Li Mingwu gritted his teeth for like two seconds then wore a solemn smile. With a colossal boulder hanging over their head any other hunter would have felt like shitting their pants. Upon discovering that their opponent had not been taking them at full strength all the while and half of the landscape of the entire gate was overturned.
Such realization was bound to cause one to die from their minds before the hands of their enemy.
But another thing that set Li Mingwu apart from others is the state of mind. His experience over the years of course greatly contributes to that. Just like how you can't expect a novice hunter who had never been to a gate before to react and handle a monster the exact way a veteran hunter would.
In the face of such magnifying disaster, Li Mingwu was very calm.
But that had no effect on his surroundings, nor did it change the fact that what is about to happen is about to happen.
The colossal boulder began to come down, threatening to crush him along with a large area of the landscape that was void of ground and only contained deep, endless darkness.
Li Mingwu looked up and inhaled deeply then exhaled. With a surge of concentration, he outstretched two hands into the air...
"Temporal Stasis!!"
Li Mingwu rapidly compressed the space around the boulder, creating a powerful barrier that held the massive rock suspended in mid-air.
The air around him crackled with tension as the boulder's weight pressed on the spatial barrier he created. He spat out blood and gritted his teeth, holding on to the boulder for as long as he could.
But he wasn't going to hold onto the boulder forever. The monk was still there to deal with, not to say he had a very nasty smile on his face. He was probably thinking of an incredibly bad thing to do to Li Mingwu.
"Haapp!!"
Li Mingwu shouted, sucking in a large amount of air at once to generate more power as if he was pushing the boulder upward. It wasn't any different, in a real sense. Because he could feel the entire weight of the boulder on his body, it was as if his body from up to down was being pressed together by the world.
This was just a side effect of using spatial manipulation to hold onto the boulder. Because his third eye was like a channel that opened his entire body to the limitless feel of space, almost making him one with the space—still, Li Mingwu was very far from achieving the state of oneness with the space.
Li Mingwu's eyes narrowed as he focused on maintaining the spatial barrier, his mind working swiftly on what to do with the energy pillar that was splitting the sky.
While in the thought process it began to come down to, at a faster rate compared to the first one. It was swift and smooth, slicing the boulder and everything in two.
However, this time, the energy wasn't able to cut the space. But the ground bore the brunt of the attack.
Already ravaged by the removal of stones that formed the boulder that was being held in the sky, a colossal chasm yawned open, its gaping maw occupying the epicenter.
The Slash of the energy pillar caused the very earth to have birthed another fracture, a jagged scar that cut through the landscape. Splitting the ground from the arch of the circular hole to the horizon.
A thick fog of dust covered everywhere and loomed longer than before. Far and wide, the ground was still shivering from the shock of the attack, it was like it had caught a sudden cold under a pressure-filled atmosphere.
The cocoon slowly unraveled, presenting Li Mingwu. However, this time, things didn't go as he had expected.
Blood followed a straight diagonal path from his shoulder through his torso to his lower side. He was bleeding heavily. His beard was colored red and his face was heavily bruised.
It was easy to get what happened.
While space itself had developed a resistance to the attack from the first interaction, the next attack recognized its own properties.
The cocoon was useless, it wasn't like the energy would cut through it. To put it in more clear terms: there was nothing to cut through in the first place. Both the cocoon and the energy had the same property, the energy is what caused the spatial distortions that Li Mingwu used in creating the cocoon.
Pitching them against each other was the dumbest thing to do.
It was a careful concept, it worked the first time because they were distortions, these distortions handled by Li Mingwu brought out more physical properties and looked like the perfect property for a shield but when the energy recognized the distortion, and became one.
All that was useless.
Li Mingwu's comprehension of physics was beyond par thanks to the third eye which also affected his level of perception. These things he was able to understand the moment he saw that the space did not tear and the cocoon was ineffective.
He gritted his teeth in pain, regret, and shame. It dawned on him for once how pompous and proud he was.n0VELusB.C0m
The monk from up there was looking very satisfied. It took the rosary in its hand and wore it over his head, then folded his arms with a victorious grin.
Li Mingwu had sustained a serious injury from that attack, he would be dead now if not for the fact that he quickly used quantum bind on himself–another intuition action.
Time seemed suspended as Li Mingwu was faced with a dilemma. Run or fight.
No, would it even be possible to run in this situation?
What he began to deliberate on this time around was:
'I wonder how I would like to be killed.'
Li Mingwu lowered his eyes to look at the overturned ground. He had little magical energy left to carry on the fight. He was seriously wounded and bleeding, his body was worn out and his legs were beginning to feel numb, almost as if he couldn't feel them.
Several minutes had passed since the battle began and it seemed like it was finally coming to a decisive end.
"I can't lose..."
