The burly man offered no reply. He merely turned his head slowly, those hollow, indifferent eyes locking onto Chen Ping below.
The instant those eyes fixed upon him, a violent shudder ran through Chen Ping’s heart.
An unprecedented sense of crisis crashed over him, making every hair on his body stand on end.
This feeling was clearer, more direct than when he had faced the Soul-Devouring Venerable.
Chen Ping had not expected that after recovering, the Soul-Devouring Venerable would be far stronger than he had been in the Sixth Heaven, and could even summon such a terrifying figure.
“Mr Chen, be careful! This man… this man is extremely strange!”
Yan Nantian could not help but shout a warning. He felt an indescribable oppressive weight radiating from the burly man.
Liu Xue gripped her long sword tightly, pushing her Heavenly Gate technique to its limit, ready to assist at any moment.
Chen Ping took a deep breath, banished all stray thoughts, and focused his entire mind on the burly man.
He could tell that this opponent was on a completely different level from the previous Five Fiends Demon.
“Kill!”
A cold, rigid syllable emerged from the burly man’s mouth, sounding like striking metal and stone.
In the next instant, he moved.
There was no earth-shattering burst of aura, no towering demonic energy. He simply took one step forward.
Yet that single step seemed to transcend the constraints of space. One moment he was dozens of zhang away, the next, that enormous fist wrapped in ancient aura was already right in front of Chen Ping’s face.
Fast.
An indescribable speed.
It even exceeded the limits of Chen Ping’s divine sense.
Before the fist arrived, the condensed fist pressure already stung the skin on Chen Ping’s face. The surrounding air exploded completely, producing thunderous sonic booms.
“So fast!”
Chen Ping’s mind reeled. With no time to think, he reacted on pure instinct, pouring surging spiritual power into his Dragon-Slaying Sword and raising it horizontally to block.
CLANG!!!!!!
A deafening clash of metal rang out, as though two divine mountains had smashed together.
An unimaginable force travelled through the Dragon-Slaying Sword. Chen Ping felt excruciating pain in his arms, his tiger’s mouth split open instantly, blood pouring out.
His entire body was sent flying uncontrollably like he had been struck by a primordial beast, smashing through several massive stone pillars in the hall before crashing into the rear wall with a tremendous boom, kicking up clouds of dust.
“Chen Ping!”
“Mr Chen!”
Liu Xue and Yan Nantian cried out in unison, their faces turning deathly pale.
The spark of hope that had just ignited among the Yama Heavenly Sect disciples was doused as if by a bucket of ice water, nearly extinguished in an instant.
A cruel, cold smile curled at the corner of the Soul-Devouring Venerable’s mouth, as though he had expected nothing less.
As the dust slowly settled, Chen Ping struggled out of the crater in the wall, looking rather battered, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.
The qi and blood within his body churned wildly, his inner organs shaken violently.
“Such terrifying strength… and that punch just now…”
Chen Ping’s expression was grave. He sensed that the punch had not only been fast and powerful, it had carried a strange fluctuation of laws that slowed his body’s reaction by the tiniest fraction at the moment of impact. Otherwise, he would never have been so thoroughly overwhelmed.
“Time… interference from the laws of time?”
The thought flashed through Chen Ping’s mind like lightning.
Seeing that Chen Ping could still stand, the burly man’s hollow eyes showed no change. He took another step and threw another simple, direct punch.
This time, Chen Ping was prepared. He shouted, “Time Slow!”
He mobilised the power of time origin that he had comprehended. An invisible ripple spread out from him, attempting to slow the flow of time around the burly man.
Yet what happened next was shocking.
The moment the domain of slowed time touched the burly man, the profound law fluctuations around him rippled slightly.
Chen Ping clearly felt his released time-origin power melt away like ice under the sun, effortlessly neutralised and absorbed by a higher, more primal force.
No, it was not just absorbed.
The fist that had already been moving like lightning actually accelerated further within Chen Ping’s time-slowing domain.
On the edge of the fist, a faint, almost imperceptible sheen appeared, as though time itself were flowing backwards.
