Each silhouette represented Yang Kai from a different thousand-year span of the future. Eight silhouettes—a full eight thousand years of temporal reach.
Combined with Yang Kai's true body, they formed a Nine Palaces Formation whose might surpassed even the Nine Palaces Formation that Zhang Ruoxi had created with her eight Stone Clan guards.
Zhang Ruoxi, who harnessed her own bloodline to harmonize the power of the Sun and Moon, was indeed stronger than any single one of Yang Kai's silhouettes. But the eight Stone Clan guards had dragged the overall strength down. Taken as a whole, the Nine Palaces Formation currently standing on the battlefield was undoubtedly the more powerful one.
And not by a small margin!
With the Nine Palaces Formation complete, Yang Kai's true body took a single step forward, merging the power of all eight silhouettes, and surged toward Mo to surround and kill him.
When the Six Harmonies Formation had been completed, the silhouettes had already been evenly matched with Mo. The transitions through the Seven Stars and Eight Trigrams formations had pushed Mo entirely onto the back foot. Now, with the Nine Palaces Formation, their advance was unstoppable—the true body and eight silhouettes fighting in concert left Mo with virtually no room to strike back.
Mo's blood sprayed through the air, and the power of Mo scattered in every direction.
Nine forms of Yang Kai wove and darted across the battlefield, each one wielding the power of the Three Thousand Great Daos. Because every one of them was Yang Kai himself, no coordination was even necessary—the silhouettes attacked in flawless succession, without a single gap or opening!
Mo wanted to break through the encirclement, but how could he so easily escape the formation's siege?
The spectators watching from afar were all stunned.
No one had imagined that this final battle would produce such an extraordinary spectacle. The wonders of the Silhouette Technique exceeded everyone's comprehension and imagination.
Seeing how the battle had turned, everyone was invigorated—because only now had they finally glimpsed the hope of defeating Mo, this ancient Supreme.
Before this, how to face Mo had always been an intractable problem for the humans. They had never deliberately avoided the issue, but the truth was they simply had not possessed the means or the power to stand against him.
Zhang Ruoxi's arrival had been a welcome surprise, but even someone as formidable as her had ultimately been unable to gain the upper hand against Mo.
The battle on the main front had already ended. Every last member of the Mo Clan had been exterminated. If Yang Kai could finish off Mo here, then this Mo Calamity—raging since the end of the Late Ancient Era—could be resolved in a single stroke.
A bright future awaited humanity. Light would at last rip apart the darkness's stranglehold.
But soon enough, several veteran Ninth-Order humans began to worry. Though the situation on the battlefield looked overwhelmingly favorable, no one knew what price Yang Kai had actually paid to unleash this Silhouette Technique.
This was a secret art that far exceeded his own innate power—the greater the power gained, the greater the price that had to be paid!
And how long Yang Kai could endure such a battle remained unknown.
In truth, just as they feared, Yang Kai had indeed paid an unimaginable price to cast this Silhouette Technique.
And after gaining power that surpassed his own limits, his true body was bearing an enormous burden.
In other words, this state was not one he could maintain for long!
This battle had to end as quickly as possible. For that reason, he had not hesitated to bring his true body into the fray himself, all to finish Mo off sooner.
Under the onslaught of the Nine Palaces Formation, Mo was driven back again and again, utterly stripped of any power to fight back. This humiliating predicament filled him with rage. He was an ancient Supreme—a powerhouse from the same era as Mu, one who had once had the chance to rule an entire age of the myriad heavens.
Even though more than thirty percent of his origin power had been sealed away ahead of time, he could not tolerate such arrogance from a junior—especially one who had seized Mu's final legacy.
Mid-battle, he suddenly turned his head and fixed his gaze in a particular direction, locking onto one of Yang Kai's figures.
That was Yang Kai's true body.
The true body was easy to distinguish—not only was its aura the weakest among the numerous shadows, but after employing the Shadow Technique, the true body appeared wretched and battered.
To break the Shadow Technique, one had two options: either destroy the Space-Time River that served as its foundation, or kill the true body that formed its core.
The Space-Time River was no longer visible now, scattered as it was across the eight shadow clones inhabiting Yang Kai's body, which left Mo with only one choice.
With the onslaught of the shadows bearing down on him, Mo disregarded his own wounds—allowing even the mightiest shadow to cleave off one of his arms. The tremendous cost ultimately proved worthwhile: he broke through the shadows' encirclement and closed the distance to Yang Kai's true body.
Mo's power surged. He raised his remaining hand and smashed it toward Yang Kai with devastating force.
Though the blow was still a full ten thousand zhang away, the punch shattered space, froze the flow of time, and tore the heavens and earth apart.
It was a strike that poured every last ounce of Mo's strength—and one that could not be avoided.
He seemed to have already pictured Yang Kai's true body being pulverized to dust by that fist, a faint flicker of bittersweet satisfaction passing through his rage-filled eyes.
But the scene he had imagined never materialized. Yang Kai's true body showed not the slightest trace of panic. Instead, it charged straight toward the incoming fist.
Just as Mo stared in shock, Yang Kai's true body suddenly erupted with power far surpassing its own, directly shattering the spatial lock and setting the frozen flow of time moving once more.
He threw a punch of his own.
This was bad!
A jolt shot through Mo's heart as he realized he had been deceived.
All along, the formation eye of the Nine Palaces Formation had been maintained within the most powerful shadow. But in this instant, the fact that Yang Kai's true body could unleash such tremendous power could only mean the formation eye had been transferred to the true body itself.