If Lu Jingming could condense a third soul core, step into demi-godhood, and form divine sense, he could sustain Divineform.
In other words, once he reached level 99 with Divineform, he could fight a second-rank god at full power.
And once he ascended, with the foundation of dual God King thrones, even newly ascended he would far surpass first-rank gods, brushing the threshold of God King might.
Lu Jingming's gaze burned brighter.
Facing the Seagod Giant's world-ending punch, bearing the weight of the ocean itself, he felt unprecedented mortal danger—yet an even fiercer will to fight.
Divineform had reached its limit. His body and soul screamed under the load, but he had to unleash this final blow.
"In that case—let our Seagod Lord witness the pinnacle of technique!"
With a low growl, he brought both hands together before his chest. Black Abyss and White Flower turned into two ultimate bolts—one black, one white—and poured into his body.
At once, the black-white lightning merged within him and was forcibly kneaded and compressed.
In his left hand: the thunder of Black Abyss—ultimate ruin and death, inky black, devouring all life, like the end of all things.
In his right: the thunder of White Flower—ultimate creation and life, holy and radiant, brimming with boundless vitality, like the first note of creation.
These two polar, mutually repellent powers, under the command of the Eternal and Thunder divine seats and the reins of Lu Jingming's will, began to entwine and fuse in an extremely dangerous way.
"Heaven's Interdict—Earth's Desolation—Eight Thunders Converge—Godslaying Thunder!"
He intoned the true name of the Eightfold Thunder Interdict's final style.
The power imprints of the previous eight thunders he had used were all invoked.
Eight disparate thunder truths and vast energies surged from all directions into the rapidly spinning, hyper-unstable chaos-sphere of lightning before his chest.
Rumble—!!!
Heaven and earth lost their color.
The world seemed muted—light, sound, even energy were ravenously swallowed by the fist-sized chaos thunderball.
On its surface black and white serpents of lightning raced and hissed, swelling like a star and shrinking like a seed, containing a paradoxical, terrifying end-force that could return all to the void, yet also birth all anew.
For a heartbeat, even the plane's repulsive force seemed cowed by this transgressive power, growing sluggish.
High above, Feixiao and Celenova simultaneously broke off, staring down in shock.
Jing Yuan drove back Hysilens with a stroke, frowning; Cerydra, Aglaea, and the rest felt a powerful sense of crisis.
"Impossible!"
From the thunderball, Tang San, controlling the giant, sensed a power that could truly threaten the existence of his strand.
He hesitated no longer. The giant's fist—condensed from the ocean's total weight and a God King's wrath—smashed down like a collapsing world-tree, crushing layer upon layer of space toward Lu Jingming.
"Go!"
Blood-lightning seeped from all seven of Lu Jingming's orifices. He poured his last strength and burning will into the sphere and shoved it forward.
The sphere shot out soundlessly—seemingly slow, yet crossing space instantly.
It met the annihilating giant fist midair.
There was no expected heavens-rending blast.
Time froze—
And then—
Light and dark erupted to the extreme.
Black and white thunder radiance exploded like a cosmic big bang—and like the final heat-death of all things—silently devouring the Seagod Giant's fist, then surging along its arm and torso…
That colossal giant of water and divinity, before this thunder-law fusing the ultimate principles of decay and creation, melted like ice beneath a scorching sun—dissolving from the impact point, breaking down into primal particles, returning to utter nothing.
The black-white thunder surged unstoppably, swallowing the enormous giant and then hurtling straight toward Tang San's strand.
"What?!"
Tang San's pupils shrank. He threw his full power behind the Seagod Trident's phantom to block.
Boom—!!!
This time, the detonation was deafening.
Gold-blue Seagod power and black-white terminal thunder annihilated one another in a frenzy.
Tang San's strand shuddered violently. The divine light around him dimmed to the limit. He grunted as he was hurled backward, the wound on his already-phantasmal left shoulder bleeding divine power even faster.
He was driven back again—far more wretched than before.
But as soon as Lu Jingming unleashed that earth-shaking blow with his last ounce of strength, the mighty divine aura around him ebbed like the tide.
The black-red thunder halo collapsed and vanished. The resplendent armor faded. His hair returned to ashen white. His body swayed and plummeted from the sky like a cut kite.
Divineform time had run out. Extreme weakness and soul-rending pain swallowed him.
"This ends now!"
Tang San, though reeling, forced himself steady. He was badly wounded and had spent much power, but the killing intent in his eyes condensed to substance.
He would not allow such a variable to remain.
He gathered what divine power he had left. The Seagod Trident rose, and a condensed gold-blue beam of destruction, enough to slay a true god, formed to execute the falling Lu Jingming.
But in that split second—
A voice, cold as ten thousand years of ice, yet honed to an absolute edge, sounded clearly in Tang San's ear, as if from the depths of the Nine Hells.
"My disciple is not yours to touch."
Before the words faded, a pale sword light—one that seemed to sever causality and freeze time—suddenly hung between Tang San and Lu Jingming.
The gold-blue beam housing Tang San's killing intent struck that slender pale light and shattered like brittle glass into motes of light, doing nothing.
At the same moment, a figure appeared soundlessly beneath Lu Jingming, catching his falling body—gentle but unshakable.
Her silver-white hair fell like a waterfall of ice. She radiated an aloof, wintry solitude, as if she existed outside the world's rules.
The longsword in her hand, as if carved from eternal ice, emanated a killing edge so cold even a God King's divine sense would ache, a chill that seemed to freeze thought itself.
Jingliu slowly raised her head. Her eyes—no longer concealed, blood-red as if aflame—were like two burning cold stars, piercing the void to fix upon the distant, aghast Seagod Tang San.
That gaze was cold, pure, without a trace of impurity—only the most absolute sword intent and killing will.
"Your opponent is me now."
Her voice was calm and indisputable.
Tang San's strand stiffened completely, feeling the sword intent in that pale light, and the unfathomable, mortal-danger aura from this white-haired woman—terror supplanted his anger.
Where did these people come from? What has happened to the Douluo plane?!
Lu Jingming's face was white as paper. His body wavered, as if a breeze could topple him, but he steadied himself and stood.
Though racked by pain and weakness, the corner of his mouth lifted despite himself. Bright amusement flickered in his eyes.
That full-force battle with Tang San's strand, brief but priceless, had let him truly experience the operation of divine power, the resonance and struggle of laws. That high vantage—grasping authority—overturned his understanding of his own system.
The experience surpassed any cultivation or manual—an inestimable treasure.
He knew that with his current foundation, forcing Divineform was dancing on a blade. When time ran out, he would fall from the clouds, a lamb to the slaughter.
But he had chosen to fight anyway.
His confidence came from the unshakable backing behind him—Jingliu, The Herta… He knew that even if he were helpless, they would never let him be harmed.
And his gamble paid beyond expectations.
This lofty experience cleared all fog from his road to godhood.
Accumulating soul power would not be hard: searching for heavenly treasures, drawing planar feedback—even asking The Herta to blast open a black hole again to extract chaos—shortcuts abounded.
The real hurdle was insight into laws and condensing soul cores, especially forging the third core—a matter of deep comprehension and opportunity.
Now, having personally wielded divine power, the third soul core's secrets lay bare before him.
The road ahead was clear. With patient accumulation, the third core would form naturally.
Beyond Limit Douluo, soul power is no longer key. Insight into laws, tempering of spirit, and even the gathering of faith are the core steps toward the throne.
"Teacher, I'm fine."
Lu Jingming's voice was hoarse, but suffused with trust and ease.
"I'll leave him to you. Send this strand… into oblivion."
Even with White Flower's creative force and Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's life authority as his safety net—his body rebuildable even from collapse—the overdraft needed time to recover.
As the space around him subtly warped, he vanished without a trace.
Staying would only distract Jingliu.
Without Divineform, even the faintest splash from two such powers crossing could maim or kill him.
At the center of the battlefield, sensing Lu Jingming's safe departure, the last ripple in Jingliu's blood-red eyes stilled—leaving only pure, absolute cold and killing intent.
She was never one for many words.
She lifted her right hand. Index and middle finger came together as a sword-sign—casual in poise, yet bearing the will to cut all things.
In the next moment—
Vmm.
An intangible, soul-freezing sword intent speared into the heavens.
The sky's temperature plunged. Innumerable ice-crystal swords—condensed from ultimate sword intent and the law of frost—materialized. Densely packed, they blotted out the firmament in a breath.
Sunlight was severed. The world seemed to fall into an ice age.
These swords were not disorderly. They rotated and gathered along a mysterious pattern, becoming an enormous, slowly revolving wheel of icy blades in the heavens.
Along its rim, space was ceaselessly sliced, frozen, shattered—giving off a faint, tooth-aching sound.
Jingliu's figure appeared at the very center of that doomsday wheel. Her silver hair drifted silently within the killing chill.
She radiated an aura that kept all at a thousand li, those blood-red pupils looking down, locking coldly onto Tang San's strand below.
No words. No warning.
Only the hush before a storm of a billion blades, and a winter sword will that could freeze even gods.
She did not attack at once. The sun-blotting wheel revolved, a billion swordpoints fine-tuning—every one fixed on the sea-blue figure below.
Killing cold spread. The surging sea beneath began to freeze before the naked eye, even the leaping waves arrested mid-crest as if time itself had stopped.
Tang San's strand wore an unprecedentedly grave look.
From that wheel and the white-haired woman, he felt a threat purer and deadlier than Divineform Lu Jingming.
A cold that reached the root—freezing all things, even divine thought.
"Who are you?"
Tang San's eyes narrowed. He could see Jingliu bore no divine seat, yet her strength far exceeded common deities.
As he spoke, he secretly whipped his power to a frenzy. The Seagod Trident's phantom blazed, as he tried to drive out the cold invading his soul.
Jingliu ignored him.
In her eyes, this strand was merely a target to cut—no need for talk.
She raised her joined fingers slightly and drew a casual stroke toward him.
"Frosted Sky… Loom."
Her voice tinkled like ice beads on jade.
At once, tens of thousands of icy blades in the wheel thrummed in unison—eerie and precise.
They did not simply rain down. They became interlaced lines—exquisitely thin yet impossibly sharp filaments of frost-law and sword-intent—casting a net over the space where Tang San's strand stood.
These were no physical strings, but condensed manifestations of sword and frost. They sliced space, froze energy, ignoring physical defense to wind about Tang San's divine sense body.
Tang San roared, trident whirling. Gold-blue divine power surged like a tsunami, striking at the ice lines.
Yet on contact, the filaments did not shatter. They hissed, and the extreme cold raced back along his divine power, freezing and fixing it in place.
Even light, sound, and his flowing divine power grew sluggish.
This extreme cold seemed innately to restrain his sea power, leaving him at a harsh disadvantage.