detail. The slight change in the Emperical Aura allowed him to briefly glimpse at the end of the valley.
There was a crystal door there with a weird mechanism.
From his understanding, it looked like dice, hundreds of them placed in sealed cubes.
And behind the crystal door was a normal room, yet in the center of the room stood a simple black table with two chairs at its side.
There was a chess game on that table, which was odd, yet what Bian found even more intriguing was the reaction from his soul sea.
Tyrant, who was still in the process of evolving, displayed a strong reaction to those chess pieces.
There were only five black pieces left on the table, a king, queen and three pawns.
Bian didn't know how, but he was certain that those pieces could somehow speed up Tyrant's evolution. It might even complete the process altogether.
Unfortunately, the room reacted to his little probe. Somehow, he was unable to perceive the contents of the room and some mechanisms seemed to be functioning within it.
Now Bian was deathly worried that the room might disappear while he wasn't around. That would be a huge waste, he wasn't even willing to consider.
Who knows how many months or even years it might take Tyrant to evolve naturally.
Clenching his fist, Bian looked ahead with a determined gaze, "the secrets of that room. I must have it."
Against the protest of his own mind, he kept fighting. Using the Emperical Aura to scan for that tiny speck of dust.
Bang!
[Gold Solum Mirror]
[Retaliation: 700/700]
[Soul Capacity: 120/700]
Another nine-tailed scorpion was utterly destroyed, but at the same time Bian found the knight's core.
Drip!
A drop of blood fell from his nostril. His eyes had turned completely red, as several tiny veins ruptured.
"Oh how lucky..." Bian fought with one hand on the sword and the other on his head. It helped to mitigate the pain somewhat.
He had just found one core in a stone knight, when he happened to glimpse another cruising too close to the armor of a different stone knight.
With a guttural yell, he flew to the visor of a stone knight using Seven Sonic Destruction on its face.
Seven sonic booms sounded as one, breaking off a significant portion of the golem's face.
It didn't deal any lasting damage, but he got its attention.
Using his beast soul wings and Phoenix technique, he kited the Knight towards another Knight, avoiding its savage swings and projected constructs.
The second Knight also spotted Bian and both statues seemed to have a tacit understanding.
Dust gathered around their swords, forming an impossibly large tower shield that covered the entire height of the valley and a width of one kilometer.
Calling it a tower shield even seemed to be an insult. It was more like they were both holding gates and the ground itself propelled them at unimaginable speed.
Bian had blood dripping from all his orifices and it seemed he could not dodge the attack.
"TRUE GOD KILLING SLASH!"
He swung the Edge of Ruin in a circular path, unleashing a red ring that expanded outward astonishingly fast.
The red ring cleaved through the Stone Knights, Numbered Series, ground and valley walls.
Nothing could bar its path.
The two Stone Knights crumbled away, their cores both destroyed by the attack. The few scorpion golems that were injured recovered and left to deal with the six other Stone Knights.
Bian saw the Soul Counter rise to 150, then everything darkened.
The Soul Pillar, which was firing at full force, was finally overexhausted. Bian immediately fainted while still mid-air.
As his body plummeted to the ground, one of the Stone Knights formed a javelin, the size of its body, from the dust cloud.
The javelin didn't need to be held. It formed by itself and shot towards Bian at breakneck speed.
Sensing danger, the Spirit Pillar tried to stir up the Soul Pillar, but the latter was unresponsive.
The javelin approached, barely a dozen meters away, but the Soul Pillar still remained dormant, recovering from the earlier overuse.
Bang!
Bian's body swerved at the last moment, barely avoiding the javelin, which went on to puncture a deep hole in the valley.
As his body landed on the ground, it didn't carry the usual posture Bian normally held.
Both feet were evenly spaced apart with arms drooping by both sides. The weirdest part of all was the fact that his eyes remained closed.
Dust began clinging to Bian's body again, however it fell off a moment later as his body vibrated at a certain frequency.
Deep within his person, the Soul Pillar looked dull, with a little amount of weak multicoloured electricity sparking from time to time.
The piston within still moved, albeit at a very slow pace. Meanwhile, the Spirit Pillar was abnormally active, taking control of Bian's body.
The body pillar was the only pillar that seemed to be unable to suffer from overheating as it was made of jade. It synchronised closely with the Spirit Pillar, more than it ever had with the Soul Pillar.
The valley was chaotic.
Fourteen Nine-tailed Scorpion Golems fought against six hundred-meter-tall Stone Knights.
Bian was stuck in the crossfire, moving with a certain grace no person should have. He didn't actively manoeuvre or attack, he only dodged attacks thrown at him and retaliated with his own attacks.
With a flick of the wrists, hundreds of thousands of sword lights rained on the stone knights. It was a level of Laceration Bian ought not to have reached yet, but he pulled it off.
Guided by instincts alone, he was like a fish in water, swimming past the bizarre attacks and only striking when struck first.
Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible for the sword lights of Laceration to completely go through their defence and it was even more impossible to strike their cores if it did.
This wasn't an issue that could be fixed with luck alone and even if Bian struck the core, the 'light' Laceration attacks weren't enough to break them.
Thus a strange scene occurred where he moved with precision unlike never before, attacking and dodging, but unable to kill a single knight.
***
After an indescribable amount of time that felt both long and short, Bian slowly regained consciousness with a fresh mind.
At first, he thought he was watching a movie. The brightness of the Emperical Aura stood out more now that everywhere was dark.
He watched as a figure darted between the attacks of the Stone Knights, moving like no human should.
Everybody had a cadence. Bian had trained to flow alongside his cadence and he had seen many more people who could do so better than him, yet what he witnessed today put all of them to shame.
It wasn't that his body moved with perfect cadence, no, he had seen that before. This time, his body's cadence was actively changing, allowing him to produce maximum output with minimum effort.
Bian's shock only grew wider when he saw his own body use Laceration. There were sword lights everywhere, nearly blotting out all of his vision.
Although the attack did little to no damage, Bian was sure he would be able to replicate it now. Laceration with countless sword slashes.
"Where are the Numbered Series?" Bian took control of his body. He felt the Spirit Pillar slowly become less and less active.
It was a relief to know that the most silent inner pillar could be counted on in case he ever lost consciousness.
"Ah!"
Bian let out a surprised yell. He quickly brought up the interface for the Solum Mirror.
[Gold Solum Mirror]
[Retaliation: 700/700]
[Soul Capacity: 690/700]
There were only two scorpion golems left, being besieged by four Stone Knights.
The other two knights attacked him with all their might and diversified arsenal, but could not land a single blow on him.
"How long have I been out?"
When Bian saw that the other two golems wouldn't last long, he hurriedly transferred the accumulated souls to the Altering Brush.
[Gemstone Altering Brush]
[690/1500]
In his opinion, it would be more beneficial to have one geno core at the Super rank, than to have all four at Gemstone rank.
The power boost from a single gemstone self geno core would make sure he was set for the rest of his time in the fourth sanctuary.
He would only have to bring his fitness up to par, which shouldn't take too long with the Cauldron around.
Next, Bian focused his senses again. The Soul Pillar sped up as he scanned the interior of the two Stone Knights besieging him while still active.
Bian was pleasantly surprised to discover that his mental abilities seemed to have doubled, while his exhaustion was halved. Not to say that it made the task of finding their cores any easier, it just made it a bit more bearable.
Try as he may, he could not get the Spirit Pillar to take control of his body, therefore he had to be the one to search for the core while still kiting his enemies.
But yet again, another surprise came. Bian found that his Phoenix technique, which he learnt second hand, was now comparable to the real deal.
"No. If I'm not mistaken, it's even better than when Han Yan used it. This is fantastic, I should fall unconscious more often."
Bian chimed in a joke, locating the first Knight's core at this time.