Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 162 - 154 VS Great Success Rank 2

Chapter 162: 154 VS Great Success Rank 2

After realizing the enemy was of the Great Success Rank, I had already mentally prepared myself, knowing this fight was likely going to be different from the past. If I were as careless as before in taking the hits, even I would probably really bleed this time.

However, at the moment I felt the pain, I was still somewhat dumbfounded.

It wasn’t that I still thought this battle should be easy or anything. Just like when you watch a horror movie and you know there will be a scary scene coming up, but you still get startled by the immersive images and music, the authentic pain still caught me off guard. Ever since mastering the Fire Element form, I had not felt such a genuine pain.

I almost didn’t know how to describe the feeling. Being punched in the face felt like... well, it felt exactly like being punched in the face.

That’s not just nonsense. Normally, my sense of pain is simulated; I could even be decapitated and still comment on the intense pain with a detached point of view. And in my Fire Element form, even the simulation of pain is shut off; theoretically, I wouldn’t be able to feel any suffering at all.

And yet now, this pain feels like being punched in the face, but I couldn’t pinpoint the source of it. After all, my head had been smashed, so naturally, my face was gone as well. It was just pure pain.

Perhaps this is what’s called a "soul’s pain." Zhu Shi once told me that a demon hunter only needs to strongly wish to attack the opponent’s soul, and their Mana would acquire the property of a soul attack.

The soul attacks that the Weirdo Maker had launched in the past were simply predicated on the assumption that "I am a Great Success Rank demon hunter with absolutely no Soul Defense." But the soul attack being used by the Great Success Rank now was a true soul attack belonging to this Rank, one powerful enough to harm another Great Success Rank demon hunter with a normal Soul Defense.

As slow in speech but swift in action, seizing the moment of my surprise, the Great Success Rank in front of me immediately followed with another strike.

He clearly wasn’t assuming that I would die just from having my head crushed and quickly spun his body, aiming a spinning kick at my chest.

The power of this kick was far more ferocious than the previous punch, akin to a cannon on the ground, stuffing me into the barrel and blasting me out. At the moment of ignition, the earth shook violently, the shockwave erupted, and white smoke filled the air. The other leg he used to support his body turned the ground beneath him as tumultuous as a wavy sea surface, while my entire body was flung away at a speed far exceeding the speed of sound, and my vision drastically altered.

A heavy, stifling pain erupted in the chest where I was hit, and in an instant, I was thrown a kilometer away. Below was no longer the edge of the city, but a highway leading to the suburbs, with numerous vehicles passing by.

I could still sense the space around Zhu’s mansion, where the man who had flung me was crouched, with muscles in his legs bursting with force, launching himself towards my direction at over twice the speed of sound.

It seemed he wouldn’t stop until he killed me.

A fear of life and death arose in my heart, the very fear that I was in pursuit of. Fear, a sense of crisis, the shadow of injury and death, excited me. The long-sought freshness welled up in my painful and stifling chest.

At the same time, I was also filled with intense curiosity.

— Just who is this person?

Except for the Great Demon Silver Moon, I’d never heard of the Zhu family having any enmity with another of the Great Success Rank, and Silver Moon had long been dead. If there were others, Mr. Zhu or Zhu Shi would have mentioned it to me. Our side was still investigating the old Human Bureau base, and out of nowhere, a Great Success Rank character "refreshed," without rhyme or reason.

I had just used heat sensing to scout for any other signs of life inside the ruins of the Zhu’s mansion, and found none. Aside from Zhu Shi’s grandmother, there was not a second living person under those ruins. This was all very odd because Changan should have been in the Zhu’s mansion. While I was relieved not to find Changan’s body, it made no sense that he wouldn’t be there.

It was quite normal for Mr. Zhu to be absent; he had been busy lately preparing to lift the seal on Changan’s demon lineage, traveling far and wide to gather ritual materials, hardly ever at home. The last time I visited the Zhu family, he hadn’t emerged from the iron gate but approached us from the outside, indicating that he had also returned after being notified by Zhu Shi.

But Changan was different. In order to have him focus on preparing for the unsealing and to avoid him stirring up strange events outside again, he was confined to the scope of the Zhu’s mansion. Moreover, the Zhu family had learned from the last time he escaped and guarded him even more strictly; it was impossible for him to run off.

The sudden disappearance of Changan and the sudden emergence of an unfamiliar Great Success Rank — according to the most outrageous possibility I could imagine, this tall and strong Great Success Rank demon hunter battling me now was Changan, transformed into a Super Demon Hunter after a loss of control over his demon lineage blood. Although the opponent’s clothes and pants didn’t seem ill-fitting, in many fictional works, characters often mysteriously change into new clothes after a transformation...

I should set aside this ridiculous assumption for now and consider possibilities that are more closely aligned with reality. As far as I know, the only other living Great Success Rank with ties to the Zhu family is just one person.

— Water Navy Xuanwu.

Could it be Water Navy Xuanwu?

Even as I thought at super high speed, time still slowly passed, and the opponent’s speed was definitely not slow either. By the time I speculated this far, he was accelerating non-stop and had moved above me, having taken the initiative.

I focused my gaze on him.

Since attacking him with my hands had been avoided, I decided to use my eyes. No matter how fast he was, he definitely couldn’t outpace the gaze of my Fire Element form.

However, my approach seemed to once again reveal my weakness.

Whether it was using elongated arms to capture my opponent or using my gaze to lock on and ignite them, these skills were ones I often used when targeting opponents far weaker than myself. They were invincible against the weak, but against the strong, they were nothing more than petty tricks.

I immediately identified the problem—indeed, my gaze could capture him, but it couldn’t directly ignite him. It was like the time I tried to peer into the Barrier of Zhu’s mansion; I couldn’t focus my attention on him.

Focusing attention on a specific target is equivalent to transferring one’s Spirit to the target. From a Mystical standpoint, this is a form of spiritual invasion. And his body seemed to be shrouded in an invisible force field, keeping my invasion at bay.

This automatic rejection of external spiritual invasions probably wasn’t any special Spell, it was merely due to the strong Mana imbuing his entire body.

I could try to forcefully break through this inviolable realm, just as I could crush the Barrier of Zhu’s mansion with my gaze. Although his realm was indeed much sturdier, I figured it would only take me a second to break through. However, this was the rapidly changing battlefield of the Great Success Rank, where one second was far too long, not allowing for any distraction.

In an instant, his leg came down like a falling battle-axe, heavily slamming onto my torso.

Again I was struck, and I felt like a meteorite falling at an angle, crashing into the wasteland outside the highway, my body smashing through the ground and even penetrating dozens of meters underground.

By physical logic, even accelerating a human body to more than ten times the speed of sound couldn’t really drive a person deep into the earth. The phenomenon was due to the force he exerted on me. A mana potent enough to completely corrode my body and soul wrapped around me, attempting to cause continuous destruction, and this mana instantly dissolved the external matter it contacted. It felt as if someone had doused me in boiling water.

Flames burst forth from my entire body, and the foreign mana was blown away like shredded paper. And in my perception, "Water Navy Xuanwu" was still hovering in the sky. It wasn’t clear how he was flying, but flying at the Great Success Rank seemed normal.

Many sparks danced around him, the result of his attack shaking off what would be my "blood". From another perspective, those were all "Fireflies".

With a thought, the "Fireflies" above suddenly expanded, transforming into dozens of large Fireballs.

At the same time, his expression turned to one of shock, and he immediately started to move, attempting to escape the onslaught of the encircling fireballs.

In the blink of an eye, all the fireballs exploded. Massive waves of fire surged along the shockwave, spreading unceasingly in the air, forming a "Fire Sea Cloud".

Using the heat from the explosion, I teleported myself into the air and then surveyed the surroundings in the midair Fire Sea. The attack method just now could be further optimized; it wasn’t fast enough, and he had managed to escape the center of the explosion before me. Moreover—unless I saw it wrong, his expression had already changed before my "Fireflies" had the chance to turn into large fireballs. Was this a sixth sense?

It was as if he had entered stealth mode. I could grasp his general direction, but it was difficult to determine his exact position and distance. I simply dispelled the "Fire Sea Cloud" that obstructed my view, wanting to try and use my eyes to gauge it.

And in the instant that the "Fire Sea Cloud" dispersed, his figure also emerged—at some point, he had sprinted to my front, at a very close distance.

His fist mercilessly surged out, smashing my head again.

This time was different from the first; I let him hit me on purpose. As he threw his punch, I also raised my hands, making a gesture to grab him. His gaze was immediately drawn to the motion of my hands. However, this was merely a feint from me.

By the time he tried to retreat to dodge, I had already caught the hand he used to smash my head.

What I extended wasn’t my left or right hand.

My neck stump had already regenerated, and instead of a head, a palm grew out.

This palm directly grasped his wrist, and an eye and mouth emerged on the back of the hand.

I looked at him with that lone eye.

"Caught you," I said.

His face turned pale with shock.