If he'd had a choice, Yang Kai would rather face an Eighth-Order Ink Disciple than an Ink Clan Domain Lord.
An Eighth-Order Ink Disciple's methods were more unpredictable and insidious than a Domain Lord's—harder to defend against. At the end of the day, Ink Disciples were still human, and they knew how to play mind games. But Yang Kai would gladly take one over an Ink Clan Domain Lord any day.
He had the Bull-Striking Secret Art—a technique born from the Principles of Space, specifically conceived to target the Small Universe of Open Heaven Realm cultivators. It was a secret art designed to allow the weak to triumph over the strong.
Some of the Great Caves and Blessed Lands also possessed secret arts targeting an opponent's Small Universe, but in all his years, Yang Kai had never encountered one that could rival his Bull-Striking technique.
The pity was that it required the Principles of Space to activate. No one else could cultivate it.
Moreover, with the Purifying Light proliferating across every major pass, Ink Disciples on the battlefield had become increasingly rare. The Human Race's various techniques targeting Small Universes had all lost their purpose.
The Ink Clan had no Small Universes to begin with. Against Ink Clan forces on the battlefield, these types of arts were useless.
Yang Kai hadn't used the Bull-Striking Secret Art in many years. The last time he deployed it, he thought it had been in the Broken Star Field against Blood Crow.
It had been several hundred years since that occasion.
But the less frequently one practiced a secret art, the more devastating it became when finally unleashed—provided one's strength had grown sufficiently in the interim. The stronger the cultivator, the greater the art's power.
The moment he realized his opponent was an Eighth-Order Ink Disciple, Yang Kai had already decided to use the Bull-Striking Secret Art to settle things in one decisive blow. The feigned weakness he'd displayed up to that point stemmed partly from genuine inferiority in strength, but it was also deliberate—an effort to lull the Eighth-Order Ink Disciple into lowering his guard.
The secret art was powerful, yes, but activating it required time.
The essence of the Bull-Striking Secret Art lay in tracing an opponent's power back to its source and striking at the root—their Small Universe.
This required a process, a window of time. For Yang Kai, a Seventh-Order Open Heaven cultivator, to trace the power origin of an Eighth-Order Ink Disciple, it took roughly one incense stick's worth of time.
From the moment they had clashed until now, that was exactly how long had elapsed. Perfect timing!
A typical Seventh-Order cultivator could never survive that long against an Eighth-Order Ink Disciple. If one couldn't hold on, the secret art could never be executed.
The successful activation of the Bull-Striking Secret Art meant the outcome of this battle was already decided.
The Eighth-Order Ink Disciple wanted to overwhelm everything with brute force. Yang Kai chose instead to fight with his wits—a necessity when one's realm fell short.
The long sword pierced through Yang Kai's chest. With one vicious swing, the Eighth-Order Ink Disciple could have cleaved him in two—but he no longer had the chance.
Because at the very instant the thought formed, a surge of ferocious, overwhelming power detonated deep within his Small Universe. In the blink of an eye, his inner world was thrown into violent upheaval.
The destabilization of his Small Universe caused his entire reservoir of power to scatter. In that fleeting moment, he could barely keep hold of the sword in his hand.
Yang Kai seized the opening without hesitation. A devastating punch rocketed toward the Eighth-Order Ink Disciple's skull, point-blank.
With his current cultivation and the terrifying strength bestowed by his Dragon Vein body, at this range, a clean hit would blow the man's head apart.
But this was an Eighth-Order cultivator after all. In that life-or-death crisis, the grotesque growth on his shoulder—the thing resembling a second head—suddenly ruptured. Dense, concentrated Ink Force poured out like liquid, coalescing into a monstrous gaping maw that swallowed Yang Kai's incoming fist whole.
The abrupt turn of events stunned Yang Kai.
He'd had no idea the growth on the man's shoulder possessed such a bizarre ability. All along, he'd assumed it was nothing more than a side effect of the Ink Disciple using Ink Force to shatter his own limits.
His fist plunging into the Ink-Force maw, Yang Kai felt a sensation of extreme stickiness. With every fraction he pushed forward, the power behind his fist diminished further.
By the time Yang Kai's fist connected with the Eighth-Order Ink Disciple's head, the destructive force it carried had been reduced by more than half.
Even so, the blow still sent the Eighth-Order Ink Disciple hurtling backward. But the scene Yang Kai had envisioned—of the man's skull exploding—did not materialize.
The long sword was wrenched free as the old man's body flew back. Blood erupted from the wound, and Yang Kai couldn't suppress a muffled grunt of pain.
But he had no time to dwell on his injuries. He'd finally managed to execute the Bull-Striking Secret Art. If he couldn't finish the opponent before he fully recovered, everything he'd done would be for nothing.
Yang Kai estimated his Bull-Striking Secret Art could affect the old man for three breaths at most.
So as the old man was sent flying backward, Yang Kai took a single step forward. The Principles of Space rippled around him, and his entire figure clung to the old man's retreating form like a shadow.
His hand seals shifted, and the majestic power of heaven and earth within his Small Universe gushed forth like floodwaters released from a dam.
The Great Sun ascended. The Golden Crow cried out.
Yang Kai seized the Great Sun in one hand and smashed it downward at the old man.
The instant he was knocked back, the old man had already been watching for Yang Kai's follow-up.
Those brief moments of upheaval within his Small Universe were the most vulnerable he had ever been in his entire life. He had never imagined that a mere Seventh-Order Open Heaven cultivator could push an Eighth-Order like him to such a desperate strait.
An utter humiliation!
Whatever admiration and reluctance to kill he'd felt before had vanished entirely. Now, only the boy's life could wash away his shame.
The enemy had closed in again, unleashing that Great Sun manifestation once more.
He had to admit—the power of this divine ability was formidable, not something even he, an Eighth-Order, could dismiss lightly. But during their earlier exchange, the brat had already used it once. The old man now understood its might and knew precisely how to counter it.